fahey week 2021 day 3 - the teachings of blind joe death

 it is in the sonoran desert that our tale begins, where the dasein and the tonal howl at night, where the locals smoke mushrooms  and the mountain lions attack. there anthropology student  john fahey travelled in search of legendary bluesman blind joe death (though the precise dates of his fieldwork are not clear and even contradictory). 

fahey found death.

he found blind joe death using the seven degrees of separation. by sending a letter addressed ' Joe Death. a black man of about 60, a blind man, blues musician and shaman, somewhere near the sonoran desert.' 

fahey, basho and the filmcrew found him working as a gravedigger in a three casa village. 'what kept ya?'  said the sage. in the local cantina, over the many glasses of rotgut whiskey necessary to build rapport with the source, senjor joe explained that what one needed to be was not a guitarist and an entertainer (or a cited anthropologist) but a man of power who did not care what others thought of him, who could retire to the desert and live in poverty and anonymity without a second thought. 

'I have seen amazing things.' said the sage. 

'silver ravens on fire on the belt of orion'

'moonbeams glittering on sacred mushrooms'

'the light of a flashlight reflected on the back of a deer's eyeballs at night.'

'harry everett smith sitting in the jail of a hick town...' 

'let's not talk about harry.' said the young anthropology student quickly, 'tell me about the blues. is it similar to the tonal. or the dasein.' 

'all of these are just words. like the words of a field report or a best selling novel. what you need young man is actual phenomenological experience that can be related to the categories of structuralist theory preferably by naive uneducated native informants...'

the young anthropologist threw down his pen. for he had been making notes in his notebook (even though it made his informant nervous). 

'goddammit I told you not to mention the structuralists, they're out of fashion'

'sorry. sorry.' the old man looked genuinely upset behind his dark glasses.

' how about an ethnomethodological breaching of the accepted definition of reality. a break in theory rather and a break in practice...' 

robbie basho was clearly unused to the drinking he sat slumped in a corner singing to himself. when they came to clean up in the morning they would find him wide eyed with terror, clutching  a crucifix and muttering about the old gods.

'let's go.' said fahey. jumping up and grabbing his guitar case. 

'where'

'the crossroads'

'not that old shit again. I told you before. all of that is bullshit lifted from english romantic poets. " mad, bad and dangerous to know". you'd think white people would recognise it...'

'cummon... get up... there's another bottle of whiskey in it for you.'

at the crossroads the wind howled like the hound of the baskervilles.

fahey got out his guitar tuned it to a gaped myxolydian and started to sing.

'jesus. that was fucking terrible. don't do that ever again.' admonished the sage.