I have now arrived in Bristol, Tennessee.  Having missed the 'Rythmn 'n Roots Festival by a day.  Rats.  Time to catch up with the blog.  I intended to write last night but on return to my hotel, after the Irish Pub with the magic trio and a meal in the Stardust Cafe which turns out to be owned by Hall's sister and run by his niece; the netbook stubbornly refused to accept that an internet connection is available.  I got very cross with the hotel proprietor but it stayed that way so I dived into bed at 10; an unheard of early night for me.  Still I thought I will probably wake by 6 and could at least draft a blog and transfer it later.  Slept rather well; in fact until 8.30.  No breakfast at the hotel so I drove to the Wild Bean Cafe in Lewisburg  where the netbook gave me just the same message.  Obviously not the hotel wi-fi that had misfunctioned.  After running diagnostics the netbook then re-installed about 15 drivers and lo; I was online. A warning though that the machine is not in peak condition and I may go silent at any time. 

Amy came in to the Wild Bean for a latte as she had to open the store, Bella, from 12.  A totally pleasant interruption, but alongside the re-installation of drivers, that contributed to a shorter rumination than intended so I shall take up the themes a little later.

If I was a little unkind about the landscape in the highlands of W. Virginia around Elk River TC then let me balance that by saying I have found much of the rest of the state more interesting and enjoyable to experience.  Rolling hills which go on for miles and miles and in most places a proliferation of shacks, trailer homes and single storey clapboard houses beside the roads.  Sometimes trailer and shack combined together.  Poor folks houses.   A recently released statistic tells that those living below the poverty line in America have increased to around 46 million people.  The ghettos of the cities are a feature of many countries, here the rural poverty smacks you in the face too.

At the recommendation of the the magic trio I visit the Greenbrier River Trail, a few miles out of town, before setting off to Bristol.  It is very much to my taste.  A heron sits mid-stream, fishing, and many colourful birds fly amongst the trees.

So this is the Greenbrier River, near Lewisburg.  

Sitting beside it after a short walk I reflect a little on the Museum of Native American History.  350 years ago we in Newcastle were, give or take a couple of years, busy dealing with King Charles I as we kept him prisoner in the City during our Civil War.  Indeed he used to play golfe upon the Shield Field during his time in custody; an area almost in the City centre these days.

Here native Americans lived in harmony with the rivers and forests, plants and animals, entirely innocent of the changes awaiting them.  Of course the vast majority of native Indians were wiped out not by guns and swords and armies, but by diseases.  Microbes, bacteria, viruses borne upon the ships of the colonising French and British.  I think the museum suggested some 90% died that way.  Missionaries reported piles upon piles of corpses in native villages. "All that we converted have now died"

I reflected too, in the midst of the tranquil beauty, on the poverty and troubles of today.  Brecht's 'Solely Because of the Disorder in Our Cities' came flooding into my head.  A poem where he can no longer speak about the beauties of this world because of the political crisis surrounding him.  As I speak the words gently tears begin to flow almost uncontrollably and I have to pause.  I remember the power of several of his poems used to do that to me before I engaged in the discipline of performing them.  You have to rein that back as a performer and try to get the audience to feel the emotion.  Nevertheless the thrill reminds me that I do have a mission to bring his poetry to people.  He remains, for my money, one of the 10 most important western artists of the 20th Century.  My daughter, who helped enormously with the first version of my show over 2 years ago now, thinks I have become ridiculously obsessed with the work, but I fear the new version of the show which I have been slowly working on for most of a year now, will find the light of day next year.

I also remembered too an early date with a girlfriend 20 odd years ago now.  A down to earth and astute working class woman she was very nervous when I suggested a film as a date, that I would take her to some obscure art film with sub-titles.  In fact we went to see 'The Last of the Mohicans'.  The film of course starts with the Mohicans hunting a deer in a forest not unlike the ones I am seeing now.  And the first 5 minutes of dialogue are all in a native Indian language; with sub-titles.

 Hall,the Crazy Baker, told me yesterday that he had actually looked up the U-Tube clip from my Brecht show.  Flattering in one sense and deeply embarrassing in another as now I don't regard it as a very good piece.  Badly recorded sound and not what I would really like to represent my work.  You forget that once in the ether material remains there for ever.

I have written a little about Hall and Amy.  Linda, the third of the magic trio, is one of the most stunningly attractive women I have ever met in my life.  Not classically beautiful and certainly not glamourous; just, as I think I told them on the first night we met, an uncommonly handsome woman.  I have to confess her image has floated into my mind as I laid my head on my pillow the past few nights.  If I were 10 years younger, a little thinner round the waist and not just passing by in transit, I would definitely want to have her babies.

The trio have, quite unwittingly, helped to define something, and I am not yet sure quite what it is, about me and about this trip.  Something to do with people not places certainly.  And it is about discoveries too. That I can have such, slightly ridiculous, fancies not expected of a man approaching 60, is at once unnerving, exciting and revealing.  Am I nothing but a superficial flirt?  Or just attuned to potential?  Where is constancy in all this?  I tried hard to be constant with my last partner, 12 years we managed, but I also am who I am and that was too dangerous for her.  Not being trusted was a deeply bitter blow that I am still trying to escape from under and I still struggle not to blame her for that.  Blame, like guilt, is an entirely unproductive emotion.

At dinner tonight in an Italian next to the motel - Parmigiana Melazane with a bed of spaghetti and garlic bread, plus egyptian bread with the Tzatziki I ordered as a side dish, total carbohydrate overload most of which I had to leave - the next door table took up conversation. The accent seems to attract attention and the Baptist minister, for such he was, on discovering I was from Newcastle, told me he spent 6 months on the Baptist circuit based in Blaydon and High Spen; near neighbours to Newcastle.  Even he and his friend agreed that despondency was the order of the day.  Where will I find some Americans prepared to stand up for their country's mad follies?

Nashville cats, cool as country water.  Tomorrow.