The Delta and Oxford, MS

Twice a year, for a number of years, an odd whimsy strikes me without fail. I want to become the next president. Every January 1st, when it dawns on me that nothing of merit will happen after 1am and it's time to head home, yet I loaf around because I am dreading the drive back in a sub-zero car, I think to myself, "If I were president, we'd celebrate New Year's like Persians -- on the first day of spring." True, I could celebrate New Year's in Key West, but it just makes more sense to celebrate new beginnings when Mother Nature herself celebrates new beginnings.

Half way into the new year, around July 4th, same thing, "If I were president, we wouldn't call Independence Day, Independence Day. Maybe Autonomy Day, or something like that." I think it's the least we could do if the government continues to balk at reparations and it took a British man to direct one of the most present (in the sense that when you're watching it, it doesn't feel like you're watching a movie) films about U.S. slavery. It'd be logical to write about Washington D.C. or Boston this week, but it made more sense (there's a difference, and I know you know it) to write about the Mississippi Delta instead.

Easily one of my favourite stretches of land in the U.S. There are other parts with more art, more music, and more history, but that's not why you're pulled here -- and you are. The traveler comes to discover the untold, the musician for the first notes, and the melodramatic starving artist (ahem, moi) intended to eat her way to an early heart attack while listening to the blues. But when the young gal next to me celebrated her 90th birthday with a similar entree, plus a hunk of chocolate cake, I called it quits.

Taking cues from the traveller, I decided to explore and found myself in a small gallery talking to a professional artist. I say professional because it's her sole source of income and has been for 20 years, the gallery was hers to boot. My dream in the flesh. When she told me she's entirely self-taught, I found the force that drew me here twice in less than two years.

She started painting because it felt good. Early critics lambasted Elvis because he felt the music a little too much. It's no wonder then that these alluvial fields birthed a writer who said to hell with technique and made stream of consciousness a hallmark of his work. So you don't come to vacation in one of the poorest regions in America to see, you come to feel. It's logical if you think about it, the land that has felt the most across centuries, continues to feel today. When's the last time you felt something in your bones? (Last weekend's drunken slice of greasy pizza doesn't count by the way. I had an spinach empanada if you're wondering :-))

Studio at Taylor Arts Gallery

Graceland Too (that's right -- too)

Elvis' birth home in Tupelo, MS (all w/in one photoframe)

The beginnings of The King...

Rowan Oak Oxford, MS

Faulkner, the proprietor

Windsor Ruins

Oxford's square

Crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul

My soul can find a hippie jam fest even in Blues country...

Moon Lake

Length of Stay

Roughly 4 days over two visits

Docking Index

       

Eight anchors. During my second visit one my favourite musicians came through Oxford and played for practically nothing. That's all the validation this groupie needed.