But I've heard of a city called heaven

and I've started to make it my home

Hark, what is that I see coming

my blood's running cold and slow

But Jesus can quiet the Jordan

and pilot me through as I go

It's impossible to depict on paper the extraordinary leaps of modulation and uncanny phrasing that Stanley's voice carves through every word and line; tailing each verse with a light "yip" harking back to certain old sea chanties like "Blood Red Roses" which the early sailors sang with foreboding rounding Cape Horn through terrible currents, on their way to the Gold Rush. This same "yip" later found its way unfathomably into the campfires of cowboys in Texas, singing to the moon and stars, and must have even influenced the high yodeling of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, much later. Everything has its heritage. Sad to say, but the modal style of singing that Ralph Stanley embodies (which is not a style at all but a belief; a way of life) has all but died in this era of "sampling" and electronic voicings. The only other place I've heard anything like it was in a pub called The Cobblestone in Ireland where a man named Seamus Fitzpatrick stood up in the middle of the day and began a twenty-seven-verse ballad in the Seannois tradition in honor of his dead father. The entire pub went silent with bowed heads toward the black pints of Guinness except for those who knew the song from childhood and seamlessly joined Seamus, not missing a word of the tale. By the end of the twenty-seventh verse, the sun was just beginning to set through the tobacco-stained windows, and the melody still hung heavy in the air.

Head in the World

I had ideas for sure, the night before, of what it might be like. Projections. Pictures, I guess. In my head. Of what my head would be like. Severed like that. Suddenly cut off. Separate. Certainly, no one else can tell you what it's like. Run the gauntlet and come back to tell the tale. Except me. Perhaps. Too soon to tell. I could be the only one. Who knows? You'd have to comb the planet looking for evidence. Could it be? I'm the only one. Certainly not. I don't know. It's beyond me somewhat. Now. I mean, now. Being out in the world. Out and about. Being out in the thick of things with no body at all. Just rolling around. No precedent. But nevertheless, things ran through my mind the night before the execution. If you want to call it that. My mind inside my head. Things running wild in there. Make no mistake. You can just imagine. The gleaming blade. The white neck. Anticipation. How do you describe it? The clean break. I had heard rumors that the suddenness of it, the abrupt clash of steel on bone caused a continuation, a certain suspension of belief that the two might still be connected. The head and body. The link of the neck. Like the way both halves of a rattler will keep twisting once you've cut him in two. Chicken running around with his head cut off. That kind of thing. Or the way they say Mary Queen of Scots's head kept chattering for a full fifteen minutes afterward as the executioner marched up and down the scaffold presenting it to the crowd, clutching it by its thick red curly hair; eyes wide open, jaw and lips snapping up and down with no words. As though the head still belonged to the living; some last expression of self, a desperate attempt at being. I don't know. I wasn't there. These things are hard to describe when you get right down to it. "Suspended"? "Floating"? Nothing quite nails it down. It was immediate, though. I'll say that much. Not unlike the hackneyed magician's trick where he jerks the entire tablecloth out from under the plates and saucers and they all remain exactly where they are. Something like that. Or the way all the lights in the city go black and suddenly everyone's silent. Everyone waiting for the world to fall away but it already has.

It's curious, though-this vague yearning for home. This yearning for place. Some place or other. Why would that be? When it's all said and done. Why a lake, for instance, when I came from the desert? Heat and sand. Why a lake for Christ's sake?

Suddenly

Suddenly-the word most used by Dostoyevsky. Somebody told me that. Some Dostoyevsky expert. Suddenly. As though any kind of action could be drawn into words: Suddenly music. Suddenly turning. Suddenly silent. Suddenly. As though I never saw the process.

Everyone in the old house is sick but me. Silence, except for the snoring, coughing, and occasional trips to the bathroom. Snow everywhere through the windows. You can't look out without seeing it. Suddenly winter. Frozen rivers. Bitter cold. Barren trees. Small silver plane etched out against a chalk, still sky. Suddenly, completely alone.

Tall Thin White Man

A tall thin white man in wire-rimmed glasses (from the thirties) stands in front of a mirror shaving his ears with an electric razor; mouthing words to himself (or someone else, we're not sure), mouthing something to someone who is not there, unseen, imaginary (most likely a woman although this information is more for the actor than anyone else).

A naked, skinny, tall white man, well past middle age, stands in front of a mirror which is hanging from an invisible wire (possibly very light monofilament fishing leader) shaving his ear and nose hair; trimming his short sideburns then, squeezing some white cream out of a tube, he rubs it gently on his nose and starts speaking to an imaginary woman but in mime. The only sound is the sound of the electric razor.

A tall thin white man in glasses, well past middle age with a potbelly, white boxer shorts with his balls hanging out one side very visibly; white sleeveless T-shirt identical to the one worn by Paul Newman in Hud (or was it The Hustler?). In any case, the tightness of the sleeveless T-shirt only accentuates the pot of his belly. He is meticulously shaving his ears, nose hair, shortish sideburns and spends a great deal of time on one pesky black curled-up hair protruding from the top of his cheekbone (which the audience can't see).

Periodically (not often) the tall thin white man shuts the razor off and speaks out loud to an imaginary woman, imploring her to reconsider her quick departure. He goes so far as to admit he misses her deeply even though she's just recently walked out the door and clicked it quietly shut, intentionally avoiding the provocative slam. (This could all be improvised providing the actor doesn't get too cute with it; pretending he's a writer.)

An extremely tall (well over 6 feet 7 inches) thin, aging white man with a potbelly, sleeveless T-shirt, white boxer shorts, balls hanging nearly to his knees, stands in blank space (no set of any kind), side-lit with no music, staring blankly at the audience (no emotion can be read on his face), arms hanging limply at his side, one hand holding an electric razor, which is turned on, making a sound more like a dentist's drill or a distant chain saw, maybe. After a while (not too long) he turns the razor off and there's silence except for the sporadic coughing and nervous twitching of the audience, which gradually shifts to fascination as the tall thin white man's stare becomes more and more specific and it begins to be clear that he is examining his own face in an imaginary mirror, picking at dry red spots on his nose that seem to have suffered from extreme exposure to the sun or wind or both or just abject neglect. He pulls a tube of cream out of his white boxer shorts, squeezes some out on his finger then rubs it on his scaly nose, then rubs some on his hanging balls. His nose turns white as a lightbulb. His balls turn blue. Now he begins talking out loud to an imaginary woman who seems to have recently departed. He explains in detail the great gaping hole she has left in his chest (which the audience can't see) and how impossible it will be to continue without her. His blue balls start blinking. Then his white nose. They blink in alternating syncopation.

He turns the electric razor back on and shaves his ears, his nose hair, and his short sideburns. In the course of this methodical procedure the lights (pale blue) fade very slowly to black. No music of any kind. The razor continues in the dark. The tall thin white man's balls and nose keep blinking in the pitch black. They blink incessantly until the audience has entirely cleared out.

Perpetual Warrior

That's what he called himself, if you could believe it-The Perpetual Warrior. Bragged about it in all the bars. Said, now that there was perpetual warfare he ought to fit right in. Then he'd laugh and spit into the sawdust floor; fire back another shot of Jameson. He'd elaborate on something he called "a carefully developed spell" against sudden pain. That's how he described it to all the women. The kind of pain that comes unannounced and shocks the entire body, mind, and spirit. Unimaginable pain. Then he'd go on in detail about how the power of this spell was contained inside the rhymes and rhythms of an ancient Icelandic poem called Song of the Spear, handed down for centuries from the Battle of Clontarf. According to legend, on the morning before the conflict, twelve Valkyries sat astride their war ponies chanting the poem in unison. The wind off the Irish Sea blew their braided bloodstained hair. The severed heads impaled on the tips of their lances spun in a ragged counterclockwise harmony. The sound was like the humming of a distant hurricane. Huge ravens floated in and out between the shoulders and shields of the warrior women. When they had finished their incantation they rode off through the air toward the battlefield to ordain the ones to be slain.

He would go on like this for hours, in a whiskey reverie, somehow always managing to seduce some stray wild-eyed girl, vulnerable to epic exaggeration.

Livingston, Montana

"Now, try not to be abrupt with her," she says to me on the phone, already coaching and getting me on the defense. "She's a very nice woman and she's just trying to help us out."

"Help us what?" I say. "Where the hell are you, anyway?"

"I told you, we're at the airport and this woman-Mrs. Adams is her name-she just wants to verify with you that Jackson is our son and that you're allowing him to travel with me to Mexico."

"Who is she?"

"She's one of the customs officials here. She just wants to know whether you've given permission for him to go out of the country."

"How does she know for sure that I'm his father?"

"You're going to tell her."

"But I could be anyone."

"But you're not. You're his father."

"But you could have called up anyone and told her that I was the father when I might not be."

"Try, for once, not to be so difficult and just cooperate with me, would you? Just this once."

"I am cooperating."

"All right, now I'm going to put her on. Her name is Mrs. Adams."

"Mrs. Adams. Right. Put her on."

"Try to be nice."

"Just put her on."

"Here she is." A very flat, public-servant voice announces herself through my tequila haze as I swing both legs out of bed and stare at the blank wall of the Masonic Temple across the street.

"Good morning, Mr. Noland, my name is Becky Adams and I'm the Notary Public here at Newark Airport and we need to have your approval that Jackson Noland is your lawful son and that you've given full permission for him to travel out of the country to Mexico with his mother, Jasmine Macey."

"Who?" I say, fumbling for my lighter by the digital clock.

"Jasmine Macey," she repeats.

"Never heard of her."

"You've never heard of Jasmine Macey?"

"That's right. Sounds like a fake name to me. A made-up name, doesn't it?"

"She claims to be the mother of your son, Jackson Noland, and she intends to take him with her to Mexico."

"Well she's lying and I'm not giving any kind of damn permission. Put her back on-this woman, whoever she is. I want to speak to her."

"What's going on?" the mother of my son says. "What did you tell her?"

"Why are you going to Mexico?" I ask her.

"What do you mean, why am I going to Mexico? It's Christmas. We've already been through this. I told you months ago I was going to Mexico for Christmas."

"No you never did."

"What did you tell Mrs. Adams?"

"I told her I never heard of you."

"Oh, great. That's just great! You son of a bitch! What is the matter with you? What kind of a fucked-up mess are you, anyway?"

"I'm pretty fucked up."

"It's your son! This is about your son!"

"You don't need to go to Mexico for Christmas."

"We've had this planned! I bought the tickets, you asshole!"

"Why don't you come out here instead? You'd like it out here. Jackson would-"

"I'm not going out to the wilds of Montana in the middle of winter! Are you nuts?"