The Man in Black

Johnny Cash (2/26/1932-9/12/2003) was a man of faith, an American, a country and pop icon, a tortured but compassionate singer and songwriter. He sang songs -- partly originals, partly written by others -- that cover the range of human behavior and emotions. I’ve always thought that he was a close spiritual cousin to bluesman John Lee Hooker, coming from another world and yet essentially coming from the same world. And while I admire Johnny’s later work, the resurrection as it were, I can’t help but go back to the ones that grabbed me as a kid, songs like “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “Ring of Fire,” and even “Hey Porter.” Not to mention a zillion others. My parents used to play Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) quite a bit, and I loved (and still love) every minute of it.

When I was in college, I read a lot of Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and have always wondered whether anyone else has drawn direct comparisons between a song like “Folsom Prison Blues” by the Man in Black and the short novel The Stranger (L'Etranger, 1942) by Camus or Crime and Punishment (1866) by Dostoevsky. It always seemed clear to me, anyway.

But I shot in man in Reno
Just to watch him die. . .

Some people find this chilling, but I find it merely honest – seriously, there but for the grace of God go I or any of us. I’ve certainly had fantasies of blowing away people I detest, and in the fantasies, at least, I’m more than happy to watch them die. Think of Ruth’s fantasies if you’re a Six Feet Under fan, taking out each of her exes, one at a time, with a happy little smile; or any other fantasy sequence like it. Johnny Cash never killed anyone, yet he could obviously understand and empathize with the impulse. So, too, Dostoevsky with the set up of Crime and Punishment, and with even closer alignment, Meursault’s killing of an Arab in Algeria also just to watch him die in Camus' The Stranger.

But I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free,
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

Meursault understands that through his exercise of freedom, he’s committed an act that is condemned by the laws of society, and thereby has lost his freedom. He only fully understands the idea of freedom when he is in prison, condemned to death.

In all truth, perhaps the only thing holding back mayhem is civil society, the existence of a legal system and prisons, and religious codes that proscribe killing, leading to haunting feelings of guilt and remorse for those who believe yet kill anyway.

Existentialists, of course, often wore black, as did nihilists, Beatniks, and punks. Johnny gave several reasons for his donning of the black, including that it made choosing outfits a lot simpler. I can go with any and all of his reasons. I also love black, as anyone who knows me well can attest. It may seem a bit funereal sometimes (like on a sunny afternoon), but so what? It’s a tragic world and we should always be thinking of the dead: let the dead bury the dead. Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 while still in his forties, but died in a car accident three years later. Doestoevsky was lined up to be shot in a firing squad in Russia, then given a last-miniute reprieve. Imagine what that does to a person – talk about post traumatic stress. . .

If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m a strong advocate for mixing up genres and art forms, blending, and thinking beyond categories and ratings that have been, when you think about, handed down to us by God knows who. The canon and all – better a loaded cannon than a load of canon. Which is one of the things I love about the internet – it’s a free for all!

p.s. The Cure’s “Killing an Arab” is a short single cover of The Stranger. And since everybody in our immediate Michigan blogland seems to adore Johnny Cash, too, I’ll put in an additional vote for “Cocaine Blues,” as well. Among a zillion others.

I hear that train a'comin' . . . . .