Lightnin' Hopkins - Double Blues

My home is built upon 5,500 feet of superimpacted memories -- layer upon layer of sedimentary dreams and thoughts, one folded upon the other until the landscape emerges into the cold air in deeply-carved crinkles reminiscent of a discarded bedsheet.

My memories roll with the land in waves where the light casts long, dark shadows between rows of crests.

Memories... remember when we used to visit the old breakfast diner on 20th street in Denver? Eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee -- all for less than six bucks. And I would sit there at the window and stare out at that windswept stretch of 20th, coffee steaming wide.

I remember the precise gleam of the Greyhound in autumn light as it passed, first moment's gleam of a long, lonely haul to Chicago, kicking dried leaves in its wake.

The 20th st. diner was a grimy joint, a real Lightnin' Hopkins sort of place. This was the place where arteries came to die. Ah, but what a death, child.

My landscape is mountains and dry brush; Hopkins sings of an altogether different emotional topography. His is a deep south of roads, shacks and shame that sizzles hard on the skillet.

Listen to me, son. Ol' Lightnin' is the voice of God. There is no disputing that.