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Image: Audience at "Singing the Centennial"
In many ways, the Eudora Welty Centennial event was a perfect marriage of the arts of songwriting and Welty's literary storytelling.
Although Welty received the National Medal of Literature, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, and was the first living author to have her stories and essays compiled by the Library of America, these accolades did not define her existence. Welty looked to friendship and curiosity about the particulars of life. " In writing, as in life," she wrote, "the connections of all sorts of relationships and kinds lie in wait of discovery, and give out their signals to the Geiger counter of the charged imagination...."
Mary Chapin Carpenter is a northerner and New Jersey born, but became fascinated with southerner Eudora Wetly and the power of her imagination when she stumbled upon One Writer's Beginnings through a comment from a friend.
The book is a bible, a talisman of sorts. It has meant so much to me. I was living in a scummy little apartment trying to be scrappy and eke out a living, when a very dear friend of mine quoted the very last line of the book. Our conversation was about struggle, and after I heard the quote I ran out and got it. I basically devoured it and found myself returning to it over and over again through the years. To this day I recommend it to any person I meet who is trying to establish a creative life within the requirements of making a living. It reaffirms what I am trying to accomplish for myself. Sometimes you are not sure of what you are trying to do; you are just trying to be happy.
Before our conversation thread ended, I looked up the last line in One Writer's Beginnings and read it to Mary Chapin over the phone.
"As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within," Welty wrote.
When asked why she opened the "guitar pull" in the round with the iconic Stones in the Road, Mary Chapin had the somewhat surprising answer that the song is an old friend and that the Welty tribute was her return to performing after two years.
This was my first show in two years and I had taken extensive time off because I had a pulmonary embolism. We were all talking about how nervous we were and it was especially true for me because this was my return to performing. 'Stones' is about a lot of things, about struggle, certainly, and it is my calling card as well.
The experience of having the embolism was terrifying. I had been having a lot of pain in my chest and luckily I got to the emergency room in time. It has taken me a long time to get back to my job. That is another thing that made it so meaningful to me--the fact that I was with such kind and considerate and lovely people in Jackson.
The Welty connection "of all sorts of relationships" was made.
The audience reacted as if it were greeting an old friend as Mary Chapin sang the opening lines of Halley Came to Jackson in a voice ringing strong and true with heart-felt emotion. The song and companion children's book, illustrated by Dan Andreasen, is based upon Welty's description of her father holding her in his arms as Halley's comet appeared over the skies of Jackson in 1910.
Another connection--a connection to the past--made through a combination of great songwriting and powerful vocal harmonies, just about brought down the house when Kate Campbell walked over to the grand piano to play Look Away. Mary Chapin said that she and Campbell locked eyes as the song began. It is one of Carpenter's favorites. Campbell is a respected presence on the folk music circuit as well as National Public Radio, and her work has been compared to that of Welty and William Faulkner. Campbell introduced the song from her album Rosaryville with a vivid personal memory.
Image: Kate Campbell
I remember seeing Eudora on public television one night and there was a photograph of the mansion in Windsor, Mississippi behind her. I remember her talking about the New South and the Old South and along the way she said, 'You know, not everything was bad and it doesn't really matter where you are from, there is good and there is bad.' She was talking about the Old South and she said 'it really wasn't all about hate.' I, too, cannot believe that the history of the south is all about hate.
