These notes are personal insights and should be respected as such.
Although these notes will not always be literally written on a porch, they do represent a new perspective on Appalachian culture that was gained when I moved into the community.
I was quite nervous when I realized that I truly was going to live right in Dante. There is always this fear or lack of security that accompanies a departure from tradition and ease. What feels comfortable at any one time is relative. The photography project in Mount Airy seemed daunting at the time because the culture appeared parochial and not accepting of someone new. As my project progressed, I realized that those qualities that I had attributed to the town were mine. Once I surrendered my fears and gave myself to the project, I perceived very few barriers between myself and the people.
Notes From the Porch
Landing in Grundy, Virginia to start Life of Coal , was a real cultural shock: I might just have well landed in some remote third world country. Everything that I saw and heard seemed so different in a way that was at once, fascinating and frightening; after all, in the North we grew up with stories about how hillbillies are fiercely independent and want to be left alone. In this myth, outsiders were not welcome. This culture seemed vastly more alien than anything I had encountered in Mount Airy. I was experiencing growing pains.
The trip through the hollows on narrow winding roads that seemed to go nowhere or, perhaps, the end of the earth, were lightly populated with trailers, doublewides, and small homes that were either very neat or barricaded with old trucks and an assortment of junk: a breeding ground for people who did not welcome outsiders and wanted to be left alone. I felt uneasy if not threatened by all of this especially when I realized that this was my project. There was this incredible internal struggle between wanting to know these people and my own inadequacy, my own demons of prejudice.
What was, at first, so disconcerting finally evolved into an understanding of being human, was just how many prejudices I carried around with me without even knowing they were there. The project was photography and recordings of oral histories and art, but, now the impetus, the passion came from my own reawakening to the joy and pain of true discovery. I am truly a humbled student.
When I attend the Free Will Baptist or the black A.M.E. Zion churches, my strong beliefs about traditional religions are gently discarded, not because I have no core values, but because I do. The sermons, divine hymns and welcoming people effect my heart and spirit in a way that acknowledges the universal struggle of man to experience life beyond just the physical world. To be moved is to be deeply moved no matter the cause. Amen.
When I come to the mountains, I live in this state of ambiguity, of uncertainty, which I probably live in during the rest of my life, but I am just less aware of it. I feel intense sadness and disconnect at some times and joyous tears and love at others. Love is not too strong of a word for my feeling of closeness to these people. And. yet, why don’t they invite me to their homes for dinner. I am alone most nights. What my neighbors have given during the day opens my heart; perhaps I need this time alone to appreciate, to honor what I have received during the day.
Whenever I experience fear and doubt about something I am about to do, it is a certain indication that I must do it; that I will grow in the process. Whether it is attending the funeral of Kathy Helbert’s father shortly after my own father’s death, photographing at RAM (Remote Area Medical), or attending the Trammel reunion, there is this nervous and insistent inner voice that tells me not to go. That something unwholesome will happen that will totally undermine everything that has led me to this point. However, that is always followed by a quiet voice from a deeper place, from my innermost being, my soul, that whispers the revelatory joy of the unknown.
My two days at RAM were extraordinary reconfirmed and expanded my experience of mountain people.
Here I am on Charlotte’s porch during the early summer of 2004. It has been a particularly difficult year what with the stresses of a new position and my mother passing: I arrive very unsettled. At first, when I come to this place it is a bittersweet experience. There is this concentrated convergence of adjustments: to another yet familiar culture, a feeling of peace yet loneliness, of returning home yet always being an outsider. I wonder why I came all this way to feel isolated and estranged from nine months of all that made sense to me. Why don’t I just find some familiar local ground for my project that would allow me to live a comfortable life. A life where I did not always feel challenged or even threatened. Yes, threatened! Then I eat with Peggy and Gladys at the seniors center, sing hymns with my brothers and sisters at Longs Chapel, sit with Earl and Sis on their front porch, laugh with Vicky at the post office, and hug Roger and Loraine. How could I have doubted my place here in the mountains. I am here out of love: a give and take kind of love.
—Ken Hassell