No Show Jones & Hillbilly Self-Doubt
George Jones once flushed $10,000 down a toilet. In the early 1960’s that was a lot of money. Was he drunk? Probably, but alcohol just brings all the things you bury to the surface. They don’t call it “liquid courage” for nothing. Why then did he flush money down the toilet?
Because he felt like he didn’t deserve it. For my money, Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis are the two greatest male country singers in the history of music, but both of them had to destroy everything good that happened to them because destroying it was easier to stomach than losing it.
You might be reading this and not understand why anyone would do this. I understand and I envy you. I am sure every culture in America has some kind of form of this and I’ve seen it happen to all kinds of folks, but it’s an epidemic among poor rural whites of the South. You can see this illustrated in detail in J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (I recommend the book over the movie, but I can’t complain too much about the job that Ron Howard did).
This is not a modern phenomenon, you can see this going back in time and we only have ourselves to blame. Braveheart tells this story, albeit not completely accurately. The Scottish nobles sold out the rebels to the English crown because they thought they were looking out for their own interests, but what happened was they handed over Scotland to the English and the English put the Scottish nobles in their place. They got “too big for their britches.” We will never be accepted as a part of the cultural elites – at best, we’re here to entertain them and at worst, we’re here to give them our timber and mineral rights, or die in their wars, pick their tobacco, pick their cotton, dig their coal, build their railroads, etc.
At a certain point, as Vance and Jim Webb have explained, this just became a part of our internal identity. It’s not only how they see us, it’s how we see ourselves.
In America, in 2023, there are people who are celebrated and venerated by the government, corporations, news and entertainment, and they still scream oppression. And, there are people in America who are legitimately oppressed. You can’t control the culture, you can’t control how the next person you interact with is going to treat you based on who you are, but you can control how you feel and how you act. People living in America in 2023 are the richest, freest people, with access to the most amount of information in the history of the world. Take control of yourself. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that a particular politician or political party will fix anything.
You can gain all the power and money in the world, which will cause people to flock to you, and you can still be lonely.
You can be at the fanciest parties, with the most glamorous of people and still feel like you don’t belong there.
Kurt Cobain got everything he ever wanted when he dreamed of being a pop star. He was miserable. He was a heroin addict. He killed himself.
I’m certainly not telling anyone not to seek success, but I am saying don’t measure your self-worth by anything external because it’ll never end. Look at all these celebrities who are constantly politically pandering (on both sides), they can dress it up as “using their voice” but the reality of it is, they either feel they have to continue to “earn it” by giving back or they have play the game to stay in the game. I don’t buy that any of these people are “good”. You can’t preach to people about how good you are while saying nasty things about people different than you at the very same time. You’re just unsuccessfully trying to prove to someone, maybe just you, but someone, you’re good. You’re not.
As Nick Cave said recently, paraphrasing, live outside people’s expectations. Don’t make art you think people want to hear, make art you want to hear. Don’t buy the house you want people to see you live in, buy the house you want to live in. Don’t drive the car you want others to see you drive, drive the car that does the job that you enjoy driving. Don’t date the woman that you want your buddies to see on your arm, find the woman who is going to love you no matter what and marry her.
Focus on the things that are going to make you go to sleep at night as anxiety-free as possible. No matter who you are, you will never be enough for the world. Just be enough for you and the ones in your sphere of influence. They need you and they need your support so that they can do the same.
I’m not saying this is easy, it’s not. We all crave validation from others. It’s a part of being human, but it doesn’t have to be the dominant part of being human.
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On a related note, we recently watched the documentary on Joe Cocker: Mad Dog of the Blues on Amazon, and it’s a good use of 90 minutes. Compare and contrast who he was trying to be Joe Cocker and who he was at home with Pam in Colorado.