Working at Cracker Country

            By September 2016 I’d been looking for work for quite some time. I had a Master’s degree but hardly any work experience, so it was tough getting hired anywhere. (To be fair I hadn’t tried call centers yet. Fortunately.) But I actually heard back from one place I’d applied to on a whim. A museum on the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa named Cracker Country. I jumped at the chance to work at a museum, and thus began a two-year chapter in my life where I actually had a job I enjoyed, and learned more about historic Florida than I ever knew I would.

            Cracker Country derives its name from the cattle ranchers who inhabited Florida in the 1800’s. There are a few different theories on where the term came from. A possibly apocryphal origin is that it comes from the cracking sound of a whip, which cattle ranchers used to gather their cows from the swamps (while not actually hitting them with the whip). I’ve seen this demonstrated at Cracker Country, those whips can get quite loud. An older interpretation of the term is simply referring to poor white people, and in Shakespeare’s era it meant a boisterous person. People off-put by the term “cracker” would do well to know that it didn’t start to take on its modern racial connotation until sometime in the 1940’s.   

                The story of how Cracker Country began, as I understand it, is that in the late 1970’s the Carlton family, a very old cattle ranching family in Florida, decided they wanted to make their old family home, built in the 1880’s, into a permanent attraction at the fair. So, they had it taken apart and relocated to the State Fairgrounds. They then began acquiring other old buildings from around Florida; a two-room “shotgun shack” home, a schoolhouse, a train station, an inn, a church, a train caboose, and others. Soon they had a replica of a little town from the late 1800’s.

Cracker Country really treats its employees like family, and I don’t just say that out of some sort of brand loyalty. A couple weeks after I began working there, I married my wife Deborah (this had been scheduled months before I began working there). They happily gave me a week off, even though I had just started working there. I don’t know if any other workplace would do that. They even sent us a card and had everyone sign it, when I hardly knew anyone. They were supportive when my son was born too. One of my coworkers even gifted us an old-fashioned quilt. This is stuff that would never happen if you worked at Wal-Mart or Target or something. I felt proud and happy working there. I was helping educate children, not just increasing the profits of a greedy CEO. It was a job I felt ethical about doing, and I never felt like I was being exploited. Granted, there weren’t a lot of hours, and no health insurance. But it’s a small operation.

            My job at Cracker Country was mainly to be a tour guide to classes of children that came to the museum on field trips for most of the year. We were to dress in period-appropriate clothing and hide our technology. Even had to buy a pocket watch. It was up to you how in-character you wanted to be. The kids would rarely put up with it long if you tried to pretend you were from the 1890’s (they’re all too smart for that), unless you were a really good actor and could get them to play along with you. While some of my coworkers were that good, I couldn’t really keep it up the whole time. During the State Fair in February I would instead be stationed at different places rather than being a tour guide. I’ll go ahead and walk you through what a typical school tour was like. Everyone did the tour in a different order of course.

            Introductions

            We’d line up at the entrance to the State Fairgrounds and wait for the school buses to arrive. There’d be days where the bus couldn’t make it for whatever reason, or days where they arrived super late and significant parts of the tour had to be cut (this was most of the time actually). Tour guides would explain the rules, set the tone for the whole thing, explain what they were about to see in Cracker Country. I’d try to get them to realize how long ago the 1890’s were, and discuss the various technologies that hadn’t been invented yet. You try to get a feel for the group at this point. Not just for the kids, but the teacher and any parents who’ve tagged along.

            Laundry

            We’d walk the class over to an area with an old washboard and a tub of water and explain to them how laundry worked in the good old days before indoor plumbing and washing machines. The children will react in amazement and disgust when I explained that typical rural poor Floridians only had a couple sets of clothes back then (the days before cheap mass-produced sweatshop clothing), and took weekly baths on Saturday nights, during which the whole family had to take turns using the same bath water (“Eww!” the kids say.). The father took their bath first, the baby took their bath last. Because babies aren’t potty trained and might soil themselves in the water. (“Ewww!”) We’d also explain how lye soap was made from animal fat (“Ewwww!”) For extra gross-out comedy, I’d tell them about how cloth diapers had to be cleaned. This was the station where I had to talk the longest. You come up with ways to keep them entertained.

            Rope Making

            Next we’d take the children to a rope-making machine and have the whole class take turns cranking an old rope weaving device to make a ten-foot rope. I didn’t do the lecture here, there was someone stationed at the rope maker. But it was my job to hold the machine down and make sure it didn’t tip over as it was cranked.

            Candle Making

            This is one of my favorites. If something happened and a class cancelled and I didn’t have a group, I’d often be stationed at the candle shack. Here Cracker Country has three vats of beeswax and let the kids dip some premade candles into the wax (via a wooden stick with a clothespin at the end), and explain to them the ins and outs of beekeeping. If you had a class clown in the group this is where you’ll really want to watch them and make sure they don’t try any dangerous stunts with scalding hot wax. The worst that would usually happen though is the kids dipping the entire stick into the wax, leaving the clothespin coated in wax and potentially breaking it when you had to scrape the wax off. Ah, fun times.

            The Schoolhouse

            Depending on the schedule, we’d then take the group to either the schoolhouse or the old church (which was also a schoolhouse at one time), and do the same activity regardless of which one we went to. We explained to them how school used to work in the 1890’s, when there were no school buses, you had 1^st-8^th grades all in one room, and teachers were almost invariably unmarried women in their teens and twenties. In the actual schoolhouse they’d get to sit in old wooden desks with inkwells. The kids are given little chalkboards and do some kind of writing exercise with chalk (look around the room and write one thing you have in your classroom that you don’t see here, something like that), explaining to them that paper wasn’t used as a cost-saving measure.  The culture shock that the kids get here as well as on other parts of the tour is interesting to observe. So many kids grow up these days never knowing there was a time before the internet, let alone before television, indoor plumbing and widespread electricity. I don’t blame the kids themselves for this. Nobody’s ever told some of them about history. I like to think when I was a kid in the 1990’s I was at least aware that there was a time before cable TV and the Sega Genesis.

            Recess

            At this point of the tour the kids are going to need some time to rest their brains and do something fun, so they get about ten minutes to play with some old-fashioned toys. They’ll have jump ropes, those cups with the ball on a string, jumping jacks, and an assortment of other wooden toys (“What, no fidget spinners?” I heard a kid ask once). This is where you really have to watch out if you have a rowdy group. And stop them if they decide to play tug-of-war. This is never fun when you get one of those classes where the teacher thinks because it’s a field trip it’s their day off, and expect you to be fully in charge of their class. That’ll happen every now and then.

            The Store

            The museum still has to turn a profit to exist. So there’s a gift shop, built in an old historic general store. Here they have candy, some of the old toys the kids will have just played with, things like bonnets and quilts, other odds and ends. You can also get really good pumpkin butter. I still have a little stockpile of that. If the class finishes shopping too soon you can take them to another store on the grounds which is more of a replica of a historic dry goods store and not where you can actually make purchases. Here you can explain to them about how people used to be self-sufficient, growing their own crops and bartering at the store. The gift shop is a bit too modern for my tastes and kind of breaks the illusion, but I get why it has to exist.

            The Blacksmith

            This station was only open part of the year so we didn’t always get to take the kids here. One of the blacksmiths would give the kids a little tutorial on how blacksmithing works, and will heat up an iron rod, twist it in a vice, and dip it in water as they watch. The classes that don’t get to go here get annoyed, sadly. But the tours ended at 12:30, what are you going to do?

            The Carlton House and the Smith House

            Depending on your schedule you’ll go to one historic house or another. The Carlton house was the first building brought to Cracker Country, a two-story home. We’ll walk them through the building, past the living room and the parent’s bedroom into the kitchen, discussing how buildings in Florida had to be built back then to keep everything ventilated in the humid tropical heat. The Smith house is considerably smaller, a two-room shotgun shack (so called because with the front and back doors open you could shoot a shotgun through the home and not hit anything, so I’ve been told), which I get to explain to the kids was built at the cost of $15 by the neighbors of the Smith family as a wedding gift, to their usual amazement. There’s something that would never happen today. It is surrounded by sand, which was to protect against fires, and the children take turns raking leaves in the sand with a rake made of sticks tied together. After the brief tour they get to listen to a small lecture on butter churning, and get to churn some butter. They then get to have a sampling of butter on a saltine cracker, while I explain that’s not why this place is called Cracker Country.

            The Train Station

Me as a train conductor.

            Every tour starts and ends somewhere different on this list, but if you start at the laundry station you end at the train station. Here we walk them through the waiting room and into an office, where they are shown an old telegraph, telephone and a typewriter, and we explain how trains worked back then. This is one of my favorite places to be stationed during the fair too. The main boarding platform has a big model train set they can marvel at, with little reproductions of some of the buildings at Cracker Country. The train station was transferred over from Okahumpka, Florida. Next to the station is a wooden caboose from 1917, which is usually only open during the fair.

            The Print Station and Post Office

            Like the Blacksmith shop these are only open part of the year. The print shop has a couple old printers where during the fair an expert will run off some newspapers made with the old linotype letters. Students and visitors get to use a smaller printer to make themselves a post card. Then they go to the tiny post office to get them stamped. It used to be an actual functioning post office too until about 2012.

That about covers it. Cracker Country is only open to the public a select few times of the year. The State Fair, Museum Day in September, and they do events around Christmas, occasionally a Halloween-themed night tour as well. Also, a couple times a year they do Home School Day for home-schooled kids.

It was a (mostly) stress-free job, working at Cracker Country. I regrettably had to quit when my wife became pregnant and we needed health insurance, and get a job at a terrible call center, which is another blog post for another time. I still volunteered when I could at Cracker Country (that’s how much I liked it there), until we moved to the other side of Florida last August. I was sad to not make it to the Florida State Fair this year, but, that’s parenthood I suppose. I’ll be back eventually. My son’s not going to be one of those kids who can’t believe there was a time before the internet. The 1890’s were a much simpler time to be alive. I’d rather grow my own food and barter with my neighbors or the general store than work some soulless corporate desk job and be treated like an expendable cog. Landlords, home owners associations and Monsanto have ensured that the working class can’t grow their own food and must rely on the corporations to supply their heavily processed, pesticide-caked junk food to us, giving us tooth decay and diabetes. Everything’s about money now. It wasn’t true to the same extent back then. If I could, maybe I would trade technology and medical advancements to go back in time to the 1800’s. Like Doc Brown from Back to the Future or something. I would just have to let go of all my possessions; my VHS collection, my video games, my goth music. It’d be like becoming a Buddhist monk. I think at the end of the day I’d still be happier. I might end up dying of polio but at least I’d be happy.

A Guide to Florida by a Californian Expatriate

 

         I moved to Florida from California back in 2015. I had just recently graduated with my Master’s in Creative Writing. Rents were too high, the job market was awful, and it was only getting worse as the entire state became gentrified. I followed my then-fiancé to Florida, to live with her mother and step-father. We lived in St. Petersburg, over on the west coast of Florida, until last summer, when we moved to the east coast of Florida. I still haven’t been everywhere in the state (I really haven’t been much further north than Orlando, but I’ve been down to the Florida Keys), but I think five years has still given me a decent idea of what this state is all about. The urge struck me earlier this morning to write about it.  If you are thinking of coming to Florida, here’s a little idea of what it’s like from the point of view of someone who has been here for five years.

The Weather

            I hate the weather here. My idea of ideal weather is between 50-70 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, rainy or foggy. I rarely get my way in Florida. Florida is a tropical peninsula. The weather here is in its natural state most of the year: hot, humid, occasional afternoon thunderstorms. But thanks to how flat the state is, it is susceptible to the influence of weather elsewhere, either cold fronts from the north, or worse, hurricanes from the south. To be fair the thunderstorms are pretty awesome, and are the only positive thing about the summers. A temporary reprieve; of course. Better for it to be just humid than both hot and humid. Be warned Californians, as you’ve probably never experienced a humid storm. I always associated rain with cold weather before leaving California. I didn’t realize it could be rainy and still hot. Cold storms are rare here. Anyway, during the winter, Florida itself is never cold on its own, but if it’s cold up north and the winds blow that cold air south, it can get cold here. If you’re lucky. The coldness that does happen here isn’t native, basically. Here’s the seasons of Florida as I’ve come to understand them.

The Alleged “Winter” – November-February

The weather during these months is basically a roulette wheel. It can be hot, or it can be cold, or it can be in-between. Sometimes it rains, but not as often as in summer. At least it cools down at night. Like I said earlier, Florida’s natural weather is hot and humid, and if it isn’t influenced by coldness from up north, that’s how it will be, even if it’s late December. But at least it can get cold. Since moving to Brevard County on the East coast I’ve noticed the winters get just a little bit colder here than back in the Tampa Bay Area. Which is good for me. Florida cold snaps tend to last two or three days; it might randomly get cold one night, usually after a storm rolls in from the north, resulting in one day in the 50s Fahrenheit. Then it will gradually warm up a little each day until it’s back to the 70s, or 80s if we’re unlucky. January is the coldest month, you can usually rely on it at least being somewhat chilly every day. But don’t ever take it for granted. As for the rest of the “winter” months, don’t get your hopes up. And as for snow, HA! Yeah, not happening.

Spring – March and April

Be prepared for the Great Pollening. Your car will be caked in pollen during these months. I’m luckily not allergic to Florida’s pollen, but if you are, it sucks to be you. The weather can still be a little bit of a roulette wheel, you might get a random cold front if it’s cold enough up north, but by this point it’s generally going to be settling on hot and dry.  

“Welcome to Hell” – May

This in my opinion is the worst time of the year. It isn’t rainy season yet, but the blistering summer heat has arrived. It hurts just to be outside. It’s as close as Earth’s climate gets to that of planet Venus. It can get this bad in the ensuing summer months, but the one thing that Florida summers have going for them is the rain. Even if the rain doesn’t stop the humidity, it will bring the temperatures down a little. That doesn’t happen much in May. Unless the rainy season decides to start early.

Ah, the Sunshine Sta-...wait what's happening?

Rainy Season (aka Summer) – June-September

It’s hot and humid, you’ll need to shower at least twice a day if you plan on setting foot outdoors, but hey, at least the daily afternoon thunderstorms are pretty cool. Not literally cool, but fun to look at through the window, in the climate-controlled comfort of your own home. You’re going to get cabin fever often this time of the year. At night it’s maybe only a couple degrees cooler than it was during the day. You’ll be sweating even at night. Ah, but there’s a sub-season during these months. Hurricane season, August through October. Where you get to live in constant fear of being washed away in an apocalyptic superstorm. Or be strangely disappointed after you’ve stocked up on food, shuttered your windows, and made all the preparations, only for the storm to make a sudden turn away from you and out into the ocean. Or you find out the media was greatly exaggerating the storm for ratings and the storm is little worse than the daily thunderstorms. Which is what usually happens, more often than not. But you can’t afford to let it become one of those “Boy who Cried Wolf” situations, because what if it is an actual big hurricane? They do hit Florida every few years, after all. You’re at the mercy of The Weather Channel and their quest for ratings.

Fall but Still Hot – October-November

The rain happens less often, and the temperature begins to drop at night instead of remaining almost exactly as hot as the day. The weather during this time can sometimes get as bad as that in May, because the rain is mostly gone but the high temperatures are not. But it gradually gets cooler, particularly at night, as we transition into the Alleged “Winter” again. I should add that throughout the year you won’t see many changes in the landscape. You could look out the window and not know if it’s July or December if you had no idea what month it was. Instead of the leaves changing color, you’ll see the license plates on cars change color as the snow birds from the northern US and Canada begin to flee to Florida to get away from actual winter (more on them later).

The Land

So flat...

            There’s the beaches, which Florida is famous for, and there’s the endless mosquito-infested swampland that takes up the majority of the state. Or at least did before the Europeans got here and destroyed the environment. I’ve found that the beaches on the west coast of Florida are a bit more mucky and gross in general, because the Gulf of Mexico is basically stagnant. The beaches on the east coast are nicer, but can be crowded. Coming from Califonia, my ideal beach is cold, windy, with sand dunes and cliffs, and refreshing sea air. You’ll see none of that here. Another thing about Florida is that it’s completely flat. I miss mountains and hills. If you happen to see a hill in Florida, it’s probably a garbage hill; a landfill that was buried in soil and made to look like a hill. That’s a thing here.

There's probably an alligator beneath those lily pads.

 Despite miles of forests and swamps being destroyed to make way for shopping centers and condos, there’s still a lot of wildlife trying to make some kind of an existence in suburbia. Animals that in California I would only expect to see at a zoo roam the streets freely. Big cranes and storks, turtles, occasional alligators. Florida is like the Australia of America. Then there are the less pleasant creatures, mosquitos and cockroaches. I’ve had an admittedly illogical but deep-rooted phobia of cockroaches since I was a child. Living here has done that phobia no favors. The roaches are everywhere. It’s not even really an indicator of how sanitary a building is, they’ll get in eventually no matter how clean the building is. And they’re huge. And disgusting. I really don’t get why the Europeans were so desperate to colonize this place.

 This turtle showed up at our front door one day. That's Florida for you.

The People and Culture

            Ah yes, there will be a little bit of culture shock if you move here from California. It’s almost like being in another country. Florida is a mixture of many different cultures, subcultures, nationalities and races. But it’s still the South. If you live in the city you can almost forget you’re in the South until some enormous pickup truck tailgates you on the highway covered in Trump bumper stickers and flying both an American and Confederate flag, forgetting that there was a war fought about this once upon a time and the two flags kind of contradict one another. But I digress. It also depends on where in Florida you are. It gets progressively more white, redneck and conservative the further you get from the big cities. This is where the mythical figure Florida Man lives, who we’ve all read about in the news. Away from the cities you also have the proud Florida Crackers (the term “cracker” predates any racial connotations it’s developed since the 1960’s), the old cattle ranching families who also run the farms and orchards, as kind of a sub-culture. There are also Cubans further south.

            And yes, the stereotypes are true, at least in part. There are lots of old people in Florida.  See for about half the year, the roads will be more congested as the “snow birds” arrive. These are generally wealthy, middle-aged or elderly people from the northern states or Canada, fleeing the snowy winters of their home. If they hate winter that much, they should probably live somewhere else permanently and save money, but whatever floats their boats, I guess. Some of them eventually decide to stay here year-round, and become part of the elderly retirees that make up so much of the population. And these non-natives are usually terrible at navigating the roads here. Which admittedly are confusing (why, oh why do some of the roads have two names?!).

My Sub-Cultures

            Florida is such a cultural hodge-podge that I’ve even been able to find members of my personal subcultures here too. For instance, there is a Goth community, which is centralized in Ybor City, an area of Tampa with the famous Gothic night club The Castle, and also in Orlando. When I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area I felt like the only Goth in the world sometimes, so it was really a pleasant surprise when I discovered The Castle not too far from where I was living, and they played music I actually like on the dancefloor. Not to mention, a lot of my favorite goth bands often go to Florida to perform, while most of them skip California, or only go to Los Angeles or rarely San Francisco. It’s interesting to find so many Goths in a place like Florida, where most of the year trying to dress like a Goth is pure torture due to the heat and humidity. I’m not exactly sure how it happened. Granted, it’s only around Tampa Bay, with some limited goth presence in Orlando, and maybe Miami.

            Also present are Armenians, in small numbers. There’s actually an Armenian church in Largo, near St. Petersburg, and another community in Boca Raton which I have yet to visit. For half of 2015 I was actually in Armenia, so when I returned to Florida and tried to mingle with some Armenians, they struck me as very Americanized. They’re generally snow birds from the Armenian communities in Boston, Detroit or Chicago that decided to stay here, from families that have been in America for several generations now. In short, it’s not much compared to the diaspora communities in California. And I rarely get to have any good Armenian food. There was a really nice Armenian restaurant and deli in Orlando, but as soon as I finally moved closer to Orlando and could go more often, they relocated to Miami. Sigh. Where I’m living now though, in Brevard County, I feel like the only Armenian on Earth sometimes. Not even a big Middle Eastern or Greek community with restaurants and delis that are sort of like Armenian food around here.

Floridian Views on California

            “Oh, you’re from California? What part?” they ask.

            “Near San Francisco,” I reply, knowing that they’ll have never heard of Martinez, Concord, Monterey or Fresno.

            “I visited my cousin in San Diego once, is that near where you lived?”

            Basically, Floridians who haven’t been to Califonia don’t know much about it, and think of it like Los Angeles/San Diego is how the entire state is, or think San Francisco and Los Angeles are like an hour’s drive apart,  not realizing how big the state is or that Southern California has a radically different climate and culture from Northern Califonia, and both are different from Central Califonia. It’s really quite amusing. Before I came to Florida I suppose I didn’t realize how far apart and different from one another Tampa, Orlando and Miami were. (Also, this conversation was even more fun when I was in Armenia).

The Food

            Believe it or not there are foods here that I had never even heard of when I lived in California. Like boiled peanuts. Then you have Southern foods that are hard to come by in California like gumbo, grits, collard greens, cornbread. You have restaurants that specialize in Southern cuisine like Cracker Barrel, which simply couldn’t catch on in California because everyone hates the South there (just as California is hated in the South). Also available are Cuban and Jamaican cuisine, which I never had in California. Jamaican curry is amazing! Cuban sandwiches are nice too. There are plenty of good local restaurants to choose from of basically any type of cuisine, at least in the cities. One thing I miss from California that is one of my favorite foods is clam chowder. I’ve never been able to find a really good clam chowder in Florida. You’re also not going to find as much Mexican food, due to the lack of a significant Mexican diaspora in Florida compared to California. But besides what I’ve talked about, the food isn’t too different here. You can still find most of the same foods as in California. But there are slight differences.

Stuff to Do

            When I lived in the Tampa Bay Area, I finally realized how boring Contra Costa County had been in California. Now obviously you have the theme parks in Orlando, of which I most prefer Universal Studios. But, they’re expensive, and all the way in Orlando. The theme parks are just the tip of the iceberg. In the Tampa Bay Area you have a zoo, an aquarium, the beaches, a few parks, some museums, and the nightclubs of Ybor City. As I mentioned a lot of great bands tour in Orlando and Tampa. Another discovery for me living in that area was the kratom/kava community. This is mostly something unique to Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area, but it is catching on elsewhere: bars where no alcohol is served but instead botanical teas made with kava or kratom. These often have an artsy vibe, in contrast to the typical sports bar filled with bloated, burping rednecks watching football. Kratom is particularly nice, an herb in the coffee family which can work as a pain relief and anti-depressant, boosts your mood and gives you mild euphoria, and is at least for the moment legal. It’s helped people wean themselves off stronger drugs, and alcohol. Since drinking it I very rarely have an urge for a beer. Kava is similar, although I feel that all it really does for me is make my tongue numb and maybe improve my mood a slight bit. The type of people who frequent these bars are mainly young artistic types like myself. They might have karaoke nights or poetry nights. A few are open 24 hours if you’re suffering insomnia and need a place to hang out. I’d go to these bars with my wife and just draw, write, or socialize.

            However, now I live over in Brevard County on the east coast. The pluses is that it’s quieter and there’s not as much traffic. But there’s less to do here. There’s a zoo in Melbourne, Nd the bars and restaurants of Cocoa Beach. Cocoa Village has a charming downtown, One thing both Tampa and Cocoa Village have are historic theaters that occasionally show silent films, which is something I never saw in California. Or, you can drive to Orlando if you really want something to do. Besides that, it’s sadly kind of boring on this side of Florida. But I haven’t lived here long, maybe I’m missing something. But living around Tampa Bay got mentally exhausting after a while. There’s a nice side to living someplace quieter and less heavily populated too. Another added bonus is I regularly get to watch rockets launch from Cape Canaveral from my backyard. Something I never got to see anywhere else. They’re always the coolest looking at night.

            Besides these areas you have Miami, the Florida Keys, the historic city of St. Augustine, and plenty of other little tourist traps. I’ve been to Miami and the Keys briefly. Miami kind of makes me think of the Los Angeles of Florida, with its traffic and crazy drivers. The Keys are a nice place to vacation. Everything is very tropical and you feel like you’re in the Caribbean. As I said I really haven’t seen everything in Florida yet.

            One thing I should probably mention again though is that you really don’t want to be outside for maybe two-thirds of the year because the weather is so unbearable. So that will always cut down on any fun things you want to do.

Conclusion

The sky is probably the prettiest part of Florida.         

  Florida isn’t a horrible place to live, but in the five years I’ve lived here I never really felt like I belonged here. I don’t feel like a Floridian. I’ve had that feeling of home in California and Armenia, but never here. I don’t like too much sunlight, heat, humidity, and I miss the cold, and mountains. I don’t feel like a part of the culture here (with the exception of the Goth community). But I’ve always been a bit of a misfit no matter where I’ve lived. It’s cheaper than California, but it’s certainly not for everyone. There are pros and cons to Florida, like everywhere else. I still don't think I'll be here forever. But as I've said, there are plenty of positive aspects to Florida as well. Can't beat those sunsets I have to admit.

Mix CD Reflections: The Moon

“Does the moon actually possess such strange powers, or is it all just…lunacy?”

            It was 4.51 billion years ago, that chaotic time when the planets were young and still forming, the chaos before creation, when Theia (a hypothetical Mars-sized planet) collided with Gaia. The debris that was thrown into space then rotated around the new planet Earth, slowly coalescing into what we now know as the Moon. This planetary partnership has been beneficial to the life that came to form on planet Earth. The Moon causes tides in the ocean, leading to tide pools and perhaps encouraging creatures of the sea to move onto land.  The Moon has protected the Earth from thousands of asteroid impacts, as evidenced by the craters that scar its surface. It reflects sunlight back on us at night, aiding visibility. However, it is moving away from the Earth at the rate of 1.5 inches per year. Given enough time, it will drift far enough away to no longer affect Earth’s tides or protect it. It will never break free of Earth altogether; in 50 billion years or so it will reach balance and move no further. But in all likelihood, both the Moon and Earth both will be swallowed by the expanding Sun before then.

            Billions of years later, primates who were at least intelligent enough to look up at the sky and wonder what they were seeing, prescribed many different personifications to the moon, what we now call Gods and Goddesses. When you look at how the Moon has helped life on Earth, it makes perfect sense to be thankful to it; not that the ancients could have known exactly how the Moon has helped life exist. Every culture had its own unique way of looking at the Moon; none more or less correct than another. The ancient Egyptians saw the God of Wisdom, Thoth, shown as a man with the head of an ibis, its curved beak shaped like the crescent moon. The ancient Greeks saw Artemis, also a Goddess of the Hunt. The Urartians saw Selardi, a Moon Goddess. The Inca saw Mama Killa, another Moon Goddess, defender of Women. The Chinese saw a rabbit, Tu’er Ye, in the craters on the Moon. In Wicca the moon represents the Triple Goddess, the Divine Feminine. It seems that the Moon is more often associated with Goddesses than Gods. In Europe there were more myths about the moon, such as werewolves, people who transform into wolf-like beings during the full Moon, born of the practice wolves have of howling at the Moon. Even today, many believe that the moon possesses strange powers. Is it all just…lunacy? All of these cultures from different times around the world looked up at the same object, and saw something different. It was perhaps a new concept when the monotheistic Abrahamic religions saw nothing but a rock in the sky. Science has demystified the Moon even further. And now, people have walked on the Moon. We might even have colonies on the Moon one day, if humanity can refrain from destroying itself by the time that becomes a viable option. Humans have, by and large, lost their imagination when it comes to the moon, perhaps to space in general. Poets and lyricists are the only ones keeping the echo of it alive.

            These are all thoughts to contemplate when listening to my Moon Mix, second in my series of theme mixes based on words and concepts, the first of which was songs about the Cold. In this mix I’ve gathered approximately 80 minutes of songs that are either about the Moon or mention it. Just like studying mythology, it gives us many different interpretations of the Moon, the end process of thousands of years of religious and poetic perspectives on Earth’s cosmic partner. I’ve tried to reconstruct the mix on Spotify, but many of the songs are too obscure to be on Spotify (a sure sign I did a good job on the mix), so for those songs I will link to YouTube.

Godsmack – Moon Baby

“Let’s take a blast to the moon, baby.”

            The best part of this song is all the voice samples at the beginning, my favorite of which I’ve already quoted. Also included are Neil Armstrong’s famous words as he landed on the moon. This makes it an ideal song to start the mix off. The song seems to be attributing the Moon to carnal longings and cravings, which ties into the werewolf myth. But the song in general is a good one to bang your head to, and one of the best by Godsmack. My first concert I ever attended was Godsmack opening for Metallica back in 2003 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I recall actually preferring Godsmack’s performance to Metallica’s. They were never my favorite band, but I liked them quite a bit in the early 2000’s, before I moved onto European black metal.  

Type O Negative – Wolfmoon

“Hey wolf moon, come cast your spell on me.”

            This song has similar themes to the previous, associating the moon with wolves, werewolves (the line “Those silver bullets, a last blood benediction,” in particular), in addition to the female menstrual cycle. The opening lyrics, “The 28^th day, she’ll be bleeding again. And in lupine ways, we’ll alleviate the pain”, speak for themselves, giving the song a lot of strong sexual undertones. The word “lupine” can be an adjective for something that is wolf-like. The Inca Goddess Mama Killa was also associated with both the Moon and the menstrual cycle. This association is possibly why more cultures have Moon Goddesses than Gods. The song itself, in typical Type O Negative fashion, is darkly beautiful, and I more often find myself just taking in the energy of the music rather than paying any attention to the lyrics when I listen to it.

Howling Syn – Black Moon

“The curse of the black moon will haunt you, the Wolf King has entered the blood storm, let the fire burn your innocence.”

            Howling Syn is a little-known metal band I found out about a long time ago; I believe it was on MySpace that I found them. This song begins with a wolf howl, suitably. A Black Moon is an actual phenomena; it’s the opposite of a Blue Moon, that is, two New Moons in one month. Some modern Wiccans and pagans ascribe significance to this, and do special rituals and spells (maybe curses if they don’t mind the karmic consequences) on Black Moons, which may be what this song is referencing when it says “the curse of the Black Moon”. But of course, a Black Moon has more to do with a quirk of the Gregorian calendar than an actual astronomical event of significance. But, significance is subjective in the first place. (Is it all just…lunacy?) Best of all, the term “Black Moon” just sounds cool. This song will be the last on the mix that has to do with wolves, but is among my favorites.    

Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon

“The killing moon will come too soon.”

            In an interview, singer Ian McColloch ascribed the lyrics to this song to divine inspiration, having woken up with the lines running through his head one morning. Perhaps some higher being wanted the song to be made. Or perhaps it’s all just…lunacy. (Okay, I need to stop.) Early in the song lyrics the Blue Moon is mentioned (“under Blue Moon I saw you,”), making a perfect juxtaposition to the previous song. The singer of Echo & the Bunnymen was unclear about the meaning of the lyrics. I’m not certain myself how to interpret them. It seems to me the Moon is more of a background element, and the song is really about a forbidden love. This song is a classic of post-punk and gothic rock, from 1984, a terrific year for music as you’ll soon find out when I cover my 1984 in Music mix. Alas, I was born just a little bit too late to live in a time where music that I like achieved any kind of popularity.

Long Night – East of the Sun, West of the Moon

“I’ve been east of the Sun, west of the Moon, for your love.”

            And here we have more modern gothic rock from the band Long Night. “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” is apparently the title of an old Norwegian folktale, although I don’t know if that is what the songwriter here is alluding to. He seems to be saying he has traveled very far to find someone’s love. I suppose to be east of the Sun and west of the Moon would mean being in a spot on Earth where sunset is occurring. You wouldn’t be staying there for long. However, if you’re as far north as Norway I think sunsets can last for a long time in the winter.

Ashes Fallen – Blood Moon

“Blood Moon rising, I’m on the ground. Seconds ticking; the only sound.”

           

The first of two songs on this mix titled “Blood Moon”, this is another gothic rock song, this time one that I got from Obscura Undead’s UnObscured 2019 compilation (which I’ve mentioned many times on the blog before). A Blood Moon is a total Lunar Eclipse, when the Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the Moon, giving it an ominous red hue. This has factored into many religions, notably Christianity with regards to the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation. And like the Black Moon, its main significance is that it just sounds badass; with the added benefit of also looking badass too. Making it a good song title.

https://ashesfallenmusic.bandcamp.com/album/blood-moon-single

Beyond Words – On the Moon

“Come and visit me, on the Moon.”

            It’s very sad how obscure this band is. This song came out back in 1986, the year I was born. I can’t find out much about it. I only heard this song on a compilation of obscure 80’s music someone posted to YouTube. It’s got the 80’s saxophone and Siouxsie-esque vocals. The lyrics are unavailable anywhere on the Internet that I looked, but I think the song is about having your head “in the clouds”, as it were. Or on the Moon in this case. I can relate to that. My mind is rarely here on Earth.

Katil - Kuzim

“Above this dark world, let us become two moons.”

            I already wrote an entire blog entry about this song, a Hamshen Armenian folksong, which you can go ahead and read, it's the entry right before this one. I wrote it in preparation for this blog post, actually, because I knew I had a lot to say about it. The metaphor about the moon that this song makes is as something that brings light to a dark world; like bringing positivity to a very negative, harsh world. And I was astonished that Spotify had this exact version of the song. Nice going, Katil. I should buy their album.

Phillip Glasser – Somewhere Out There

“Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, someone’s thinking of me and loving me tonight.”

            This song is going to cost me goth points. But screw it. An American Tail is one of my favorite movies. The song “Somewhere out There” was sung by the mouse siblings Fievel and Tanya after Fievel was separated from his family on the way to America, and is about how they know they’ll be together again. They’re staring up at the same moon, after all. That gets me thinking about what I discussed earlier, about how different cultures around the world all looked up at the sky and saw the same thing, yet had many different interpretations of it. The version I used for this mix was sung by Fievel’s young voice actor Phillip Glasser on a rare promotional album. It basically uses the background music to Linda Ronstadt’s version (which I’m not into, but not because of the background music but because it was turned into a cheesy 80's love ballad).

The Midnight – Los Angeles

“Helicopters against moonlight, our holy mother of the midnight, and if we live forever let us live forever tonight.”

            The Midnight is one of the best synthwave bands, and as with most synthwave (or retrowave if you will) that has lyrics, the subject of their songs are often invoke nostalgia. They might be about lost loves, wonderful summers, or in this song’s case, a really great night you had with your friends that you didn’t want to ever end. So this song barely mentions the moon, but it serves as a background element. The image of helicopters against the moonlight kind of stands out against the rest of the song; when I think of helicopters at night I think of police helicopters sending glaring searchlights down and hunting after a criminal on the run, and having to lock up your doors and hope some crazed gun-wielding madman doesn’t bust in. But I spent a bit of my childhood living in one of the worst poor neighborhoods of Fresno, California, so maybe that’s why I feel weird about romanticizing helicopters.

Switchblade Symphony – Dissolve

“In the moonshine I leave no trace, my visions have gone far from this place.”

            Switchblade Symphony is another of those bands I wish I had found out about a lot sooner, but didn’t hear of them until a couple years ago. It’s a 1990’s goth band. This song is very dark, slow and meditative. I’m unsure what it’s really about. Other lyrics include “The fear of God is in me now”. I’m assuming by “moonshine” she’s not referring to illegal homemade alcoholic drinks, but actual moonshine. But it would be interesting to know how the alcoholic moonshine got its name. Maybe because it had to be made at night, in secrecy. This is a hard song to interpret. Maybe the narrator of the song is dying and afraid of meeting God’s judgment as their consciousness dissolves. It could be.

[:SITD:] – Drowning in the Flame

“And when the Sun and Moon grow dark, and when the stars no longer shine, the sky and Earth will shake, my love will keep you safe.”

            I’m convinced this song is about the end of the world, which is pretty obvious when other lyrics include “We’re waiting for the end to come, our world is slowly dying, while we’re staring at the Sun”. Unless the Earth was encased in some kind of shell there’s no way the stars would stop shining, at least not for the next hundreds of billions of years. Even if all the stars went dark right now it would be four years before we even saw one disappear, because the closest star is four lightyears away. It’s a big universe out there. The sun has about five billion years left in it, and by the time it goes dark the Earth and Moon probably won’t exist anymore, at least if the sun really does expand and swallow them. But the song’s being poetic, and I’m ruining it.   

Grey Gallows – On the Dancefloor

“The Moon is high, the night is young. That’s the time for you to dance.”

            It’s my favorite Greek darkwave band. The Moon just sets the scene for this song. It’s night time, the night has just begun, let’s go to a dance club and do some lurching and swaying goth dances. It’s a pretty straightforward song. It makes me miss The Castle in Ybor City. The moon, with all its spooky connotations, is a good first image to invoke in a song about going to a goth nightclub.

Mindless Faith – Moth Without a Moon

“Like a moth without a Moon.”

           

I talked about this song last December when it was #1 on my top 3 songs of the month. The lyrics are in the description of the YouTube video, but I still can’t really make sense of them. The song has references to insects and plants and the night, and the line “Like a moth without a moon” doesn’t explain much. Do moths normally have moons? At any rate, I still like the song a lot despite not understanding it.

SYZYGYX – Blood Moon

“Take me far away to the blood moon.”

            And those are the lyrics to the whole song, just repeated. Here’s the other song on the mix titled “Blood Moon”. I’ve spoken about this song on the blog before, when it was my #2 song for this month, February 2020. The music is captivating, and makes me think of staring transfixed at a blood red Moon. I was so transfixed by this song I didn’t realize the lyrics were just one sentence repeated over and over until I paid attention for this blog.

Voltaire – The Man Upstairs

“And I’m surrounded by lunatics who don’t even need a moon.”

            I’ve spent most of my life living in apartments, so I know only too well what it is to have noisy, sometimes scary neighbors. This is a song for anyone who has wished death on their upstairs neighbor for vacuuming or juggling bowling balls at 4 in the morning. The word lunatic comes to us from the Latin word “lunaticus”, meaning “of the moon” or “moonstruck”, and used to describe the mentally ill. Going back as far as ancient Greece, and maybe further, the Full Moon has been rumored to cause people to go mad. Police officers and nurses today will attest to this as well, although I’m not certain there have been any statistics to back this up. Poor Voltaire’s neighbors didn’t even need a Full Moon to fall into…lunacy.  

Right Said Fred – Let’s Face the Music and Dance

“Soon we’ll be without the moon humming a different tune, and then there may be teardrops to shed. So while there’s moonlight and music and love and romance let’s face the music and dance.”

            And now for something completely different: electro-swing. It’s a good song to end off on though, as it equates the moonlight with love and music, and urges the listener to enjoy the moment, because it won’t last forever. This song is a cover of a much older song, perhaps best known as a Fred Astaire dance number, but has been revived by Right Said Fred, a band that’s been around for a long whle now but is hopping on the electro-swing bandwagon, an emerging genre in recent years which I’ve been listening to more often as of late.

            Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this meditation on our celestial partner in the Solar System, the Moon. I look forward to my next mix of this nature being centered on either Stars, or the Heart. Whichever I decide.   

Moon Mix: Spotify Playlist

Guzim / Կուզիմ – A Hamshen Song

            To the north of what is now considered Turkey, at the mountainous southern shores of the Black Sea, live the Hamshen people. This ethnic group stemmed from Armenians who converted to Islam after the Ottoman Turks came to rule the region, which may have been what spared them during the Armenian genocide of 1915. From what I’ve seen, they live in a very lush, mountainous and beautiful region, reminiscent of the northern Lori and Tavush provinces in Armenia. It is from this isolated minority that a folk song originated. It’s among my favorite Armenian songs.

            The song is called either Guzim or Kuzim; I’ve seen both spellings. The fact that the “g” and “k” sounds in the Armenian language flip depending on the dialect makes it hard to determine which is correct. But I’ll go with Guzim. "Guzim", in the Hamshen dialect, translates to "I want". Each rendition I’ve heard of this song is different, but I like them all. And I just love the lyrics. Here they are in Armenian. I’ll put together my best English translation. A direct translation is a little hard in places, especially the first couple lines, just because in general poems and song lyrics flow a lot better in their original language.

Ուզում եմ

 Արեգակը չի գնում,

Կարծում եմ խավարել է,

 Այս ինչպիսի աշխարհ է,

 Ամեն տեղ խառնված է:

 Երկինք բարձրանալ եմ ուզում,

 Աստղ բռնել եմ ուզում,

 Լուսնի միջից Քեզ նայել եմ ուզում:

 Ուզում եմ գնալ այստեղից,

Արի միասին գնանք մենք,

 Մութ աշխարհիս վրա

 Լուսին ենք լինելու մենք։

I want

the sun to move but it doesn’t,

I think it has eclipsed.

What a world this is,

Everywhere it’s a mess.

I want to float up to the sky.

I want to grab hold of a star.

I want to watch you from the moon.

I want to leave this place.

Let’s leave together.

Above this dark world,

Let us become two moons.

            Perhaps I can relate to the feeling of living in a dark, mess of a world, and wanting to just be above it all, leave with my true love, and reflect light into the darkness like the moon. I love escapism. And I love the beauty of the night sky, which this song is also about. To think such a remote culture as the Hamshens could create a song with such universal themes. Perhaps it comes from lasting for centuries under the rule of oppressors. Unlike the rest of the Armenians in what is now Turkey, they escaped annihilation. They know what a dark, mess of a world this is. They know only too well. But you don’t need to know the exact context to enjoy and relate to the song.

            Now that we’ve discussed the lyrics, let’s see what happens when music is put to them. Here are my three favorite versions of the song.

Katil

             

This is a very passionate version, and actually the first version of the song I ever heard, before I had any idea it was an older folk song. Mainly it’s just vocals with acoustic guitar and light drums, but when the other instruments kick in, it goes to a whole other level. The animation is a nice touch too. You see the moon and the stars, just like the song. A guy sits alone in the snow smoking a pipe. The sky lights up as the music swells. It goes so well together, really captures the emotion behind the lyrics. You feel the depression of living in a dark world, and then the longing for an escape to something better. Musically, it’s a more modern take on the song. The next two I’m going to discuss take a more traditional approach.

Shake Baghdassarian

             

 This is an upbeat and jolly rendition of the song. You could dance to this version. To me it sounds like Celtic music, with the violin. It makes me think of a renaissance fair. The “oy yoy yoyoyoy” chorus is fun too. It makes you want to join a dance circle. And the video displays the breathtaking landscape which the Hamshens are fortunate to occupy. It gives you a really different interpretation of the lyrics when paired with this music. We’re not focusing on the dark, mess of a world we want to escape from, but on the fun and excitement of floating up to the sky and grabbing a star. There are two different ways to look at the lyrics. This is the more optimistic approach.

Harun Topaloglu

           

This is another passionate and emotional version, a little like Katil’s in tone, but with more traditional instruments, and lots of drum swells which add to the energy of the song. In a way it’s almost like a combination of the previous two, and is perhaps the middle ground between the two ways you could interpret the lyrics. This is perhaps closest to the original version of the song, or at least that’s the impression I get.

            Anyway, I’m sure there are other versions of the song out there I haven’t heard yet. I discovered the song somewhat recently. I’ll be on the lookout for other renditions of the song.