(Images by The Drifter)
“But don’t you place the blame on me / As you pour yourself another drink, yeah.”
– Eminem
I heart Ems because he talks about, explores, and explains what it’s like to be from Michigan, which means, of course, what it’s like to be from the American Midwest: “flyover country.”
It’s kind of like America’s greatest rock critic (by far), Lester Bangs, who always loved to wear his “Detroit Sucks” T-shirt while living in, and loving living in, the Detroit area, which is known as both Motown and Rock City among other monikers. I can’t believe he was only three miles down the road co-creating Creem Magazine while I was living there as a rebellious little kid. And yet, such is (weirdly for me as a person) true.
There is a simple four-part formula for understanding the essence of Eminem as an American artist, I say!
I speak here of his best, most mature, and most fully developed work, not every single thing he’s ever done. He is a very profuse, honest, sometimes dark, and prolific artist, and if I wanted to slam him, I could choose lots of things to slam. He’s also a very self-aware and self-critical artist – anything anyone can say about him, he’s already said about himself a million times before (much like the poet Charles Bukowski).
The four-part formula goes like this.
One: What it’s like to be from the state of Michigan.
Two: What it’s like to be from the American Midwest (“flyover country”).
Three: What it’s like to be an OUTSIDER.
Four: How the figure of The Outsider, in his work, becomes a symbol of the modern Human in general, plain and simple, and also not simple at all.
Someone once asked him if he believes in God; he said, “I don’t go to church, but I do pray.”
Such an answer shows how he is a kind of modern-day Everyman who modern-day Everywomen can also relate to.
Every place in America, and I mean every place in America, has great heroes and heroines who lived there in the past or are living there right now. By “heroine” and “hero,” I simply mean someone who can be looked up to in some kind of way; someone who proves that humans are, somehow, worth it; and can act as a representative figure somehow (which is also much more of a burden than it might sound like at first blush).
Because if we don’t question the fact of human nobility sometimes, we are blind and mad. And if we don’t ultimately believe that humans have that noble strain within them, we become someone like the current president of the USA, who believes that everything, and that means everything, comes down to nothing more than a monetary transaction, one way or another. Think well of other people – without being blind – and eventually you start to think well of yourself, too.
Eminem’s gated KMart mansion is fifteen miles away from where I lived for the first ten years of my life.
My parents were young and our neighborhood was modest and I often find myself back there in my dreams or in the smell of rain or snow or grass or in the warmth of the sunshine, all of which I learned there first.
We lived in the area where Eminem’s film 8 Mile is set.
Five of Eminem’s greatest songs are from his 2013 album The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
When this album came out, I was separated from my wife and broken up with my truly-beloved, soul-mate girlfriend (who I took up with only after my wife kicked me out and I also kicked myself out even more, which she tended to forget (about the girlfriend) a little too often, since we never lost regular contact while taking care of the kids, in front of whom we always retained a friendly family demeanor in between the poison barbs we regularly aimed at each other; see the quote from Eminem himself at the top of this essay for an example). Two people I deeply love were battling cancer (they got over it, but I didn’t know if they would, at the time; and one of them was her). And my mother had recently passed on. And I was losing my job, a process that took, on and off, two years. Unlike the cancer/s, I knew how this one would pan out from the start, but I never stopped fighting (even though lost in a fog-of-war confusion most of the time, at the time) until it was over (when I immediately plunged into a periodic three-year depression that almost killed me lots of different and exciting ways).
The Marshall Mathers LP 2, and especially the five songs I’m about to list, provided me with great, deep consolation, comfort, and inspiration at the time. For some reason, the album cover has one of my favorite numbers hidden in plain sight upon it: 946.
My two kids, who are forty years younger than me almost to the day, also love/d these songs, then and now, as do most of their friends.
This album was/is one of the rare times when great art and the American mainstream actually come together these days. Lana Del Rey, at her best, is another example of this; as is Taylor Swift (at her best); as is Lady Gaga – at her best.
“The Monster” (co-vocals by Rihanna). ALSO SEE THE MUSIC VIDEO WHERE RIHANNA WEARS BLACK LIPSTICK AND EXTRA-LONG FINGERNAILS!
“Legacy” (co-vocals by Polina).
“Headlights” (co-vocals by Nate Ruess).
“Stronger Than I Was.”
“Bad Guy” (the sequel to Ems’ great song “Stan”).
Remember the spirit of the 1960s (even if you weren’t alive at the time) and play it loud!
These songs are not really rap or hip hop per se; they are more like rap rock, like when he sampled Black Sabbath or Nick Cave on earlier songs; and even more like something one-of-a-kind in a genre of their own, a genre of Eminem’s own invention. Like all great art (including all great essays), these songs don’t really fit into any pre-conceived categories: at all.
But these five songs are so great, they can, very rightly, be compared to the best of The Beatles; Bob Dylan; Nina Simone; The Clash (London Calling); Nirvana. Yes, it’s true: Eminem, at his best, is that good.
Another thing many folks don’t know about Eminem: he took better care of his little brother than their parents did; and he took better care of his three daughters than their mother/s did (two are adopted, from his ex-wife with another man and from his ex-sister-in-law).
Unlike everyone else, he stuck around.
Exciting End Note/s:
I can also recommend Eminem’s powerful 2010 album RECOVERY.
Especially these songs: “Cold Wind Blows,” “Love the Way You Lie,” “Not Afraid,” “Going Through Changes” (one of the songs where he samples Black Sabbath, brilliantly), “Space Bound.”
This essay was written in a single burst while sitting in the car outside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois, USA, on May 12, 2026, which is right around the corner from Ernest Hemingway’s boyhood home. I do not use, and have never used, and will never use either grammar or spell check, believing my brain should be the one to do the work instead of any sort of a computer for a multitude of reasons some of which I can’t even explain. I believe that any typos or mistakes (if there are any) are deliberately made by something else. Therefore I let them stand if I catch them after a certain point (after my brain says “Finished”).
SEE THE QUILLEMENDER OF MY CO-EDITOR LEILA ALLISON!
(Borges rightly says that the real writer is never afraid to write a bad page.)
I saw seven GIGANTIC wild rabbits in Wright’s yard while writing this!
They were running around chasing each other because they know that it’s SPRING.
Saragun Springs 
Hello Drifter
I remember when Moby elected himself King of Morality and got his, and well deserved. I was forty-one when I heard Eminem, in 2000, at work, everyday. I liked it a lot but was relevant to tell my younger co-workers that because it is assumed that you either hate everything after thirty and when you say you like it you are just trying to regain hipness. People like that can fuck off, I liked it. Still dislike Moby except for the one thing he did with Gwen Stefani.
Boo flirts with the camera while the quiet member of the Pack likes to chill and soak up the sun.
We are where we come from in childhood, unless rootless, then we become that. I understand your Michigan roots. For better or dreary the Northwest is in me but at the same time it rejects people that belong to it. Some sort of spiritual desertion going on there.
Leila
Great pics as always!
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Leila
Hi!
Yes, all those so-called well-adjusted grown-ups and adults who cast aspersions about old people like me liking new things are really just calcified old farts with dead, dead hearts. Old folks like myself either remain young at heart or they die inside instead, gradually and then suddenly. They are so many corpses walking around above ground, and many of them are well-heeled, highly respected members of society, too! I HATE how so many old people get stuck in their ways and are always going off on rants about the old people who stay young or the young people who do new things. Life is short enough, people, and everyone’s doing their best! Keep your whining and complaining to yourself or just shut up about it, which amounts to the same thing.
And YOU, Leila, are the opposite of all that, which is why I heart you too, BIG TIME (and much much much much much much much more than I heart Eminem!!!…)
D
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Hi Drifter
I checked out what was happening today on the Springs, and man I was impressed! This essay really opens up the door to Detroit and Eminem.
I’m kind of on the outskirts of Eminem’s, music, but I find him more and more interesting as I get older-old. I can’t seem to get into the newer music, besides Justin B, Swift, and a few others (they’re getting older too, so I’m probably not with it at all.)”
After Alternative passed on I’m not clear about what genres represent the 2000 decades, beside general labels like Pop, Country, ETC. I suspect it’s because a lot of the new music relies on computer generated guitar, and drum tracks. And the ignorance of the age gap.
My first introduction to E was watching “8-Mile.” Then I got onto “Stan,” via the Light Bringer. She’s down with rap and all kinds of other great music, like “Bad Finger, Karen Carpenter, Sly & the Family Stone,” not so much on “The Band.” Which is hard for me to fathom, but people have their musical taste like eating green beans or not. She’s the one who got me into rap and I’m glad she did!
It’s really impressive that you don’t use spell check or any other kind of writing aid. I’m always misspelling everything and there’s a tug-a-war with grammar too. Should have paid more attention to my 7th grade English teacher Ms. Knarr (probably spelled wrong) who me and a bunch of smart asses had other plans for her class, and she laid a big red F on my ass.
I think I’ve known for awhile now–you are a terrific and prolific writer. How you can effortlessly write such clear content and always highly educational, funny, down to earth, but way up in the literary clouds is amazing! And your off the cuff, concise, and flawless commenting blows me away!
I’m going to make use of E’s song list too, Thanks!
CJA
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Hi CJA!
Doesn’t surprise me at all that the Light Bringer has great taste like that, tell her I said hi as always!
I don’t have anyone awesome in my life like the Light Bringer.
But I do have two 19-year-old punk-ass kids who are my number one sidekicks other than the dog/s.
I never go more than a coupla days without seeing one or both of ’em, and I am blessed, very blessed, because they are both a lot like me (and even look like me except shorter and female).
And these kids both have awesome musical tastes.
They know how to pick and choose what’s good and what’s bad from all the too-much bad out there. Probably gonna be literary critics of some kind some day, or already are!
There are two really really really great singer-songwriters out there right now who are still at the top of their game. Both of them are around Eminem’s age (one about eight years younger). They are both a lot like The Band in many ways. And they both still live in the places they come from, like Eminem and Bod Seger and (last I heard tell) Mellencamp.
Conor Oberst of Omaha, Nebraska. And Bonnie “Prince” Billy, of Louisville, Kentucky.
My kids didn’t introduce me to their music, I introduced my kids to their music, but my kids are smart enough to like the good stuff!
F. Scott Fitzgerald got Fs in English class, as did lots of other great writers! Hilarious! I did ok in English but I bombed out lots of other classes in high school. In fact, the only reason I graduated high school was because they made an administrative exception in my case and didn’t make me take math (little did they know I would later become a numerologist, ha ha). I also dropped out/flunked out of college twice before finally going back and making it through.
D
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Dale, you demonstrate once again your love-hate relationship with the American Midwest, but I maintain that your angst could have transpired anywhere, at any time. Your dog, as always, takes center stage, emoting for your camera. That’s a handsome beast. I was concerned for your daughters and am glad they are apparently on the mend.
Regarding Eminem, the phenomenon of his success happened well after I seriously considered popular music. In the 1970s I had the obligatory JBL 150A small refrigerator-sized stereo speakers and everything that went with it, but nowadays I don’t even own a stereo (I traded the speakers for a car many years ago). My hearing is such that profound music equipment would be redundant.
So Marshall Mathers as a musical phenomenon has totally escaped me; aesthetically, I am still within the clutches of Robert Plant and Freddy Mercury and Paul Rogers; alas, my loss. I Googled Eminem and discovered he had a rough upbringing, which fueled his angst and allowed him to scale his artistic heights. He has been a well- known music force for nearly 30 years (where does the time go?) and I’ll probably never listen to him, in the same way I’ve never watched The Simpsons or Seinfeld. Again, my loss, but there it is.
Eminem’s disaffection appears to spring from an absent father and a disaffected mother; I didn’t have these experiences; my parents, though modest providers, always did their best and were always there. I had good parents. So perhaps I don’t have the necessary foundation to be an angst-driven rapper. That’s alright too.
So what’s the point of my remarks? Not sure. But it’s no sin to be from the Midwest. The residents aren’t perfect, but we aren’t evil either. We can have the same colorful or nondescript lives as anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Hey, Drifter, maybe we’re soul mates. We can both sit at home in mid-May, writing stream of consciousness essays about who knows what, and someone will read it, at least once. You sit in your car, while I sit in the bedroom of my hovel, eating BBQ potato chips and beer for breakfast. It’s a wash. All the best to you and your kids, and to anyone reading Saragun Springs this morning. — bill
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Hola Bill!
Chips and beer for breakfast sounds like a great idea, except that in the ol’ days I woulda skipped the chips. Now I just have magic mushrooms for breakfast (which I just did two hours ago, meaning they HAVE kicked in and have NOT worn off). My psychiatrist does very well-funded research in this field (really) and he calls it “the Psychedelic Renaissance.” How strange that our current president himself recently made all this stuff legal!
I like stream-of-consciousness writing because it’s more natural than the usual, over-simplified, over-produced, cookie-cutter articles that are composed for the so-called masses. Natural = more like the mind really works. Flowing like, well, a stream! (or a river, depending).
Mick Jagger estimated that the Stones’ original audience (the original blues scene in London which they came out of) was around 300 people. Literature takes a lot longer to catch on (usually) than popular music does. It goes downhill when thousands of people all come out at once to listen to it.
It only goes to those (and only those) who can already understand it.
You are one of those precious few souls!
I also know from past lives that when a writer has a mass audience they have to deal with too many idiots. And usually write what they’re told to write by editors and marketing people.
How many times is John Grisham gonna write The Firm and call it something else?
This is how much $ Thoreau was paid for both of his books: 0. Civil disobedience, indeed.
As Eminem said in “Legacy”: “Thought I was full of horseshit and now you fucking worship the ground on which I am walking.”
I get along better with animals than I do with humans, with very few, rare exceptions. And then I love them as much as I do my animals who I almost think of as human/s.
I used to live near the Mighty Mississip’, in Quincy, Illinois. Beyond beautiful country. I still dream of the river. Would even be happy if they scatter my ashes there (not a bad idea!).
Thanks for your always-original attitude. You possess a flair for the word, or are possessed with a flair for the word.
Who are some of your favorite fiction writers?
Ever read Richard Brautigan?
The D
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PS Bill
I have a bunch of photos (with short text/s) coming out the next five days in the Springs…
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TO ALL:
If anyone else wants to have five days of photographs coming out in the Springs, with expert commentary by the Editors every day, send ’em in for our consideration!!
The Editor/s
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