Dale Williams Barrigar

What Does It Mean to Tell the Truth by the Drifter

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” – George Orwell

“All bad poetry is sincere.” – Oscar Wilde

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

– George Orwell

What is art? asked Leo Tolstoy of himself and his readers in the late nineteenth century.

He had many answers – because he was possibly the most comprehensive writer since Shakespeare (or one of them) and there are many answers.

One of the answers which Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, provided was this: “divine play.”

Vlad said art equals “divine play” because nowhere else and at no other time does the human subject get closer to the divine than when creating art.

And the second part of the equation is equally crucial.

If it were real, we wouldn’t be able to digest it and allow our imaginations to work upon it in the same way (thereby helping us create our own identities among many other practical tasks, like helping us decide what to do when we realize that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and soon it might be you, too).

If we were really watching Hamlet slaughter everybody and be slaughtered in turn, our reactions would be quite a bit different at almost every level to say the least, starting with physiology.

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard thought art was “indirect communication.”

If you just stand there spewing out (or hurling out) all your preconceived and received (and stale) opinions, this is propaganda and obnoxious behavior, but it isn’t art.

Jesus said, “It isn’t what goes into your mouth but what comes out of it that makes you sinful,” and how I wish this quotation were read aloud from endless pulpits every single Sunday in the USA, from Maine to Timbuktu.

It seems pretty clear that there are three categories of art.

The gigantic bottom.

The vast middle.

And the higher realm/s (and levels of the high/er, from the bottom of the higher to its very top).

The bottom revels in sensationalism, titillation, distraction, the same old same-old yet again (and again). (“Entertainment” and art are not the same thing.)

The higher kind lasts much longer, sometimes many, many centuries, because it goes deeper as well as higher – the mind, the heart, the body, the soul of the human are there in higher kinds of art in ways that they simply are not in the gigantic bottom or even the vast middle.

The gigantic bottom is more popular in the moment, just as the higher kinds of art are far, far more lasting and durable, and therefore much more popular, in the long term.

Shakespeare said, “So long lives this and this gives life to thee,” while one of Shakespeare’s American heirs said, “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.” (During Shakespeare’s day, the population of London, largest city in the world, was around 200,000. The population of Des Moines, Iowa, USA, today, in 2026, is around 200,000. The world has changed.)

Bob Marley, the Jamaican Shakespeare, said, “How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look? / Some say it’s just a part of it – we’ve got to fulfill the Book.”

I was almost shocked one time when I heard a Catholic priest say quite clearly to a church full of restless elementary school children, “The story of Jonah and the whale isn’t a real story. No one has ever been swallowed whole by a whale then vomited out upon the shore fully intact three days later. It isn’t a real story. But the truth it tells is real.” (He then went on to use the word symbolic and explain what it meant.)

The anonymous Jewish author who wrote the thousand-word story of Jonah and the Whale also didn’t think the story was “real.” He, or she, too, knew that the story’s truths were internal, representative, real only in the sense that they tell it like it is, so to speak (the outward facts are not what the issue is when it comes to art).

…

The book of Genesis in the Bible contains not one, but two, creation stories, almost completely contradictory in many of their aspects, just as the gospels of Matthew and Luke contain two different accounts of where Jesus came from.

Neither of these facts either prove nor disprove anything having to do with the existence or non-existence of a Supreme Being, a Creator God, an Unseen Power that lives well beyond, or inside, us, or both.

I have heard many people who claim to be agnostics give fevered atheistic (and veiled capitalistic, materialistic) explanations for why they are agnostic, apparently not understanding the difference between agnosticism and atheism, especially in American academia, where such arguments are the dominant mode of thought and have become utterly stale and unoriginal. People parrot these kinds of things because they think not doing so will make them look bad.

Some of us turn to God when we can no longer stand the pain (or the meaninglessness).

Art is the thing that helps put us in deeper touch with the mystery or reminds us when we forget.

The mystical branches of Islam believe people need to be reminded, not converted.

ART, not organized religion, is my religion because the first religion was art and art was the first religion.

People and people-like creatures were being nailed to crosses (symbolically) for millions of years before Jesus came along.

No wonder they called him “The Word.”

GRIPPING END NOTE: Art is also amazing because of its dual nature: alone while not alone or with others while solitary amounts to the best of both worlds combined and makes Art relevant forever!

ANOTHER GRIPPING END NOTE from The Drifter on Genre, AI, and a few other issues: The Drifter considers this piece of writing to be a comic philosophical essay on the meaning of, or reason/s for, human art. It contains elements of the personal essay through the lens of Gonzo journalism.

Since it contains personal HUMAN thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions, AI could neither write nor read and understand this.

The comic philosophical essay is nothing new under the sun, also practiced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Plato, Henry David Thoreau, and Philip K. Dick among many others.

The Drifter is thoroughly versed in the lives and writings of all five philosophers named. So much so that they appear as living beings in his dreams. This little treatise could not have been penned (and most of the rough draft was penned before it was typed, a practice I recommend to all beginning or aspiring writers, since if you aren’t willing to make the effort it won’t be worth anything) without them. In other words, it builds upon them.

I have made crucial, life-altering decisions based on the info I thought these five philosophers were giving me. Art is about tutelary spirits, connections through time, both past and future; AND your own original voice interacting with all of the above in the present.

As Thomas Paine wrote pamphlets and William Blake was an engraver and Bukowski and the Samizdat writers in Russia made mimeos, so do we all use the tools we find at hand. Nothing less; and nothing more.

It isn’t supposed to be easy.

FINAL THOUGHT (For Now): Instead of mechanical plot devices, stock characters, and unchallenging themes, Shakespeare and Cervantes, those mysterious twins, gave the world natural plots, realistic characters, and challenging themes.

(all images by The Drifter)

The Drifter

Is There a Hell by The Drifter

(All images provided by the Drifter)

Is there a hell?

I generally don’t believe in hell until I think of someone like J. Edgar Hoover and what he did to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perhaps one of the most egregious things he did was send King a letter right before Martin was scheduled to leave for Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

It was an anonymous letter.

It started by stating that the letter-writer would not address King by the titles of Mr., Dr., Reverend, or any other honorary title because Dr. King didn’t deserve the respect.

J. Edgar pretended to be a black man who was writing the letter.

And in the letter he projected on Dr. King a whole host of perversions and sexual excesses that are clearly the fantasies of none other than J. Edgar Hoover himself, having absolutely nothing to do with what King himself had ever done.

The letter repeatedly calls King “a beast,” which is not a term a black man would likely have used to describe another black man, even if he hated him.

Hoover also sent the letter to King’s wife.

When Coretta opened the letter (which was of course accusing Martin of adultery of various kinds) in front of Martin then handed it to him, Martin looked at it and immediately said, “This is from Hoover.”

The letter also threatened to expose Dr. King to the world for being a sexual pervert even though King hadn’t done any of the things he was accused of doing in the letter.

Martin outsmarted Hoover at almost every turn, which was probably one of the many reasons Hoover hated King so much.

But the pressure got to Martin.

Being followed around, being wiretapped all the time, and now being sent this hideous composition from the madman could not have helped but make Martin feel paranoid, pursued, unjustly accused (of course), hated (for no reason), hounded by the devil. By the devil himself.

Hoover was a repressed, hateful and hate-filled man who also worked hard to kick Charlie Chaplin out of the USA, and finally succeeded in getting Charlie kicked out of the country.

Hoover justified all these horrors to himself by claiming that he was protecting the United States from ne’er-do-wells, radicals, revolutionaries.

He was not protecting the United States. He was helping to damage and ruin it in some ways like no one had ever done before.

He clung to power for 48 years.

Once Martin started to try to end the war and bring all poor people together in solidarity no matter the color of their skin, Hoover and all the others like him had had enough.

Last time I checked, the King family did not believe that James Earl Ray acted alone.

I do not believe it either.

(Neither did James Earl Ray himself, who repeatedly stated that he did not act alone.)

If there is a hell (and I’m not necessarily saying there is one), J. Edgar Hoover is in it.

…

John Meacham, the brilliant historian and biographer, recently told Charlie Rose in an interview that the reason Abraham Lincoln was great was because, at the critical moments, old Honest Abe always chose to do the right thing. Even when it was at great cost to himself.

Martin Luther King, Jr., did not choose greatness. He had it thrust upon him at the young age of 25. No one else could do what he did, because no one else had his talents to do it.

He had greatness thrust upon him.

But he always answered the call.

…

In his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in Oslo on December 11, 1964, Dr. King said: “Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors, and brutality in the destroyers.”

He also said, at another time, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

He also said, “If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

…

I guess I don’t believe in hell, or definitely not the kind of hell where God officially sentences you to be burned alive forever, tortured in flames for the rest of all eternity. If I believed that kind of thing, I would probably spend even more time than I already do having various kinds of panic attacks.

But I’m not so sure there isn’t a hell where He makes you SEE, finally see, really see, just what it was you did and were doing during your tenure here on Planet Earth.

Maybe He makes you see and finally care.

(A Rather Demonic Drifter!)

The Drifter

The Drifter: A New Definition of Lynchian

(All images provided by The Drifter)

“She is gone / But she was here / And her presence is still heavy in the air. / Oh what a taste / Of human love / But now she’s gone / And it don’t matter any more.” – Willie Nelson

David Lynch passed away exactly one year ago today as the Drifter writes this (January 16, 2026).

He was a man who combined two strains of the American artistic spirit within himself.

He could create a dreamlike sense of horror within his works that reaches straight back to none other than our wonderful world-genius Edgar Allan Poe.

And he also had another side to his personality that reaches back to our other artistic founding father, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson was an American Transcendentalist, and Lynch was a Transcendental Meditation teacher who spent the last twenty years of his life directly trying to bring peace to the world more than making movies. There is, except perhaps on the surface, very little difference between Transcendental Meditation and American Transcendentalism. And even on the surface, there is not that much difference.

Lynch was also a Hemingwayesque figure who could write dialogue like Ernest Hemingway. (Roger Ebert was for the most part drastically unfair to Lynch throughout Lynch’s career, but he got this part exactly right.)

And Lynch even looked a bit Hemingwayesque, especially in the film of him where he is painting – we can remember that Hemingway loved painting and always said that Van Gogh and Cezanne were two of his biggest, deepest, and longest-lasting influences, bar none.

David Lynch was born in Montana and lived in Idaho for some of his formative years. Hemingway died in Idaho and spent much time hiking and hunting in Montana.

David Lynch once said, “Big things become smaller when you talk about them – unless you’re a poet.” I could cry for gratitude when I ponder this quote. He meant that words destroy things that can’t be said or that are too big for words, and he also meant that poets have a special place in the human pantheon where they can get closer to the source than anyone else.

He did not consider himself a poet, and he was not a poet, and that’s another thing that makes me love this quote so much. All artists should love all the arts, no matter what their specific focus/es happen to be. They should also become aware (by degrees) of what they both can, and cannot, do. This is a life-long process. Roger Waters said he only discovered that he was able to write prose in his late 70s.

…

The Drifter had forgotten Lynch’s death date somehow when he recently became obsessed with Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive again over the holiday season.

I watched the film end to end at least three times and I watched certain parts of it, like the scene with The Cowboy and Adam Kesher or the scene where Rebekah Del Rio sings Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in Spanish while Betty and Camilla hold each other and weep, dozens of times (not quite literally). Rebekah died last year, just like Lynch, and she died two weeks after singing the song “Llorando” (“Crying”) at a Philosophical Research Society screening of the film.

Many critics have said that Mulholland Drive is the greatest film of the twenty-first century and it is also surely one of the greatest films ever made, even a candidate for THE greatest film ever made. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is the only film I can think of that competes with it in the twenty-first century, and even there Mulholland Drive clearly triumphs, as much as I love and adore Eternal Sunshine. (Mulholland Drive is a faultless work of art and Eternal Sunshine is a truly great work of art with many faults to it.)

…

The friendship between Betty and Camilla is much more endearing and powerful than their erotic relationship, even though their erotic relationship is the most realistic and powerful depiction of an erotic relationship I have ever seen on screen. This fact alone makes this film so great there’s almost nothing more to say about it on that level. The paradox of art here bends the mind and changes the heart forever.

The Cowboy is a supernatural character. When angels appear in this mortal sphere, they often do so in a stern, or even a terrifying, guise (see the Bible, which has countless examples of this).

The terrifying homeless man turns into Jesus at the end of the film.

Diane Selwyn exists in ALL OF US.

This movie is about Hollywood, but it is not just about Hollywood. It is about the youth of every person and how youth fades and attitudes and beliefs change as this happens. We either adjust our great expectations, or we die a spiritual death we never recover from.

The crime-of-passion murder in this story is LITERAL in this story; and it is SYMBOLIC in the larger scheme of things (in many, many ways).

When someone breaks your heart and leaves you or forces you to leave them due to their possessive, controlling, jealous, and unhinged behavior, you either kill them off in your mind (NOT literally!) or you die yourself, literally or not. But you think you’ve symbolically killed them off, when you haven’t, really… (Listen to the lyrics of Roy Orbison’s song, “Crying.”)

…

Renee Good reminds me of a David Lynch character like Betty Elms.

Her last known words were, “It’s OK, dude, I’m not mad at you,” spoken with a deeply friendly and smiling sincerity that anyone with half a heart can understand if they’ve seen the video taken by the very man who murdered her seconds later.

I just don’t understand how anyone could have shot this person in the face, right after looking into her face.

She had a beautiful face.

…

We live in a time when the whole system appears to be breaking down. The current president is merely a symptom of that, not a cause, although he is surely hurrying it along, too. (We all need to remain aware, AND stop giving him so much attention.) A healthy society would never have let such a mentally challenged person of obvious bad faith ascend to the position of its “supreme leader” – not in a million years.

No one person is able to change this, or stop it.

There will be light at the end of the tunnel (as there was in Germany).

We don’t know how long the tunnel will be.

…

Drifter Notation Upon the Definition of SARGUN: The word “Sargun” (Sanskrit roots) looks very much like the word “Saragun.”

It’s a literary synchronicity.

If you don’t already know what the word, and name, Sargun means, and even if you do, you should look up the definition. And think about it! (And then think about the literary-synchronicity-connection to the word, and name, Saragun.)

And a repeat of the header for downloads that fail to show it

The Drifter

Animals in Motion; or, Symbolism of the Dog Reflected Back at You

(All wonderful images provided by Dr. Dale W. Barragar)

By Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

Herman Melville had his whale obsession; Hemingway had his bulls; Faulkner his bear; Jack London his dogs; Flannery O’Connor her peacocks; Poe his raven; Leila Allison has her Daisy Kloverleaf, and I have my dogs, Boo, Bandit, and The Colonel.

(Not that I’m comparing any of us; I’m simply pointing out the similarities.)

I’m aware that many people think I’m crazy because I have three dogs. Those who think this think this for a variety of reasons. All I can say is: maybe I am crazy. My dogs don’t seem to think I am (most of the time, which is the best one can hope for) and in a world like this world (this denatured society), that’s good enough for me.

My mind (not my brain) seems to be made up of one third critical connection-making faculties, one third visionary tendencies, and one third of something I will never be able to fathom, no matter how hard I try.

It’s worth considering what you think your own mind is composed of, if you have one and haven’t already done so. And to remember that it’s as much a part of nature as nature is; it IS nature.

I find great beauty in the motion of animals. It isn’t just Siberian Huskies and pit bulls play-fighting which fascinates me. The running of deer, the flying of birds, the climbing of squirrels, the swimming of octopuses, and any other kind of animal motion you care to name also does it, insects included.

For me, “beauty” means something ephemeral (or seemingly ephemeral) that has something eternal (or seemingly eternal) about it. This is the yin and yang, what Walt Whitman meant when he said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.” (Everything that’s good has a bad version of it, and everything that’s bad has a good version.)

It remains to be seen if there really is any death. If there is, we won’t know it. In that sense, there is no death. Others die, but we do not (until we do). At least half of those who “die” never see it coming. In that sense, can they really be said to have died? One second they were here; the next second not so much. We are tormented by this; but they might be the lucky ones.

Trying to live forever will always be a fool’s game; and how could you ever think this world needs that much of you? Bow your head and move on. (But when it’s time, only when it’s time.)

Nature is the key, but what nature really is cannot be known by us (yet), least of all by what is called “modern science.” Modern science doesn’t deal with the Unseen (or the untestable), and the Unseen is obviously what animates nature.

And meanwhile, the bird still flies, the whales still ply the oceans, and “man’s best friend,” last time I checked, is still just as loyal as she, he or it has ever been. (Whether they put their pronouns in their bios is a matter of extreme indifference to me.)

NOTATION of Importance: Join “The Idiot” who calls himself “The Drifter” tomorrow for a celebration of the genius-turned-saint David Lynch two days after his one-year anniversary of passing from this mortal-coil world.

(The reference to Dostoevsky’s novel THE IDIOT is also an homage to Mr. Lynch, who called Dostoevsky and Kafka two of his favorite authors.

Many people have called The Drifter “an idiot” in the ordinary American sense of the term, for a wide variety of reasons, including (but not limited to) his utter incompetence at many practical tasks which a lot of people find quite easy to accomplish.

He here uses the term in reference to the way Dostoevsky used the term (in Russian) in his wonderful, sporadically beautiful novel, THE IDIOT.

(And there are many who would call him an idiot for doing so (without reading either him or the novel), which is fine).)

Dog Action One
Dog Action Two
Dog Action Three
Dog Action Four
Dog Action Five–Boo So Nice We Show Him Twice!

Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

My Daughter’s Face; or, The Visitation by The Drifter

In the silence

in the nothingness

of the road

I could suddenly feel

the holiness

of my daughter’s face

of her spirit

and of her whole self

and I suddenly knew

while I was driving the car

in Illinois

down the road

with her sitting

silently

next to me

that I was sitting

next to an angel

a human angel

imperfect and stressed like the rest of us, yes,

and yet

angelic

nevertheless;

and it was only later

in a far field

when I was alone

that I allowed

the tears of gratitude

to fall

which are still tears.

And I can still

conjure up that feeling

at will

whenever I want to

wherever I am

and it’s worth

more

than all the empty

bank accounts

I ever owned.

And Someone

maybe the Stranger

is always hovering right

behind it all

in my mind.

– The Drifter, aka Dale Williams Barrigar, 12/31/2025

The Drifter: Love and Murder in the Mountains; or. Eleven Reasons

The details in this essay may shock you.

Don’t read on unless you want to understand why some people commit multiple murders. In order to understand, we will have to go into the grisly details. Steel yourself or turn away and pretend it isn’t true.

Everything in this essay is absolutely true nonfiction, 1,000%.

…

It was not too long after the Civil War, in the remote mountains of eastern Kentucky, USA.

A woman murdered her husband, by poisoning him.

Then she preserved his body, and kept him sitting in a chair, fully dressed, in a locked room, eyelids closed. (They had a taxidermy business, well-known in the area.)

Then she murdered two other men, both of whom asked too many questions.

She preserved both and also kept them in the locked room, sitting in chairs with their clothes on.

She convinced her 17-year-old son that he was no longer himself, that he had literally become his own father.

And she became pregnant with her own son. She believed that both the new baby and her 17-year-old son really were her dead husband returned to her – even though she was the one who’d murdered him in the first place.

Her other son, a 14-year-old, was also made to believe that he played a special role in all of this.

But he never really bought into any of it, although he was loyal to her and played his role to the hilt, probably in the same manner as the 17-year-old sometimes.

The sheriff discovered these horrors, by sneaking in through the window where the three preserved bodies were kept, pistol in hand.

The woman and her two sons caught him in the act.

The 17-year-old tried to attack him and the sheriff shot him dead on the spot in terrified self-defense.

The mother and the 14-year-old now went peacefully as he handcuffed them and took them away to the nearest town, which was three hours distant down the mountain trails.

Of course, he brought the baby with them as well.

The baby was sent away to another state, for adoption or to the orphanage.

The mother and her 14-year-old son were given their date with the hangman.

The answer of the town was more murder. Four people are dead because of you. Now you die too.

Hundreds came out to see it, just like people always did back then. Hangings were social occasions, among other things.

The boy apologized, wept, begged forgiveness.

The mother remained firm.

She never thought she had done anything wrong at all.

She was a true believer until the end.

The sheriff never got over it.

…

I don’t want to cast stones at this woman and say how evil she was.

Everyone knows that her behavior was “evil.” (Not everyone, in fact. There are many just as mad as she was among us even now – or especially now.)

…

I don’t want to cast stones at this woman.

I want to know why she did it.

…

The Drifter has compiled a list of eleven reasons why she did it.

Only when ALL of these reasons are combined and considered, separately and at once, can any kind of rational, scientific explanation be made for her actions. (The entire essay is just under 1,200 words in length.)

But if you add all eleven of these up, put them together in different combinations, and think about them deeply, her motivations do indeed become exceedingly clear.

…

She was an artist. Her house was filled with bizarre art which visitors described as looking both overly civilized and demonically primitive at the same time.

Some visitors ignored it.

Others were unnerved by it, and described it as “unnatural,” although they didn’t know why.

…

Rural isolation. The family lived three hours away from the nearest town, an hour away from the nearest village, and almost as far away from their nearest neighbor, as well. They went days, and sometimes weeks, and sometimes in the winter, months, without seeing other people, except themselves.

…

Preservation and butchering of animals. The family ran a well-known taxidermy business. And they also ran a farm, where they daily killed most of the animals they used for meat. Such closeness to death inures the subject to death on more than one level.

…

DEATH ITSELF. We live in a universe of death, and it does weird things to people.

…

Religious mania. One of this woman’s responses to living in a universe of death was to become fanatically religious, so that she no longer believed in death. After someone was dead, they weren’t dead. At least not in her mind.

(And on the other hand, almost no one didn’t believe in the afterlife back then. Even Darwin himself was only ambivalent, not a hardcore unbeliever. Because believing in evolution doesn’t mean you don’t believe in a Creator God. His timeline is, to say the least, different than ours.)

…

Childhood trauma. There is a high likelihood that she was the victim of massive trauma during childhood. God knows what was done to her, by whom, or where and when, when she was an innocent child.

…

Genetics. She was almost surely born with a mind predisposed to go insane.

…

The patriarchy. She was forced to follow her husband’s orders to a large extent. And if she didn’t follow those orders, and keep her mouth shut about it, too, physical beatings and other punishments (like involuntary confinement) would not have been at all uncommon.

…

Love AND hatred. She clearly hated the man or she wouldn’t have poisoned him. And she clearly loved him since she couldn’t get rid of him. Her last words on the gallows were, “Now I’m going to where my husband is.”

…

The will. Her will and her willpower made her want to rule her own world and to elude capture.

…

America. She lived in a time right after the bloodiest war in human history up to that point, where modern warfare came into its own, where the South had been ravaged and destroyed, and also the American world of outsiders, gun fighters, outlaws, desperadoes. And a world that had seen the Native Americans decimated. But where your own family (if you were white) could also be decimated by angry Native Americans. And a world of slavery (although the area in which she lived didn’t have slavery), a world of the most brutal slavery humankind has ever invented. And also a world where the individual was very much encouraged to do whatever you wanted (if you were white at the time), an idea that was technically made for men by men, but that surely influenced the women, too.

…

When we add up all these reasons, we might even ask ourselves why it was that everyone didn’t go insane.

…

Digression Coda: In America THE GUN means “no one can tell me what to do.” It’s one reason why people who’ve been bullied and beaten down turn to the gun. Until we can convince the average populace that their true freedom really lies in other means, we’re gonna have a gun problem.

Final Detail: Her artwork was burned.

Photo Gallery by Dale Williams Barrigar

 Creativity NOW

This photographic series of five celebrates creativity in our time. “Our time” means right now, because these days, things move so fast that we will be in another era by the middle of next year, most likely. It’s no wonder the world’s head is spinning.

Retreat and rejection of the madness is part of what’s required for creativity now. And that is part of the message of the first photograph.

People used to type vast tomes on typewriters. Cormac McCarthy was one such individual. Even though he was hyper-aware of the latest developments in physics and other highly developed sciences, McCarthy continued to use a typewriter until the end (2023). The model of typewriter he used for his entire life is the exact same model shown in the picture. Someone gave this thing to me, believing it was an outdated piece of junk, but also knowing I would like it for some reason. The person had no idea about Cormac. The typewriter sits there by the window as a talisman now, even though I don’t appreciate Cormac’s work in the way I once did (but I still appreciate him).

T.S. Eliot said, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” The same is true for the animal kingdom. The guy in this picture would have come over and said hi to me up close and personal if I’d hung around for much longer.

The last two pictures are visual representations of quotations which encapsulate the essence of creativity now. They should be (in order to be gotten the most out of) lived with, in the manner of Zen koans. Also, there is a reason they each appear in the visual format they appear in instead of only the words. The viewer is meant to guess and speculate what the reasons are (which is part of the fun).

The difference between propaganda and art is that one is simplistic and obvious and appeals to our baser instincts, while one is elusive and mysterious and appeals to the better angels of our nature, even when it’s brutal and disorienting at first, like much of Pollock’s work.

Jackson
Tripping
Night Raid
Typewriter
Hand

Photo Gallery: Oak Park, Illinois Hemingway’s Hometown by Dale Williams Barrigar

                                                                       

Ernest Hemingway’s spirit casts a shadow over Oak Park, Illinois, USA. Along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Hemingway is the town’s most famous citizen. Even those who’ve never read a line of Hemingway’s work, which includes the vast majority of the citizenry (I would guess), are aware of who Hemingway was, what he is famous for, how he lived his life, and how he was from Oak Park. Frank Lloyd Wright is America’s greatest architect, bar none, an architect so great that he fascinates people who don’t care about other architects, like yours truly. Hemingway is an author who can be set on the shelf beside Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe. Indeed, if one had to pick the top three most famous American writers of all time worldwide, Hemingway is in the running for third place along with Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, and perhaps a few other candidates. And he is famous for all the right reasons (for the most part). Hemingway never returned to Oak Park after his father committed suicide there with a pistol. His spirit, and his shadow, never left it. The village, the fire escape, the train tracks, and the alleyway are all elements which feed into his fiction, which is why they are captured here in a Walker Evans-style of spontaneous photography. 

The Shadow
The Village
Fire Escape
Train Tracks

The Drifter: Why Christmas Music in 2025 and Beyond?

(All fine images by the Drifter)

In the Year of Our Lord 2025, many good-hearted folks can indeed be excused for being cynical about Christmas music.

So much of it (like so much else in our society) is used for nothing but Sell, Sell, Sell; and so much of it has a quality of sincerity which matches the sincerity of Amber Heard on the witness stand (sorry Amber).

But as Scrooge and the Grinch (among others) have eternally reminded us, the real spirit of Christmas is not meant to end on the day when the Christmas shopping is over.

The real spirit of Christmas is supposed to be about the way you live your life all the year ’round.

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In this short little essay/column, The Drifter shall offer brief musings upon four Christmas songs that can be enjoyed and returned to all the year ’round.

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The first song is “Samson in New Orleans,” by Leonard Cohen, from his 2014 album Popular Problems, a brilliant album all the way ’round.

Leonard was 80 when this record was released. His final, triumphant world tour had ended in 2013, but Leonard wasn’t finished making art, and he wouldn’t be finished making art until he was finished being here in the flesh in autumn of 2016 (and maybe he continues to do so elsewhere even now).

“Samson in New Orleans” is not an official Christmas song. But it should be thought of as one.

This song so much reminds me of John Milton’s great poem Samson Agonistes that it makes me think Cohen must’ve been familiar with Milton’s poem. If he wasn’t familiar with it, it was a familiar case of two great artists coming to the same idea on their own, a common phenomenon, which justifies Tolstoy’s famous quote about art’s core being about linkages, connections through time.

This song contains these lines: “The king so kind and solemn / He wears a bloody crown / So stand me by that column / Let me take this temple down.”

Leonard was a practicing Jew, but he also made a call many times for his people to remember that Jesus was one of their own. As such, he was a Christian in everything but name, as well as a Jewish Buddhist.

Listen to the song. It explains why we should follow the real Jesus, and what doing that really means.

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When Bob Dylan released his Christmas album Christmas in the Heart in 2009, many people made fun of him. And indeed, much of the album was made in the spirt of Christmas fun. But some of it is deadly serious.

Dylan’s version of “Little Drummer Boy” is one such performance.

If you listen to this song in a highly advanced flow state, or with your favorite medicinal substances enhancing (not impeding) your imagination, it will take you back 2,000 years.

The song contains the line, “Little baby…I am a poor boy too.”

It reminds us that the real Jesus was nothing if not a law-breaker, a rule-smasher, a son of the lower classes who was smarter than everyone in the upper classes and who stood on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed his entire life, even though he could have easily joined the other side any time he wanted (which is the symbolism of the devil offering him the whole world if he would only bow down and kiss the devil’s feet – which, of course, he wouldn’t).

Like Cohen, Dylan is a Christian Jewish person or a Jewish person with an unbelievably deep feeling for Jesus.

He knows that one thing does not preclude, nor exclude, the other, and that goes for everyone.

(“All Religions Are One,” wrote William Blake over 200 years ago. You would have thought the human race might’ve caught up to him by now.)

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Now that all the members of The Band are gone from the world (in the flesh, anyway), anything by them becomes that much more beautiful.

But “Christmas Must Be Tonight” has always been one of their most beautiful songs, a song so beautiful it brings sadness and joy, tears and quiet internal laughter, at the same time.

Rink Danko’s voice is gorgeous in this song. Robbie Robertson never wrote better lyrics.

Its first words are, “Come down to the manger, / See the little stranger…”

Everyone in The Band knew deeply why it’s appropriate to call Jesus “The Stranger.”

It’s a knowledge that has been lost by mainstream culture in the USA.

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Finally, one more song, which, like “Samson in New Orleans,” is not an official Christmas song but should be seen (and heard) as one.

Toward the end of his life, Harold Bloom was asked to name his own personal favorite song of all time.

His answer was, “The Weight,” by The Band.

A Few Christmas Words Worth Considering

By Dr. Dale W. Barrigar

In Mark 6, we can read the story that is sometimes called “The 5000.” In terms of word count, it’s the length of a modern flash fiction.

Five thousand people come out to hear him. They listen all day. At night they are tired, drained, elated, and far from home. And they are hungry.

His twelve disciples are distressed. The very pressing question on their minds is, “How the h-ll are we going to feed all these hungry people?”

The Teacher does not get upset. Bring me what you have, he says.

They collect what they have. It consists of a few loaves of bread and a few fishes.

The disciples are now even more stressed. How will this ever be enough for all these people? Utterly impossible. And he tells them that they are fools to get concerned.

He starts distributing the fishes and bread to all the hungry ones.

And it turns out that there is enough.

There is more than enough.

Everyone gets enough.

Everyone is able to eat until they are full, and satisfied.

In the space between the impossibility and the outcome lies “the miracle.”

No one really knows what happened in that space.

Jesus was not the only miracle-worker of his time. There were many such. They roamed the countryside, visited the towns, and drifted through the cities all the time.

He was not the only miracle-worker by a long stretch. Back then, it was “a thing” they did, kind of like indigenous peoples in other places would transform themselves through shamanistic rituals and the use of drugs like magic mushrooms or peyote.

The lesson of the story is what matters.

And the lesson is this.

There is enough.

There is more than enough for everyone.

Modern science has proved this many times over.

It is not a matter of producing enough food and shelter for everybody.

The earth can provide, even now, when the population is 8 billion and climbing.

It’s all a matter of how things get distributed.

And it’s all a matter of what people want.

If people’s wants remain simple, and real, and if we all share what there is, there won’t be any problems any more.

Or at least there wouldn’t be the kinds of problems we see now: war, disagreement, stress created by greed, conflict created by desire. All of these things are rampant everywhere right now, from East to West, from North to South, and all points in between.

But there is enough, both materially and spiritually.

How we choose to use what there is – that is the message of the story.

He is the great messenger. But so is the anonymous writer, called “Mark,” who wrote the book of Mark. And so are all the ordinary people who came out to hear him. And so are all the readers of good faith who have studied his works and words over the centuries, no matter what their specific beliefs on other issues (like the afterlife) are, or were.

(Socrates said, “I believe in the afterlife because it makes me feel better to do so. If it isn’t there when I’m dead I won’t know it.

The end.”)