Rec from the director of The Keepers
by Newnameelizabeth
7 part podcast called S Town. I’ve just listened to the first, and colorful doesn’t begin to describe that Alabaman who cares that a murder was possibly covered up.
Words
Life
7 part podcast called S Town. I’ve just listened to the first, and colorful doesn’t begin to describe that Alabaman who cares that a murder was possibly covered up.
Words 
I edited my post to say “possible” murder/coverup.
Spoiler – just finished the 2nd. So sad!!! Sounds like the narrator blames his negativity. Maybe John was trying to show how serious he was and how serious the problems are. His eccentricity and self deprecation made it easy to kind of blow him off. Listen to the podcast before reading further. May God have mercy on his soul.
Ep. 3. Sackville Baginses!
How awful for that woman! Was he a mean atheist? Or just needed a functional mother?
Ep. 4. Wow, John just gets more interesting.
Ep 5. Things are seldom as they seem. Brian’s a good journalist.
Ep 5 again, I was afraid there’d be an angle that the community not supporting homo-ness would be blamed, but looks like not, thankfully. He’s being pretty respectful and balanced to southern Bible Belt complexity.
Ep 6. Olin. Was he too gentle for John? If he had declared himself in that moment would it have saved John? Depends what salvation is. I think for the narrator, Brian, and for John himself, a romantic relationship, and not the objectified physical ones John had had, would have been salvation. Intimacy and connection are the things we tie to romance. Olin said he heard that intimacy was being able to tell someone everything and still being able to carry on. But Olin had his limit to what John could tell. And John didn’t respect Olin’s limit and pushed him away. One of them would have to change. Either the limit keeper or the pusher. Irreconcilable? But this bypasses the sin aspect. What if your deepest connection, the one that is the core of you, is forbidden? Interesting that Sister Kathy and Gerry Koob also had a secret connection that conflicted with their vows. Again I’m glad he’s not saying society stopped John and Olin, who had no vows to be disloyal to. And John was in love with someone else in the midst of their friendship so…. So John’s lack of a connection was based on not finding someone who reciprocated on his level. He would have settled for Olin, I think, but may have driven him away eventually. It’s almost like he played cat and mouse with people. He was the smarter, but he needed mice. He wanted mice to choose him and put up with it all. I’m more cynical than Brian I think, because for him a country song romance is the end all be all. I see things more in terms of power. When everyone left, John dramatically killed himself to keep them hooked forever. And it was his plan all along. But he cried when he wasn’t loved back. Perhaps the cat and mouse happened after years of failed connections, so it became the way he related. But would a real connection have fixed everything? Back to sin and forbidden love, perhaps if that is the deepest part of someone, it is a competition with God. This sounds monastic but the teaching is that monasticism is an alternative to marriage, not necessarily better. Paul’s statement sounds like he’s talking about how hard it is to be married, not that it is inferior. But perhaps for people like John, marriage isn’t enough. They are made for God. So I’m wondering, not what it would have been like if John and Olin (or just someone else) were more suited and worked everything out, but if John hadn’t been an atheist and had become monastic. Could his brilliance have shown as brightly but more purely then? Could that have been his deeper core? He deeply wanted to save the earth from climate change, but maybe that was a misplaced objective. Salvation is Christ, the creator of the universe and the climate. How big pollution caused climate change is to Christ I don’t know. Maybe pretty big, but not bigger than him.
If our need for God is deeper than our need for romance, then why are we so fixated on it? I’m still romantic enough to think it’s not totally a competition. That’s why Eve was made. Was it Adam’s failing that God wasn’t enough? That he still needed a help-meet, whatever that is. I respect people’s pain caused by not being able to live their heart-needed connection, for any of a million reasons. I don’t respect home-wreckers though. They should have the courage to live out their tragedy and not cause another one. But of course the unwanted (in comparison, or on a certain level, because they wouldn’t stay if they were totally unwanted) person(s if kids are involved) still suffers because they know they’re second on a certain level. I’ve heard some “understanding” kids be glad for their parent who left to be with the person they happily loved. That lets the leaver off the hook. But I still think it’s wrong, and if it’s the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two evils, the evil being not being able to give your heart totally to the avowed/right person… Are they not able? Is love a choice? If it is, it’s a very very challenging one.
I didn’t finish my sentence, if it is evil to have someone on a certain level you’d rather be with whether you leave or not, then I hope that the evils caused by staying are forgiven. Those evils being making your family feel second, either through weakness or for making a vow you shouldn’t have. I remember thinking Annie Denver was wrong for divorcing John, not because he may have had affairs, but she said it was because she didn’t believe Annie’s Song was really about her. That he didn’t really see her when he wrote about love. He believed it was her though, and she should have let him. And been glad that he felt that love, whether it was misplaced or not. It hurts your pride immeasurably to not feel loved for yourself and in a number one manner. Maybe that’s the competition with God, when you want to be loved first. I’m not going to totally blast those vain people, because I think that demand comes from a lot of pain. Usually neglect and abuse. There may be more to it than parent blaming covers. I’d like to hear more about John’s upbringing. I hope that’s in the last episode.
I’m reminded when Scarlet went to her father broken hearted about Ashley, and he said, there’s something you love more than Ashley, Katie Scarlet, it’s Tara. He said it with such conviction, and beautiful music, it seemed like it should be true, but I didn’t see how the land could compete. “A man shall leave his mother and a woman leave her home…” Nope, loving home more don’t seem right. Hey, maybe that’s why John B McLemore didn’t leave S-Town.
I swear I had not started Ep 7 before my last comment. How much of the pain of the past is in the land? The land is like an elephant that remembers. I felt a lot of pain present in my last house. But I tried to make it feel better by making it pretty. My house that I live in now used to be a cow pasture and the one clump of blue grass behind the cedar tree in the front remembers. I wish the old cactus hadn’t died, but we mow so. The house itself was almost brand new when we moved in but it suffered a divorce and it remembers. Epidode 7 asks deeper whys than the other 6. There are deeper things than romance, but not than parenthood, I don’t think. And that’s how he saw Tyler. And how his mother saw him.
Racists think other people groups caused their problems. How sadly ironic that the Triple K lumber yard owner got the land. That may be John B’s worst sin. Yes he made beautiful, genius, incredible clock repairs, but his sinful lifestyle kept him from having a son to pass the land on to. Mary Grace should have prayed for the land too. He tried to pass things on to Tyler but both their dysfunctions kept that from happening. Oh, the south. Anyway, back to Racists and religious hoity toities, oh and I think John sued the plant nursery people because they let money come between them (right wing hoity toities). You can’t help but think the people who let him go, including Olin, were too fearful for their niceties. Brian the narrator could take it. Seems a lot of John’s pain was because relationships didn’t last. His relationship with money was very interesting, He didn’t trust the banks and such. So weird. He tested people and went with them as far as they would go it seems. When they stopped, that was it. I guess since Brian was just an observer it wasn’t enough. But John required the dispassion of someone not objectively affected by his stuff. But being disaffected was too painful. He was woth the time to listen. I wonder if this series would have been a thing had he not died. Maybe John saw that it wouldn’t and he needed everyone to hear because he was a big picture person as well as a minute detail person. And before we judge his sins, his screaming need to feel needs to be heard.
I’m a conservative southerner and I feel defensive of that because it’s the left who complains about racism. Most of us, I think it’s most, hate the kkk and N word users, and people who think other people groups ruin our lives. But it’s how the left defines us for being associated with it and hates those people back just as hard is what makes us feel defensive and less vocal. Is it S town for letting those type baptist people prosper there? Why don’t I think so? I guess it’s because the south is just as traumatized by the Civil War as black people are about slavery. They are both muddied by complexities that I believe should keep anyone from feeling hoity toity finger pointy.
pics from people and places in the podcast:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4392106/The-photos-podcast-S-Town-John-B-McLemore.html
one of the last scenes is Brian finding where John and Tyler spent John’s last day. They had written their names and their establishment dates which correspond with mine and my first born’s, 1966 and 1991
Brian Reed on the Tonight Show
But he did have choices. His early experience in a sensual lifestyle made him less able to control his urges later. We aren’t just our nature and nurture, we are our habits.
Here’s Brian Reed’s interview with Salon:
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/15/brian-reed-went-to-s-town-all-he-brought-back-was-this-amazing-story/#comments
This journalist is not as good because he made the story be his agenda, “what happens if you cover up who you are”
Brian saved it by not confirming that. And John did not cover it up. And of course Salon wants to make a huger point about racism and Trumpism. Brian luckily didn’t get all racist and sexist about Trump supporters, but he did say he wasn’t sure if he should have confronted the racists comments more. They actually did come to agree that the use of the n word and the other comments could have been used to test the newcomer. I totally agree with that. It’s the same as using s or f bombs. They are bombs meant to have an effect. They are initiation words into a club. Yes, the n word is meant to exclude people, but I think the other cuss words are also meant to exclude people like me and Olan who don’t like profanity. It did drive Olan away. Olan brought closure on John, I feel. And Brian pays a nice tribute to him in this interview.