Acclaimed author and artist Steven Sherrill offers 750 antique crutches to The Molok. A note from S.S.:
Here, in the place of crutches, in the belly of Molok, I reflect. For years, decades even, I leaned into nothing. Crutched, so to speak, between fear and doubt. Unknowing and ignorance. I limped and hobbled through my life aimlessly. Endlessly. Yearning for things I could not mouth, could not envision. Could not fathom.
My prison walls? The rural south of the 1960s. The cruel greed of the Mill Town. The Bible. Poverty. Generation after generation of people hemmed up in this invisible, kudzu draped, ghetto. Me too. And everyone I knew. No solace but in the driving imagination and relentless curiosity that has ruled my mind since (my brief) forever. Some inner force, source, kept me. Kept me. Kept me from succumbing. Kept me reaching out into the fathomless dark. Reaching. For something to hold. Something to climb. Out of blindness. Into light. Into knowing.
Muzzled by shame, gagged by doubt, my tongue thick as a mattock blade uttered nothing. Early on, I found drugs and drink. Early on, I found books to read. The dirty words. The mystical words. Early on, I found carburetors and transmissions. I found the five Mother Sauces and the eternal pleasures of the tongue. And I kept reaching. And reaching. And climbing. There in the dark, I found wrong turns and near misses and mistaken identities. Masks and props of all sorts. But I kept reaching. I kept reaching. I found things to lean on. Eventually, maybe inevitably, I found others reaching back. Seekers. Like-minded. Eventually, I found language. My tongue unbridled, I built windows, ladders, doors with words. I built my escape. And kept reaching. Soon enough, I wanted to color the landscape that unfolded before me. Paint, paint, paint. Now, of late, half a century into my journey, I am endeavoring to shape the sonic quality of my life. Sometimes music. Often just joyous noise. And in all realms, I find myself more than willing to fail, wholly. Happily. I keep reaching. So much so that the gesture is now habitual, instinctive. I say yes to ideas, to opportunities, without needing to know why right away. What I have discovered is that, through no will of my own, when I reach into the dark now, it is just as likely that I am not taking but offering. Not holding but giving.
I have learned to trust the darkness. To claim my place there. To believe that what we need to lean on, to prop us up, will be provided. Or discovered. And the great sacrifice at that door of unknowing might be nothing more than the willingness to let go of our crutches when it is time to do so, and to step through the door.
Why do I have 750 old wooden crutches in a root cellar in my basement? Because I say yes to ideas that feel energized. Because, why not. Because one day I would be asked to write this paragraph.
Steven Sherrill