TWO WORLDS: COSMOPOLITAN ASHEVILLE
After visiting the Laurel Community Center Junior Bio Blitz we went to Susie‘s house and I napped. But then we were off to Asheville to a completely different world. Susie had heard from a friend about Lonnie Holley and had seen a video on You Tube, All Rendered Truth, which you can look at to feel the presence of Lonnie Holley and the art he makes from discarded trash as well as hearing his story and listening to him sing his improvised songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkLi_4heZxA
We were told that we could buy tickets, part of the Connect Beyond Festival, on line, but they were $24 on line and $18 at the door of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium at the Harrah‘s Ashveville Civic Center. So we took our chances that there would still be tickets available. We went into the lobby but the volunteer at the front desk had trouble finding a way to collect our money and told us to come back later (later she still couldn‘t do it and said the tickets were a gift). We went in, ten minutes before the performance was to begin and discovered that we were the first people there. We sat down on the front row, the best seats in the house, and waited. A few more people drifted in, maybe 60, and dotted the large auditorium. And then the presentation began. If you watch All Rendered Truth you will feel his presence as we did. He told stories of his childhood, he sang improvised songs as he played on a keyboard, he broke down and cried, it was a memorable hour and a half.
His story was of being born in Alabama, the 7th of 27 children his mother gave birth to, being shunted to various relatives for his upbringing, being hit by a car and almost killed, being incarcerated and beaten in the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. And finally, without any formal education becoming an artist whose work is in the Smithsonian Museum and the Metropolitan Museum and the Asheville Art Museum. He has also recorded several albums of his improvised songs.
His world is as far from my priviledged white educated cosmopolitan world living on a college campus with a great view as you can get and an enormous distance from liberal tourist Asheville outside the Civic Center.
After the presentation with our saved $18 and a 10% discount given to attendees of the Connect Beyond Festival we decided to spend our money instead on a restaurant we had heard of but never visited, Bodega. It is the second restaurant opened by the four times James Beard award nominee Katie Button with her husband Felix Meana, a Spaniard. Both restaurants, the high end tapas restaurant, Curate, along with their delicatessen downstairs provide a wonderful, flavorful dining experience. Both the potato wedges Susie ordered and the much better than French fried curly potatoes I ordered with thin sliced ham and fried eggs were delicious. We have had two marvelous dining experiences, Bodega and Chai Pani, in a week while the special at the Madison County country store for lunch yesterday was hot dog with all the fixings and old men sitting on the porch.
After eating we walked around downtown Asheville on our way to the car, stopping at a wine bar
Darting in and out of a very elegant hotel lobby and dining area with flames on the balcony
Watching the Pubmobile pedal past on the street
https://share.icloud.com/photos/029m-vNy41kx-odo52NtsNdUA
Being surrounded by a group of women witches
Dealing with a guy selling paintings by beating on a newspaper stand with drumsticks
https://share.icloud.com/photos/049_LlpTJD0vEvj0qu1qd924Q
Listening to an old man play the fiddle in an open restaurant window
https://share.icloud.com/photos/013sruZeAp72niWxwGePmgDpg
I visited four worlds in one day: traditional rural Flag Pond, liberal newcomer environmentalist Laurel Community School, the pain of the Blacks in the old South through Lonnie Holley and then cosmopolitan urban Asheville and a Spanish restaurant.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 