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(return
to part 1)
What were your college
years like?
I ran away at 16, but I finished high school
in Gilmer. For one semester I went to a junior college in Jacksonville,
Texas. Then, I can't explain why, but I left a circumstance that
was kind of nice - there was a scholarship program that covered
housing and tuition, and I was a music major - and I don't remember
anything about it, I don't even know whether I went to classes.
I left and went to Dallas, where I worked 30 hours a week reading
telegrams. After that I went to the University of Texas. It was
time to pick a major, and it was then that my dad and I had one
of those really important conversations. He said, "Whatever
you learn in life, you always want to be able to communicate
with people." So I chose communications. Typically at the
University of Texas, when people go into communications, they're
studying broadcast journalism. They had another communications
degree that was for business majors. And way off in the corner
they had this degree program called Oral Interpretation of Literature.
I think of it as being between an English degree and a drama
degree.
This was in the early '80s at the height of
Reagan culture, and business schools were overcrowded. Everyone
was treating college like it was a vocational school. Even then
I knew that you didn't go to school to learn; you went to school
to learn how to learn, and it was life itself that was
going to teach you what you needed to know. So my approach to
choosing a degree was to pick the most impractical thing I could,
which was basically a degree as a poetry reader. And I've never
seen a job ad for a poetry reader.
Earlier you spoke about
experiencing the blues. What is a "blues" life?
I've heard very mundane definitions of a "blues"
life, and I've experienced very poetic, almost mythological examples
of it, so I would be hard-pressed to offer a single definition.
I didn't know why, and I didn't know where, but I knew I had
to make a journey, and it seemed like a constant leaping off
into the unknown, like a free fall. But there's some peace when
you actually get there, when you see where the journey was going.
I don't know if that suffices as a definition of living the blues,
but by now I've met a lot of living legends, and I'd probably
use them a signposts for that definition. They just do what they
do.
(continue
to part 3)
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