Communiqué: An Online Literary & Arts Journal

We've been tracking the career of singer-songwriter Eric Peters since he was part of a two-man acoustic duo called Ridgely back in the early 1990s that built a respectable college following in the South and Midwest. Since venturing into solo territory, he's managed to release three CDs and has toured extensively across the U.S.

We caught up with Eric recently, and he let us peer into his journal entries -- dispatches from the road. Here are some excerpts (and two snapshots) he shared with Communiqué from September, 2003:

9/16/03

"A clean house, a big fire, and a couch without sorrow."
(Irish monastic wish)

Yesterday, I drove from one American steel town to its surrogate brother. In crossing six states in a single 14-hour stretch of interstate, I managed to pull myself into bed at 11:30 last night, more tired than I could ever remember, and slept as good a sleep as any in recent adult memory. There could be no torture or pleasure too great or small that could keep me awake. I sunk like a stone: hard, fast, and deep.

During this exodus I was a brigade of determination and a cauldron of privity wanting only the comfort and warmth of familiarity. I set my face like a flint and headed for the place of my salvation: home with my wife. Keeping in mind that a refuge is not always a mere physical shell of walls and plumbing, it is an extension of the sacred vows that we make to one another and is a shelter of promises that must be acted out each and every day thereafter. My mind was set on that place, the coffers of my riches; a bank of goodwill, humor and grace. How I missed Danielle, my safekeeping.

A funny thing happened on the way: Mars rose over my hood in southeastern Tennessee that night and hung there, the second brightest object in the sky, as if prodigal leanings and Grandiosity were one in the same. The Martian planet, tempting earth from its proximity -- a mere 35 million miles -- seemed to steady my hand as darkness held court over the last four hours of the trip from Knoxville into Birmingham. It was a journey filled with weak radio signals, bad talk radio, some favorite albums of mine, NPR, and golden silence. The latter turned out to be my favorite. The final jaunt, and my safe arrival, are almost solely indebted to the power of the sunflower seed. A combination of mandible motion and mental concentration, eating sunflower seeds is for me the single most effective way to stay awake while driving (particularly at night). That and these road reflectors that bounce off my corneas every split second. They point me southward like a lumbering jet airplane: a belly full of cartage (some of it baggage), an empty cup of Dr. Pepper, some unsold CDs, and a plastic bag of money that serves to be yet another hard-earned, exhausting 3000-mile paycheck. I accomplished two things that night after pulling in to our newly paved driveway: I unloaded my guitars, leaving the rest of the gear in the van, and I slept like a log for ten sweet, childlike hours.

I awoke the following morning thankful that the ground was once again at my feet's disposal, not a brake pedal or an accelerator, I took my wife to lunch, and remembered that just 30 short hours prior, I had been a visitor to an altogether different steel town on the banks of a much bigger and more complicated river. In both places, I slowly realized, hope is sought but not always found, and mercy is a harvest of safekeeping growing in love's portly shape and shadow like the flamboyant dust of steel. Kyrie eleison…

9/13/03

I've traveled from one turn of the century steel town to its bigger brother in Pennsylvania. The air here is just as thick with history as it once was alive with the captains of American industry when these mills, now ramshackle, broken-down ghosts of a former glory, operated a mile a minute and spewed out their sooty filth onto the surrounding civilian rooftops of Ambridge, a blue collar town on the sweaty banks of the river Ohio just 15 minutes north of Pittsburgh. This town is as tired and worn as are its brick-laden streets. Dunn Street, once bustling with every business known to man, from deli to whorehouse, is now a cluttered, de-veined, and dilapidated congregation of empty pew-like architecture. Walking down the street, it seems that every other shop door is bolted shut and has apparently been closed for some time. Every sign, every window, every brick, every person looks as tired as if they just came off a double shift at the American Bridge Company. This place is a story that's been told far too many times, has seen its punchline get fewer and fewer laughs until the only sound left is that of its own voice muttering to itself, creating an eerie awkwardness. Most of the warehouse buildings appear to be vacant. Pane after broken windowpane, these massive vessels have a story to tell, a biography of creation, success, and eminent failure. Fences that once barred outsiders from entering, now, instead, keep these monolithic structures from departing; a wall of sorts to contain history, grim though it might have been.

I am staying in the home of Jason and Kristin on Beaver Avenue. Theirs is directly in the middle of a working class neighborhood of brick houses that still retain — at least to my eyes — a complex history of coal, smog, brute and brawn. The daily, nonstop osmotic layer of steel dust permeating year after year has permanently made its way inside every nook and cranny of these simple, homogenous homes. I noticed it while hanging their newly purchased mailbox just to the right of the door on the brick of their front porch. It is hard to imagine, but this town, once, must have been as black and laden as the sinner's heart. The constant soot must have been a hell on earth.

The Smiths' home, I realized this morning, is not the two story building that I thought it to be, but is actually a three story number. I visited the third floor this afternoon. Its creaking, dark wooden narrow stairwell leads up to what could potentially be an entire apartment for someone. I perused their library — for that is what they use the upstairs space for — for quite awhile and found volumes of Buechner, several high school and college yearbook editions, Books of Common Prayer, two J.B. Phillips translations of the New Testament, and many other sundry works. A library is more than a collection of books on a shelf; it is a codex of history. It is the bloodline of family, the mortar between bricks, and is the fine layer of steel detritus that penetrates the space between each atom. It is the story within the story.

This afternoon I visited the original settlement and colony of Old Economy (the former namesake of Ambridge). Aside from the steel barons, Old Economy was home to a very wealthy sect of Christians named the Harmonists. Their homes and utilitarian buildings, all adorned with a propellor-shaped "s", a representative symbol, are obviously well constructed, highbrow tenements. By no means are they mansions, but they are indeed beautiful homes. As I snapped photos of the more contrast-oriented scenes outside the white picket-fenced border and the tall church spire (now of Lutheran orthodoxy), I couldn't help but imagine this quaint and tidy village surviving amidst the churning and groping of a ravenous industry within an Age of Progress that surrounded it on every side. Yet, somehow, this haunt still survived America's pangs.

There are no more steel barons here, and few, if any, heroes. Just tired men and women, hardened on some account by the local history, hopeless streets, brown badges of rotting antiquity now only symbolic of a former glory, and that of the Ohio River — the one constant of time's passing in this town.

The river won't sleep without being heard.
The river doesn't need another regal word.
The river won't keep any memories.
They slip away into the sea….

9/9/03

My morning breath has given way to coffee breath. The Pattons' cat, Cookie, just scared the hell out of me when it jumped up on the armrest of the chair I'm sitting in. David — a friend I've met while touring and traveling — and his wife, Lisa, are gracious enough to offer me a rotating door at their place in South Carolina. An open door to someone's home is as good as manna as far as I'm concerned. One never knows where the next night of travel might lead. Tonight once I leave here, for instance, I have no real idea where I'll be sleeping post concert. There's a healthy chance that I might be sleeping in my van along the side of the road. I'm 30 years old, soon to be 31, have been at this for 10 years, and still habit a gypsy existence. But perhaps, in some awkward way, it's more of a Gospel existence: "the last shall be first", "do not fret over tomorrow", flocks of sparrows, lilies of the field, food in my belly, a resting place for my head at night; that minimal approach to life, believing, in however small or deep-rooted a way, that my needs on earth — in South Carolina no less — will be met with glad abandon. I won't starve, I'll find rest, and I'll continue to find an avenue to support my family.

And so I find myself in that state of being on this late morning having found out no more than an hour ago that the promoter for tomorrow night's show has backed out and cancelled at the last minute. A crummy start to one's day, but if that's the worst it gets then I'm still having a pretty good day, all things considered.

Although I sense my loneliness in being away from Danielle, I am glad that she's not here. I'm glad that she is surrounded by more certain things at home (a roof, a bed, friends who know her, the mailbox and our plants) than she would were she out here in the crevices of America. More than likely, I can handle sleeping a night in the car, but I wouldn't wish that on her for one second. She certainly deserves better than I can provide. She deserves better than having to eat Taco Bell for the second time in 2 days. Yet, in her relentless pursuit of the gospel Graces, she endures it all with me, smiles at it, continues to wear her heart on her sleeve, and cares for those she meets.

I should probably go. David is meeting me for lunch in 15 minutes in downtown Greenville. Afterwards, he's taking me to a used record store. We've been talking about the long list of artists we thoroughly enjoy but don't own a single album of. So maybe I'll find a couple of those albums. A visit to Bentley's Used Bookstore is also on tap. Can never have enough books to read. I'm always on the lookout for new or used Buechner.

9/5/03

Night and day. That's how vastly different the weather is today than it has been for several weeks. There is, for a change, a cooling breeze this morning. The speed of air triumphs again! Our front porch is a haven during the all too brief mornings of these rambunctious summer months. Now, even more so, it is filled with a fluid revival. I see a glimpse of transition and it soothes my bones.

I read an article about monster trucks this morning. Perhaps you remember the patriarch of them all: Bigfoot. A souped-up Ford F-250, Bigfoot still exists and continues to crush cars today. In Black and White (a Birmingham city paper), there's a photo caption of a monster truck haunched up on its 2 rear wheels and is about to slam down onto 4 or 5 already disturbingly mangled junkyard cars (why is it that all of these sacrificial cars seem to be either Lincolns or old Chevy Impalas?). And the thought occurred to me: whatever became of my previous car — a 1996 Honda Accord hatchback? What if that car's fate became that of the punishing end of one of these monster truck contests? I wonder how I would react were I to randomly attend one of these events in some city and notice that there was something strangely familiar about the third car in the demolition line. "Hmm, front end looks similar with its bent driver-side headlight. That's a familiar LSU sticker in the rear window too. Wait a minute! That's my old car. The one I traded in for a minivan 4 years ago!!"

That would be a Jack Handy moment. I wonder if that would make for an interesting evening out on the town? Just imagine the stories I'd have to tell. I'd be a hero to all my redneck friends.

9/1/03

A woman driving a Jaguar just passed by on Central Avenue with an occupant hanging its thick-haired head out the passenger window: her pet Pomeranian. The dog panted for the air that rushed by so fast that it's hard to breathe in. It's the speed of air that's got me thinking this morning.

My father-in-law, Carl, has taken me fishing several times where, once we're out on the water in those long, narrow canal stretches of the Atchafalaya Spillway, his 200-horsepower Mercury outboard engine cruising and humming along, I find it impossible to breathe the missile air pelting my head. I have to turn my face away from our bearing in order to catch my breath. It's a lot like the mouth of a child who presses their lips to a window and blows with all the force they can muster, puffing their cheeks full of air like a 3-year-old Dizzy Gillespie. Only this is more comical.

It is also comical in remembering my drool on those boat rides. Usually, I got so caught up in the excitement of traveling so fast on open water that I forgot to breathe at all, which included swallowing my saliva, and had to wipe the cascading drool that ran from my mouth and across my cheeks as a result. An embarrassing moment to be sure and one that I hope was never noticed by anyone. If he did, Carl was gracious enough not to mention it.
It is the speed of air that punishes. It is what offers blessed relief, if any, during the summer months which are, more often than not, as still as if the wind ceased to exist at all. It makes me thankful for the morning hours when the wind wrestles the sun for dominion as the sun rises in the sky. It keeps me on my porch, whisks a kiss across my forehead, and makes me yearn for the speed of air.

···

Eric Peters' first solo effort, a 6-song EP, More than Watchmen, was independently released in 1999. His follow up full-length album, Land of the Living (2001), a 13-song folk-pop album, traverses the realms of folk, Americana, Cajun zydeco and covers all ground in between. His latest studio effort, Miracle of Forgetting (June 2003), co-produced by Atlanta legend Don McCollister (Sister Hazel, Caedmon's Call, Indigo Girls) and recorded at famed Nickel & Dime Studios, is his 3rd solo independent release. Refusing to dumb things down lyrically, he still maintains artistic integrity.