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Doug Davis - Never Going Back Again

from Round 30, Week 7 by Monday Morning 3AM Music Club

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about

Continuing my trek through Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find Collection, and this week brings me to a real challenge. Beginning with the fact that I can't even include the title of the story. The sixth story in this collection is one of the most challenging and unflinching stories in literature about mid-20th-century race relations in the American South. O'Connor's rhetoric about race was raw and honest, and she always came up just short of pedantic writing; she left us to draw our own conclusions and paths. A story well worth reading and pondering, but difficult to discuss, and even harder to write a two-minute song about. Where do you begin? Whose point of view? Where do you go with this?

I chose to stay a bit opaque, speaking largely from the point of view of Nelson, the child, who is receiving some dangerous lessons about race from his hopelessly bigoted grandfather. The story ends with Nelson retreating into his own world, with the title lines of this song.

lyrics

Jesus in the fire
Jesus in the rough
Jesus take the plough
when the roots too tough

skin I never seen
skin I never touched
never knew could make a man
hate so much

I have seen the world
And it’s too wide
And I’m never going back again
never going back again

mercy covers pride
mercy coming slow
mercy for the shame
brought me cold and low

someone teach me wise
someone teach me doubt
someone taught me hate
I was born without

I have seen the world
And it’s too wide
And I’m never going back again
never going back again

credits

from Round 30, Week 7, released January 11, 2021

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Monday Morning 3AM Music Club Winston Salem, North Carolina

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