Along the Little Coal River, impacted in the gloomy heart of the West Virginia coal fields, lies Madison, West Virginia, my childhood home.  I count among my earliest memories there, birthdays, Christmases, lost toys and teeth, acorn-throwing battles, my first bicycle, and fireflies twinkling in summer’s periwinkle dusk– each tinged with the visceral melancholy of childhood remembrance, and vivid as the smell of loamy soil under my small, bare feet.

In summer, I gamboled on thick grass to the lazy whine of cicadas. In fall, I strode nervously out into misty white mornings – clad in stiff denim and scratchy wool – toward the new-built elementary school that smelled of fresh paint, pencil shavings, and Elmer’s glue.  In winter, trees jutted like snaggled rake teeth into the gun-metal sky, their feet covered in dingy white drifts. In spring, snow lingered and the air rang with winter’s dying chill while cardinals and blue-jays returned from their austral forays to find the dogwoods budding.

I remember a glorious, golden sunset looming through the greenish glass of my parents’ wood-grain paneled station wagon.  Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” punctuated the clouds’ expansive, salmon architecture. I remember at 5:59 AM Eastern – before Saturday morning cartoons – the Indian-Head test signal would appear on our Zenith TV accompanied by a 1 kilohertz tone to test the Emergency Broadcast System.  Immediately after, Old Glory waved to a brassy rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and then came John Denver’s “Country Roads” set to a dissolving series of oil-on-canvas renderings of flowery meadows, mountains decked in a patchwork of autumnal colors, and covered bridges spanning trout streams nestled deep in the hollows of our beloved Mountain Momma.  For me, the 1970s are strung together in this way; a multicolored macaroni necklace of memories and melodies, dearly cherished, then boxed and cloistered in the musty attic of my experience. 

During this garishly wall-papered era, my paternal grandfather, Gordon T. Ikner Sr., died of obdurate alcoholism. My few clouded memories of “Paw Paw” are wreathed in tobacco smoke. He sat, bearded and smoking, in a worn brown leather armchair, sipping iced whiskey from a tumbler. His gruff voice occasionally barked military-sounding orders. He kept a loaded 9mm Luger in a kitchen drawer. Once, while I was left in his care as a toddler, my mother returned to find him dozing and me playing with the pistol on the speckled tile kitchen floor. In the ensuing shouting match, she was as unyielding in her disgust as he was in his insistence that since the safety was on, there had been no real danger. 

Shortly after he died, my grandmother, Mary Martha, sold their modest home – two hours away in Charleston – and came to live with us.  It was a return to her own childhood home. Weeks before her sixth birthday, her father, Fred Clayton Fenimore, had died from internal injuries in an ambulance following a mining accident. She had ridden in the ambulance during his horrible final moments. She brought with her a Dictaphone, a green IBM Selectric typewriter, two reel-to-reel tape recorders with several reels of 3M tape, an implacable sadness, and her childhood ghosts. To my knowledge, she did not bring the pistol. 

The train tracks ran parallel to the Little Coal River, many miles from the Fenimore house on the corner of 2nd street and Route 85. At least twice daily, the blare of horns in the distance would announce a passing coal train. On frequent errands, we would idle at the crossings. I would stare up at my mother, impatiently scowling in her leathery driver seat, waiting in exasperation as black and yellow Chessie System cars clattered by. 

The hazy golden light of my childhood afternoons

Filters through leaves and years to tint my memory.

I sprung from a green place.

There, nature's ubiquity forced men to carve their lines

Out of ever-encroaching forest.

Tractors, lawn mowers,

Brush hogs, back-hoes,

Outsize drills, and dynamite

Are no match for the insistent thrum

Of peat and springs and wood and lichen.

Entire towns devoured by grass and clover

Being visually challenged is not the same as being visually impaired. For better or worse, I am both. My visual impairment is only slight: I am near-sighted which requires me to wear glasses. This actually works in my favor because I have for some time now preferred the big chunky Henry Kissinger-style glasses that seem to be all the rage these days. I see impossibly hip scenesters with 20/20 eyesight or better sporting these frames with fake lenses in them, and I think to myself “Ha! I was wearing those well before it was cool, and not as a fashion statement. My lenses are medically necessary!” It does my heart good to smugly think this to myself while ignoring the fact that I’m actually being kind of a dick. Though, I must admit I feel a slight dread to know that one day soon these thick black frames will once again fall out of favor with the Cool Kids, and despite the fact that my face-windshields will have jumped the shark, I will still prefer them. For the moment though, I’m golden.

Being visually challenged, however, has been a far taller tree to climb. I don’t mean that I’m homely, though it’s arguable. I mean that despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to produce a good band photo for Dutch Holly. This is largely owing to the fact that I’m not nor have I ever claimed to be a photographer. Also contributing to this, I suspect, is the fact that I don’t own a decent camera, much less any of the fancy lenses or attendant accoutrements. Lastly, if I had any of these things, I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to use them. In short, I don’t know an f-stop from a fluffernutter, and I’m not going to learn now.

And so, for years, Dutch Holly’s visual presence has limped along on the internet and in press kits with whatever I have managed to schlock together with a crappy digital camera, Photoshop, and an unhealthy attitude toward putting out sub-par visuals. Poor creature, Jen is used to me being able to do whatever is required: Record and produce an album? No problem. Make a video? Sure. What’s that you say? Construct a virtual band out of puppets, record backing tracks for them, video them against a green screen, and synchronize them to a projected live show? You betcha. But take some decent photos? Bzzzt! Nope. That is where my ability to do whatever is required ends, apparently.

Photography, to me, is a mysterious art. Likelier than not, if I snap a picture, I will capture Jen in mid-blink from an unflattering angle and in terrible lighting. Do it a dozen times, and I will have a dozen shots like that. It’s like flipping a coin and having it always come up tails. And the worst part is, Jen’s a beautiful girl just looking to get a decent picture of herself out there. I’m sure my bedside manner isn’t any help either: I glare severely into the viewfinder, silently white-knuckling the shot into focus, not offering any direction or reassurance at all. To Jen, having her picture taken by me is like facing a drunken Romanian firing squad, only slightly less pleasant, and she won’t be granted the mercy of eternal rest once the trigger is pulled. This unfortunate confluence of my incompetence, general lack of equipment and/or the knowledge to operate it, and the achingly terrible photos it has produced, has had a deleterious effect on Jen’s psyche. Apart from walking around the world thinking that she is some kind of hideous Medusa-crone, she has developed a crippling inability to face a camera without making the “I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-my-face” expression. This only perpetuates the vicious cycle. It took professional intervention to interrupt the pattern.

Fortunately, our dear friend – and a consummate professional – Chad Castigliano of Chronicker Photography has leapt heroically to our aid. When Chad showed up to our house on a recent unseasonably chilly Saturday afternoon, he brought with him a Lowell lighting kit, several lenses, and a competence that – I am not ashamed to say – I will envy forevermore. Immediately, he started getting great shots: The kind of shots that Jen, bless her, has wanted me to be able to produce for years. Where my efforts behind the camera produced one passable shot in 2 years, Chad got at least 10 in a matter of minutes.

Band photos are a tricky business. You don’t want to wind up glaring malevolently into the camera from a back-alley fire escape only to find your promo shot on the top 10 list of world’s douchiest band photos. And yet, you can’t stiffly strike a familial pose against some mottled pastel Olan Mills backdrop and slap it on your website. These two extremes represent the zenith and nadir of my visual sensibility when it comes to band photos. Come to think of it, that may have something to do with my failure to ever produce a good one. Not having taken ANY photos with a professional photographer, Jen and I had absolutely no idea what the hell to do. Fortunately, Chad just suggested we go outside and play with the light. Just relax, look at the camera or occasionally away, and we’ll see what we get. Beats the hell out of the Romanian Firing Squad treatment, and despite our own lack of vision, we got some good shots!

The post production process was just as painless despite Jen and me being nitghmarishly persnickety about our images. Chad just soldiered on in his good-natured and patient manner until we had a plethora of shots to choose from. And thus, a long and dark chapter of being a visually challenged band has finally come to a close. I’ve learned my lesson. From now on, I’m not taking any more photos of us. Finally, we have seen the light: Pro photos from here on in for Dutch Holly.

(All photos mentioned here including my profile pic can be seen at http://dutchholly.com/photos)

My college roommate “Big” Al Duncan kept a large python, “Fluffy,” in a home-made wood cage with a window-sized plexiglass pane on one end. As 22-year old bros are wont to do, he ritualized the feeding of his reptile. He would arrive home fresh from the pet store with some mice, do a few bonghits, put on Metallica’s "Creeping Death" at an un-neighborly volume, and drop the mice in. He nearly squealed with delight every time the snake wrapped one up and swallowed it whole.

It became a source of great pride for Big Al, and he began bringing home larger and larger prey for his pet. In a matter of weeks, “Fluffy” progressed from mice to voles, gophers, and then to rabbits. Then, one day, Big Al burst into the apartment with a live chicken and a maniacal grin. We, his roommates, were incredulous. We tried to reason with him.

“That bird is too big, man. There’s no way Fluffy can take that thing.”

Big Al was undeterred. We might as well have been telling him his dick was too small. Our objections dismissed, and with the now all-too-familiar strains of "Creeping Death" and clouds of pot smoke creating the atmosphere, he put the chicken in the cage.

Fluffy struck once, then again, to no avail. The chicken started pecking Fluffy and bloody marks began to appear on the snake’s body and head. Big Al was distraught. Finally, after a few agonizing minutes, he decided to remove the chicken from the cage and wring its neck.

Holding the fowl by the head, Big Al swung it hard in a circular motion, once around – kkkrikk! – the wings flapped wildly. Twice around – the legs pumped as its life drained out.  On the third and final pass, the bird banged against the plexiglass window of the snake’s cage which split the plexiglass and created a sharp, protruding edge. With the chicken still in motion, the plexiglass edge sliced it clean open. As Big Al completed the final rotation, chicken blood and innards sprayed in an arc all over the apartment.

“Arrrrrhhh!”

The roommates and I gave a collective yawp of horror and disgust. I will never forget the expression on Al’s blood-spattered face, wide-eyed with remorseless dismay, as I ran from the room. I moved out shortly after.

Day after day after day a repetitious grind

Maybe some grace in a place grace is hard to find

Remember who you came to be

Remember remember remember:

Nothing is as it seems.

Lie after lie after lie, the delightful truth

Brings it to light, oh the light that's so bright in you

Remember who you came to be

Remember remember remember:

Nothing is as it seems.

Remember who you are, you're a Starseed!

The light that shines in you shines through me.

(You can hear these lyrics performed by Dutch Holly at http://dutchholly.com/DH_Tunes/Starseed.mp3

I post my smile on my profile, don't even have to think about it.

Just click "send" to make a friend, how did we ever live without it?

I see you're sad, it says right there.

I make a comment to show I care.

Y'know, I care.

I've got a million friends online.

It's like watching the sunset on prime-time.

Hello! You make me LOLOL,

I'm so in <3 with you.

OMFG, It's the New Sincerity.

In reality, and on TV, I play an idealized version of me.

Should we hook up? You can text the show:

There's a number for "yes" another number for "no."

And if we do, y'know it stands to reason:

We won't last until next season.

I've got a million friends online.

It's like watching the sunset on prime-time.

Hello! You make me LOLOL,

I'm so in <3 with you.

OMFG, It's the New Sincerity.

(You can hear the recording of these lyrics performed by Yours Truly at

http://dutchholly.com/DH_Tunes/TheNewSincerity.mp3 )

There was a time when everything was more romantic.

We were sublime, we were Technicolor versions of ourselves.

When did it change? The world of wonder crumbled around us.

Isn't it strange that we can hardly remember before then?

Though the past is in our minds, the present moment is the only time. But there's something that I recall, and I can't quite put my finger on it...

Whenever I'm blue, I'll sing if I'm sure no one's listening.

If I'm in the mood, I'll dance if I'm sure no one's watching.

When did it change? When did I become so self-concious?

Isn't it strange that I can hardly remember before then?

Though the past is dead and gone,

And I'm reminded I can never go home,

There's something that I recall, and I can't quite put my finger on it...

Aquamarine, the color's faded.

Didn't it seem that everything was different for a while?

Whenever I see a particular shade of

Aquamarine, it always seems to make me smile.

Haven't you ever noticed how

The Master of the Universe is always serene?

But if you look behind the smile he's wearing, you'll always see a little touch of

Aquamarine, the color's faded.

Didn't it seem that everything was different for a while?

Whenever I see a particular shade of

Aquamarine, it always seems to make me smile.

(You can hear the recorded version of these lyrics performed by Yours Truly at http://dutchholly.com/DH_Tunes/Aquamarine.mp3 )