So much of my happiness has revolved around music. And my insights. Shaped my whole attitude on life. I could hardly claim to be an expert, but easily qualify as aficionado.

So how do I explain the world beginning with Buddy Holly?

I have a problem, I realize, which my agent would probably strangle me for admitting here (she counsels me occasionally about what reviewers will someday use against me). Hard for me to appreciate certain kinds of art that don't resonate with my own time.

Strange. I was going to just say "art," but even as I wrote it, I realized I tend to flip that around with painting. Most of what I like was done 1860-1940. And books, I tend also to favor those written a bit farther back than my contemporaries. (Haven't gotten around to gushing about The Sheltering Sky, yet. Still kind of shaken by it.)

But movies. That's where I've noticed it most acutely. I've seen plenty of classics--thanks mostly to film classed in college--and I appreciate them, but almost never do I feel them. They just feel like a different reality to me. Maybe I'm trapped in a realist aesthetic or something, I don't know, I just can't get sucked in the way I do with, say:

Wild at Heart, Moulin Rouge, Trust, Eternal Sunshine, Hope & Glory, My Own Private Idaho, The Grifters, Heathers, Harold & Maude, 35 Up, Streetcar (OK, there's one), Manny & Lo, Life of Brian, Sammy & Rosey Get Laid, The Big Sleep (two) , Crouching Tiger,  Apartment Zero . . . 

Music, that's the other problem child. My most beloved of all the arts, the one that's fed me most deeply, and it's not just that I dislike everything pre Buddy Holly, I don't even know what exists there. Of course I'm aware of Beethoven, Motzart and the various "classics" I also struggle to appreciate. And then this great big hole until Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard suddenly materialize out of nowhere and spawn Elvis.

I'm aware of a few intermediaries, few of which I have ever liked: various bluesmen, and jazzmen, Sinatra, Crosby, Judy Garland, though I'm finally starting to appreciate her. Hmmmm. OK, I guess I'm aware of Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, people in that vein, and appreciate them, though I've never spent much time with them.

I'm not completely clueless, but it's a fairly muddy haze. Suddenly, the minute blues and country fuse, I tried to know everything.

I was aware of The Carter Family. I kinda knew the history, in very sparse terms, and a few of the hits. I had this vague recollection of Kasey Kasum saying they were the first country act ever to make the charts, and of course, I knew and loved June--(one of the first entries when I relaunched this blog in 2003 was titled June Carter Cash is still dead)--and Carlene dragged me in slightly deeper.

But only the way you would be vaguely aware of a good friends' grandparents, seeing them as the old codgers they shriveled into shortly before their deaths.

But man. Just watching this American Experience on them, and I feel like I'm in musical kindergarten. How could I have come so far, known so little about where all this came from? Listening to Maybelle invent some of the guitar techniques I take for granted--that my life would have been so empty and miserable without . . . God. I feel like such a dick.

Not sure where to head from here. Flea markets to find old vinyl 78s? Maybe some record company has made it easy on me with a boxed set.

The singing is still a little tough to relate to sometimes, but it's a start.

All feels so daunting, though. I'm 43. And only in kindergarten? Don't know if I have the stamina to live out a whole nother grammar school and high school again.

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Update:

So far, I've been to the site on this show, and found lots of great stuff, including four original recordings you can listen to online (apparently).

I didn't mention, but I'm only 15 minutes into the show, and already amazed. And having to "watch" with no pic, cause of a local affiliate snafu, but still enraptured.

Here's a summary of the documentary, from the film description page of the website:

Their music lifted the nation's spirits during the darkest days of the Depression. Their lyrics captured the joys and tragedies of everyday life: loves won and lost, dreams attained and shattered, separations and reunions. Their original sound, first heard 75 years ago in a makeshift recording studio in Bristol, Tennessee, continues to resonate throughout America.

This hour-long documentary by Emmy Award-winning producer Kathy Conkwright explores the lives of A.P., Sara and Maybelle Carter, starting with their childhood in Poor Valley, Virginia, and following their story through the early 1940s, when they stopped playing and recording together. The film features rarely seen family photographs, memorabilia, and archival footage that chronicles the life and music of this famous and influential trio. Robert Duvall narrates.

"Through this film, I wanted to chronicle the amazing contributions the Carter Family made to American music," says Conkwright. "Their songs and style remain the most copied in American folk and country music, and have influenced artists across all genres." Artists Marty Stuart, Gillian Welch, Rodney Crowell, Ralph Stanley and Joan Baez appear in the film, together with A.P. and Sara Carter's children Janette and Joe (who died in March 2005) and granddaughter Rita Forrester.

Sara, her husband A.P., and sister-in-law Maybelle lived the poverty and heartbreak of the poor rural Americans they sang of. Through music, they brought a dignity and understanding to an often-misunderstood culture. Carter Family songs like Wildwood Flower, Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Worried Man Blues laid the foundations for country, folk and bluegrass music.

A transcript will be available here after the show finishes airing around the country. That's really nice. Don't think I'll ever let go of that. The story is as heartbreaking as the music. It starts out in Poor Valley--seriously--where they can barely get by during the Roaring Twenties. You can only imagine what that place was like once the depression hit.

But it's the personal story, particularly A.P. and Sara. It opens with the family about to appear on the cover of Life magazine, stardom beyond their wildest dreams, but the whole thing is crumbling, A.P. and Sara are secretly divorced . . . As tragic as the songs they've been singing.

God, I just want to immerse myself in this story indefinitely. I wonder if anyone has written up a first-rate bio on these people. Guess I'll be getting back to you on that soon.