I am posting this on Nov 8, 2024, but Burke and I first recorded it five years ago. We went out with a camera and a shotgun mic one cool, fall day. This audio file was long ago archived, never to be posted — another project whose ambitions exceeded the will to ship. But as I looked through my window today to see cirrocumulus clouds above, I thought to myself, “What ever happened to that Stone Mountain recording?” This is what happened to it. Unearthed some five years later. (Don’t say I never saved anything, Burke! 😉)
Quentin: I think the camera would have been better than the sound. What do you think, Burke?
Burke: Don’t doubt yourself, Q.
Quentin: Alright.
Burke: Welcome to this week’s NPR. (NPR.) At the Confederacy.1
You know, that actually would be the funniest podcast ever, of like, unedited podcast. (Yeah.) So all the outtake, all of like, ooh, I get a recording of my footsteps so we can add it into the background.
Quentin: Yeah. But hey, there’s that tin metal trash can over there. Go give it a thumb.
Burke: Go give it a nice wallop.
Sep 23, 2019 | Burke Swanson | Poem
Today's forecast: Cirrocumulus. This essence of who I am, Quen plus five by ten. All this circling 'round, Yet I just look To the ground. Noise of ignorance.
This essence of who I am, Quen plus five by ten. Phone always in hand, Forgot to take in the land. Noise of the paragon.
How can I begin to remedy The Self within When I can't even express this dust, On the hill, In the sun? Take me in. Absolve my sins. Let me cry Into the wind.
Look up, Look down, Look left, Look right, And let's begin again.
They were the pedestrian caravan of enthusiastic pagans creeping upwards to a pivoting spire of a Confederate church. Some African, most non identified white. But each with a steadfast insistence to finish what each reluctantly began. We were just there to observe.
They were the children who ran and ran. They ran right up, crashing through the puddles, through the brush, and the peoples. Toddlers and teens alike in their freedoms, carefree and careless of lungs ever tiring.
Yet father, yet mother, yet elder and wife bore canes and packs and bottles and stripes. With munitions to stay for a while prattling, discounting tongues warning, "Slow down, slow down. We've only just begun."
I’m filming a deer.
We were just there to observe, to observe. They were the four and we were the two. Else were the children who ran, and else were the pagans who planned, and neither knew the other, not sought, never found. We were just there to observe, to observe. Two observed.
*GPS Signal Lost.*
For those unfamiliar, Stone Mountain features three Confederate figures (Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy; Robert E. Lee, Confederate general; Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate General) etched into its rockface. It is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the U.S.
Stone Mountain is controversial for its celebration of Confederate leaders who fought to uphold slavery, its ties to the Ku Klux Klan, and its role as a symbol of white supremacy during the Civil Rights Movement. The monument perpetuates “Lost Cause” mythology, romanticizing the Confederacy and downplaying the horrors of slavery. For many, it stands as a stark reminder of systemic racism and resistance to racial equality. Perhaps the silver lining is that the mountain now makes a lovely park in Dekalb County, where the majority of the population is black.