Delta Baby
I just remembered having a strange dream saturday morning that I'd wanted to write down the few details that remained following waking -
Sitting in the cluttered musty familyroom of some '50s ranch style home, '70s era rough knit curtains drawn closed through which the only illumination of dusty shafts of sunlight filtered. A conversation with My mother regarding some unsolved (possibly family related?) mystery. Sorting through boxes of detritus - old albums and documents and loose photographs.
Each item was cataloged after having been checked against a strange paper decoding wheel, the outer and inner rings lined with strange symbols, the only recognizable one being a detailed scratch mark sketch of a human skull in purple ink. Several of the items were musty old magazines in the vein of Time Life, the last item inspected in the dream being one of these dated in the late '60s.
Flipping through the pages, I'd stopped at the picture which corresponded to the purple skulls lined up on the decoder. Rather than simply a picture, however, it was like a film playing against the aged and cracked paper. What I viewed was footage of a small, wildly smiling black baby in a bassinet. The footage was all faded black and white except for the baby, which was in full and lively color.
Loosely wrapped in a light metallic blue swaddling with dark polkadots, the child's features were almost the embodiment of racist caricature...not quite Little Black Sambo, but not terribly far off, either. Eyes rolling in exaggerated abandon and mouth flashing equally exaggerated mirth, his head (crowned with a large puff of wild black hair) bobbled around as though on a spring. He waved tiny fluttering hands about as he rhythmically rocked and swayed his body to some jaunty delta tune I couldn't hear, clearly having an incredible time.
I woke up questioning what the correlation might have been between the image playing in the magazine and the purple skulls scratched into the wheel faces of the decoder.
Sitting in the cluttered musty familyroom of some '50s ranch style home, '70s era rough knit curtains drawn closed through which the only illumination of dusty shafts of sunlight filtered. A conversation with My mother regarding some unsolved (possibly family related?) mystery. Sorting through boxes of detritus - old albums and documents and loose photographs.
Each item was cataloged after having been checked against a strange paper decoding wheel, the outer and inner rings lined with strange symbols, the only recognizable one being a detailed scratch mark sketch of a human skull in purple ink. Several of the items were musty old magazines in the vein of Time Life, the last item inspected in the dream being one of these dated in the late '60s.
Flipping through the pages, I'd stopped at the picture which corresponded to the purple skulls lined up on the decoder. Rather than simply a picture, however, it was like a film playing against the aged and cracked paper. What I viewed was footage of a small, wildly smiling black baby in a bassinet. The footage was all faded black and white except for the baby, which was in full and lively color.
Loosely wrapped in a light metallic blue swaddling with dark polkadots, the child's features were almost the embodiment of racist caricature...not quite Little Black Sambo, but not terribly far off, either. Eyes rolling in exaggerated abandon and mouth flashing equally exaggerated mirth, his head (crowned with a large puff of wild black hair) bobbled around as though on a spring. He waved tiny fluttering hands about as he rhythmically rocked and swayed his body to some jaunty delta tune I couldn't hear, clearly having an incredible time.
I woke up questioning what the correlation might have been between the image playing in the magazine and the purple skulls scratched into the wheel faces of the decoder.