Friday, April 7, 2017

S-Town and John B McLemore and Time and .... Time


S-Town is a new podcast from Serial and This American Life, hosted by Brian Reed, about a man named John who despises his Alabama town and decides to do something about it. He asks Brian to investigate the son of a wealthy family who’s allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder. But then someone else ends up dead, and the search for the truth leads to a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure, and an unearthing of the mysteries of one man’s life.
 
Brian, a longtime This American Life producer, started reporting this story more than three years ago, when he got an email from John with the subject line “John B McLemore lives in Shit town Alabama.”

I was recommended to this podcast by a friend and then on a lazy day in office I hit the play button which takes me into the world of John where everything he sees is decaying and rotting and ultimately making his town "Woodstock" a shit town.
At first we are only given a short overview of what is going on as a middle aged man sends mail to a radio show about making a story on his concern regarding a murder that was maybe covered up.
Brian goes to find out about the thing once he decides to be involved in this and hence starts the story of mysterious events and a discovery that the cover up over which john was concerned was actually just a rumor and nobody actually got killed the way it was being spread.
 
Apparently Brian gets friendly with John and he keep on fascinating him and us with his extent of living his life.
 
at a certain point I was so intimated by the way story takes turn because it was so hard to believe because it wasn’t something that happens in our day life. Rather I have never heard anything so dramatic yet so real.

John shows Brian his hedge maze with 64 possible combinations of solving and one null set and Brian remains stunned with the same amount stunned we feel when we actually see john's maze.
It actually made me feel sad when I find out that the same maze and his property will be demolished by the same person on which john had suspect of a cover up. He just shrugs his shoulders and says "Well nah. I am not going to spend money on that hedge maze"
 
John talks of climate change as if its an apocalypse coming onto humans in upcoming years and he exclaims that why people shouldn’t bring any more kids in this world because they will suffer in this up sided down world which is ending slowly and that remind me of the same feeling I had at a certain point whether world is that good enough to bring my children into.
 
John talks of time as if its something we ignore and he understands. He is a horologist which is term for people who are interested in clocks and fixing old clocks and basically the time perspective of it and it reminds me how fascinating I myself find the time which just goes on. I look at the florescent lights shining in my office, watch million of dust particles spreading in the air and see so many people just moving and talking and doing stuffs that don’t really matter maybe.
 
John says that in all we only get a quarter of our life to do something worthwhile and it reminds me how many times this fact disappoints me that how less time we have left on the face of earth yet we spend doing things like procrastinating to avoid tasks that actually we should do or want to do.
 
John talks about his intimate relationships and it reminds me how much it all is universal the way we find relationships and intimacy and the whole aspect of companionship so similar. It reminds me of my own wish for being in a loving relationship despite of the fact that I know sometimes my situation actually contradicts what I want in my life. I find his cravings for someone to be around to talk of random stuff and complain about stuff that he cares about so familiar.
 
The story takes in climax turn while it digs into the hidden treasure John might be having because he was unbanked and earns loads from his clock repairing business. And we are expecting him to be a genius who had complex plans like his hedge maze to lead to his treasure so that it will not fall into wrong people. But then it disappoints us because no mention of further any treasure is made.
Ultimately I would repeat the things which surprised me the most and they were his wish to make a change in his life and ways to live it in a better way despite of his depression.
His enthusiasm towards something which is so dangerous that ultimately costs him his life but he keeps doing the fire gilding, I truly believe that John knew the level of danger he was playing with because the way his intellect is revealed slowly to us. But I think he still did it because it was something only he did without fear of its consequences.
When I was finished then I had a kind of feeling like loosing something so dearly but also there was a vague sense that even though John lived so many miles away from me and even though his house was hard to find despite of having exact location on map and even though he was nothing like someone I usually admire, I found him fascinating. I was angry on him for disrespecting women, for yelling curses on people and for ending his life so abruptly. I was also in the awe with the way he lived his life, the way he made a Sundial for his professor in the shape of sunflower. I was surprised to see the maze he built and the way he would be so interested in the issues like global warming and be genuinely disturbed about the way earth is getting exploited.
In his suicide note he wrote something addressing to the people who uses those quarter of life years to make their life worthwhile. And I could actually see the time going by us without reminding us but yet killing each last minute and killing our chance of re using it.
John said that is how the first clock he saw made him so attracted towards the clocks as even the each moment that was passing reminded him of his own life. That he will be only one homosexual, alone, intelligent, clock repairing  person living in the shit-town/ Woodstock , where he has spent his entire life taking care of his mama, and stray dogs and extraordinary hedge maze and his clock repairing shop.
I guess it’s the same with all of us. We are all different pieces like the pieces of clock which are required so it ticks on perfectly, measuring something which exists beyond our control. We are all important here and we all deserve to make our each moment worthwhile.  Its not only our duty but it should be our mission to make that one person’s life worthwhile despite of the fact that we have very less time to do so and so much to explore and take care of.
 
 

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