Florida Folk Music: Classical Greek Style

by Dwight Hines

Good solid country music needs words, needs tunes, but it needs a good story. Good stories, like good Greek myths, need towering, bigger than life people. Good folk stories need regular people doing regular things, like picking cotton, or making liquor, or dreaming, and knowing that there is a specialness about the ordinary.

The pleadings are mostly filed in the courthouse now in the case of the State Attorney for the Seventh Circuit, John Tanner, versus the Special Prosecutor Harry Shorstein. Of course, there are some pleadings that have been sealed because they might be too much for your gentle minds, your gentle folkie abilities to sort wheat from chaff. Truth not being easy to know by folkies, especially Florida Folkies.

The attorney for Mr. Tanner is Mr. Jonathan Kaney, and he has written a fine motion and memorandum for an order regarding the rules of civil procedure and discovery, and a notice of filing under seal. Make no mistake, the man is a craftsman and in any legal battle, I’d want him on my side. When you read his writings, you hear the music of Kazenzakis, the music of Zorba, running through the words. It is that good. The man is a wordsmith, a legal wordsmith.

On the opposite side, at least in the battle scheduled for February 5, 2007, at 2:30, is David Evans’ motion to intervene and the motion of law in opposition to the motion to repress or expunge the grand jury presentment, and in support of the motion to intervene by the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Reading it, be careful. You will want to go right out and purchase a subscription to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. This, also, is good writing. Oh my, another wordsmith and you have to feel not a little joy that you can watch these two, Mr. Kaney and Mr. Evans, live and in action in the courtroom and not have to be responsible for the decision that must be made by the Judge. It is going to be a barn burner of a hearing. These are passionate themes, they are, especially for Florida folkies.

When Evans speaks, for the News-Journal, you will hear a Greek chorus in the background, softly, so softly at time you will only catch the sibilants of trust. Trust, trust, trust, the chorus will chant, without stopping all the time Evans is speaking for the right to know. Trust, trust, trust.

When Kaney is speaking, even if he speaks as well as he writes, or only half as well, it will be hard to hear his words, to follow his logic, to believe his assumptions, because the Greek chorus, the chorus so necessary in any tragedy, will be making gargling sounds, intermittent so your ears won’t habituate to the words: bonds, bonds, bonds. Munis munis munis. The screams of anguish, of robe being rent, not here loudly, but a mere memory, like an long ago echo from BettyJo’s yodel in a dark night, a night with no stars.

It will be difficult for Kaney, but being a professional man arguing a non folk argument, a man arguing that the folk don’t need to know, that the folk don’t need all this information: bonds bonds bonds. Munis munis munis.

Evans, if he has a second time at the plate, will not gulp, will not look at his banjo pick, will not play a well turned riff, will not look down at his feet and kick the dirt, but will simply let people hear the chorus, the folk people who even the Greek gods liked, trust trust trust.

There be good music here, good Florida Folk Music in the Best Greek Classical style.

See you there, and you can’t bring instruments into the courtroom, but afterwards, we could play a tune or two and let the songs start writing themselves.