On a visit to the local indie cinema to see The Christophers, Steven Soderbergh’s newest film (which I highly recommend for those of us who enjoy grown-up movies), I had stuffed a well-used 1958 paperback copy of Flowers of Evil (Fleurs du Mal), Charles Baudelaire’s transgressive poetry, in my back pocket. I stuffed it in the pocket backwards so it wouldn’t look pretentious. I did not realize that the title was more prominent on the back cover than on the ominous front.
On the way out of the theatre, a man behind me said, “Is that a copy of Flowers of Evil in your back pocket?”
I replied, “Yeah it is. It was given to me by a surrealist painter years ago and I decided to give it another look.” I shuddered that I had just shattered any attempt at non-pretension. The man was unperturbed, chatted in the lobby for a minute about Soderbergh movies, and moved on.
The surrealist painter was Mitchell Cashion (1953-2015), a stalwart of Tuscaloosa’s alternative art scene in the ‘70s and ‘80s. His unathletic lanky build, Prince Valiant haircut, Coke bottle glasses, and high-pitched voice were a memorable presence. I think he had regular employment, but the only job I was aware of was that he delivered Bama-Bino’s pizza on his bicycle. He was brilliant, I think, but it was the kind of brilliance that many might mistake for madness. If you paid close attention, he often made sense. When he didn’t seem to make sense, it was clear he made sense to himself. He spoke in exclamations.
He was part of the local Raudelunas art collective, a group of talented musicians and artists who challenged local tradition and ingrained notions of civility by staging performances that thumbed a nose at what may have been expected. As an undergrad, I was slow to appreciate what Raudelunas was up to; with my very traditional and very Baptist upbringing, I couldn’t always decipher what they were doing and how serious they were about doing it.
Over time, my appreciation grew. I may not have understood it, but their annual marching in the University of Alabama homecoming parade thrilled me. Dressed as vegetables and blowing into instruments not all of them could play, they provided an alternative to homecoming tradition that pleased me much more than any of the traditional accoutrements of the occasion. If you can find Icepick to the Moon, Skizz Cyzyk’s feature-length documentary about surrealist singer Rev. Fred Lane and Raudelunas, you must look at it. Mitchell Cashion is interviewed, among others, and it will eat away any previous conceptions you may have about 1970s Tuscaloosa. Cashion was always around the Raudelunas happenings, either as a participant or a cheerleader.
Try this link for the trailer: ICEPICK TO THE MOON trailer | Videos & Movies on Vimeo.
In my life as a theatre director, Cashion provided my favorite and most memorable review. I directed Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in grad school because I was afraid I would never get another chance to direct it in the real world. I knew of Beckett’s admiration for vaudeville-style comedy and incorporated that breezy style into the two act play in which nothing happens. Mitchell caught me in the Chukker after he saw a performance. Mitchell had seen someone else’s Godot years earlier and described it as slow-paced, grim, and dark – with a running time of over three hours. My Godot came in at around two hours, was fast-paced and often funny. Mitchell had approved of both productions and, after breathlessly describing both to me in great detail, he proclaimed, “I wondered why I like them both even though they were both completely different! I figured it out – the first one was Baroque and yours was Rococo!”
Like the great Alabamian Eugene Walter, Mitchell Cashion was probably more appreciated abroad than he was at home. Mitchell was thrilled to be one of the only Americans included in L’universe surrealiste, French author Jose Pierre’s exhaustive 1983 surrealist compendium. That inclusion was the reason I went to Mitchell’s house my one and only time. He told me about the honor but he wanted me to see it for myself so he invited me to stop by. His house was chock-full of his art and other treasures, arranged haphazardly but making a sort of sense. Or maybe, by that point, I had known Mitchell long enough that his sense of the absurd had begun to make sense to me, too. He opened the book to the citations about him. It seemed that the honor became more real for him by seeing it through the eyes of others. As I left his house, Mitchell grabbed a copy of Flowers of Evil and handed it to me. “I need you to read this!” he said.
I never saw Mitchell after I left Tuscaloosa. I only learned of his death when I caught a screening of Icepick to the Moon at a film festival. He came to mind a few days ago and I decided to grab that copy of Baudelaire on my way out the door. I believe that our spirits live on this earth as long as someone remembers our name. Mitchell Cashion is hard to forget.
I heard that Mitchell was blind when he died. His last words were “Something weird happened!”
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