Songs, Writing

Someone Else’s Heart


When athletes began taking a knee during the National Anthem, I was inspired to write the song “Someone Else’s Heart” during the one knee protest of the national anthem. I wrote it because of the empathy I felt for the Black Lives Movement. My empathy is human, it is empirical in its nature because of this story.

When I was 9 years old in 3rd grade we lived in Wilcox, AZ. Our school was an old rickety 3 floor building (it was torn down in the 80’s I think). Our basketball court was a concrete slab raised inside a retaining wall to about 5 feet and it was surrounded on three sided by chainlink and the other side was the building itself. It was a dead end that had no exit gate. I hadn’t realized this until one day…

My mother was a Jehovah’s Witness and as such, she didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays, or any other secular US holidays. Even Easter they changed to be the Passover and never would it fall on Easter Day. So I was not allowed to even be in the room when these school celebrations occured. This marked me as an outsider. The worst of which being that every morning when we recited the pledge of allegiance, I had to remain seated. I didn’t want to, but I was still young enough not to rebel, and I was afraid Jehovah would retaliate or something. Not to mention the lashing my mother would give me. She would whip with a belt while the whole time she would be saying, now remember this hurts me more than it hurts you. Ha!

So being the new kid in school – we had just move there from Safford, AZ – I was instantly an outcast and an outsider. After a few weeks of sitting during the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance, the boys in my class decided to tech me a lesson. As class was let out they screamed “get him” – after all the glares and mumbles since my arrival, I knew it was me they wanted. So I turned left and ran like hell. I ran straight out the door an onto the basketball court. Dead end. No way out. I was trapped. Those sons of cowboys and farmers were not happy with me and they were determined to teach me a lesson. The teachers turned a blind eye to the abuse.

I was once beaten so badly I woke up in the nurses office. Where my bloody nose was left unattended as the nurse treated me like a worrisome nuisance that didn’t deserve her care or nurture. When my mother arrived she was appalled by the nurse’s lack of empathy for a 9 year old boy. So she repeated the lecture I got all during that school year: “Remember all good Christians will be persecuted.”

So I know intrinsically WHY we have a RIGHT not to salute, pledge, stand or place our hands over our hearts. At an assembly of students, they played the National Anthem and when I didn’t place my hand over my heart, later those same boys tried to make me hold my hand over my heart as one of them sand the song. Hence the line in the song: “Never hold your hand over someone else’s heart.”

I post this with love, respect and forgiveness.
Rusty Cline

Chris, Songs

35 Years On


(The video is age restricted because of the “Eff” word)
Amazing that after 35 years my ex still thinks all her problems are my fault. Wow, that says a lot about her problems. I wonder why I couldn’t see that in 1979 when I met her… hmmm. Now all these years later thanks to her hatred, my son born in 1980 was never allowed to get to know me. He is the one that suffered her ugliness. He still suffers from only knowing about his father through the ugly stories and lies told by my angry ex-wife. He has never asked for any validation or clarification to the stories she tells. Sad really. In my stubborn refusal to ever say anything unkind to him about her, I blew my chances to tell him and show him who I really am. Every time I tried to be with him she made the scene so miserable that there was nothing to do but pull away, or prove her to be the monster to me that she was.

I am not saying I did nothing wrong, I am saying that no matter what I did to try to make our parting amicable, she always turned it into a way. Just like this song says, 35 years later, ALL of her problems are MY fault.

John Prine, Songs, Writing

Missing You John Prine

Video

Sept 16, 2021
I hadn’t looked at this song on Youtube in a while and today I say that it has 10,359 views. That is a big deal for me. Woohoo… still… I miss you, John. Thank you for the lovely song.
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John Prine died on the night of the 7th of April, 2020, I found out on the morning of 8th and spent the entire day writing and crying. John affected and influenced my writing my all my writing life – since 1975.

I put this playlist together starting with a song I wrote for him the day he died. There are others I wrote for him and some songs where his affect was obvious.

Sculpting

Rusty the Sculptor

Gallery

I did my first sculpture in 1982. I played with carving and molding concrete. In those days I was limited by the state of the art in those days, not to mention a lack of readily available information.

Nowadays, there is a plethora of information in the internet. I have recently used what I have heard with experiments of my own to develop a mixture that is serving really well to sculpt and carve with. It is hard, long lasting, colorful and the materials are all readily available. If you are interested, contact me.

I love making utilitarian sculptures that function as a usable device and as a work of art. Below is a work in progress that will be a mailbox holder:

My old mailbox holder was a concrete knot that was hit by a car:

This was a gift for a friend titled Earthbound Friendship:

An anniversary gift for friends entitled Heart of Gold:

Concrete Cactus: