#my parents played a lot of bluegrass and old school country songs in the car growing up

[acelor-acetaylorswift]

I'm a simple woman.

All I ask is that, some day, before I die, I get to hear Taylor, Lana, and Julianne Hough sing "(I've got spurs that) Jingle, Jangle, Jingle" in a round together.

That's all.

[jasongoldtrap]

The Corkscrew

By Jason Goldtrap

March 9, 2021

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, my hometown, Nashville, Tennessee, had a musical theme park called Opryland USA. Aside from the standard thrill rides, the park was noted for dozens of shows featuring Country, Rock, Gospel, Bluegrass and Broadway. The king of the attractions was the Wabash Cannonball.

Named after the song popularized by Roy Acuff, the Wabash Cannonball was a corkscrew roller coaster. Ten models were built by Arrow Dynamics, the first one debuting at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California in 1975. Opryland USA opened their coaster that same year in the State Fair section.

My parents loved roller coasters, and still do though time has tempered active involvement in the subject. As a family we all loved going to the park. I would ride all the rides along with them except for one: the Wabash Cannonball.

From my perspective it was just too intimidating. Even today, I still get fearful around roller coasters which is part of their appeal. I pictured myself flying out of the seat and rocketing into the ground.

As a little kid, with mommy around, I had an excuse to sit this one out. That changed as I matured.

Thirteen-years-old, going to the park for the first time without parents. Lots of running, drinking far too much Orange Fanta, two cardboard containers of popcorn, playing video games that I could already play at the skate center and, well, bodily noises offered for amusement rather than necessity. We could ride the Flume Zoom as many times as we wanted. We'd rear-end antique cars on the guided track where you could press the hammer down with speeds up to 7 mph.

Inevitably though, someone would suggest my foil, the Wabash Cannonball. "Um.... I have to sit this one out." I would flood them with laughable excuses about not feeling well. And, eventually, they would give up coaxing me. I would sit on a bench beneath the second loop and try to wave. They would dart out of the station hyped up on adrenaline.

"Wanna ride again?"

"Yeah!"

I was silent.

They would race back to the station. I would people watch. Head to the petting zoo. Long for a square of Smoky Mountain cashew fudge which I could have eaten if I had not wasted $2 on Space Invaders and Pac-Man.  On the third go around, one of the fellows would feel a tinge of sympathy for me and we would move on to the bumper cars or the spinning swings.

It went on like this for weeks until one day when my band of brothers ran into a similar sized group ....of girls.

"Hey Joan!"

"Michael. What are you doing here?"

"Having fun. Who are your friends?"

"Well you know me and Betty from school. This is Rhonda who goes to my church and my neighbor Melissa."

We exchanged pleasantries. Awkward silence seeking cues for conversation.

Michael stated, "We're about to ride the Wabash Cannonball. You wanna come with?"

Joan smiled and nodded. She received a tug from behind. "One second." The girls clutched together to analyze the situation and discuss limits to potential affection. She turned around and spoke for the other hens. "Sounds like fun... except Rhonda here is too scared to ride it."

I got a slap on the back. "Jason will ride with her." Suddenly, the world grew dim as if I was suddenly thrust across time and space. Frozen. Confused. Before my mouth could utter the words, "Well I..." The boys and girls began to pair up.

"Are you afraid of coasters too?"

I confidently shook my head, "No. Rhonda. Absolutely not."

"Let's go!"

We walked the seemingly 2,000 mile long trek from Doo Wah Ditty City to the State Fair. Not much on conversation. Occasional, stolen glances. Evaluation. Rehearsed lines. Hoping my voice won't squeak.

During the 30 minute wait in the sweltering sunshine I actually opened up to her a little. She told me of her life. She liked horses and even once rode an elephant at the Knoxville Zoo. We discussed our mutual fondness for Gatlinburg, Star Wars, volleyball and watermelon. We relaxed and became new friends.

And then it was our turn at the ride. We were too busy talking to realize that we had seats on the front row! I snapped my head to Chris. Hers to Joan. Was this a prank? Did they realize the enormous pressure we had been voluntarily pushed in to? She tried to communicate her concerns via telepathy which is common to females, especially in mating season.

Undaunted, I slid past my self built brick wall of trepidation and took my seat in the front car. She gave a coy smile and gracefully sat by my side. The train lurched forward. Jerk. It connected with chain. During the ascent I imagined a cartoonist scene in which the 85 foot peak of steal and bolts made sport of me with each half a foot rotation.

I prayed. Nothing too elaborate. Just a plea to not throw-up on her. I began to silently whisper "amen" when I felt a hand being delicately intertwined in mine.

The car gently rounded an elevated curve. Before I could say something clever we both began screaming as the floor escaped us as we hurled down at 48 miles per hour. Up a little. Another sharp banked turn followed by a nose dive. The first loop lay ahead. I was too distracted by the gravity of the moment by the hand holding to notice that this acceleration was slugging me into the first swirl. I was upside down and then once more.

"Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh! Ahhhhh! Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. That was fun!"

I had stepped aboard a child but now I was a man!

We all clapped and begged for one more go around from the teenage thrill engineer. Maybe there was a lightning bolt from Heaven or she was too busy chatting with a co-worker to notice that she forgot the breaking switch. Jerk. Chain connection. We were going for a coveted and rare second ride!

This time my heart was thrilled and somewhat disappointed that Rhonda removed her hand to clap. And, once complete, did not return to my velvet fingers. But, that was ok. I was having fun.

As we got off the ride the coed group took a break from each other. The girls needed conversation and play-by-play analysis while the guys just pushed each other around.

Rhonda, from a distance, turned my way with a flirtatious grin before her visage lowered as she was told the real story of Jason Goldtrap: the dork. She even looked at her hand and wiped it on her Capri pants. I could see her guffaw, "He picks his nose in public?"

Reunion. We rode a few more rides but that was it for me and Rhonda. I talked to the other girls a little but there was no connection.

The speakers echoed. "Opryland USA will close in thirty minutes."

We disbanded and walked separately to the long line of station wagons. We were three years far from automotive liberation. I lost her in the dark.

I never heard from Rhonda. I never even considered calling her or asking Joan about her. We were two ships that passed in the night... and sunk.

That day I conquered one fear and, for one minute and 28 seconds felt invincible. That is part of the magic of a theme park. Escape. Innocent, affordable fun. Acceptable thrills mixed with surprising spurts of physiological  growth.

In 1997, Opryland USA closed and replaced by a mall. I always feel sad for cities that lose their amusement parks. They are losing so much in the way of togetherness, family memories and funny and romantic tales to share with future grandchildren. You don't get that from a mall.

As far as I can tell, there is only one corkscrew roller coaster still in operation in America. It is named the Corkscrew and it's at Silverwood Theme Park in Athol, Idaho.

After the park closed the Wabash Cannonball was sold to Old Indiana Theme Park in Thorntown, Indiana but not reassembled. Sadly, it laid in an open field until it was finally scrapped in 2003.

Thanks to YouTube you can take one last ride. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/OLtO06SC-Lc

[someinstant]

What Spotify playlists do you recommend?

OH MY GOODNESS, WHERE TO START.

Well, Nonnie, since I don’t know what type of music you personally like, I will pretend that you have the same bizarre music tastes I do. And I’m... not very pop-y, and like roots Americana stuff, and lots of blues, and the Clash, and angry girls with guitars, and alt-country, and also old classic country, and enough indie rock from the early 2000s to open my own gastropub and brewery, and acoustic Cuban hip-hop, and 1980s New Wave, and basically everything that came out of David Bowie’s brain and mouth, and every note Etta James ever sang.

So! Spotify playlists you should maybe listen to, if you share my brain:

1. Southern Gothic

Okay, look, I grew up in Georgia, and-- even though neither of my parents were born here, and even though I don’t have a southern accent unless it’s useful (and let me tell y’all, it is sometimes so damn useful, because bein’ super sweet and southern in one’s delivery makes being a stone bitch EVEN MORE FUN), and even though I cannot stand grits OR sweet tea-- there is something about this place that just gets down into your marrow.  Can’t explain it.  There’s so much I hate about where I live, so many original sins and continuing transgressions, and so much ugliness.  But.  I dunno.  I’ve read so much Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner and Rick Bragg and Cormac McCarthy and Melissa Fay Greene that it’s just part of the fabric?  Like, you’ve got to be able to take the bitter with the sweet.  And there’s a hell of a lot of both down here.

Anyways.

 This playlist sounds like how the late, gasping summer feels: so thick and humid you can feel it slipping down your throat when you breathe, the persistent drone of cicadas singing in the rasp of guitar strings.  And everyone loves a good ghost story, right?  Just think about live oaks hung with Spanish moss, blood-soaked soil, good bourbon, and a Tennessee Williams play, and that’s what this playlist is.  I love it so.

2. Roadtripping Across Americana

So the summer after I graduated high school, I went on a summer program with my university in which I spent two months camping out across the United States-- mostly out west-- studying anthropology, ecology, and geology.  And we spent that summer hiking with rock hammers attached to our backpacks, trying not to get on each other’s nerves on fifteen hour drive days, listening to Bob Marley at the campsite while on KP duty, learning to take kickass long-exposure photographs, avoiding coyotes at four in the morning in New Mexico, and forming an impromptu bluegrass band (we had a fiddle player, a guitarist, and a banjo, and a number of us were willing to give Gillian Welch’s oeuvre a go on vocals).  This playlist sounds like every day of that summer to me.

Although it perhaps needs more “No Woman, No Cry” to be truly accurate.

3. ‘90s Pop Rock Essentials

Shut up, it makes me happy.  Basically, this is the entirety of my high school career in playlist form, and I can sing pretty much every damn song on this list from start to finish.  It might be slightly embarrassing, but I think I own at least one CD by (counts) at least twenty of the artists on this list?  Damn.  I still own them, too, even though I no longer have a CD player anywhere other than my car.

Oh, man, I forgot Marcy’s Playground was on this.  Welp.  Guess I’m listening to “Sex and Candy” now, huh.

The other bonus to this playlist is that I can play it in the classroom, and (a) mostly my students don’t complain, and (b) I know the music well enough to know if I’m going to need to skip something for language or whatever.

4. The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975

Um, this fucking blows my socks off every time I listen to it.  It’s full of this deep, groovy, soulful funk-- Al Green and Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight-- I mean, it’s just KILLER.  I like to put it on when I’m cooking, or doing work that doesn’t require me to think too deeply, because I’m inevitably going to be singing along with this.  Honestly, it makes me think about growing up and listening to the soundtrack to “The Big Chill” with my mom while cleaning.  Motown and soul music and R&B make me think of the good kind of work, where you’re exhausted at the end of it, but everything’s better for it.

5. Feel Good Indie Rock

Look, my undergrad was in a little college town known for having a kickass music scene.  This, therefore, meant that we were all kinda expected to have the sort of Musical Opinions that are appropriate to devotees of “High Fidelity,” and to have a vinyl collection before it was super hipster to be into vinyl.  Like, I legit used to go to my favorite record store (I HAD A FAVORITE RECORD STORE, WHAT THE HELL, ALSO PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS INDICATES THAT THERE WERE MULTIPLE RECORD STORES IN A TINY COLLEGE TOWN AND THEY DID GOOD BUSINESS) between classes and flip through the new EPs and judge the cover art.  One wall of the living room in my first ever apartment was covered in LPs and album covers my roommate and I bought at a flea market, because it looked super cool and was a cheap way to cover the shitty paint job.  I read endless music blogs.  I had a dedicated tag on my personal blog wherein I reviewed new music.  I read alt-weeklies and had go-to music reviewers who I trusted enough to buy concert tickets to a band without having ever heard them, on the strength of a review.  I was THAT PERSON.

I still AM that person, a little.  And sometimes it’s good for me to remember that, beyond the drawer full of concert ticket stubs and the tattoo on my back.  So, yeah: indie rock.  I have opinions about the Elephant 6 Collective and of Montreal; hit me up about it.

And... there are a bunch of other ones?  I’ll be honest, I mostly listen to playlists I make myself, and I’ve got a shit ton of those.  I’d link to them here, but they’re attached to my personal account which has my real name on it, so.  Maybe if I transfer the playlists over to the account I made for the Scott Moir vs. Himself playlist, I’ll link them over here.

The ones I made myself that I listen to a lot are called things like, “This Playlist Kills Fascists,” (which is obvs deeply political and is what I play when I’m having another What The Hell Did My Fucking Idiot of a President Do NOW day), “Don’t Panic,” (which is basically full of music I personally find makes me smile 100% of the time), and “This is Water” (which is a graduation playlist I made for my seniors last year, and is still pretty kickass).  

Anyway, I hope that’s enough music to get you started, Nonnie!

[mrsrcbinscn]

BDRPWriMo Task #6 - 10 Short-Short Stories

Task #6: Write ten short-short stories of no more than a paragraph long.

Franny Robinson’s musical influences; ten interview quotes about other musicians and singers that she says inspire her work

i. Jenny Lewis

“I dunno, there’s just-” Robinson paused and with her palms flat up, made claws with her hands as she searched for the words. “-something so honest about Jenny. I had the honor of performing with her once and I was just in awe. I think I have a little bit of a crush on her. I was first introduced to her work in 2001 by a great friend of mine from college, Dani Weiss [currently a member of the American-Canadian newgrass band The Weepy Willows]. We were...going on a little trip -

Q: Acid or shrooms?

“My husband is sitting right there, oh god. Acid. In moderation, I think things like that can be worthwhile experiences. In moderation. We were doing acid in her apartment and listenin’ to music and she [Weiss] put on their album Take Offs and Landings. I was real into it from Go Ahead [the first track]. Which. I always liked chill music when I dropped acid, anything too loud and busy made me anxious. And when the followup, The Execution of All Things came out, it was like - I was like - just like, ‘damn, this woman is amazing.’ Her songwriting ability is just phenomenal and her voice- I feel like I’m sittin’ across from her and she’s tellin’ me stories. There’s- again, the only thing I can think of is this honesty about her.”

ii. Hizuru

“Japan actually has a vibrant history with jazz music, so I’m familiar with a lot of Japanese jazz and have had the honor of working with many talented Japanese jazz musicians. I don’t know very much about Hizuru, actually, other than I love them. I have been experimenting with incorporating traditional Cambodian music with, you know, jazz and other western styles of music. That part of my culture is very important to me, so I want - I want to show the world how beautiful instruments like tro and chapei are. Anyway- I was struggling with a balance of sounds when in 2017 I stumbled upon a Hizuru song called - oh, god, I don’t speak Japanese, so I’ll probably butcher this. The song is called Ushiwakamaru. It is an instrumental piece, as is the entire self-titled album, and the blend of traditional Japanese music and modern jazz on that entire album is perfection. I hope they come out with more soon, I am hungry for more, truly.”

iii. Ella Fitzgerald 

Q: Of the early jazz vocalists, who inspires you the most?

“Oh my god, Ella Fitzgerald. Well - mm, no, absolutely her, no question. I am by no means implying I live up to her standard, in fact I never will, but I have channeled her. Especially in my earlier work when I was a bit more concerned with going what jazz fans want, expect, and love versus taking lessons from those who came before me and building on that with my own ideas, my own voice. If that makes sense? She was classic. It’s Only A Paper Moon was, I think, the first jazz song I heard when I was little. Or, it was the first that really struck me. [laughs] My oldest brother used his birthday money to buy an Ella Fitzgerald album for me on vinyl so I would stop running around the house singing the only lyrics I remembered. I think it was like [singing]- Say, its only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea...and I forgot the rest so I could just repeat cardboard sea like three times.”

iv. Patsy Cline

“I’m from Georgia,” laughs Robinson, running a hand through her hair as she pulls her feet up under her on the chaise lounge in her Swynlake home. “Like, out in the country in Georgia. You couldn’t grow up there in the eighties and not have known who Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton were. Dolly was more, like, relevant and current, but Patsy’s a classic. And as a woman whose natural register is lower myself, I really appreciated being able to sing along decently well without much effort. We don’t - we don’t get to see alto voices in popular music a lot. Pop, even the jazz music that gets a following outside of hardcore jazz fans. Hitting the craziest high notes does seem to be a current trend across the genre spectrum.”

When asked if that was a bad thing, Robinson simply shook her head. “I don’t think it;s positive or negative one way or the other. It’s just an observation.”

v. Ahmad Jamal

“I mean, if you want to talk jazz pianists, you can’t not talk about Ahmad Jamal. On Green Dolphin Street? Autumn Rain? F---, man, leaving him out is criminal. He’s been in the game for five decades, that’s longer than I’ve been alive. I only hope to be on his level. Like, I hear words from his piano. I understand what I’m supposed to be feeling, thinking, or seeing when I listen to his work. And with instrumental music, that’s a challenge. Classical? I struggle to listen to classical music. I think it’s beautiful, and I really respect classical musicians, but unless I’m explicitly aware of what picture this piece is supposed to paint in my head, when I tell a classical expert what a piece makes me feel, they’re usually like ‘ACTUALLY...’

vi. Édith Piaf 

“My father - well, he’s technically my stepfather,” Robinson said, scowling at the word like it was a swear. “But, he adopted me when he married my mother, and my biological father may as well have been a sperm donor. Anyway. My father is from Switzerland, and they have four official languages there. He speaks them all, plus English, plus he learned to speak Khmer when he married my mother. He’s so cool, my dad. He’s from a Francophone-Italophone Swiss family, so I grew up listening to a lot of old French, Italian, and some German music from him. I still don’t speak German and Italian though, [laughs] sorry Dad.”

“We listened to Édith Piaf a lot together. I was very protective of my mother as a child, you know how kids of single moms are? My mom was my superhero and I was used to American men thinking they had a right to touch her because she was just a poor foreign woman who owned a restaurant. So when my future dad started hanging around, I hated him. But he was determined to make me like him so I’d let him marry my mother, and he’d take me for ice cream and play Édith Piaf cassettes in the car. He’d tell me about what the love songs meant, and didn’t tell me about the songs that weren’t, and told me the love songs are how he felt about my mother. He was like, ‘Dara-’ my legal first name is Darareaksmey, it’s Khmer. My parents usually calls me ‘Dara.’ ‘Dara, if you let me, I’ll be good to your mother, and to you.’ I eventually got tired of him begging me to marry my mom so I let him. [laughs]

I asked if she ever regretted giving him her blessing.

“No, never. He’s my dad, and the two boys he brought into the marriage are my older brothers. I’m my Swiss grandparents’ only granddaughter, so they spoiled me even from Switzerland. No, we’re family.”

vii. Dolores O'Riordan

Interview date, 26th of January, 2018

Q: Let’s talk about something I just found out about you from your Twitter feed the other day.

A: Oh, no, should I tell my husband to cover his ears?

Q: No, it’s rated H for Husband. 

A: Excellent.

Q: You’re a huge fan of Dolores O’Riordan. Which, I wouldn’t have guessed. But on the day the tragic news of her passing broke, you Tweeted out a tribute to her including ffive meet and greet pictures of the two of you together- the first, correct me if I’m wrong, is from 1994?

A: Yes, yes I had actually seen then the year prior, when I was thirteen, but ‘94 was the first time I could afford a backstage package with my babysitting money. The other four are from 1999, 2002, 2010, and 2016. I loved The Cranberries, they were the first concert I dragged my husband to when we were dating.

Q: Safe to say you’ve been a hardcore fan for-

A: Two and a half decades, yeah. Yeah, The Cranberries are one of my all time favorites. Dolores O’Riordan’s voice was...everything.

Q: You’re a jazz artist, primarily. What’s consistently drawn you to The Cranberries?

A: [laughs] Other than being a teenager in the 90′s? I mean, her voice. She changed the game for what it meant to be a female vocalist in rock music. And up until my second year at NYU, I wasn’t sure where I was going with music. I loved rock, I loved jazz, I was into R&B, I loved bluegrass. I sang in several bands in high school and college, and The Cranberries were usually on the setlist. Her voice was amazing. I idolized her as a young vocalist, even if I ended up gravitating toward a different genre.

Q: You uploaded a cover of Dreams with Irish alt-rock singer and guitarist Padraig Chen, and Irish indie musician Siobhán Walsh as well. How did that collaboration come about?

A: Padraig’s been a friend of mine for a long time; we met through a mutual friend who is also an Asian-diaspora musician in the UK and Ireland and it was a match made in music heaven. We’ve collaborated a lot. Siobhán is a friend of Pat’s, and we all looked up to Dolores, so we just got together and made our little tribute to her.

viii. Badi Assad

“I was first introduced to bossa nova...probably during my sophomore year of college. Her voice is like butter, but frankly, that’s not the most interesting thing about her. She combines traditional jazz, bossa nova, other Latin music elements, and traditional Middle Eastern sounds. Anything that is a marriage of different tastes and cultures is interesting to me, and when its done as well as she does it? Forget it. She is one of the best jazz and jazz-adjacent guitarists out there today. I really admire her. I hope to perform with her one day, it’s genuinely a dream of mine.”

ix. Ros Serey Sothea

“One of my most unexpected musical influences...well, I don’t - I don’t think she’s so much unexpected, as any of my following outside of my small Cambodian or Khmer-American following won’t have ever heard of. Ros Serey Sothea is one of the most important singer in Khmer popular music history, she’s called the Golden Voice. My mother would sing her songs to me as a child, whichever of them she could remember. Under the Khmer Rogue, which my mother survived, something like 90% of Cambodia’s artists, dancers, musicians, and singers died or were executed. She was one of them. And my mother’s favorite singer. Most of the master recordings from her and other singers like Pen Ran and Sinn Sisamouth were destroyed by the Khmer Rogue, so whatever recordings we do have of Khmer rock and roll from that era are so, so vital to preserve and keep record of. Even though I am a jazz music educator, at my lower level, more generic classes where I have the wiggle room to do so, I talk about Khmer music of the 60s and early 70s for a class because I feel so strongly about the legacy of this music.”

“I went on a tangent,” Robinson said apologetically. “Where was I? Oh, Ros Serey Sothea. Right, so her voice was just-” Robinson put her arms out to her side and swayed to the imaginary music in her head. “-you could just kind groove like this to only her voice, nothing else needed. Her voice danced on top of the backing band. My mother managed to get her hands on some records, her siblings who remained in Cambodia sent some to us and her other siblings who were resettled, in the mid-eighties. So, I was six or seven before I heard my first Khmer song from a record player or a cassette instead of my mother’s voice, even though she’d been singing to me since I was born. These songs are still incredibly important to Cambodians today, and diaspora as well.”

I asked her if that had anything to do with the semi-viral success of her recent  cover of 70′s singer Sieng Vannthy’s ‘Console Me’. 

“Oh, for sure.” Robinson said.  "It’s the first time I professionally recorded a song in Khmer, a lot of people were surprised I spoke the language.”

x. Dolly Parton

“Okay, Dolly probably has less of an influence on my music than my persona, I’ll be honest. But her music means so much to me. At my wedding, during toasts, my mother mortified me by throwin’ in video footage of my first ever live performance from ‘89. Little nine-year-old Franny was on stage in little secondhand cowboy boots, this horribly 80s lookin’ frilly dress, my hair in little twin braids, singin’ and dancin’ to Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That. To this day, my husband still brings that up.”

Q: How do you mean Dolly Parton influenced your persona?

“Great question. So, our origins are similar. Kind of. She grew up poor one of twelve children, I grew up poor, one of three. My family eventually was lucky enough to make it out of the poverty I was born into but we were still always poor, you know? Like. I remember my mom rationing her food so I could eat enough until that stopped when I was about seven and my mom didn’t have to make a meal for herself last two meals.  And we’re both from the American South.”

“I grew up on Dolly. She’s the queen of our people [laughs] and I’m not even being facetious. We love her. Can’t get enough of her. And I include myself in that; Dolly Parton is an icon. She is unashamed of who she is and where she comes from, which really struck a chord with me. As the American-born daughter of a refugee, I was always caught between two cultures. Am I Cambodian, am I American? Which can I claim? My mother taught to me my Cambodian culture, our Vietnamese friends taught me about Vietnamese culture, but my white father was from Switzerland so I didn’t learn to be American until school. That’s when I started droppin’ my G’s, sayin’ y’all and ain’t, and asking my parents to make grits for breakfast when they’d never eaten them before in their immigrant lives. I wanted so badly to just be seen as American, to be seen as just a girl from Georgia. If it weren’t for my mother refusing to let me speak English to her at home I would have lost my Khmer. She spoke English just fine, but English was for Out There.”

“My mom taught me to be proudly Cambodian, but I’m not just Cambodian, right? I mean, I’m biracial, sure. But more importantly, I’m bi-cultural. I’m not just Cambodian, I’m American - Southern, if we wanna get real specific. Both of my cultures are vibrant, and beautiful, and are equally important to me. My mom taught me not to be ashamed to be the daughter of a refugee - she didn’t get into specifics until I was older, but she was always made it clear she had Been Through Some Shit and could handle anything. Even now, when I go through something difficult I just tell myself, ‘Mom survived genocide, you can do whatever this is.’ I knew how to be proudly Cambodian, I knew how to wear traditional dress to nice events, and wear Khmer wedding clothes for my wedding instead of a white dress. But I didn’t know how to embrace this other part of myself - because wasn’t raised in the default Middle America. Even my American side is a type of odd culture, isn’t it?

Dolly Parton taught me not to be ashamed of the other half of where I came from. She is unapologetic about bein’ who she is. She is proud of where she came from. And I want to be the Dolly Parton of my rural Georgia town. My identities as Cambodian and Georgian are more important to be than my identity as, like, an American person in general. I want people to think, ‘that’s a Georgia woman’ when they think of me, just like you look at Dolly and say ‘that’s a Appalachian girl’ before you just go ‘oh, she’s American.’