Nature Boy Ric Flair
is neither natural nor
that much of a boy
I’M USUALLY a linear, singled-minded guy when it comes to reading matter. Start a book (or a comic or a zine), finish it, then start reading something else.
But by accident rather than by design, I’m currently reading four things at once, which is a tricky proposition for a person who has trouble talking and walking at the same time (ask my wife about my issues with multi-tasking). Apart from Amanda Palmer’s part-autobiography/part-manifesto The Art Of Asking and DC’s Showcase Presents: All-Star Comics Vol. 1 (featuring the 70s incarnation of the Justice Society of America as drawn by the immortal Wally Wood), I’m also perusing the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter and Raven Mack’s new zine, Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts 1. Of the four, it’s the latter publication that has most caught my attention.
Replacing his One Thousand Feathers project, RWFA finds our man discussing a range of topics from the quality of the graffiti on the Berlin Wall to stealing a school bus while naked and high on acid to the horseshoes vs cornhole debate to smacking readers between the eyes with the first chapter detailing a surreal battle royal among the 50 states, Raven is a great wordsmith.
Now, I know “great” is a word that gets thrown around far too easily for many things (“Great burger!” “Great tits!”), but in Raven’s case it’s completely appropriate.
I read his work like it’s free-form jazz or, better still, freestyle rap – lyrical words come tumbling out from his West Virginian brain onto the printed page in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. He is a redneck hippie (and I loathe myself even as I write that term, but it’s as accurate a description as I can come up with) with a spiritual soul but a world-weary acknowledgement of the realities of this shithole we call life. Even when I don’t fully comprehend (or agree with) his philosophies or beliefs, I am moved by how he’s conveying his innermost thoughts.
It’s been more than 12 years since my only one-on-one meeting with Raven, sitting in a darkened bar (courtesy of a dude who stole the fuse box just before I arrived) in West Virginia. He doesn’t drink beer these days, but I look forward to the time that we meet again – maybe over a cup of tea – and I can tell him in person how much his work means to me.
Whether he’s writing about pro wrestling (which is what first caught my attention at the turn of the century and which, sadly, he does far less of nowadays) or his personal experiences living in the American South or short fiction based on those experiences or his general thoughts on life or music reviews or haikus or sonnets or existential previews of the FIFA World Cup, Raven writes in a way that makes me feel both extraordinarily inadequate as a writer but also inspires me to become a better one.
Read this zine and maybe it’ll inspire you, too.
Now, excuse me while I try to finish off the rest of my publications-in-progress, so my linear brain can return to normal.
Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts 1: Raven Mack, PO Box 270, Scottsville, VA, 24590, USA. www.rojonekku.com [email for prices, 40S, :90+]