When she was younger, Allison Moorer used to believe that she wanted an intellectual existence, a life of the mind. But now, at 42, she sighs, “What I’ve realized that I have is a life of the hands—I’m always just making something, or I’m writing or drawing something, because it makes me feel connected; it makes me feel real. It’s the same way with music—I just want to make it.” Hence, her latest ambitious set, Down To Believing, which documents her recent split from her husband, Steve Earle, and even the motherly guilt she felt when their son John Henry, now four, was diagnosed with autism two years ago. Moorer will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on her.
Moorer: I picked up my first O’Connor collection, The Complete Stories, about a month after I graduated college. I was in a bookstore in Franklin, Tenn., and was searching for something, anything, to make the pieces come together. I had just turned 21 years old, and didn’t know where I was going or even what did and didn’t make sense to me, I just knew I needed to try figure it out.
Despite getting a fairly decent liberal arts education at a state school in Mobile, Ala., I had not yet been exposed to enough great literature, and was determined to change that. Upon reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find, I knew that I might have found something to help me on my way. But it was more than that. I recognized the subfuscous nature of her stories. I felt comfortable within the words she used and the environments she created for her damaged characters to live in. They felt like the ones I’d come from, dusky, mysterious, and at least a little bit creepy. Southern Gothic at its best, they say. But I won’t pigeonhole her. All I know is that her words make me feel at home, and I don’t think that has much to do with geography.
Video after the jump.
