soultice poultice: year three
the solstice for your pole: a poultice for your soul
depending on what day of the week halloween happens to fall on, america (where barley’s is located (35.9708° N, 83.9173° W)) stops from the end of october and doesn’t really do much in the way of anything until after valentine’s day. this is the way it goes. you or i didn’t make this up, but somehow it came to be. laziness seems to find a crooked dignity and momentum all its own. iffing tom brokaw were still around, this curious development would make for an elegant epilogue to his book that painted circular rosy cheeks on anything that came remotely close to wwii or the glories of civilization at its pre-technicolor prime.
welcome to the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere. this day has been celebrated for thousands of years by people all over from persians to ancient egypt to the inca to the zuni of new mexico (halona: idiwan’a). even those white people over in europe skinned this day out the other ones to revere, just ask ol’ jethro tull or the mighty thor. now in its third year, the cartwright brothers musical band”s solstice poultice invites you to come in out of the cold, semi-darkness of this modern world and join in the glowing warmth with our sisters and brothers of the ages to regard this significant event in our greater understanding of our lot in the native galaxy.
the towering stacks of weathered and industrially baked-earth facade housing barley’s taproom and pizzeria makes the perfect setting to rest, reflect, recalibrate and reconnect with that light immemorial. heady grogs, bubbling ferments, tinctures and other spirits line the communal bar, thirsting only for the scratching of your buttoned cuffs on its slender and shellacked belly. thricely-stacked bergie patties seething with gorgonzola beneath languid sidemeats await as do sundries of flatbread offerings, fieldfare and southwestern-inspired wraps (who do not take part in the solstice shenanigans per se, however both the hopi and pueblo did and continue to do so today).
it’s a sunday. it gets dark at like three forty-five. other than some hollow emailing and showing a bit of headroomian face with blurred backgrounds nothing is happening tomorrow at work. thanks in part to oklahoma (whom several of its many native tribes also took part in regarding this day of the astral journey as momentous), this year there isn’t even a ballgame. in a season replete with such connective interference and deafening rapacity, why not treat your noggin to some communal revelry scratched firmly into the surface of the impermanent? what better way to commemorate the longest night of the year than with an evening of warmth, togetherness and storytelling under the dimly-lit stars of one of knoxville’s most familiar and well-worn taverns.
the cartwright brothers musical band (knoxville) are a spectrally wavering hand loosely clutching the reins of a karst landscape through an oscillating rumination of perennial self-discovery.
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