Reflections from April 2025 Beyond the Clock with Lacy Hale
Beyond the Clock Resident Artist Reflection, Written by Eliza Blue
Lacy Hale began her Beyond the Clock live event by saying, ‘I was born in a deep, dark holler,” and then launching into a poem by James Still about the place she calls home, Wolfpen Creek:
“How it was in that place, how light hung in a bright pool
Of air like water, in an eddy of cloud and sky,
I will long remember. I will long recall.
The maple blossoming wings, the oaks proud with rule,
The spiders deep in silk, the squirrels fat on mast,
The fields and draws and coves where quail and peewees call.
Earth loved more than any earth, stand firm, hold fast;
Trees burdened with leaf and bird, root deep, grow tall.”
As the songwriter-in-residence, this filled me with equal parts joy and terror…there was the whole song, already written, albeit by someone else. How could I ever hope to capture the whimsy and soil-deep joy of Lacy Hale better than that?
From there, the conversation roamed far and wide, but always found its way back to Lacy’s love of place. She told us of ancestors and youngsters, wild animals and rising water, things that devastate, and things that heal.
More than a few of us shed tears. As Ash and Anna often mention in these events, it takes a lot of resilience to be a rural artist, and Lacy’s vulnerability–the ways in which she’s been broken–are her strength, and her strength is contagious. By the end of the conversation, we were going around the circle sharing our own stories of natural disasters and what can be born in their aftermath.
Before the beginning of this season of Beyond the Clock, I was able to go on a retreat with Ash, Anna, and Taneum of Rural Assembly to discuss and plan for the year ahead. Out of those conversations, the lyrics for the opening music of the new Beyond the Clock podcast were born, and they include the line: “What we lost in the fire, we found in the flood…” Listening to Lacy talk about flood waters, and other artists on the call talk about their home landscapes ravaged by wild fire, I was amazed by the synchronicity, but not surprised–art can move like water or fire, too, and has its own timeline, telling the story that needs to be told even if we don’t find out the why until later.
So I used those lyrics again for Lacy’s song, as well as many of the titles of her artwork and a stolen snippet from James Still. They tell the story better than I ever could…
No Hate in My Holler
Coyote on the road,
street light burning low,
Blackbirds in the trees,
you’re in my bones,
like the mountains of home
How the light hung in a bright pool,
Left me feeling so grateful
I was born in a dark holler
But that light’s in my bones
from the mountains of home
Blue heron steps from the river
That’s how I knew we’d recover
The innocence lost
held by the deer gathered there
In the mountains of home
Held deep in my bones
Held deep in my bones
Refrain
Things that burned in the fire
Things we found we in the flood
No hate in my holler
Cuz we were born to rise up
Rise up, Rise Up
Rise up, Rise up
Rise Up…
Artist Lacy Hale points to a billboard featuring her artwork
Eliza Blue is an author, folk-singer, and accidental rancher on the wild, wild western prairie. Visit her website here, and subscribe to her weekly newsletter here.
Lacy Hale is an artist and co-founder of EpiCentre Arts, a 2016 Rauschenberg Foundation Seed Grant recipient, based in Whitesburg, Kentucky. She served two years on the board of the Kentucky Arts Council. Her work has been mentioned in Time Magazine by Kentucky author Silas House. Visit her website here.