Standin' at the crossroad, baby, risin' sun goin' down
Standin' at the crossroad, baby, risin' sun goin' down
I believe to my soul, now, poor Bob is sinkin' down
Robert Johnson
The great Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938) was a revolutionary guitarist with a wicked way with words. While he still has a living stepsister who published a captivating memoir last year, much is not known about his life and death. Johnson’s prodigious musical powers in combination with his short life and enigmatic biography have naturally generated much lore, one tale being his visit to the crossroads.
Early in his brief and brilliant musical career he reportedly struggled to learn his instrument. He allegedly left his home in Mississippi and returned a transformed and transformative artist, capable of extraordinary musical feats — an innovator with fathomless potential. Thus began the legend of the crossroads.
The tale is that a young Johnson went to a mystical crossroads where he met the devil. There, as one does at a crossroads, he chose his path, cutting a deal that would see him become a musical legend. All he had to do was forfeit his eternal soul.
The story is bunk, of course, since everyone knows that the devil does not truck in retail but only in bulk, but it is a juicy tale. A similar myth has been attached to my good friend Bob Dylan,1 who, legend has it, himself visited with the devil shortly after leaving his home state of Minnesota.
As for Johnson, his two recordings of “Cross Road Blues” did nothing to dispel the myth of how he procured his prodigious talents.
So, what does this lore tell us about, well, anything? Is it a cautionary tale about how we should not wish to rise too fast and risk flaming out? Is that old saw — the one about how young stars who burn bright will die young — still even worth regarding? After all, if true, how can we explain the longevity and still-active careers of Dylan, The Rolling Stones, and even The Monkees?
The crossroads myth is about life choices. Stay on the straight path or take a turn. Rarely are the choices so stark as the temptation to go with the devil or not. In fact, most life choices, even the really momentous ones, may look as innocuous as picking a direction at an actual crossroad. The problem is, we can never really know what or whom our choice serves in the long run.
It is a truism that every choice has consequences, intentional or not, foreseen or not. While this may seem an obvious platitude, we often don’t connect our choices and their outcomes, whether as individuals or as a species. Even our innocent or seemingly innocuous choices can have unintended effects. For instance, buy local berries that happen to be packaged in a convenient plastic box, and you are — however minutely — supporting the fossil fuel industry and contributing to climate change. Purchase a newly renovated house in a revitalize neighborhood, and you may be participating in gentrification and the displacement of poorer residents. Contemplating and accepting personal responsibility for the consequences of our choices can make us uncomfortable, and too many people just cannot abide even the prospect of discomfort.
Part of the challenge of understanding the impact of our choices stems from our tendency to portray choices as binaries: right or wrong. You know the image: there is an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. You come to the crossroads. You can turn or travel straight on. But, even right choices can go wrong. Someone rushing an injured neighbor to the hospital (a right choice) may accidentally hit a pedestrian (a bad outcome). The effort to eat a plant-based diet (a good option) may increase demand for food transport and storage (a bad ramification). The desire to improve opportunities for the prosperity of the planet’s people (a worthy cause) ends up relying on activities and industries that destroy that planet (a bad effect).
So, then, perhaps the best thing to do is to make no choice at all. That option would be effective if not for the fact that, making no choice at all, standing still as the world passes by, is as much a choice as any, and one with usually undesirable consequences.
Once you have made a few wrong turns (or right turns that have turned out wrong), it is difficult to ascertain and understand how you arrived where you are and how to get back on your preferred track. We can really only forge ahead with more choices and more consequences.
Frankly, I sometimes wish it were all as cut and dry as Robert Johnson standing with the devil at the crossroads. Here is good, and here is bad. Here are the consequences of each choice: either flame out quickly in a life of decadence and musical genius or enjoy a long life albeit in utter obscurity. Be Achilles, the hero of epic poetry, or be some guy who sailed straight home from Troy without incident to work his farm and raise his kids. Choose.
Personally, I love binaries and find their clarity of selection both easy and satisfying, at least initially. You could look east or you could look west, as Johnson puts it. Over time, though, it gets pretty boring when every choice is a simple this or that with predictable outcomes: this thing is good and this other thing is bad. Reality, as it turns out, is much messier, featuring choices not as a series of uncomplicated crossroads and discernible directions but as a multitude of interwoven highways across an abundance of land leading to the vast uncertainty ahead. No, I guess the way things are— messy as they be — ultimately suits me better, at least that is, to quote Dylan, “most of the time.”
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Goin’ to the Crossroads