THE WINNING CRUELTY OF RAY GISH
Rick Poinsett
The winning cruelty of Ray Gish, like a thing gone wintry in a cloyed and waterless vale. Some call him “dune encircled.” Others say he’s “set upon by lazy shapes,” or, “he’s a merman on his last set of lungs.” Ray’s cruelty is a thing of pale Burgundian clay, having undergone many firings and misfirings, many needless upheavals. Ray, what color bib will you be wearing when the Papal Bulls come for you? And what about those sloped shoulders? Ray’s sloped shoulders allow him to thread what’s left of himself through the finely honeycombed caverns of his native KY. Ray says, “My work concerns itself with ultimate questions.” Ray says, “The dawn don’t ever lie.” Maybe. But you lie, Ray. You lie when you say you never took a licking for rolling your auntie’s show cats in powdered milk. Ray really ought to be flanked at all hours by a full complement of trainers, trainees, tame witnesses to his every inward toot. Ray delights in the distant teeming issue of his cousins, brothers, sisters. The thrill matures into something uglier, but Ray never speaks of it. He never puts anything between himself and good music. Ray turns perpendicular to the main camera and begins to editorialize on each galactic failing his kind could never possess. Ray never responds to questions about black radicals or “ethnic strife.” One has to wonder if he would take in a beautiful mute homeless underage boy with a bellyful of dollar-menu food and fuck him, just for a few weeks. The law usually takes no notice of Ray. But it’s time for people to step forward. It’s difficult to imagine money whiter than Ray’s, and harder still to imagine money that smells more like the South after church.