From Ralph Lemon:

My dear and evanescent art partner, Walter Carter, passed away recently in Bentonia, Mississippi, at 102! He just got too old, and too beautiful, I guess.

The last time I saw him he told me it would be the last time, but he said that it would be the last time every time we parted in these last few years. Of course I didn’t believe it.

I’m terribly sad but also feel like celebrating, what an extraordinary, fearless and present life it certainly was.

May we all have such a life, and such play.

R

Even though Walter’s education ended after the completion of the fourth grade, he possessed a wealth of knowledge. He was literally a Jack of all Trades. He worked as a sharecropper, planting and picking cotton, corn, potatoes. He also worked as a carpenter and in a sawmill. The job he performed the longest was planting cedar trees. In the last years of his life he was a vital artistic collaborator with Ralph Lemon.

Ralph was introduced to Walter in 2002 by Jimmy (Duck) Holmes, owner of the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, Mississippi, one of the few remaining “juke joints” in the Delta. In their first meeting, Ralph asked Walter about local blues musicians, such as Skip James and Jack Owens. After reminiscing about some dances, Walter demonstrated steps he had not done since he was teenager:

Standing still for a few seconds, outside of remembering, and then he starts to move, mostly his legs, sliding, without bending any limbs, announcing and then moving from step to step. First the one-step, then the two-step, then the slow drag. His body thin as a rail and light, stiff, shinning.  Arms rounded. Hat tilted to the side. His cowboy boots scratching out music on the sandy concrete floor, surprising himself. Then he stops, places his hands on his chest, coughing, smiling, a revelation.

Since then, Ralph has visited Walter twice a year, creating an art exchange in his house, his backyard, along some nearby country road. A conversation with the living reality of ordinary human existence—a day’s work, ritual, repetition (digging, greasing, moving, breaking, dancing, waiting).

-Walter, what do you think about this stuff we’ve been doing…does it mean anything to you?

-I don’t think nothin’ about it. Ain’t never done it before, and won’t do it again after you leave, and surely won’t do it once I’m dead. So what’s to understand? I know I like it.

-You like it, then does that mean it’s important?

-I’m 99, ain’t nothin’ important to me. And then he laughed.

-But you’re alive, that’s important, isn’t it?

-Yeah, that’s a fact. Living is important, but I’m living ‘cause I’m living, but know soon I won’t be. That’s the privilege of an old man like me. I know what’s comin’ and in the meantime I’m enjoying myself.

What a full and beautiful life.

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