John Henry

There’s a word you all use these days that we didn’t have back when I was just somebody working on a railroad.  Problematic.  We had problems, sure, but they were nouns, not adjectives.  Back then things were problems, now things are problematic.  The trouble is, you can fix a problem, but if something’s problematic, you gotta change what that thing is to fix it, and keep it intact at the same time.  A problem you can smash with a hammer.  Destroy it.  That’s easy.  Change ain’t easy.


You know what I wanted to ask Athena?  Out of every dancer here, why did you ask me to kill Apollo?  Because I’m the black one?  Does that make me the scariest one?  The most intimidating?  Or just the one you think you can buy?  Did any of you think about that?


See?  It’s problematic.  People don’t listen anymore.  They don’t see what’s right in front of them.  Or they see too much, and sometimes that’s even worse.  They pick a word out of a sentence and say ‘What does this mean?’ while meanwhile a train’s comin’ down the tracks and they can’t even hear the engine roar.


People know who I am because I took on a train and won.  I beat back technology.  Then I died.  My heart gave out.  So really—the train won.  Technology won.  Oh, they don’t frame it that way when they tell the story, but that’s the truth, isn’t it?  Look around.  The locomotive went right over me, didn’t it?  What we’re doing here at Americana—taking off our clothes—that ain’t just to get your money.  That’s to get your attention.  This here’s the only theater in town where people got their eyes glued to us and they ain’t thinkin’ about checkin’ their phones once the show is over, or whether or not they got an e-mail while they were here, or who they’re gonna hook up with later, because the only people they wanna hook up with is us.  These days, if you got a story to tell, you better take off your clothes while you’re telling it, otherwise you’re likely to be ignored.  Forgotten.  You see what I’m talking about? 


I gave up my life to buy y’all some time.  So you could figure out how you was gonna keep that locomotive at bay instead of letting it plow you down, but it looks like y’all hopped on for the ride instead.  Well hey, that’s your choice.  But it seems to me like we got ourselves a problem, whereas y’all just think it’s problematic.


A little piece of advice—you can’t change a locomotive.  You just gotta stop that thing dead in its tracks.