The Audacious Masculine – or – The Devil Went Down to Georgia On the Railroad- by maryh10000
The audacious masculine is taking extreme, foolhardy, risks simply for the right to say, "I can SO do it!"
In "The Devil Goes Down to Georgia", a Georgia musician bets with the Devil. Now there's someone you can count on to keep his word! The contest: who is the better fiddle player?
The stakes for the musician could not be higher – he loses everything, his very soul. To win gains him a fiddle made of gold. But it is clear that this contest, for the musician, is not about money. A gold fiddle is useless for making music. The reason for winning is for bragging rights. It would prove that the musician is so good that even the most evil being in existence, an inveterate liar, cannot help but acknowledge him.
For the Devil, if he wins, he destroys another soul. If he loses (and why would he admit to loss anyway?) he loses only a meaningless bit of matter – a fiddle made of gold.
The modern folk song by The Longest Johns, "On the Railroad," imagines a work song that could have been sung by the workmen, including freed slaves, whose back breaking labor built the transcontinental railway in the second half of the nineteenth century in the United States. "Sweat and blood gonna earn my pay," they sing, and the grunts punctuate a tune that evokes a visceral sense of the immense physical exertion required; labor so hard that although the workman "ain't no slave" he must "slave away," where they "spare no quarter and... spare no man," and each instructs the others that "if I should fall, leave me where I lay on the railway." Grim, dirty, blood-soaked.
But in one of the middle verses, an audacious boast. The boss man has set a pace of a mile of railroad laid per day. And the workman sings back his boast: "I'll make two for the look on his face."
A stupid boast. Everything about the song says that a mile a day is already excruciatingly back-breaking labor. Why would the workman even try for two miles? What would he get for it except the boss's expectation that he could try for twice the work per day that he had planned? And a more deadly pace for the workmen?
But the purpose of the audacious boast isn't to win any material reward, just as it wasn't for the musician. The musician must get even the devil to admit that he is the best musician, even should it cost him his soul. The railroad worker must stun the boss man with his sheer physical prowess, even should it cost him more sweat and blood and leave him fallen on the railway.
Why the audacious boast? What does each man gain by risking everything on something so meaningless?
In the end, each man triumphs over his opponent, who never had anything to lose, or even, actually, much to win.
The musician walks away from the devil, risking everything to play the fiddle the best that it can be played. And so, in risking everything in the boast, he becomes what he has boasted – the best. His music is better for his boast, and he has expanded what "best" means.
The railroad worker doesn't walk away from the boss man. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Maybe he will fall on the railway to Frisco Bay. But he has given his sweat and blood and he has been paid. Even if he "slaves away," this time he is "no slave." He may have a boss man, but he does not have a master. If he makes it to Frisco Bay, he will have earned his pay, and while he has "dirt on his brow," he also has "steel in his soul." The boss man may only require a mile a day. But he knows he can do two. Because he is a free man and he chooses to so dispose of his labor.
The boast of the audacious masculine is that he will risk everything to go past what he has done before. If he fails, the price is catastrophic. But if he succeeds….
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