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Confederate.

A word born of ideals such as fidelity & faith, carrying the Lion’s share of remorse for supremacy and hatred.  Word association doesn’t afford “confederate” a kindness to speak of.  Nor does the last buck fifty in American history.

“And it’s to our everlasting shame. And we didn’t get rid of it in time to save our own culture. And it was FUCKING STUPID of those people not to have done that. And it pisses me off. But I think that theres something very important and special about Southern culture and I don’t think that it should be swept away.”

Birmingham’s no belle of the ball either.

In fact, I would venture to say it may be that no two bedfellows have worn the scarlet letter of our country's shame or been looked upon with as much contempt as the city of Birmingham and the word Confederate.

But like a length of burnt and disgraced barn wood turned keepsake or an old soda pop bottle gone pendant, Matt Chambers has given both word and city a reason to make us slow down and take a look.  Reclaiming “Confederate” from the historic rubble, consider that it now - with pride - honors an Atelier in Birmingham, Chambers has undertaken the tedious labour of preserving a part of our Southern Heritage whose missing pieces, faded angles, watermarks, and gouges would have caused the less devoted to leave it out by the road.

Confederate's Motorcycles document this Love’s Labour.  Cinematically.  And in a way that words cannot.  You have to see the bikes.  You have to really SEE the bikes.  And I'm pretty sure you have to ride one.  That I'll have to feel it to really understand.  I'd like that.

“Please allow me to introduce you to Joseph Smith. He is responsible for fabrication of each set of stainless steel X132 Hellcat exhaust headers. In keeping with our pre-industrial design ethos, Mr. Smith designed the exhaust system entirely, made his own tooling and assumed responsibility for the fabrication of each set. He can create two sets per week.

These examples of American artisanal hand craftsmanship are lovely to behold.

We are a company that has been blessed with amazing heliarc welders over the years. Joseph is one of the very best and we thank him for all he has given to nurture and actualize our effort.”

Reads one post on Facebook. 

“Our company attracts extraordinary talent. There is no greater example of this fact than Richard Lee. Rich started coming around in the mid 1990's. He was in his mid 20's. We both shared a passion for motorcycles, of course, but also cars. We would try to outdo each other concerning automobile industry factual knowledge and depth of understanding. It was tit for tat. Ultimately, the dialogue would turn to design and context. His intuitive genius for fusing these two essential elements into the vitally holistic outcome was unmatched by anyone I have ever known.

Rich advised, informed and illuminated all aspects of Confederate design during the critical late 90's period of our evolution, growth and understanding. He always pushed hard for what he believed was right. He never let ego get in the way. Time reveals truth. I cannot now remember a single directive upon which he opined that was wrong.

In 2000, Rich moved on to pursue other interests. I wish I would have prevented his departure. This is why I reached out to him a few weeks ago. I told him that his company needed him. There is so much to do; motorcycle design, graphic design, communications, etc. He could do it all. To my great delight he accepted the invitation. In a conversation Monday evening we agreed that we would forge the alliance like a marriage, not a one night stand. He gave me his terms. I explained that his terms were quite reasonable. I told him that I would get back to him with how we could facilitate his move and to discuss the dateline for our new beginning. I was hoping to begin November 1.

I informed our accounting division, our design chief and our communications team that we had scored a proven uber-creative with tangible Confederate historical frame-of-reference. Everyone at Confederate was pumped. I was going to confirm and finalize all details with him Wednesday morning.

Tuesday night my phone rang at 9:24 p.m. A voice I had not heard before requested my name. I asked who are you calling, thinking it was a wrong number. The gentleman responded that he was Richard Lee’s father. He stated he was randomly calling numbers from Rich’s cell phone. Next Mr. Lee uttered words which affected me with such piercing emotional discomfort and raw pain that I will never, ever forget the moment. Mr. Lee informed me that Rich died in his sleep early Tuesday morning.

Rich, other than the first 2004 grey ghost prototype, there is not a single Confederate motorcycle that was not positively impacted by your efforts. Further, every future Confederate will, likewise, benefit from your loving touch.”

Tugs your heart and your gut in equal measure from another.

And still there are the hecklers: the price tag, the way they engage, the color of this, the decision to do that. My favorite: the way the lights are hung in the shop, cause for a shoulder-shakin’ laugh. “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain” Ben Franklin observed. “And most fools do.”

I went to Birmingham looking for Matt Chambers. And I found him. And he has appeared to me along the way ever since: in Beasts of the Southern Wild at E. Street Cinema, at The National Gallery in London, down an alley in Paris.  When I ran low on courage.  But he was most recognizable in his own words.

"My father was a . . . . . . my father was a person that never, I’m try-

My father never yielded even one iota of his moral certitude. I mean he was such a bastion of moral strength. He always made the right decision. My dad always was right about everything. He was so logical. And he was powerfully intelligent. But he was more wise than intelligent. Amazing logic.

He’s a great father. He was so effortless and he made me feel completely warm and at peace with his absolute love of me. With no effort whatsoever. He was really a great, great Father and a great role model."  

When he said to me:

"I don’t know. I tell ya, the kind of strength my dad had - I’d give anything to have that. He was really something." 

I suspect that he’s closer to home than he knows.

And I've thought about this a great deal because there are a couple of fundamental disagreements that we share, making it seem as if one person would have to be right and the other would have to be wrong.  But I don't think that's the case.

You see . . . It’s very easy for us to understand, in this world, that people fit together physically. There are likenesses and differences to our bodies. So that what’s organic is that our physical selves fit together. And because this union, as we are joined: into one, heartbeat to heartbeat, life forces pulsating against each other... because the somewhat effortless result of that is pleasure, we get it.

What I’m interested in chewing on is the idea that our spiritual and intellectual selves function the same way.  That what’s organic for me intellectually and spiritually and what’s organic for you, are alike in many instances. But in others, they are quite different. And what those likenesses and differences create, as in the physical world, is the ability for us to fit together like pieces of an ancient puzzle. Intellectually and spiritually, soulfully, we make an imprint on each other. So that if two people are open to and reverent of each other’s beliefs and ideas, the result is a somewhat effortless ecstasy.

My experience, in this case, led me to take another look at Plato’s split-aparts. 

Disclaimer: I don’t believe in a single soul mate for a human being. And I don’t believe that androgynous four-legged creatures were split into two whose search, through reincarnation, is to find their other half.  But I do think . . . I think that, allegorically, the concept has something to offer us. 

Within a couple of keystrokes, I found, at the bottom of the page, goose pimples.  And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address: A World Split Apart.

Thursday, June 8, 1978 

“After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.” 

“Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself” 

“Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be one of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.” 

I was first introduced to Mister Solzhenitsyn through Mister Chambers.

"I was very motivated by what happened to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn when he came over from the Soviet Union to great fanfare. And he didn’t write anything for quite a while. 

And when he finally wrote, he basically wrote this thing that said that America was just like the Soviet Union. That there the State wouldn’t publish you and here there were like five big publishing houses and if you didn’t - in other words the only way that you get a message out is if your message conforms with what the establishment wants it to be. 

So if you’re not willing to play ball with the establishment then they’re going to prevent you from getting the message out. And what Mr. Solzhenitsyn said is that the U.S. and the S.U., the Soviet Union, is the same. And then he went back home. And that’s been very motivating for me." 

Matt Chambers . . . “Back home” . . . “he was really something.”

Yeah.

I don't know Joseph Smith.  And I didn't know Richard Lee.  But I think - I think they would agree.

I love the city of Birmingham.  It stole my heart.  And Confederate, has come to mean - to me -  something more sacred than a "kindred," more dear than a "friend."  My Confederates are the people who believe in me, whom I believe in.  At least that's what I've begun calling them since Birmingham.  And I kept them with me from Atlanta to Edinburgh, and in London, Paris, Antibes, and New York.

Because they are inside of me, as I heard Deepak Chopra say recently, "where they always were."