"Death's favorite preacher has at last met his unmaker!"Evangelist J.B. BestTowards the conclusion of his own life, Evangelist Rayall gave a eulogy for an old comrade who’d been undone from the inside out by colon cancer. He observed then, “Remembrance is as faithless as the clay in a night school pottery class; it cooks in the kiln and hardens into hapless shapes, while the lumps left unrecognizable on the work table may be what really matter.” To extend the metaphor, this little site is in the mold of the insurgent Golem, who was coined from clay and drafted unconsenting into the needs of the moment. It too is but a passing fact of mud.
A note about the photo galleries and excerpts from Evangelist Ray's writings, for the most part from his unpublished memoir,
The Eighty Year War, featured on this site: Evangelist Ray believed that the genre of autobiography developed directly out of the ancient and venerable con art of the shell game. "Unreliable" is rather too light a term to describe his approach to self-writing. In his script for John Huston's "Beat the Devil," Truman Capote defines a liar as one "who has more imagination than memory," but I think Evangelist Ray would probably honor the liar as one who merely flashes bright blades to spook boredom into flight. The
Life Story section of this site, deceptively titled, will hold not only excerpts from his
The Eighty Year War, but also some archival research and private reflection on the strange career and unlikely flight path of Evangelist Rayall Rowan. As you stroll through the
Life Story page, you should begin on the day he was wiped from sight, December 19th, 2008, and alight on the rest at your whim, blind to sequential order. Additionally, there are tabs on the menu on the left that link you excerpts from his memoir as well as his early collection of poetry,
A Saint's Day Stand at an Oakland Swap Meet (1947). He considered it juvenilia, but I think you'll agree that it makes important links between the genres of the medieval saint's tale and contemporary anti-cop rap.
The photo albums featured here should be watched in their discrete groupings--
Hidden Falls,
The Blind Seventies, etc.--which is how Evangelist Ray himself organized them for his memoir. Regrettably, he left them uncaptioned. As I gradually scan and upload photos from his considerable archive, I'll attempt to locate and verify information on the persons and places appearing in them. If anyone reading this has any photos of Evangelist Ray (there is a real scarcity in his files), of souls he knew, or of grounds on which he preached, please scan and email to: evangelistjbbest@yahoo.com.
