Chasing Slim

It’s a warm fall morning in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Cotton harvesters move slowly through the Delta fields under a pale sun.

Inside a modest house sits Watermelon Slim — born William P. Homans III — blues musician, Vietnam veteran, political essayist, and restless traveler.

Slim is packing a suitcase.

At seventy-seven years old his body moves slower than it once did. Decades of farm labour, trucking, war, and relentless touring have left their marks. But his mind is as active as ever.

On the kitchen table lie several thick binders.

Inside them is a staggering piece of writing:

an 82,000-line epic poem titled The Kozyrev Option: Miscalculations.

It is Slim’s literary response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and to what he sees as the dangerous return of authoritarian politics across the world.

What began as an attempt to chronicle Vladimir Putin’s war crimes quickly grew into something larger.

For Slim, the war in Ukraine is not an isolated event.

It is part of a wider historical pattern — one that includes the erosion of democratic institutions in the United States and the rise of strongman politics globally.

In his poem Slim connects these events through history, philosophy, and personal reflection. Drawing on his background as a historian and his long study of fascist movements, he writes with urgency and anger about what he believes is a dangerous political moment. The poem is sprawling, obsessive, and deeply personal — a massive work that merges poetry, history, political analysis, and blues philosophy.

Slim never expected to become a poet of geopolitics.

But the times, he believes, demand it.

The Artist as Witness
For most of his life Slim has spoken through the language of the blues.

The blues is an art form born out of oppression — slavery, poverty, racial violence, and survival. Its greatest practitioners have always been storytellers and witnesses.

But Slim now feels that the traditional three-minute song is no longer enough to contain what he needs to say.
The war in Ukraine — and what he sees as the growing normalization of authoritarian rhetoric in the United States — has shaken him deeply.

The result is The Kozyrev Option: Miscalculations.

Named for the Russian diplomat Andrei Kozyrev, who warned decades ago that Russia could return to imperial nationalism, the poem imagines the catastrophic consequences of historical miscalculations — political, moral, and human.

Slim writes about leaders and soldiers, dictators and civilians, about the long shadow of fascism and the fragile nature of democratic institutions.

But he also writes about himself.

About Vietnam.

About propaganda.

About the strange cycles of history.

The poem becomes a massive act of intellectual resistance — one man’s attempt to understand the moment we are living through.

The Journey North
Amid this flood of writing, Slim agrees to undertake a journey he has never made before.

A trip north to the remote Arctic gateway town of Churchill, Manitoba.

He travels with Canadian musician Scott Nolan, who serves as both companion and sounding board.

They board a train heading north across the vast Canadian landscape. The train becomes the film’s central stage.

As the wilderness rolls past the windows, Slim reads passages from The Kozyrev Option.

Some sections are analytical.

Others are lyrical, furious, or darkly humorous.

The poem grows and mutates as he continues writing throughout the journey.

Confessions and Contradictions
During the long ride Slim reflects on the strange arc of his life.

Vietnam veteran.

Truck driver.

Watermelon farmer.

Political activist.

Blues musician.

Now, at the age of seventy-seven, he finds himself attempting something few musicians ever attempt — writing a literary work of massive scale.

Along the way he also confronts more personal truths.

Slim speaks candidly about his sexuality, describing a life that has included relationships with both women and men — a reality he rarely discussed publicly in the deeply traditional culture of the Delta blues world.

But even these personal revelations connect to the larger themes of the film. Slim believes that truth — personal or political — must be spoken. Silence, he says, is the ally of authoritarianism.

The Northern Wilderness
When the train finally reaches the northern wilderness of Churchill, the landscape is vast and almost surreal.

Endless sky.

Wind sweeping across tundra and boreal forest.

The silence of the North stands in sharp contrast to the violence and chaos Slim has been writing about.

Here he performs a series of intimate concerts in the community. Between songs he reads fragments from The Kozyrev Option.

The audiences are sometimes puzzled.

Sometimes captivated.

For Slim, the music and the poetry have now become inseparable. The blues and the epic poem are two expressions of the same impulse: to tell the truth about suffering and power.

A Late-Life Mission
Slim understands that he is in the final chapter of his life.

But instead of slowing down, he has embarked on his most ambitious intellectual project.

The Kozyrev Option continues to grow — page after page, notebook after notebook.

He writes in hotel rooms, on trains, in diners, and backstage before performances. The poem becomes a living document of the times.

A record of war, propaganda, resistance, and moral confusion. In Slim’s mind the role of the artist is clear.

When history begins to tilt toward authoritarianism, the poet must speak. Even if few people are listening.

Final Movement
Near the end of the journey Slim stands outside in the northern wind. The horizon stretches endlessly.

He reads a passage from the poem — a meditation on power, war, and human stubbornness.

It is not a lecture.

It is a warning.

The blues has always been a music of survival.

Now Slim sees his writing as an extension of that tradition — a blues epic for the geopolitical age.

Closing Image
The train heads south again.

Slim sits quietly in his seat.

Notebook open.

He adds another line to the growing manuscript.

Eighty-two thousand lines — and still unfinished.

Outside the window the northern wilderness recedes into the distance. History continues.

And Slim keeps writing.