this August, James Baldwin will turn 100. we can all start preparing now. after reading about Amiri Baraka’s eulogy for him, i dug up it up last week (Baraka actually wrote enough eulogies to fill a book!). and his reverence for and faith in Baldwin glow, even in print:
“Between Jimmy’s smile and grace, his insistent elegance even as he damned you, even as he smote what evil was unfortunate, breathing or otherwise, to stumble his way. He was all the way live, all the way conscious, turned all the way up, receiving and broadcasting…”
“What he gave me, what he gave us, we perceived instantly and grew enormous inside because of it. That black warm truth. That invincible gesture of sacred human concern.”
“Jimmy’s smile of recognition alone would have lit up even the darker regions under the earth.”
i have seen some photos of Baldwin and some videos, and what always strikes me is the way he seemed to bore a hole into people’s heads (or straight into their hearts) with those watchful eyes of his. the man was paying attention at so many levels, even though it cost him a great deal.
Julia Cameron writes, “survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention…..The reward for attention is always healing.”1 JB paid attention, shared what he saw, invited all of us to heal—to imagine dignity for ourselves, to love in the shadow of white supremacist domination. Concern requires attention, love requires attention, endurance requires attention.
The immensity of attention he offered to life and to people meant that he told us the truth. His truths were and are sometimes hard to hear or even acknowledge, and they are so often beautiful. I am often left speechless reading or listening to him, stilled. Here comes Ross Gay “…one of the purposes of the beautiful, by the way, is to leave us, or rather bring us, to wordlessness. To grant us some silence.)”2
and the silence is beautiful too.
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, 53
Ross Gay, The Book of (More) Delights, 142
So rich, these reflections Kendall, thank you. 🙏🏼
And of JB, thank you Baraka: "He was all the way live, all the way conscious, turned all the way up, receiving and broadcasting…”. 💜