WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.230 --> 00:00:10.300 align:middle line:84% So like many of us, we experienced the pandemic 00:00:10.300 --> 00:00:13.690 align:middle line:84% alone and together to some degree. 00:00:13.690 --> 00:00:22.900 align:middle line:84% And after the pandemic and particularly during the pandemic 00:00:22.900 --> 00:00:26.230 align:middle line:84% when there were the protests of Ahmaud Arbery's death and George 00:00:26.230 --> 00:00:27.700 align:middle line:90% Floyd, it brought back-- 00:00:27.700 --> 00:00:31.487 align:middle line:84% sometimes you forget very traumatic-- rightfully 00:00:31.487 --> 00:00:33.320 align:middle line:84% so you should forget very traumatic moments. 00:00:33.320 --> 00:00:34.362 align:middle line:90% You can't live with them. 00:00:34.362 --> 00:00:36.880 align:middle line:84% And I started remembering moments of run-ins 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:40.450 align:middle line:90% that I've had with the police. 00:00:40.450 --> 00:00:45.000 align:middle line:90% And sometimes I would get-- 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:49.370 align:middle line:84% I would call it like a sitting sickness where I couldn't move. 00:00:49.370 --> 00:00:51.320 align:middle line:84% I would be somewhere and I would-- 00:00:51.320 --> 00:00:53.780 align:middle line:90% I just couldn't move. 00:00:53.780 --> 00:01:00.350 align:middle line:84% I would finish a run or finish riding out on a trail somewhere 00:01:00.350 --> 00:01:05.080 align:middle line:84% and I just-- would sit in my car because I couldn't move. 00:01:05.080 --> 00:01:10.380 align:middle line:84% And so I started thinking about and writing letters 00:01:10.380 --> 00:01:22.570 align:middle line:84% to Michael Brown in 2014, 2015 and here's a letter. 00:01:22.570 --> 00:01:24.990 align:middle line:84% It's from my book of essays called Dark Days. 00:01:24.990 --> 00:01:27.290 align:middle line:90% July 22, 2022. 00:01:27.290 --> 00:01:31.030 align:middle line:84% Dear Michael, I'm in a parking lot and cannot convince myself 00:01:31.030 --> 00:01:33.620 align:middle line:84% to start my truck and drive home. 00:01:33.620 --> 00:01:37.130 align:middle line:84% The fear of dying, being killed by a police officer 00:01:37.130 --> 00:01:38.570 align:middle line:90% overwhelms me. 00:01:38.570 --> 00:01:41.310 align:middle line:84% I lean on my one leg hanging out of the truck, 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:43.960 align:middle line:84% my foot stuck against the pavement. 00:01:43.960 --> 00:01:45.940 align:middle line:84% The pavement glitters as if someone-- 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:47.920 align:middle line:90% if-- excuse me. 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:52.000 align:middle line:84% The pavement glitters as if some intergalactic glass or star 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:55.900 align:middle line:84% exploded and emptied its corpse all over the asphalt. 00:01:55.900 --> 00:01:57.730 align:middle line:84% When I'm done tracing the slivers of glass 00:01:57.730 --> 00:02:00.100 align:middle line:84% with my eyes I look up, the evening sky 00:02:00.100 --> 00:02:01.930 align:middle line:84% cast off its intense blue of the day 00:02:01.930 --> 00:02:03.970 align:middle line:90% for softer pinks and oranges. 00:02:03.970 --> 00:02:07.750 align:middle line:84% And there I am below it despite distracting myself 00:02:07.750 --> 00:02:09.780 align:middle line:84% with the grace of shapes and colors 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:13.060 align:middle line:84% thinking of you, Philando Castile, George 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:14.660 align:middle line:90% Floyd, and Sandra Bland. 00:02:14.660 --> 00:02:17.330 align:middle line:84% Black men and women whose death waited for them, 00:02:17.330 --> 00:02:20.410 align:middle line:84% found them on the road, their assassins 00:02:20.410 --> 00:02:22.810 align:middle line:90% taking the shape of the police. 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:25.580 align:middle line:84% Dusk dips its head and yields the night 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:27.920 align:middle line:84% and I am still here remembering your deaths, 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:31.900 align:middle line:84% not wanting to leave because at least here I am alive 00:02:31.900 --> 00:02:35.800 align:middle line:84% and the police nowhere near the warm aroma of cedar and chlorine 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:37.220 align:middle line:90% burnishing the evening. 00:02:37.220 --> 00:02:40.240 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I lift my head and try to drag the smell of cedar 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:42.430 align:middle line:84% into me, but the fumes of the chlorine which 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:44.600 align:middle line:84% is used to sanitize the water, jumping out 00:02:44.600 --> 00:02:47.300 align:middle line:84% of spray nozzles in the ground, water pouring down 00:02:47.300 --> 00:02:49.610 align:middle line:84% from pink and yellow umbrellas and mushrooms 00:02:49.610 --> 00:02:51.830 align:middle line:84% at the little water park across from the parking lot 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:55.460 align:middle line:84% we call a splash pad here in Texas, it's too strong. 00:02:55.460 --> 00:03:00.440 align:middle line:84% So tonight being alive but being paralyzed in this living 00:03:00.440 --> 00:03:04.570 align:middle line:84% smells like chlorine with a faint hint of cedar beneath it. 00:03:04.570 --> 00:03:07.480 align:middle line:84% And beneath the canopy of the late summer 00:03:07.480 --> 00:03:11.550 align:middle line:84% heat, a shirtless man sitting at a green picnic table. 00:03:11.550 --> 00:03:14.640 align:middle line:90% 00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:18.510 align:middle line:84% His black-- his back to the splash pad, a cigarette in one 00:03:18.510 --> 00:03:21.360 align:middle line:84% hand, his small dog at his feet pulling 00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:24.260 align:middle line:84% at the leash tethered to the metal legs of the table. 00:03:24.260 --> 00:03:27.760 align:middle line:84% This will be living in service distraction from dying. 00:03:27.760 --> 00:03:30.390 align:middle line:84% The man's finger whisks along the screen of the phone 00:03:30.390 --> 00:03:33.360 align:middle line:84% and for a moment, I forget about dying, meeting my death out 00:03:33.360 --> 00:03:36.030 align:middle line:84% on the road and become absorbed and watching the man 00:03:36.030 --> 00:03:38.460 align:middle line:84% scroll through whatever causes the 5 o'clock 00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:41.820 align:middle line:84% shadow around his mouth to lift into a smile. 00:03:41.820 --> 00:03:43.500 align:middle line:90% What does he love? 00:03:43.500 --> 00:03:44.760 align:middle line:90% What makes him smile? 00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:47.610 align:middle line:84% So clearly, he loves the dog at his bare feet 00:03:47.610 --> 00:03:49.650 align:middle line:84% that he shushes after it yips and yips 00:03:49.650 --> 00:03:52.320 align:middle line:84% at the children who chase each other beneath the umbrellas 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:56.310 align:middle line:84% of water, leaping through the water, shooting from the ground. 00:03:56.310 --> 00:03:58.950 align:middle line:84% And obviously the man loves an evening cigarette 00:03:58.950 --> 00:04:00.330 align:middle line:90% in the middle of a drought. 00:04:00.330 --> 00:04:03.840 align:middle line:84% The smoke lifting up from his face curling and disappearing. 00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:07.080 align:middle line:84% For a moment, I want to feel the relief that an evening 00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:08.580 align:middle line:90% cigarette brings. 00:04:08.580 --> 00:04:10.350 align:middle line:84% Instead, the white cigarette in his hand 00:04:10.350 --> 00:04:12.660 align:middle line:84% throws me down in memory into thinking 00:04:12.660 --> 00:04:14.500 align:middle line:84% about the black and white television 00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:17.380 align:middle line:84% footage of Palestinian novelist, playwright, journalist 00:04:17.380 --> 00:04:20.630 align:middle line:84% and political leader Ghassan Kanafani discussing his people, 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:22.720 align:middle line:84% Palestinians defending themselves 00:04:22.720 --> 00:04:25.990 align:middle line:84% from a fascist government and Zionist terror. 00:04:25.990 --> 00:04:28.420 align:middle line:84% I don't quite know why the cigarette reminds me 00:04:28.420 --> 00:04:30.880 align:middle line:84% of Kanafani; in none of the television footage 00:04:30.880 --> 00:04:33.790 align:middle line:84% is he smoking, though someone next to him at a news conference 00:04:33.790 --> 00:04:36.260 align:middle line:84% appears to be holding something like a cigarette, 00:04:36.260 --> 00:04:38.260 align:middle line:84% though there is no invisible-- no visible smoke 00:04:38.260 --> 00:04:39.400 align:middle line:90% wafting from it. 00:04:39.400 --> 00:04:42.770 align:middle line:84% Maybe it's the barefoot man's face, the tilt of his head, 00:04:42.770 --> 00:04:45.160 align:middle line:84% the bushiness of his mustache, the way 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:47.570 align:middle line:84% he balances the cigarette between his fingers, 00:04:47.570 --> 00:04:51.640 align:middle line:84% the tenderness of it, that reminds me of Kanafani. 00:04:51.640 --> 00:04:55.640 align:middle line:84% If you listen to Kanafani's interviews, to his firmness, 00:04:55.640 --> 00:04:58.490 align:middle line:84% you might question and reject my assertion of tenderness. 00:04:58.490 --> 00:05:00.850 align:middle line:84% But even his unyielding persistence 00:05:00.850 --> 00:05:03.010 align:middle line:84% in the dipping of his head toward the reporters who 00:05:03.010 --> 00:05:05.470 align:middle line:84% interview him as if he might suddenly lock shoulders 00:05:05.470 --> 00:05:07.120 align:middle line:84% with them and wrestle them to the floor 00:05:07.120 --> 00:05:09.430 align:middle line:84% there in that motion, in that wrestling 00:05:09.430 --> 00:05:12.220 align:middle line:84% lives, gentleness, a love, something I 00:05:12.220 --> 00:05:15.340 align:middle line:84% might call soft and pliant, something like the way smoke 00:05:15.340 --> 00:05:19.160 align:middle line:84% wreaths and bends itself around any hard thing it encounters. 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:22.090 align:middle line:84% Maybe it's the whiteness of the barefoot man's cigarette 00:05:22.090 --> 00:05:23.780 align:middle line:90% that reminds me of Kanafani. 00:05:23.780 --> 00:05:25.510 align:middle line:84% The whiteness of the cigarette, very much 00:05:25.510 --> 00:05:28.420 align:middle line:84% like the whiteness of Kanafani's shirt in an interview 00:05:28.420 --> 00:05:31.030 align:middle line:84% with Richard Carleton, an Australian journalist 00:05:31.030 --> 00:05:34.450 align:middle line:84% who dismissed the Palestinian struggle for self-determination 00:05:34.450 --> 00:05:38.170 align:middle line:84% as a conflict, as a civil war in 1970 00:05:38.170 --> 00:05:41.290 align:middle line:84% rather than as what it was, and is, 00:05:41.290 --> 00:05:45.140 align:middle line:84% a liberation movement fighting for justice. 00:05:45.140 --> 00:05:47.960 align:middle line:84% It is in that interview where Kanafani declares 00:05:47.960 --> 00:05:49.610 align:middle line:84% that talks or discussions of peace 00:05:49.610 --> 00:05:52.790 align:middle line:84% between Palestinian peoples and the Israeli state 00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:57.620 align:middle line:84% is a conversation between the sword and the neck. 00:05:57.620 --> 00:06:01.460 align:middle line:84% A conversation that ends in liberation or death. 00:06:01.460 --> 00:06:03.960 align:middle line:90% The sword and the neck. 00:06:03.960 --> 00:06:07.610 align:middle line:84% This the conversation between Black people in America. 00:06:07.610 --> 00:06:10.710 align:middle line:84% A conversation had and a conversation to be had. 00:06:10.710 --> 00:06:12.920 align:middle line:84% However, while sitting in this parking lot watching 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:16.160 align:middle line:84% the first daubs of night smear across the bottom of the sky 00:06:16.160 --> 00:06:17.930 align:middle line:84% and unfold a barefoot man smoking 00:06:17.930 --> 00:06:21.260 align:middle line:84% a cigarette in its cloak, it is Kanafani's strange feeling 00:06:21.260 --> 00:06:24.050 align:middle line:84% that he wrote about in a letter to a friend that has sent me 00:06:24.050 --> 00:06:28.405 align:middle line:84% thinking of you, writing to you, Michael, after all these years. 00:06:28.405 --> 00:06:31.530 align:middle line:90% 00:06:31.530 --> 00:06:36.480 align:middle line:84% My feelings are very strange, writes Kanafani. 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:39.870 align:middle line:84% They are the feelings of a man who is on his way 00:06:39.870 --> 00:06:42.270 align:middle line:84% somewhere in search of suitable work 00:06:42.270 --> 00:06:46.350 align:middle line:84% when he died suddenly on the road. 00:06:46.350 --> 00:06:47.910 align:middle line:84% When I read this quote, I thought 00:06:47.910 --> 00:06:50.410 align:middle line:84% of you and George Floyd, who had died on the road. 00:06:50.410 --> 00:06:53.070 align:middle line:84% And then I thought of Sandra Bland, who was on her way 00:06:53.070 --> 00:06:55.560 align:middle line:90% somewhere and died on the road. 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.180 align:middle line:84% Did you two have a strange feeling? 00:06:58.180 --> 00:07:00.870 align:middle line:84% Kanafani's uneasy feeling anticipated his death 00:07:00.870 --> 00:07:02.350 align:middle line:90% 13 years later. 00:07:02.350 --> 00:07:05.650 align:middle line:84% Mossad, the Israeli National Intelligence Agency, 00:07:05.650 --> 00:07:07.560 align:middle line:84% planted a bomb beneath his car that 00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:11.560 align:middle line:84% detonated, assassinating him and killing his beloved young niece. 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:14.220 align:middle line:84% Like you, he was a man on the way towards something 00:07:14.220 --> 00:07:16.310 align:middle line:84% and suddenly found his death on the road. 00:07:16.310 --> 00:07:18.850 align:middle line:84% Neither of you had the privilege of a calm death, 00:07:18.850 --> 00:07:22.380 align:middle line:84% but rather the death of the sword in the neck. 00:07:22.380 --> 00:07:28.110 align:middle line:84% A death that comes about because you live in a time of hostility. 00:07:28.110 --> 00:07:31.170 align:middle line:84% In war, Kanafani writes, the winds of peace 00:07:31.170 --> 00:07:35.680 align:middle line:84% gather the combatants to repose truce, tranquility, 00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:37.470 align:middle line:90% the holiday of retreat. 00:07:37.470 --> 00:07:42.120 align:middle line:84% But this is not so with hostilities, which are never 00:07:42.120 --> 00:07:45.630 align:middle line:84% more than a gun shot away, where you are always walking 00:07:45.630 --> 00:07:48.690 align:middle line:90% miraculously between the shots. 00:07:48.690 --> 00:07:52.380 align:middle line:84% This without the hint of peace, this lack of repose 00:07:52.380 --> 00:07:53.830 align:middle line:90% is where I find myself. 00:07:53.830 --> 00:07:56.310 align:middle line:84% Miraculously somewhere between the bullets and the winds 00:07:56.310 --> 00:07:58.620 align:middle line:84% of peace, fettered and jailed somewhere else 00:07:58.620 --> 00:08:01.720 align:middle line:84% is what keeps me staring out into the dark shapes, 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:04.170 align:middle line:84% turning in the night, watching a man smoke 00:08:04.170 --> 00:08:06.700 align:middle line:90% a cigarette in the dark. 00:08:06.700 --> 00:08:08.950 align:middle line:90% Where am I between the bullets? 00:08:08.950 --> 00:08:10.660 align:middle line:84% Where are the bullets and do any of them 00:08:10.660 --> 00:08:13.000 align:middle line:90% know my name as they knew yours? 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.730 align:middle line:84% While the nation might pretend to know our names calling 00:08:15.730 --> 00:08:18.680 align:middle line:84% US urban youth or super predator, 00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:21.310 align:middle line:84% the bullets of the nation do know 00:08:21.310 --> 00:08:24.070 align:middle line:84% that they rush to tear our lives from our flesh, 00:08:24.070 --> 00:08:27.780 align:middle line:84% leave us as the refuse of safety of progress. 00:08:27.780 --> 00:08:29.560 align:middle line:84% The bullets plowing the fertile landscapes 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:33.130 align:middle line:84% of our bodies, our deaths, the blood that causes the corn 00:08:33.130 --> 00:08:34.520 align:middle line:90% and wheat to rise. 00:08:34.520 --> 00:08:37.630 align:middle line:84% I hope none of the bullets are calling out to me. 00:08:37.630 --> 00:08:40.539 align:middle line:84% Sometime I'm dizzy and overwhelmed by the echo 00:08:40.539 --> 00:08:41.780 align:middle line:90% of deaths like yours. 00:08:41.780 --> 00:08:45.400 align:middle line:84% Deaths that come by the assassin in his blue uniform and contempt 00:08:45.400 --> 00:08:46.400 align:middle line:90% for our lives. 00:08:46.400 --> 00:08:48.430 align:middle line:84% Your death, the memory of it comes upon me 00:08:48.430 --> 00:08:50.470 align:middle line:84% with the rush of a slamming car door. 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:53.620 align:middle line:84% While driving home one morning after a run along the Colorado 00:08:53.620 --> 00:08:56.810 align:middle line:84% River last summer, the summer after George Floyd's murder, 00:08:56.810 --> 00:08:59.900 align:middle line:84% the sky's new blue sprawled out and wet before me, 00:08:59.900 --> 00:09:02.930 align:middle line:84% the last words of George Floyd flooded me. 00:09:02.930 --> 00:09:07.070 align:middle line:84% Floyd, a man choked to death by Minneapolis police officer Derek 00:09:07.070 --> 00:09:07.740 align:middle line:90% Chauvin. 00:09:07.740 --> 00:09:14.180 align:middle line:84% His assassin knelt upon his pleading, Mama, I can't breathe. 00:09:14.180 --> 00:09:17.120 align:middle line:84% Floyd's mother, no longer alive, but the only solace 00:09:17.120 --> 00:09:19.910 align:middle line:84% he could request or reach for as his life 00:09:19.910 --> 00:09:21.830 align:middle line:90% was being throttled from him. 00:09:21.830 --> 00:09:25.220 align:middle line:84% Sitting in the cage of the car, the car whisking over 00:09:25.220 --> 00:09:27.350 align:middle line:84% the newly laid asphalt on a highway 00:09:27.350 --> 00:09:31.380 align:middle line:84% who could not turn from the phrase his voice, Mama, 00:09:31.380 --> 00:09:32.850 align:middle line:90% I can't breathe. 00:09:32.850 --> 00:09:36.050 align:middle line:84% I drove down the highway with a thunder and gray of that 00:09:36.050 --> 00:09:37.680 align:middle line:90% sadness moving inside me. 00:09:37.680 --> 00:09:40.580 align:middle line:84% The irony of such a blue sky in front of me 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:45.030 align:middle line:84% and could do nothing but cry and drive. 00:09:45.030 --> 00:09:47.670 align:middle line:84% Today, the sadness over the seeming disposability 00:09:47.670 --> 00:09:51.120 align:middle line:84% of our lives will not let me up, will not 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:52.710 align:middle line:90% let me out of this parking lot. 00:09:52.710 --> 00:09:55.157 align:middle line:84% I don't allow myself to cry because if I do, 00:09:55.157 --> 00:09:57.490 align:middle line:84% I might not be able to get up from beneath that darkness 00:09:57.490 --> 00:09:58.330 align:middle line:90% and go home. 00:09:58.330 --> 00:10:02.170 align:middle line:84% Once I let myself fall beneath such a sadness, 00:10:02.170 --> 00:10:06.120 align:middle line:84% a deep down sadness that kept me latched to a friend's bedroom 00:10:06.120 --> 00:10:09.180 align:middle line:90% floor, crying for a whole day. 00:10:09.180 --> 00:10:11.820 align:middle line:84% A sharp pain that from my ear down into my neck 00:10:11.820 --> 00:10:15.340 align:middle line:84% wouldn't let me rest, kept me up at night, clutching my head, 00:10:15.340 --> 00:10:17.970 align:middle line:84% unable to control or bring down any semblance of peace 00:10:17.970 --> 00:10:18.940 align:middle line:90% or relief. 00:10:18.940 --> 00:10:22.350 align:middle line:84% It was the first time that I had felt an ailment, a suffering 00:10:22.350 --> 00:10:24.220 align:middle line:90% that seemed to have no end. 00:10:24.220 --> 00:10:28.900 align:middle line:84% I started to cry because of the pain. 00:10:28.900 --> 00:10:31.100 align:middle line:90% Going to jump down. 00:10:31.100 --> 00:10:32.810 align:middle line:90% I call my partner. 00:10:32.810 --> 00:10:34.918 align:middle line:84% Normally, I sit wherever I find myself 00:10:34.918 --> 00:10:36.710 align:middle line:84% with these memories and disturbing thoughts 00:10:36.710 --> 00:10:38.990 align:middle line:84% until they dull or I become distracted 00:10:38.990 --> 00:10:41.750 align:middle line:84% or can force myself to jab the key into the ignition 00:10:41.750 --> 00:10:44.250 align:middle line:84% and allow my feet and hands to guide me home. 00:10:44.250 --> 00:10:47.600 align:middle line:84% My brain turned off, languishing in the malaise 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:50.590 align:middle line:84% of weathering this visitation of those spirits. 00:10:50.590 --> 00:10:52.890 align:middle line:84% But today I couldn't get the pass-- 00:10:52.890 --> 00:10:56.990 align:middle line:84% couldn't get past the memory of the dead and my potential dying. 00:10:56.990 --> 00:11:00.920 align:middle line:84% You think these thoughts because you're alone, my partner said. 00:11:00.920 --> 00:11:03.530 align:middle line:84% Alone as in you're not with your people. 00:11:03.530 --> 00:11:06.020 align:middle line:84% Community keeps the graveyard and the potential bullets 00:11:06.020 --> 00:11:08.520 align:middle line:84% that seek to push you beneath its lawn at bay. 00:11:08.520 --> 00:11:10.550 align:middle line:84% Muzzles and measures grief allows 00:11:10.550 --> 00:11:14.570 align:middle line:84% us to touch lives we've been denied like Baby Suggs and Toni 00:11:14.570 --> 00:11:15.980 align:middle line:90% Morrison's Beloved. 00:11:15.980 --> 00:11:17.870 align:middle line:84% In the novel, Suggs takes everyone 00:11:17.870 --> 00:11:20.300 align:middle line:84% in the community, a community of runaways and survivors 00:11:20.300 --> 00:11:23.270 align:middle line:84% of slavery, out to a grove in the woods near their homes 00:11:23.270 --> 00:11:26.990 align:middle line:84% to cry and laugh so they can get closer to themselves. 00:11:26.990 --> 00:11:30.810 align:middle line:84% Closer to what has denied them and what they denied themselves 00:11:30.810 --> 00:11:34.780 align:middle line:84% during slavery, their lives and love unfettered, messy. 00:11:34.780 --> 00:11:38.110 align:middle line:84% We share our sadnesses, our griefs, our hurts, our lives, 00:11:38.110 --> 00:11:40.200 align:middle line:84% our love with our community, so in order 00:11:40.200 --> 00:11:42.640 align:middle line:84% to reckon with them, which is to say, feel them, 00:11:42.640 --> 00:11:44.770 align:middle line:90% we have to do it with others. 00:11:44.770 --> 00:11:48.210 align:middle line:84% We have to laugh a hysterical laugh while crying hysterically 00:11:48.210 --> 00:11:49.300 align:middle line:90% in the next moment. 00:11:49.300 --> 00:11:51.930 align:middle line:84% And we must do it together in a grove sometimes 00:11:51.930 --> 00:11:54.520 align:middle line:84% and in the streets, in boulevards of America, 00:11:54.520 --> 00:11:56.820 align:middle line:84% at other times, in a sort of study group. 00:11:56.820 --> 00:12:00.970 align:middle line:84% In the parking lot, I am by myself without directive, 00:12:00.970 --> 00:12:02.410 align:middle line:90% without a grove of my people. 00:12:02.410 --> 00:12:05.490 align:middle line:84% So my grief is just running wild all through me without anyone 00:12:05.490 --> 00:12:07.810 align:middle line:84% to adjust or help me understand its darkness. 00:12:07.810 --> 00:12:10.590 align:middle line:84% I am neither sitting on a porch nor in the bottom 00:12:10.590 --> 00:12:13.560 align:middle line:84% of a church with an elder who has been down to the river 00:12:13.560 --> 00:12:17.490 align:middle line:84% and down at the cross to return what was left after America 00:12:17.490 --> 00:12:18.580 align:middle line:90% was through with it-- 00:12:18.580 --> 00:12:19.930 align:middle line:90% through with them. 00:12:19.930 --> 00:12:24.000 align:middle line:84% Which makes me think of James Baldwin and the stories 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:27.300 align:middle line:84% you hear of him sitting in dorm rooms with college students 00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:29.070 align:middle line:84% after giving a lecture or reading 00:12:29.070 --> 00:12:32.220 align:middle line:84% all of them grappling with the consternation, difficulty 00:12:32.220 --> 00:12:34.980 align:middle line:84% and grief of trying to live, love, and thrive 00:12:34.980 --> 00:12:39.580 align:middle line:84% in a country that seems to want its opposite. 00:12:39.580 --> 00:12:40.880 align:middle line:90% I can see it. 00:12:40.880 --> 00:12:44.320 align:middle line:84% James Baldwin sitting on a couch in some dormitory apartment 00:12:44.320 --> 00:12:47.180 align:middle line:84% building in Washington DC or Atlanta, 00:12:47.180 --> 00:12:49.360 align:middle line:84% his legs crossed, a burning down cigarette 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:51.500 align:middle line:84% in one hand, the smoke wafting above his head, 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:53.330 align:middle line:90% forming a large, lazy halo. 00:12:53.330 --> 00:12:55.250 align:middle line:84% A gaggle of students leaning toward him, 00:12:55.250 --> 00:12:56.560 align:middle line:90% peppering with questions. 00:12:56.560 --> 00:13:01.340 align:middle line:84% One student asks, why must Black people die in order 00:13:01.340 --> 00:13:03.500 align:middle line:90% for the nation to live? 00:13:03.500 --> 00:13:06.960 align:middle line:84% I imagine Baldwin leaning toward them saying, 00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:11.610 align:middle line:84% because that baby is what it means to be a nation. 00:13:11.610 --> 00:13:13.540 align:middle line:84% And he'd take a drag of his cigarette, 00:13:13.540 --> 00:13:15.900 align:middle line:84% blow it across the living room and the students 00:13:15.900 --> 00:13:18.450 align:middle line:84% and let the words and smoke settle over their shoulders 00:13:18.450 --> 00:13:20.620 align:middle line:90% and eyes before continuing. 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:24.650 align:middle line:84% And America, while it's sure it wants to be a nation, 00:13:24.650 --> 00:13:27.100 align:middle line:84% Baldwin continues, deludes itself 00:13:27.100 --> 00:13:30.520 align:middle line:84% daily about the cost of that ambition. 00:13:30.520 --> 00:13:36.790 align:middle line:84% The cost being you and me and itself. 00:13:36.790 --> 00:13:41.700 align:middle line:84% America will kill itself in order to become itself. 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:43.890 align:middle line:90% But what will it have? 00:13:43.890 --> 00:13:46.210 align:middle line:90% What will it have? 00:13:46.210 --> 00:13:48.550 align:middle line:84% Is this the work that you, we have 00:13:48.550 --> 00:13:51.890 align:middle line:84% found on the road, the cost, the price of the nation? 00:13:51.890 --> 00:13:54.500 align:middle line:84% Must our lives always be remanded to symbol, 00:13:54.500 --> 00:13:56.960 align:middle line:84% to spectacle, to commodity, to exchange, 00:13:56.960 --> 00:13:59.560 align:middle line:84% to historical marker or announcement 00:13:59.560 --> 00:14:02.470 align:middle line:84% for some cultural, political shift needed? 00:14:02.470 --> 00:14:05.170 align:middle line:84% When can we find ourselves on the road 00:14:05.170 --> 00:14:07.630 align:middle line:84% without the strange feeling of our deaths 00:14:07.630 --> 00:14:10.180 align:middle line:90% at the back of our necks? 00:14:10.180 --> 00:14:11.650 align:middle line:90% Come home, says my partner. 00:14:11.650 --> 00:14:14.400 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:19.000 align:middle line:90%