There is a bus that goes from Chinatown, NYC to Chinatown, D.C. for $40 roundtrip. Yesterday, I made the mad dash from 125th to East Broadway to catch the 6pm bus; I caught it without a moment to spare. Now, if hearing a different incomprehensible language at high decibels sounds like it might be extremely irritating, this mode of transportation is definitely not for you. I had many moments of jaw-tightening and teeth-grinding anger management, but eventually I acquiesed. I brought along Thomas Wirth's Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent because I needed to read something - I needed to awaken and stimulate something within me. So I read underneath my dim overhead lamp, almost without a choice, much like a convalescent who watches the IV drip deliver nourishment ...
I'm embarrassed by my own lack of literacy; I do not read nearly as often as I want to or should. I guess I took this book from my shelf, borrowed long ago, because I needed to see myself reflected in something. At first I didn't know why, but that must be the reason. Or maybe I needed to see what I could be - maybe the better possibility of that. Whenever I think of the Harlem Renaissance, I imagine sheer opulence - you know, with everybody being so dandy - as stereotypical as that sounds. And so literate and intelligent - and so invested in an identity of Blackness neatly folded (somewhat) into all of these things. Well, that illusion is falling away fast. The more I read about men like Nugent, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, as brilliant as they are, the less I can relate to them. Actually, I can relate more to this quote from Sterling Brown (even with its diaphanous homophobia):
I have no relationship to any Harlem Renaissance. When they [the writers and artists of that era] were down there flirting with Carl Van Vechten, I was down south talking to Big Boy [a principal informant in Brown's lifelong study of folklore]. One of the most conceited things I can say is I am proud that I have never shaken that rascal's hand ... He corrupted the Harlem Renaissance and was a terrible influence on them. He was a voyeur. He was looking at these Negroes and they were acting the fools for him. And the foolisher they acted, the more he recorded them.
When I am not writing, I have only a vague sense of being a writer. Although I always think of different portraits I want to take, different people, locales and lighting arrangements, I can't really call myself a photographer until someone else is looking at the picture. Being a web designer is more fluid, because so much of this is (or appears to be) automatic, but I spend many nights mesmerized by what other people (with obviously more creativity and/or intelligence and/or training and/or experience and/or resources than me) have been able to do. So, it is unnerving to live here, in this Harlem with such a weighty heritage of art, but it's an inheritance for which I clamor. I feel like someone, for some reason, is expecting me to take it further.
Next Monday is World AIDS Day. This year, there will be no public manifesto of measure - I'm just glad to have had another year to dream dreams and the constitution to take steps toward them, when I can. Which come to fruition? That might be an all-consuming wonder ... but there is still hope.
yup. you gotta rep by next monday. i’m absolutely hating that there’s no photo of me though. snif
Dear Donald,
I am expecting you to be you, that’s all. Fuck the Harlem Renaissance…as a guide. Your thing is to move and to love and to be creative—when and how you want. We love you for your work. I think the spector of the Renaissance can be daunting, but it’s ultimately besides the point when your pen hits the paper, or when you aim and shoot your camera, or diddle with HTML. Always move with your creative spirit and to those who would tell you to toe the line…the hell with them!
The one who reads your words and dances in your photos, SteveNNN
Welcome Back!
I second Steven’s sentiments. Langston and his crew just worked! They were too busy to worry about whether or not people were going to remember their work. Impact wasn’t important to them. You inspire me and I am thankful for knowing you and all of your work/art.
PS-I’m about to read the same book on Brother Nugent! What a coincidence.
(And I really don’t know the answer.)
Did they call it the Harlem Renaissance while they were in it? Or was that label attached to it by historians after the fact?
Me thinks folks just did their art cuz they needed to create, not cuz they said (with a haughty speech affectation), “Dahling, why don’t we brilliant young people band together and form a ‘Harlem Renaissance’?”
Babe,
You know I don’t and won’t disregard the past—hardly. But I do think that far too many of us feel a responsibility to do things in a way that we think will appease those who came before us. I think the more healthier approach should center on what we have to give as who we are, and not what we think we should be. We are everything because of our past—I agree. But that past should help, not hinder, us be the ones we are supposed to be.
“Fuck the Harlem Renaissance” is actually healthy to say when it blocks your creative way. Fuck all of it, really. I look at cultural movements as grandparents. They should guide and point out where there might be roadblocks or problems ahead, but that’s it. I am clear that what I am interested in doing is built on a creative tradition and I am clear that if that tradition blocks my vision, hampers me, or makes me feel like what I have to say needs to be edited or censored, then that cultural movement needs to be set aside, period. I know something about being a part of conversation that is art. I have something to say. I can take my cue from the past, but I have something wholly wonderful to say that Langston, Zora, Bruce, Wally and all the rest of them could not, did not say because they are not me. They said theirs, I have to say mine. It’s all good for everyone.
I am interested in the best you; the one who’s ideas aren’t being held hostage by gatekeepers of some tradition that sort of oddly shaped. Sure I feel the energy of my forebearers. But I view my responsibility in terms of being myself, which is the best thing I can be.
But you undrestand all of this. I am willing to be a bit raw with my words because I think certain conversations need to occur so that we all can be better. And by the way, you’ve left a hellava legacy already with the websites you’ve designed. You can take credit for helping me go “global” as it were. I watch you, Donald. Your taking baby steps toward your “art,” but it’s already happening. And how. Celebrate that. If not you, then who?
Be good to your self. And say fuck ‘em a little more often. It’s like taking an enema, and a lot less messy.
Best, Steven
Donald, though I’ve never actually posted a message until now to your page, I have actually been reading your words for sometime. Your letters to yourself, the ones where you say all the things that need to be said, with no holds barred. Those shit’s really helped me go and do the things I often find myself too afraid to do.
I have to agree with Steven, too often do we look back and expect the past to dictate our current travels. I do it. I often feel I have to follow a set, set of footprints in order to be recieved as a literary voice. Or, that I must go through other people and get their approval before I proceed. Laughs out loud
I am here, just as you are, to change the world; to challenge trends; to set new heights.
We are tomorrow’s legends…