In light of Colin Kaepernick's recent protest, choosing to sit during the national anthem, I wanted to bring out this old piece I shared as a guest speaker for the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop in spring of 2014. In it I posit that the act of sitting down, for black people in America, is nothing short of revolutionary. It has been since (and well before) Rosa Parks, and continues to be in light of circumstances. For those of you that don't know, this happened also in the 1970's NBA with Rucker Park legend Charlie Yelverton.
***
As Black
people, we have been fed the lie that the Black body is an “Always Able” body,
with no time to rest, feel safe, or breathe easy. Though there isn’t one of us
who can live up to these unrealistic expectation whiteness forces upon us, we
still belittle and shame our kin. Black People, it is time to reclaim our Black
bodies as our own.
We don’t have
to “do” anything or “go” anywhere to be revolutionary and worthy of love,
family, and community. Our mere existence as people on the margins of
society—as Black, Queer/Trans, Chronic, Poor, and all the other labels we use
to define our unique intersections—IS revolutionary.
My relationship to basketball and the concept of
the height advantage is fraught. I guess. Last I checked I was 5’4”. That’s
what my driver’s license says. Langston Hughes was purportedly 5’4”. Prince is
supposedly 5’2”. Muggsy Bogues; 5’3”. Freddie Patek; 5’4”. So I count myself in
excellent company. I learned with time that height does not define our ability
to be great or accomplished. Even still, I knew the great machine of American
basketball would never be available to me. I gave up on basketball at the tail
end of the Jordan era when it was apparent I wasn’t getting any taller. In any
case I recently had the good fortune of meeting a beautiful lady named C.B.
Yelverton. She told me a remarkable story about her personal hero and brother,
Charles “Charlie” Yelverton. She so clearly admired and reveled in the story of
her brother that I was moved. The story, according to C.B.: Charlie was a
basketball star at Fordham in the late sixties. Some of you may remember, or
know the history. He was drafted by the Portland Trailblazers in 1971 and
signed to a three year contract. This was in a time when most NBA teams wouldn’t
allow any more than two black ballplayers on the court at a time. So Charlie,
with his teammates, devised a plan to peacefully protest by sitting
while everyone else stood for the national anthem. When the moment of truth
came, Charlie’s teammates did not follow through, effectively leaving Charlie
alone in his protest. Charlie was ultimately cut from the team (although he was
paid, per contract stipulations, for the next two years) and he moved to Italy
where he continued to play basketball. There he became a kind of local legend,
beloved by Italian basketball fans, and jazz musicians alike. (Charlie is an
adept saxophone player) Charlie is the hero you’ve
likely never heard of. His story is largely forgotten by most Americans born
after the Reagan era. And it all, in my mind, sits squarely on his decision to sit
down.
So this essay is on Sitzfleisch; or, the
sometimes revolutionary and always controversial choice to sit down. Sitzfleisch
is a lovely German word which signifies “sitting endurance”. Sitzfleisch
implies staying power, fixity, focus. According to the wiktionary: the
ability to endure or carry on with an activity; [an] ability to sit
still. But before we further discuss Sitzfleisch let’s talk shop.
***
The circumstances of our induction into the
so-called industry of writing will never be more than personal testimony. Which
is to say, there is no formula. An innocuous example: J.K. Rowling. Perhaps you
know the story of J.K. Rowling writing fragments of what would become the Harry
Potter series (one of my personal favorites) on the backs of napkins in cafes
because she was too poor and destitute to do otherwise. There are several rags
to riches stories like Ms. Rowling’s chronicling a miraculous ascent from
poverty to wealth all because of an exceptional imagination.
In my experience there’s no accounting for who
and what is published. I think of Kafka—and the fact of his posthumous
success. The time and energy spent thinking about the publishing industry can
be used more efficiently elsewhere. Discussion of the industry invariably leads
to formulaic conventions of craft, marketability, statistics—all of which
reflect an economic reality which is neither real, nor fair. Business Insider reports Creative
Writing as #2 on a list of the 10 most competitive jobs in America. Poorly
written works are published monthly and now daily with the advent of blogging
and e-publishing—two very useful tools in the democratization of the written
word, but which still exist on the fringe of the so-called industry.
The question is: Who and what gauges the quality
of our written works? What distinguishes a poorly written novel from a well
written novel or essay or collection of poems? We as writers should be concerned
not with the industry, not with editors or professors or the academy. To be
concerned with a single person or notion of agency delimits the significance of
being a writer. Being a writer, asserts the ontological condition of
freedom. You are bound to your own work and your work comes unbounded from you,
and the rest of your energy is a negotiation with the perfection of the process
by which you mediate your work and its production. You are free and as a writer
you must accept this.
Easier said than done.
Intention is crucial, and often dictates the
forms and media which adequately shape our expression. But artistic intention
and integrity are frequently in conflict with market demand. What you intend,
even if possessed of a singular quality, may not be de rigueur in the various
economies which perpetuate the industry.
I was asked once by my best friend if I believed
poetry could heal. Quickly and cynically I responded: no—thinking of cancer and
what general disease and the march of time can do to a body. But after much
thought and revision I realized definitively that, no, poetry cannot
heal, in the strict sense of the word. It does not cure disease or stitch open
wounds. What poetry does is mend. It mends the chasm between what is beyond the
ken of human understanding and what is meaningful, relatable, graspable. Think
of Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journals. Poetry is the primary agent for the
development of causal relationships and psychic continuity. In this
respect, what we do as poets and writers is essential. We hold the fabric of
reality in our palms—and this is not hyperbole—this is a fact of what we do and
that is why, for good or bad, we do it. I believe Nas when he raps “I’m deep by
sound alone/ caved inside a thousand miles from home”
So I'm unconcerned with publication (or a lack
thereof) insofar as I understand and believe that what is vital, as a rule,
cannot be ignored. If the work is vital it is necessary to the well-being of
the people.
So again, who and what gauges the quality of our
written works?
My answer?
The standards by which we write are gauged
against the high water mark of our ancestors, our predecessors and
contemporaries. Not only do we contend with the writers and poets, but the
musicians, the painters and sculptors. We assimilate the full breadth of life
and art that precedes us and walks with us. Why? Because they do it for We
as James Baldwin defines We in “The Price of the Ticket”, “We: my
family, the living and the dead, and the children coming along behind us.” This
is what sits at the center of every mytho-poetic tradition, every
literary tradition.
One practical means of gauging the importance and
significance of your work is reading to your family. They know you and put up
with your shit. If they’re amenable, read to them. And if they feel it in their
hearts, in their minds—when your writing can speak to those people closest to
you, then you’re on the right track.
So the task of the writer, the divine calling so
to speak, is a sustained meditation on and wrestling with the angel of history.
It is a metaphysical, supertemporal discourse with the world as constructed.
This Jacobean agon requires time and study. This is study
in the sense delineated by Fred Moten’s in his coauthored marvel of a book “The
Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study” Jack Halberstam in his
introduction provides a concise definition of study: “…a mode of thinking with
others separate from the thinking that the institution requires of you…”
But
the student has a habit, a bad habit. She studies. She studies but she does not
learn. If she learned they could measure her progress, establish her
attributes, give her credit. But the student keeps studying, keeps planning to
study, keeps running to study, keeps studying a plan, keeps elaborating a debt.
The student does not intend to pay. (62)
This is the kind of insolvency one overtakes as a
writer. And as one just fired from yet another minimum wage job, often
underpaid or unpaid for the labor of my thought and writing, I understand how
very painful and inconvenient it can be to write. When to sit while those
around you implore demonstratively and in silent complicity that you stand,
sitting down with intent will always be risky, revolutionary, provocative, even
dangerous.
I have to question (without dismissing) the old
adage that “we must work twice as hard to get half of what they got”. The
expression is a painful and not entirely untrue vestige of Brown v. Board of
Education—but it also implies that what we strive for is exactly what the
hegemony will not allow us to have. To live our lives in pursuit of this kind
of affirmation is already being called away from the vocation to sit out and
critically observe. The agon of your writing should never overwhelm the
significance of your well-being—which the world at large is constantly trying
to take from you.
Despite the realities of being a writer, you will
continue to compose your work and submit it for publication. Why? Because this
is your calling. You may send your 3-5 poems weekly, varying the selection in
accordance with the publication you’re submitting to. You may send your most
recent short story out to ten different journals, expecting to hear a positive
word. You may be rejected every time and forced to return to square one,
complaining the whole way and feeling like you’ve wasted your time. But you
return to the agon of your craft, because it is your own thing. As you submit
your work, do not also submit your sense of purpose, direction, and integrity.
Our respective journeys, if we allow them to,
unfold organically. Respect yourself. Know and respect your boundaries and
limitations, so that perhaps you may challenge and exceed them. Be honest and
unrestrained—precisely because you are free. Know and respect opportunity when
it is presented to you—because opportunity is a blessing. As well, recognize
that no opportunity promises to result in the fulfillment of your dream. Each
opportunity you get as a writer is a piece in a puzzle which is intimately tied
to the fulfillment of your being.
I can only imagine the nervous energy that rushed
through Charlie Yelverton before committing to sit out of the national anthem,
certainly aware that his protest risked his livelihood in the NBA. But Charlie
must have also been attuned to the fact that he had righteousness on his side,
that he could essentially do no wrong because he was doing the right thing.
Perhaps he lost his job. Perhaps he was shamed from the association. But years
later we can all recognize him as a hero, a champion. To take a stand against
injustice he had to sit down.
This is the final and most important part of
writing toward publication. Toni Morrison’s injunction: If there's a book you
really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
Do it because it is imperative. Do it because you
know your own righteousness. Do it because you believe the world needs it.
Otherwise what are you doing?
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