by
David Budbill
In 16th Century Lahore, which is present day Pakistan, the artist, Miskin, on the leaf of a manuscript, depicted the story of how The King one day while hunting in the countryside shot a bird with his bow and arrow.
When The King approached the bird, The King discovered, much to his chagrin and dismay, that the bird was, in fact, a young man, who now lay lifeless on the ground with an arrow through his chest.
Overcome with grief at what he had done, The King approached the mother of the young man who was sobbing nearby. The King called his servants to bring forth two golden bowls and place them on the ground between himself and the bereaved woman. The King then spoke to the grieving mother and said, In order to make amends for my grievous error, I offer you a choice. In one of these golden bowls you may have as much gold coinage of the realm as the bowl will hold, or in the other bowl you may have my head. The choice is yours.
When the king was done speaking, he called his servants forth with bags of gold enough to fill to overflowing one of the bowls. Then The King drew his sword and handed it to a servant, rolled down his collar, knelt down and bowed his head in preparation for his own beheading.
Here there was a pause of quite some time while The King waited for the mother’s decision.
At last, the mother of the young man, knowing that revenge is futile, accepted the golden bowl filled with gold to overflowing. Upon departing the mother, through her tears, exhorted The King to continue his just rule.
Thus the mother and The King parted, each carrying their own grief away from that place.
Such integrity and scruples in a King!
by
David Budbill
All ancient Chinese poetry is song, to be sung in a high-pitched voice often accompanied by musical instruments.1 And those songs most often tell about the small, ordinary things of our common life together. Chinese poetry focuses on the actual, the things of this world, the here and now. It delights in the physical. It is humanistic and full of common sense and seldom touches on the supernatural or indulges in extravagant flights of fancy or rhetoric.2 It is remarkably accessible and although periodically ancient Chinese poetry got rarefied, effete and intellectual, some poet always came along, like T'ao Ch'ien in the 4th century A.D. and Po Chü-yi in poetry and Han Yü in prose during the T'ang Dynasty to bring it back to the simplicity and directness, the plainness which is the ear mark of any classical style.
There is a radically different aesthetic, world view, operating in ancient Chinese poetry from the one that controls poetry in American today. Much of contemporary American poetry, by Ancient Chinese standards, is pretentiously philosophical and mercilessly overwritten. Ancient Chinese poetry seeks out the simplest things in life and celebrates them. It does not want to be lofty or profound. It wants to tell of life on this earth. It finds the great universal truths in the mundane.3 Although full of the celebration of this life, it is full of sorrow also. There is no poetry anywhere so imbued with the anguish of old age, the loneliness of sad partings, the ravages of war, the other myriad tribulations in our lives. Yet, as Robert Payne points out in his Introduction to The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry, this Chinese sorrow is not the final sorrow of Virgil's Christian West which looked forward to the end of the world in some catastrophe or a resurrection outside of time.4 For the Chinese there is no life after this one, only, as the Tao Te Ching puts it, a short while as one of the ten thousand things and then a return to the undifferentiated Way. At the same time that we are only passing through, the Chinese know that the world is permanent. The sorrow in Chinese poetry is the sharp and painful sense of time and life passing, the sense of our impermanence in the larger permanence.
Because in Chinese philosophy and religion there is no idea of an afterlife, the eternal now becomes where heaven must be. As T'ao Ch'ien puts it in a poem:
And everyone dies. It's always been true,
I know, but thinking of it still leaves me
grief-torn. How can I reach my feelings?
a little thick wine, and I'm soon pleased
enough. A thousand years may be beyond me,
but I can turn this morning into forever.5
Yet T'ao Ch'ien knows also that by noon forever will be gone.
This sense of time fleeing is the basis for Chinese poetry's awareness of the terrible impermanence of things6 and because of this impermanence, a sharply felt regret7 for the passing of the things of this world which is why Chinese poetry is always imbued with melancholy. And because of this melancholy sense of the temporality of our lives there is in all Chinese poetry a tender pity, a universal friendliness8 regarding what we westerners would call "the human predicament."
There is never any of the misanthropic hatred of ourselves so common in current western literature and philosophy or the hellfire and damnation pronouncements of the impending apocalypse issued daily by current religious or ecological groups.
This apocalyptic and eschatological way of seeing the world is peculiarly Judeo-Christian. In our contemporary, non or anti-Judeo-Christian intellectual society we have discarded our religiously based ideas of the end of time and the end of being, but we have kept the attitude that went with those discarded ideas, and therefore in the most sophisticated of intellectual circles one gets a disdain for any religion, but the eschatological attitudes, now detatched from the discarded religion, remain. I am talking about the fashionable gloom with which modern art of all kinds has been enamored for decades, what I like to call "chic bleak." In place of this gloomy, cynical, post-modern, self hatred the Chinese put a sweet melancholy, a tender pity, a universal friendliness, a great sadness over our inevitable suffering as we pass through this life. As Robert Payne puts it :
There is no Christian apocalypse, no crucifixion, no final blaze of glory. [The Chinese] were more human than the Europeans, who from earliest times have hinted secretly that they were gods, or at least could become gods. And because [the Chinese] had no belief in a future world, they loved the concrete things of [this] life passionately and with a kind of abandon, and where we find glory in a dying youth on a wooden cross, they would find the same glory in a leaf, in the silence of the woods and the distant roaring of tigers.9
They also, by the way, found glory in sex and developed elaborate sex manuals and theories of sexuality necessary for what they considered good psychic and physical health. These theories were based on the idea that it was critically important for partners to exchange the liquids of Yin essence and Yang essence on a regular basis.
And their literature reflects and articulates this earth bound, human, sensual vision also. The Chinese poem is much less a philosophical pronouncement, less a demonstration of the poet's way with words, less a means for drawing attention to itself and to the author. As Burton Watson says in his Introduction to The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry:
There is less sense than in the West of a poem as possessing a life of its own apart from that of its creator, more of the poem as a form of autobiography, shedding light on the life of the poet and at the same time yielding up its full meaning only when read in the context of that life. The poem is the voice of the poet not self-consciously addressing posterity or the world at large, but speaking quietly to a few close friends, or perhaps simply musing to himself.10
It may seem odd or contradictory for me to say that the poem is "less a means for drawing attention to itself and to the author" only a few sentences before Burton Watson says that the poem is "a form of autobiography, shedding light on the life of the poet," but the authorial first person in a Chinese poem is uniquely different from the "I" of most modern American poems. The "I" in a Chinese poem is an "I" connected to the rest of humanity in the most basic, common and ordinary way. It is an "I" speaking out of its particular situation to be sure, but speaking always for the rest of the human community to which the poet feels deeply connected. Even when the poet bemoans his old age, as Chinese poets constantly do, the poem remains somehow wonderfully selfless. I think this selflessness comes from the profoundly physical, sensual and non-intellectual nature of Chinese poems, and from their deep connection to the traditions and history of poetry in their language. The focus of the poem always remains outside the poet and his mind, always upon the world and other people. A Chinese poet does not draw attention to himself, he does not seek his quirky, odd, unique voice. He has an almost mad desire not to be different from other poets and to see himself connected to the past, and therefore, he achieves his uniqueness easily and automatically, since it is already there. In other words the focus of the poem is never on the poet but rather on some thing or person to whom the poet is relating, on a friendship, on the parting of friends, on the peach blossom petals floating down the river, on wine, fish, old age, a cloth cap, but not on the poet.
This human and humane attitude toward our lives, this loving kindness for our predicament is not exclusively Chinese. It is in our heritage as well. Sophocles says in Antigone, "Numberless are the world's wonders, and none more wonderful than man."11 On the last page of The Plague Albert Camus gives the reason for writing the book: "to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there is more to admire in men than to despise."12
No doubt the fashionable gloom, the post-modern, chic bleak, of the anti-religious, sophisticated intelligentsia is a reaction to the stupid, can-do, problem solving, infantilism of American optimism, but both attitudes are extreme and extremely Romantic.
The Chinese way of seeing the world and relating to it offers another, plainer alternative, one it seems to me, more human and humane, one full of tender pity, universal friendliness and great sadness. This Chinese way of seeing is at once more bluntly realistic and yet also more comforting.
A WORD ABOUT WORDS AND SILENCE
There is in almost all of ancient Chinese poetry, and certainly in poets like T'ao Ch'ien, Po Chu-i, Wang Wei and the Sung Dynasty poet Yang Wan-li, a deep, abiding and unresolved conflict between the desire for silence and the urge to use language to make poems.
This is, I think, more of a Taoist thing than a Buddhist thing. In Bill Porter's ROAD TO HEAVEN, he quotes one Taoist hermit as saying, "Taoists like it quiet." Po Chu-i referred to his uncontrollable desire to write poetry--he wrote thousands of poems--as his "poetry demon" and he lamented the fact that he could never overcome his "word-karma." So there is in much of ancient Chinese poetry a desire to get away from words, to get into silence.
The great goal, I believe, of all Taoists is to become anonymous and then to disappear altogether, which of course is exactly what the author of THE TAO TEH CHING, Lao Tzu, actually and finally did.
This urge toward silence and this understanding that in silence is where you will find enlightenment is opposed to, radically different from, what we in the Judeao-Christian tradition have grown up with.
I recently saw a program on public television about a group of rabbis who went to India to visit the Dali Lama. One of the rabbis says, "Monks like silence; Jews like to gab." My book editor friend Mike Moore refers to Jews as "The People of The Book" which of course leads to books, millions of books.
And it's not just Jews; it's us Christians too. Here is the first sentence of the Gospel According to John in THE NEW TESTAMENT, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Well, you can bet a Jew/Christian wrote that. It's, from a Taoist's point of view, bad enough to say that the word comes even before God, but it's really over the top to claim that the word actually IS God.
So there is this conflict in Chinese poetry between getting silent and disappearing and making poems. This topic, this motif, recurs again and again, throughout there history of Chinese poetry.
Here's just one example, from Sung Dynasty poet, Yang Wan-li.
Don't read books!
Don't chant poems!
When you read books your eyeballs wither away,
It's so much better
In other words there is an enormous amount of space, emptiness, in Chinese poetry, which is to say, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Dylan Thomas were not Chinese poets.
by David Budbill
A year after 9/11, it is clear that George Bush and his administration are using the so-called War on Terror as an excuse to advance their dreams of unilateral domination abroad and their Right Wing agenda at home. The sooner we can be rid of This Disaster and his administration the better off we all will be.
Before 9/11 the Bush Administration established an arrogant, go-it-alone attitude toward the world community with acts such as withdrawing from the Kyoto Treaty for climate change. Then, after a brief post-9/11 sojourn into talk of coalitions and allies, Bush & Co. returned almost immediately to its myopic, unilateral way of approaching all issues. They thumbed their noses at Russia and withdrew from the ABM treaty; they refused to sign on to the International Court of Justice and demanded exemption from it; they withheld our contribution to funding for the United Nations Population Fund, to name only three in a depressingly long list of examples of ways in which the Bush administration is an international bully.
And the president's abysmal failure of leadership in the Middle East, his embarrassingly pro-Israel stand, and his increasingly bellicose rhetoric about invading Iraq have not only alienated and infuriated moderate Muslims everywhere, they have also alienated and infuriated and frightened our former friends around the world.
And here at home Bush & Co. seem determined to alienate everyone but the most conservative. John Ashcroft invents TIPS--the Terrorism, Information and Protection System--so that we can spy on each other in the name of security. It sounds like the McCarthy Era or Communist Russia or Maoist China. The same man who invented TIPS also spent thousands of dollars to cover up the bare breasts of The Spirit of Justice. A year ago we were attacked by religious fanatics from far away; now our civil rights and our own spirit of justice are attacked by a religious fanatic here at home.
George Bush & Co. have found that The War on Terror is a handy tool for doing what they wanted to do anyway: gut environmental legislation and regulations, give more tax breaks to the rich, cut support for the young, the old and the poor. The list is endless.
Yet the American people are silent. Why?
Is it because Americans are brow-beaten and bamboozled by the shenanigans of the last Presidential election--an election that was "won" with illegal and racist tactics in a state where the president's brother is the governor?
Is it because Americans know that "our" president was not elected but appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?
Is it because Americans are incredulous at the Bush administration's self-righteous, moralistic bombast about business ethics while criminal CEO's run the White House?
Is it because Americans are genuinely threatened by and afraid of future terrorist attacks? We want wise, far sighted leadership in the White House, not self-serving megalomaniacs.
Is it because Americans are frustrated and angry, because an unelected President declared a war that is not a war? We haven't smoked Osama bin Laden out of any hole. In fact nothing has happened except we've got a huge, new deficit, the stock market has fallen apart and the President has proposed a military budget larger than all the rest of the world's military budgets combined.
And for what? So we can fight Rogue States? Some wacko Axis of Evil?
The plague of Pax Americana is upon the world. And it is upon us also. We--you and I and our country--we are the Rogue State. As Pogo said once, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Yet as a nation, it's as if we are hypnotized by a bunch of fast talking street corner con-men and shills eager to sell us a bill of goods we know we shouldn't buy.
When are Americans going to wake up and realize that this so-called War on Terror is a sham, a scam, a shell game played on a cardboard box on the nation's street corner? On September 11, 2002, it is clear that George Bush has found a way with his War on Terror to keep the American public from speaking out about and rebelling against the insane travesty of justice and governance that is now transpiring in our nation's capitol.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This essay first appeared in a slightly different version in THE RUTLAND (VT) HERALD and THE BARRE (VT) TIMES ARGUS on September 11, 2002. The essay was originally commissioned by THE BURLINGTON (VT) FREE PRESS, a Gannett paper, but was rejected for being "too partisan" and because it was "a two-by-six to the face."
by
David Budbill
by David Budbill
A Listener's Guide to O'NEAL'S PORCH
the debut album of
The William Parker Quartet
released by
Centering Records
William Parker is not only one of the world's most accomplished and creative bass players, he is one of the great melody makers, song writers, of our time. In song after song on this CD, through the sheer beauty of his sweet melodies, his bubbling, effusive, good humor and the energizing, life-affirming, great joy that infuses everything here, William gives us the gift of his love for us and for the world. As pianist and composer Cooper-Moore says, "William is like Duke Ellington to us; he's like Mingus, even beyond that because neither Mingus nor Duke had the compassion William has." (50 Miles of Elbow Room, Issue #1)And it is compassion and love that drives this album forward--that and the killer rhythm section!
Which brings up the drummer on this date: Hamid Drake. Lewis Barnes, the trumpeter here, says," William and Hamid play together like twins separated at birth! No two guys can better anticipate each other's musical moves than these two men, and on top of it all they play in and out better than anyone and at the same time!" Or put another way, Hamid Drake takes in with him when he goes out. In short, the propulsive force of Hamid's drumming means that no matter how far out a solo may go, it always swings. Louisiana-born, Chicago-based, Hamid Drake, who is in constant demand as a Reggae drummer--and when you listen to him on this album you'll hear why--has been playing regularly with William only since 1998, yet it seems like they've been together for years. When a drummer who is as great a time keeper as Hamid is gets in a situation where he is free to go outside time you get the best of both measured and free playing.
In front of this rhythm section stand two soloists: alto saxophonist, Rob Brown, and trumpeter, Lewis Barnes. Rob Brown has never sounded better; his playing here is full of passion and confidence. As Lewis Barnes says, "I don't know what Rob Brown had for breakfast the day of this recording but he played like a man possessed." Lewis Barnes, if he weren't so modest, could have said the same thing about himself. Again and again Barnes's playing here makes me think of Kenny Dorham, yet Lewis's tone is rounder and fuller than Dorham's was, less angular, thus adding yet another element to the warmth and sweetness of the tunes on this album. Lewis's self-effacing, almost reticent, way of playing adds, in its quiet way, great dignity and richness to these tunes. And Rob and Lewis together make a sound sublime. Again and again here, they play together as if the alto saxophone and the trumpet had been recast into a single instrument. Call it an altompet. Miles and Cannonball played the altompet too, lots of other players have, but none any better than Lewis and Rob.
PURPLE, the opening tune, and perhaps the hardest swinging number on the CD, begins with a statement of the melody line, then a little ensemble improvisation, then Rob Brown's solo, then back to Rob and Lewis and off to Lewis's solo. These players pass the tune between each other as effortlessly as a well rehearsed 400 meter relay team. Hear also how closely they keep to the melody in their improvisations. No matter how far out they go, they always carry with them fragments of the head. Lewis concludes his solo and passes the baton to Hamid. Very quickly William enters playing the Talking Drum. William begins by responding to a figure Hamid has just played, and off those two go. All four then back in, some ensemble flights of fancy, and back to the head twice through and fade out on the retard.
SUN opens with a figure in the alto similar to the one in PURPLE, yet this is a totally different tune. Bass intro, drums in, the simple six note figure of the melody in the alto, trumpet in playing quarter notes under the alto, then trumpet and alto together working out on the head. Now off to the solos. First Lewis's sweet, legato trumpet solo. There is no rush here. This is thoughtful, pensive, graceful improvising, and Lewis always staying close to the melody. Rob's alto solo is more out and away from the head than Lewis's. Back now to the head, alto and trumpet together. Then William's rich, deep pizzicato solo and Hamid always there keeping the groove going. William out and Hamid into a very brief outside drum interlude, William back in and back to the melody again for all four, repeating the original theme with delicacy and grace.
William's Uncle O'Neal who lived in South Carolina must have been a wonderful guy with a great sense of humor. I wish I could have sat on O'NEAL'S PORCH. After the bass and drum intro, there's that wonderful altompet to begin this good natured tribute to William's Uncle. Rob's solo here goes further out than is customary for this album, but his brilliant flights of imagination are always rooted in the groove-heavy, dancing bass and drums. It's this combination of in and out, and both at once, that makes this tune, and all the other tunes on this album so remarkable. Listen to the bass line--William playing dance rhythms--as always--and Hamid's in-the-groove drumming accentuating, driving forward William's joy. Now Lewis; that rich and luxurious tone; those thoughtful phrases, adding up to sentences, paragraphs, a statement of his own. Then a bass solo, and a drum solo. And then all four go out, out there in the front yard in front of O'Neal's Porch and dance in the yard. Then, as with all the tunes on this album, back to the head and out with all the joy and good humor imaginable.
RISE begins with William's bass line walking down the street, that steady, determined, even stride of his, then Hamid in, playing on the rims, then the altompet again, then an ensemble dissembling in which Lewis even plays the call to the horses, yet as always when the players go out they take the in of both the melody and the rhythm with them. And also as always in the cacophony of the ensemble improvisation there is William holding everything together and at the same time driving everything forward. Then arco bass under Hamid's solo evolving into a quiet, introspective section full of space and emptiness out of which William's walking bass line emerges again and leads the four players back to the head and out.
The bitter-sweet, touchingly beautiful ballad, SONG FOR JESUS, opens with the melody on alto and Harmon muted trumpet. Rob is at his lyrical, yearning best here in his solo, while Lewis's meditative and muted trumpet provides just the right foundation for Rob's explorations. Opposing tempos in Hamid's brushes on the drum heads and William's bass create a rhythmic counterpoint against which the soloists play. Lewis's solo is especially poignant and all the more so because William and Hamid engage in an up tempo dialogue, inspiring each other ever onward, right in the middle of Lewis's meditation which takes place at half the tempo of the bass and drums. Then, as usual, back to the tender and sweet melody and out. Here, as elsewhere on this album, William's great gift as a melody maker provides the foundation for these melodic and rhythmic flights.
LEAF is the story of a day in the life of William Parker. The tune begins with William's bass line walking down the street, that usual, determined, focused walk of his. Hamid comes in, then Rob and Lewis, their horns--the altompet--the horns of the city--blaring and crashing in the welter and confusion, the energy and excitement--and the distraction--of the city. Yet plowing though all that hustle and chaos, is the determined William Parker intent on going somewhere with that steady, focused walk and his calm, undistracted manner--that ten note figure in William's bass. While the sounds of the city crash and bang all around him, William moves steadily on, not oblivious to the life around him, but rather totally within that life, yet always focused on his own life also, always listening for the music coming from The Tone World. William Parker is a black, urban, Zen monk, a roshi, a self-possessed, yet completely modest and humble just-another-one-of-us, and therefore someone able to be fully outside himself and attentive to the world. William Parker is, as Christians would say, "totally in but not of the world." As he moves through the weltering swirl, he is the point of reference, the inner eye, the stillness at the center of the storm.
SONG FOR JESUS 3/4, a reprise of the sweet ballad, up tempo now and the rhythm in three/quarter time, the melody in four/four. Lewis's muteless trumpet retains its lyrical sweetness as it lags slightly behind Rob's inventions, each soloist's distinct personality defining itself in relation to the melody, and as always Hamid and William propelling it all forward.
MOON--up tempo and swinging--opens with that altompet sound as smooth as it's ever been. Here as throughout this date Lewis's trumpet makes a somewhat spare, almost reticent, statement compared to the fullness of Rob's improvisations. Here also, as elsewhere, Lewis stays closer to the melody than Rob does. Then it's out with that wonderful altompet sound again.
Each player in this group is a distinct individual with inclinations and ways of playing all his own. Each man knows musically exactly who he is, and all four men are radically different from each other. Because of their distinctive personalities and their differences, they make together a new song of great beauty. Here then is the debut album of The William Parker Quartet, four men and eight tunes packed full of all the groove and sweet soul of Reggae, the crackle and snap of Hard Bop, and the emotional intensity and outside flights of imagination of what some people call Free Jazz. This music, however, is beyond category. This is simply joyful and compassionate music full of love for this world. And, oh, my, does it swing!
Lewis Barnes summed it up better than I ever could when he said, "I felt so excited by everyone's playing that I felt just as thrilled as a musical fan as I did as a musician on this date. These cats play!" Indeed they do.
DAVID BUDBILL is a poet and a playwright. Find out more about him at: www.davidbudbill.com
by David Budbill
Go to New York City. Get yourself to the intersection of Canal and Bowery down on the Lower East Side in Chinatown. Brace yourself if you are from the country or the suburbs because this is going to be a scene from Beijing, Hong Kong or Singapore.
Great waves of humanity, mostly Chinese--But not all. I was there.--surge back and forth packing the sidewalks and spilling out onto the streets. The streets likewise overflow with cars and trucks of every description all of them blowing their horns all at once, or so it seems, and the traffic so congested the cars and trucks spill up and onto the sidewalk. Yet--in a wonderment that never ceases to amaze me every time I'm there--all these cars and trucks and people mix together in this chaos of noise--this halting, stalled, horn-blaring, weltering confusion--yet none is injured and all somehow progress, albeit slowly, toward wherever each intends.
Go south now on Bowery about a block. You can see him just ahead, over there on your left, rising above the cars and trucks, out there in the middle of the traffic where Division Street splits into a Y and joins Bowery. In that triangle of asphalt and concrete created by the forking Division Street, on a pedestal about seven feet high stands a ten foot bronze, and therefore green, statue of Confucius.
He's looking southeast and stands there in his robes, still as a statue, deep in his meditative calm amidst the noise and chaos of commerce.
Most people who know anything about Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.) or the ideas for the governance of human society he devised think of him as the perpetrator of a set of rigid, hidebound, legalistic, restricting rules and regulations for every imaginable human encounter, relationship or event. And certainly that is what "Confucianism" became over the centuries in ancient China. But just as there is no necessary relationship between the teachings of Buddha and Buddhism or the teachings of Christ and Christianity so it is also with Confucius. Confucius' initial vision of a good society, "The Great Harmony," as he put it, is a vision of societal peace, cooperation and understanding unsurpassed in the history of human contemplation.
On the base of the statue chiseled in the stone is the following quotation from his writing called The Great Harmony, the TA TUNG.
"When the great principle prevails the world is a Commonwealth in which rulers are selected according to their wisdom and ability. Mutual confidence is promoted and good neighborliness cultivated. Hence men do not regard as parents only their own parents nor do they treat as children only their own children. Provision is secured for the agéd till death, employment for the able bodied and the means of growing up for the young. Helpless widows and widowers, orphans and the lonely as well as the sick and disabled are well cared for. Men have their respective occupations and women their homes. They do not like to see wealth lying idle, yet they do not keep it for their own gratification. They despise indolence, yet they do not use their energies for their own benefit. In this way, selfish schemings are repressed, and robbers, thieves and other lawless men no longer exist, and there is no need for people to shut their outer doors. This is the great harmony. "
Imagine such a society. Imagine leaders in a society having this ideal toward which they strive.
Last year I saw a program called GREED on one of the TV networks. This was months before the game show of the same name. The show was an open and unabashed defense, and promotion, of pure and simple greed. Ted Turner--not exactly Mother Teresa himself--was on the show as a kind of straw man, a fall guy, to be ridiculed for giving away a few million of his dollars, by other corporate CEO's who argued that the best thing for everyone in America is for people like themselves to make as much money as possible and keep it all for themselves or use it to generate greater profits for their businesses.
The program posited the idea that since profits in the private sector are what make our country prosperous and strong, any notion of anything even remotely approaching the idea of "the public good" is not only laughable but, in fact, actually bad for the economy.
These words from Confucius about the nature of the social contract and the public good, about how to be just and caring with your neighbors--even THE LONELY are cared for!--and how unchecked greed and the profit motive will destroy anything and everything, seem surreal in the middle of modern American life.
How far have we as a people strayed from the kind of Confucian humanism presented by this quotation from the TA TUNG?
Or perhaps my mistake is to imagine that we Americans have ever shared this Confucian vision of a social contract and the public good. Perhaps the real American vision is a loose fitting anarchy devoted exclusively to the aggrandizement of the individual and his or her ability to acquire money and power. Perhaps Donald Trump and Bill Gates are the only true American gods.
Yet a part of the American dream has also been movements devoted to something bigger than the individual. I think about J. Phillip Randolph and John L. Lewis and the Labor Movement born to resist the greed of the Captains of Industry, or the cooperative Credit Union movement born to overcome the rapaciousness and usury of bankers. Both of these movements sprung from visions of something bigger than the self, both come out of the idea that cooperation can benefit all. Or what about the phenomenon of Frederick Law Olmstead and the creation of public parks all across America--spaces for The Public to enjoy? Anybody who has wandered through Central Park in New York City or The Emerald Necklace in Cleveland or walked along the lake shore in Chicago, knows the joy of a public space. There is a tradition of "the public good" in America; it's just been trampled to death by our stampeding economy here at the turn into this new century.
Yet I keep hearing a faint voice coming from that statue of Confucius, a voice saying that human community is better, fairer, easier, kinder, gentler, more effective and more just when we know there is a social contract and something called The Public Good. But it's hard to hear that small voice these days.
Here at the beginning of this new millennium as the Stock Market soars off into the stratosphere or crashes or does one and then the other and no matter what happens the New Rich drive off into A Bright New Day in their Sports Utility Vehicles decked out in their Designer Clothes sipping a double-half-caf-decaf-organic-low-fat-latte, it truly is what Ronald Reagan said it was: It's Morning in America, and, because it finally truly is Morning in America, finally Free Market Capitalism and "the private sector" can stand up and shout to the whole world what they've meant to say all along:
Anything public is not only bad for the economy, it is, in fact, evil and must be eliminated as soon as possible: public transportation, public parks, public agricultural and medical research, public libraries, public health care, public education, public care of the poor and the mentally ill--they all must go.
In other words, when we can't hear that quiet Confucian voice or remember our own traditions of cooperation, when self-aggrandizing greed and personal gratification are all that matter, when Money and Me and an open hatred of "the public good" stand at the center of our society's profoundest philosophy of life--what can we expect from the future?
These are the liner notes for avant garde pianist Cooper-Moore's solo piano CD of a live performance recorded in Canada in the fall of 1999 and to be issued on Hopscotch Records, in March of 2000
The great Japanese wood-block artist Shiko Munakata tells a story about his first one-man show back in 1930 when he was still painting with oils on canvas, "I had a few older pieces I wanted to exhibit. For the rest, I took bare canvases and frames to the gallery the evening before the opening, and there, that night, I painted most of my show."
As Oliver Statler says in an essay about Munakata, "Speed has always been a goal of the oriental painter. He distrusts self-conscious rational thought. He strives for the swiftest possible realization of conception, for almost automatic transmission of idea through arm and brush." And so too with this music called African-American Improvised Music, which ought to be called American Classical Music.
In the film about a photograph of jazz musicians called A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM, Nat Hentoff says, "Spontaneity is what makes this music so continually fresh. . . . You don't think of the passage of time. It is the immediacy of what that person was thinking and feeling at the time."
Think of Thelonious Monk's tune titled "That's the Way I Feel Now." No revisions. No time to go back and redo anything. This is the suddenness of a Zen ink painting.
Yet it would be a serious misunderstanding to think that Munakata's methods or the methods of improvising musicians are in any way akin to the ego-maniacal, self-aggrandizing and self-indulgent obsessions of The Me-Me-Me Generation. Munakata is hooked deeply into the traditions of both Chinese and Japanese painting and he and his whole family before him were followers of Shinto ritual and practitioners of the Zen sect of Buddhism. And so it is with this tradition-rich music called improvised music.
Clearly the focus in a method like Munakata's tradition and also the focus in improvised music is, or should be, on the preparation of the person who will make the product, and how that person grows up and out of the tradition. All of us have a history. We all come from somewhere, and for improvising artists be they Japanese wood cut artists or African American jazz musicians, the neighborhood of history and influence in which they grow up is of paramount importance.
At the end of A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM Art Farmer, his lower lip and chin quivering with the intensity of his emotion, says, "When I start counting heads and I think about how many people are no longer there anymore, it still comes as a shock to me, because we don't think about people not being here. If we think about Lester Young, we don't think, yeah, Lester Young was here, but he's not here anymore. Lester Young is here! Coleman Hawkins is here. Roy Eldridge is here. They are in us and they will always be alive."
There is no better illustration of what Art Farmer has to say about how "they are in us," no better way to talk about the neighborhood of history and influence, than to listen to this piano solo by Cooper-Moore.
Here are ?? minutes of spontaneity, in-the-moment freshness, impromptu, improvised, on-the-spot music, and yet this brand-new, never-before-and-never-again piece of immediate art is so deeply rooted in the past, so much a part of the neighborhood of history and influence, that it is all new and all old all at once, which is what Art Farmer is saying, and what Cooper-Moore says too.
For the sake of writing about this piece of music I've divided it up into a Prelude and Nine Parts.
As Prelude to his solo, Cooper-Moore speaks openly about the process and meaning of history and influence in his litany of the people he wants to give thanks to, his list of people to whom he is indebted, all those without whom Cooper-Moore could not play the way he does. Cooper-Moore walks us through, both verbally and musically, the ways in which he is beholden to and inspired by his ancestors. You will find here in this solo a deep sense of history and an even deeper sense of gratitude.
The music begins on an abstract, angular and modern note, as if to make an announcement about what is to come. What follows however is an amazing variety and blend of styles and understandings; this is, in fact, one man's history of the 20th century African-American, improvised piano.
Part One, abstract, restless and angular, may make some people think of Cecil Taylor, yet it is also filled with silence and emptiness and small sounds, delicate touches to the keyboard, and then, without warning, it stops. A pause.
Then quietly, lyrically, melodically--I thought I saw the ghost of some late 19th century Russian composer, maybe Shostakovich, float by--a dirge-like, meditative beginning in the left hand announces Part Two which slowly moves and modulates to more angular and abstract sounds in the right hand as the style of Part One incorporates itself into and blends with the meditative melody of Part Two and begins to establish a new motif in the right hand while way down on the keyboard the left hand clusters chords for a strong foundation on which to build this new, insistent, frenetic and tremulous motif developing up in the right hand. Then suddenly: another stop.
It's as if Cooper-Moore's two hands, in constant dialogue with each other, show us how all these great musics from the past meet and influence each other, blend together to make a new sound and then push off into the future.
Witney Balliet has a book of essays about jazz called THE SOUND OF SURPRISE, and true to that sound, Part Three begins unexpectedly with a joyful and delightful Erroll Garner-like descending figure in the right hand--the ghost of Thelonious Monk is in here too--supported and good humoredly heckled by the chords clomping around down there on the left. It's as if some kind of comic tug-of-war is going on between the two hands. And no matter what those heavy-handed left-hand chords do, the comic descending theme in the right rises out of the thickness of the left hand chords and with its defiant and wacky humor it prevails. Part Three makes me think of Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks. Part Three also ends abruptly, and we hear Cooper-Moore say, "That's three!"
Cooper-Moore not only likes to play; he also likes to talk, and here follows a brief commentary on his influences including the powerful influence of Jaki Byard and also how as a child at his grandmother's piano he learned, as everyone did, to play Boogie Woogie. This brief verbal interlude ends with Cooper-Moore saying, "I'm gonna play a little bit of Jaki and a little bit of blues."
Once again, here in Part Four of this history lesson--what a way to learn history!--two periods of the music sit at a picnic table in the backyard, eat fried chicken and collard greens and visit. Part Four begins as the left hand walks through the Boogie-Woogie while the right hand works out on some blues changes. Then slowly and easily, while the left hand continues walking through the blues bass line, Jaki Byard slips into Cooper-Moore's right hand, and so subtly and easily, as a matter of fact, that you can actually hear how the modern sound grows out of, springs up from, the blues.
As with Monk and Mingus, Bartok and Kodaly, the greatest musics never stray too far from The Folk out of which they all emerge and to which they all owe their deepest and most lasting debt. As Paul Robeson said, "We who labor in the arts, we who are singers, we who are actors, we who are artists, we must remember that we come from The People, our strength comes from The People, and we must serve The People."
No abrupt stops now, rather a segue out of "Byard and The Blues" right into Part Five, into a return to something like Part One only more hyper, frenetic, what Cooper-Moore and his cronies once referred to as "tremble time" music. Rapid tempos full of tone clusters and repeated figures, Coltrane-esque "sheets of sound," pushing, driving intensely onward, then a slight retard, then back to the hyper central figure, then onward again, always driving relentlessly forward, then a retard again and this time the sound emptying out, slowing down, coming to an almost stop. But before a full stop, Part Six begins with one of the most lyrical, sweet and painfully beautiful melodies I have ever heard.
Cooper-Moore announces, "This is a song by Susie Ibarra called, 'Radiance.'" And, as always, Cooper-Moore takes this new hymn-like and luscious melody and begins to fold it into the angular, atonal pieces that have come before.
Here, as throughout all of this piece of American Classical Music, Cooper-Moore's motifs evolve and devolve into one another, which is, of course, exactly what this music and the history of this music has always done. One figure or motif leads to another and that leads to something new and so on and on and on forever.
Within this particular piece of improvised music not only are various aspects and periods of American Classical Music illustrated, but the very structure and evolution of this piece, this solo, this performance, is itself a demonstration in miniature of the history of improvised music.
Another segue and the music evolves, devolves into Part Seven, an insistent knocking-like chord in the left hand, the hyperactive dashing of the right hand over the keys in the upper registers, more "tremble time" music, more sheets of sound and that knocking chord.
Then segue again into Part Eight, and here comes Jaki Byard again around the corner, with his pal Walking Bass. The two of them stop to visit on the street with that fellow from Part Seven, the one who is always knocking. They talk quietly together for awhile.
Then suddenly Cooper-Moore stops in the middle of a line--another verbal interlude--and says, "Some people might think he's abusing the piano." He launches into a lecture-demonstration on how a piano player either does or does not abuse a piano, and out of this commentary and musical illustration appears The Knocking Man from Part Seven who yields to another melody briefly stated, a melody which makes me think of something Abdullah Ibrahim might write.
Again, Cooper-Moore breaks off in the middle of the line and begins Part Nine, begins talking, singing, a poem that might be called "The Agony of These Feelings Felt," this brief history of the African in America, this tribute to a thousand black poets, and tribute also to the frustrations of being an improvising musician in America, and all this yet another part of the history of this music.
Finally out of a welter of cries and screams Cooper-Moore's voice comes slowly down to pianissimo and then in the silence we can hear him quietly say, "Thank You."
An essay about race relations in Vermont.
This essay first appeared in Seven Days on 15 December 1999
I came to Vermont in 1969 for a lot of reasons. I'd saved some money and I wanted to take a year off to write. As a city boy, I had that eternal dream of going to the country, to the wilderness. I came here also because I believed in Black Power.
During the school years 1967 through 1969 I taught at an all Black college in Pennsylvania. It was the late 1960s: assassinations, revolutions in Africa, riots in the streets of America, ghettos on fire. One Christmas vacation, one of our students was shot to death by the police in Trenton, New Jersey, for nothing more than standing on the street. Another student, an African, spent that same Christmas vacation in Sweden buying ambulances and sub-machine guns for the revolution back home in what was then called Southwest Africa.
Here in America, Black Power was at its peak. As the Self-Appointed Chairman, at the college, of the White Folks Auxiliary of the Black Power Movement, I sincerely believed that the time of "Black and White Together" was over; each race had to go take care of its own. My job was to deal with my own racism and the racism of my people.
I also felt it was my duty to get my white face out of that Black school. I believed that sincerely, but my exit from that world was not, rest assured, pure altruism. I took seriously--I approved of!--the militants who shouted, "Move on over, Mutha', or we gonna move on over you!" Such slogans seemed to me to be the only appropriate response to ubiquitous white power and calcified white privilege. Thus my move to Vermont occurred in a public as well as a personal context.
But how, I ask myself now with hindsight, could moving to the whitest state in America be a way to deal with racism?
When I first came here a T-shirt popular at that time said: VERMONT: THE WAY AMERICA USED TO BE. In other words: clean, wholesome, community oriented, small, rural and . . . white.
I also ask myself, again with hindsight, how many of us white people, people like me--recently or not so recently immigrated--came here because it was easier NOT to confront the racial conflicts inherent in American life? Here in this land of whiteness we could relax, live with less stress, not have to confront daily the tensions inherent in a more ethnically and racially diverse place. How many of us escaped here to live simpler, cleaner, whiter lives?
By running to this bastion of whiteness 30 years ago, I had become, willy-nilly and only half-consciously, a part of the opening salvo in what became known as White Flight.
All these years later, I am still asking myself how we can, here in Vermont, deal with the issues of race and ethnicity when we live in what, compared to the rest of America, is essentially a segregated society.
The answer is coming to live with us.
In less than 20 years the majority of United States citizens will be non-white. Already more than half the population of California is non-white. Yet we white Americans still go about our business acting as if we don't know these simple and inevitable demographic facts. We white people have always been a tiny minority of the world's population, but our imperialism and ethnocentricity let us forget that.
Now however America increasingly looks the way the world really looks. White America knows this, if only half-consciously, and that knowledge propels rampant fear, more and more white flight from our cities and many other forms of ethnic and racial tension and reaction all across the country. We all know our white world is changing color.
Vermont is changing too. Between 1980 and 1990 the absurdly small non-white population of Vermont doubled; it went from .5% to 1%. My guess is, between 1990 and 2000 the non-white population here will have at least doubled again.
At the same time that non-whites arrive here in increasing numbers, Vermont also becomes more and more a place for rich white people, and with that increase comes a gentrified and self-satisfied smugness that settles down over this place, a smugness that can come only from gobs of white privilege, the Hidin' Out In Honky Heaven mentality, so to speak.
It is easy to be white, liberal-minded and politically correct, in this bucolic and essentially segregated place. However, as Vermont begins to REALLY look like the rest of America and the rest of the world, how will Vermonters react?
I fear there may be serious trouble ahead when white privilege collides with a growing non-white population. The liberality of Vermonters is yet to be tested, but that test, it seems to me, is just around the corner.
Crisis, however, is also opportunity. As Vermont becomes more and more non-white we will have the chance to admit that the way we have lived here in the past is not only odd, but seriously at odds with the rest of the world.
The new millennium will offer us the chance to open ourselves to a bigger, more diverse and colorful life.
We will have the chance to admit that the segregated life we have lived here in the past has limited us severely. It has hurt us and made us small.
About war, the Chinese Communist poet Ai Qing, environmental pollution,
organic gardening and the madness of governments. First appeared in
The Judevine Mountain Emailite #14, August 27, 1999
I've been reading the Chinese Communist poet, Ai Qing, this summer. Ai Qing was born in 1910. In 1939, when he was 29 years old, in a time of war, he wrote a poem called "Street." Part of it goes like this:
I once lived on this street--
Those who lived there have been driven off by the alarms of war:
Child bearing women, sick men, asthmatic old men,
Old ladies raising little babies . . .
Every day was spent in bedlam,
Numberless the people who were shipped in trucks to this small town;
The street teemed with refugees, wounded soldiers, youths dropped out of
school,
The ears buzzed with a variety of different dialects.
The street changed, the war made it flourish:
On both sides, vending booths of all types cropped up,
Beancurd shops turned into restaurants, groceries into hotels,
The house opposite my home became a temporary hospital.
One day, the skies above this little town were blotted out with black wings,
One bombing run sent cataclysms through this little town;
The enemy rained down deadly fire and destruction on the street--
Half of the town was left in ruins.
Look: the roof of that house has been ripped off,
Walls don't come together any more,
The wells are choked with debris,
The rafters have been fired into charcoal.
People have all fled in this disaster (who's interested in where they all went?)
. . .
Ai Qing wrote that in the city of Guilin 60 years ago. Those were Japanese bombs falling on that Chinese town.
This summer as I read Ai Qing's poem, it made me think of the terror and destruction with which the Serbs devastated the Kosovos. It made me think of the terror and destruction we rained down on the Yugoslavs.
Ai Qing's poem makes me understand once again how--no matter when it happens and no matter how noble somebody says the cause of the war is--the victims of war are always the hapless and helpless and hopeless common people, the ordinary and passive victims of someone else's hatred and political ambitions.
It must also be said, however, that in places like Kosovo and Rwanda it is the common people and their ethnic hatreds who contribute much of the violence. [How those hatreds get started and are maintained is a question for another time.] The butchered Serb farmers in today's news sent to their deaths by ethnic Albanians are evidence enough that not all violence in war comes from the hands of the political leaders however much they may encourage that hatred and violence and take advantage of it.
Yet, these massacres notwithstanding, there has been, since August 6th, 1945, a categorical shift in the nature of war, and that shift is almost exclusively the creation of The United States of America.
Until August 6th, 1945, the incomprehensible carnage of war was at least limited to the millions of rotting corpses filling the streets and rivers of a war torn land. It was at least limited to ruined buildings and roads, croplands and factories. With the advent of the atomic bomb, and now the use of depleted uranium in weapons and the bombing of toxic chemical plants, the effects of a particular war fan out genetically over generations.
Every summer here in the mountains of northern Vermont I have a big garden full of organically grown vegetables. I delight in their delicious and salubrious goodness. It's my guess that almost all the readers of THE JUDEVINE MOUNTAIN EMAILITE try to eat good food, carefully grown; you all are conscious of the need to put into your body what is good for you--at least some of the time.
Yet while we attend to such things as whole wheat bread and organically raised spinach, chicken and potatoes, our government uses the rest of the world, as it has since August 6th, 1945, as its testing ground for all manner of genetic evil and it does all this in the name of freedom, democracy and most especially free market capitalism.
This evening as I harvest my organically grown collard greens, Swiss chard and Italian kale, which I will blanch and pack into freezer containers and freeze for this coming winter, I will do so sickened and furious that my self-indulgent privilege to put up my organic vegetables stands on the back of the my country's willingness to lay waste to anything and anyone--including its own soldiers--in the name of it's own political and economic ambition.
This essay was delivered as the Cum Laude Address
at The Chestnut Hill School in Philadelphia on April 8, 1999. It includes two short essays,
"Sticking up for Larry Doby" and "Incident in Boston" which originally aired on
National Public Radio's "All Things Considered."
When Robert Fles wrote to me about the Cum Laude talk he said, "if we were to suggest a topic, it would most likely be along the lines of the role of art and writing in society, but we're most interested in what you're interested in.
" I want to do both. I want to demonstrate the role of art and writing in society by talking about one of the things that interests me, consumes me, the most. I want to talk about race.
This talk is called SYMPATHY because I try to write out of a basic sympathy for the human condition. I want to write passionately and compassionately about us. Whether I am writing about poor white folks in northern Vermont, as I did in JUDEVINE, or about black folks in America, I want to approach my subject with sympathy. Through writing I want to help us achieve deeper understanding.
I want to begin by reading two little essays I've written. Both of these essays have aired as commentaries on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." I've come to think of these short radio commentaries as a new literary form, sort of a prose sonnet: tight, compact, carefully controlled and developed in less than three minutes, a new kind of strict form. This first one, called STICKING UP FOR LARRY DOBY, is a memoir of sorts. It aired the day before the All Star Game in July of 1997, the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in major league baseball.
As everybody knows by now, 50 years ago this year Jackie Robinson became the first black man to enter white baseball. This total focus in the white media on Robinson to the exclusion of all the other black baseball pioneers has something to do with The Great American obsession with The Best, The Greatest, The First. It's as if, since Jackie Robinson was first, nobody else even exists, and I am afraid everyone is now going to spend this year remembering Jackie Robinson and in the process they are going to forget, or never even hear about, all those other black baseball pioneers who entered white baseball shortly after Jackie Robinson and who also suffered plenty. Something as momentous as the integration of baseball doesnÕt happen because of one person; it happens because of many people, just as the civil rights movement didnÕt happen just because Rosa Parks refused to move the back of the bus.
Therefore, I want to remember someone who was second and hope that he will stand for all those others who were in their own suffering ways also second. I want to remember Larry Doby, who joined The Cleveland Indians only 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson had joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, Larry Doby the second black man in white baseball and the first black man in the American league.
I can't remember 1947, but the summer of 1948, when I was eight years old, is as clear to me today as the view right now outside my window, because during that baseball summer I acquired my first childhood idol, and the object of my adoration was the man who played center field for the 1948 World Champion Cleveland Indians, a 23 year old black man whose name was Larry Doby.
I don't know why my first childhood hero was a black man. Maybe it was because I knew that Larry Doby was an underdog . . . like me, a painfully shy, skinny, good-at-nothing, ignored-by-everyone little kid from the streets of a working class neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. My father, who never made it past the seventh grade and who knew that he too was an underdog, said to me, again and again, "Stick up for the little guy, Bud."
I knew nothing at the age of eight of the brutal details of racism in America, but I knew how I too often felt and I too often felt invisible. I knew how it felt no matter what I did never to be seen for who I really was. And therefore, when my friends talked about "that nigger Larry Doby" or their fathers said "If that black bastard strikes out one more time I'm gonna kill him!" I seethed with an almost uncontrollable rage, because Larry Doby stood for me, and I wanted to stick up for him, but I was too little and too shy.
One Sunday in February 1997 The New York Times ran an article about Larry Doby. He was 73 years old then. There was a picture. He gazes quietly at the camera, his right hand folded gently against his face, his forefinger extending up toward his round, bald head, a gentle, almost-smile in his eyes and on his mouth.
I looked into his face and I remembered that skinny, little white boy and his first real hero, a black man, and because I'm not little or shy anymore, I wanted to do what I couldn't do back then; I wanted to stick up for Larry Doby, because in the summer of 1948, Larry Doby began to help me understand what it means to be invisible. He also taught me something about courage, perseverance and grace. Because of Larry Doby, I began to love and identify ever more strongly with the underdog, the little guy, and as my love increased so did my indignation and my rage and grief.
This second commentary more of a very short story and is called INCIDENT IN BOSTON.
Not long ago I was walking along the street in Boston when down a side street came an old man in a wheel-chair rolling right down the middle of the street and into three lanes of on-rushing traffic on Huntington Avenue.
Suddenly cars were swerving everywhere, horns blaring, tires squealing and drivers trying to weave around the old man and his wheel-chair so they could get going. I knew I should go after him, but, for some reason, I didn't. I stood there and watched.
Then an old car with a bad muffler pulled out of the snarl of cars and to the curb and a young man hopped out and boldly walked into the traffic and up to the old man. The young man was wearing a knit cap and a sports sweatshirt of some kind and hugely baggy jeans and high topped sneakers. He took hold of the old man and his chair and gently wheeled him back toward the curb, then tilted the chair up and onto the sidewalk. He bent over the old man and said something to him. The old man nodded his head. The young man patted the old man's shoulder and moved away toward his car.
Then the young man turned and looked straight at me and shouted, "Why didn't you help him! What's the matter with you! Why didn't you help him!" I wanted to apologize, tell him I meant to, but it was too late; the young man was already in his car and driving away.
As I continued down Huntington Avenue that day feeling embarrassed and ashamed, I thought about that young man, that young black man, driving along talking to himself about how self-centered, indifferent and cold white people are.
And I also thought about how many white people would step away in fear, cross the street, if they saw that young black man coming down the sidewalk toward them, how they would step away from this Good Samaritan, this young black man who put himself at risk, who acted with compassion and was, in that moment, something I was not, a credit to his race--the human race.
I am working on a new book with the working title of DIFFERENT AS BLACK AND WHITE. The book will be a series of interviews with black friends about race relations in America. I want to turn now to this work in progress and read some excerpts from an interview WTM Johnson who lived not far from here in Glen Mills. Bill Johnson spent his life as a research chemist in private industry and later at the University of Pennsylvania and as a teacher at Lincoln University. In 1949, Bill Johnson was the first black chemist ever hired by the Dupont Chemical Company. Bill died of cancer a couple of months ago at the age of .
Bill Johnson's life was a challenge to, a rebellion against the status quo. He stands solidly in the tradition of great American individualists who are willing to confront anyone, challenge anything for the sake of what they believe to be the truth. This attitude toward the world is, in Bill Johnson, absolutely consistent whether the subject is science, education, civil rights or politics.
Here are some excerpts from my interview with Bill.
"The poor people in this country for a long time to come are going to be Black people, because of the unchangeability of our skin color. I can't understand why white people can't see this. They continue to say, well, my parents came over here, they were immigrants, they couldn't speak the language and all this stuff and they got along all right, why can't you do it? Lady, can you change the color of my skin? Can you change my hair?
"And it's also a matter of what color of the skin. One of the reasons that I've been as lucky as I've been is the color of my skin. If I were as dark as my grandfather, my problems and difficulties would multiply, which is a tragedy. Look at the clothing catalogues. The Black people in there they look damn near white. Black people know that. They notice that.
"I was going to tell you about some of my Army experiences in the Second World War. After I finished basic training in Georgia, I got my orders to go to Atlanta. I went to the big train station there and I noticed a whole group of German prisoners sitting in there under guard, so I just got in the line to convert my orders into a ticket. Pretty soon two MPs (Military Police) came over to me and asked to see my orders. I showed them my orders; and they said you'll have to get over in this colored waiting room, so they marched me from there to the colored waiting room and here are these prisoners of war, the enemies we are fighting against, just sitting in this train station! Most white people have no idea how much racism Black people have suffered and how much anger there is in me.
"I can also remember something else. We were in Camp Swift, Texas. I think this may have been just after the war ended. We were a battalion, a Black battalion and two white battalions making up a regiment. And I can recall that one day they notified us that we were going to have a regimental track meet and that we were invited to participate. We heard about it that morning and the track meet was that day, so anyway we went out there--I was just a spectator--and we got there and we saw all these white guys runnin' around out there in track suits and track shoes and our guys, some of them had to run in their army boots, just stripped down to their underwear, no equipment, nothing.
"They had two prizes, a company and a battalion prize. We won 'em both. Our boys beat the shit out of 'em. And do you know what does it? What drives you? Anger at the damn racism. That's what drives you. Anger at racism. It was just two awards, a company award--we won that--and a battalion award--we won that. Our guys had fierce feeling. Those other guys were competing. We were protesting. Protesting against the goddamned racism that had blighted every life, had twisted our sense of loyalty to our country.
"I've had white people tell me, well, you're educated and successful, you're not bitter. I said, what do you mean I'm not bitter? I said, you have no idea how bitter I am. They want me to take all this abuse and not be bitter? Goddamnit, I am bitter. I'm angry. They have no idea of the depth of anger in me.
"I'm talkin' about racism. We Black people live in a different world. Some of my friends, my white friends, the sensitive ones, know that and they don't try to pretend it isn't that way. But a lot of white people think that when a Black person has a decent job and all that, like me, that I'm one of them. Huhuh. No. I'm not one of them. Not at all. I come from a different planet. I've seen things and felt things and suffered things . . . they have no idea.
"This one white guy once, I guess he thought he was being nice, he says something like, I was glad that this happened for your race. Well, Goddamn, I thought I was a member the human race. There's always that gap there, always that difference.
"At the University of Pennsylvania I've had people say, and I've heard this broadly, especially among young white people, well, I didn't institute slavery, I didn't deny employment to Blacks, I didn't do these things, so why should you charge me with it? My answer is: you're absolutely right, you didn't do these things, and that's a position that you have a right to take. But /fortunately for humanity there have always been a few people who assumed the responsibility for taking action, for putting themselves at risk to remedy injustices. /The only progress we have ever made toward a decent society, a decent world, has come from people who, although not compelled to do so, took the responsibility to make a fight for justice, to say yes, I have a responsibility to fix it, maybe I didn't directly cause this problem, but I have a responsibility to try to remedy it. That's my responsibility as a human being. We have an ethical responsibility to fight for justice.
"We didn't contribute directly to building all the just aspects of the society either; we didn't contribute directly to the creation of freedom of speech that we now enjoy, but we do have a responsibility to build on it, we have a responsibility to use our freedom and to fight not only for Black people but for women, homosexuals, justice for every other minority. The only sound basis for a good society is no discrimination at all, overt, covert, of any kind, against anybody. We've got to try to take care of every human being."
Let me end where I began. For me important writing grows out of a sympathy, a passion and compassion for our human condition. Through writing I want to help us all achieve deeper understanding which I believe will lead to greater sympathy. This is the most important function for writing in society.
By way of ending, I want read a poem by one of the greatest poets America has ever produced, not one of the greatest African-American poets, one of the greatest poets: Paul Lawrence Dunbar, who was born in 1872 and died in 1906--a short life: 34 years. The poem is called:
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting--
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings!
BLACKS, WHITES AND THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS
What white people and white privilege can learn from the overwhelming support for
President Clinton during his Impeachment trial among Black Americans. First appeared
in The Judevine Mountain Emailite #6, January 21, 1999
Why is it a large majority of Black Americans support The President in his Impeachment battle and what can we white Americans learn from this overwhelming support?
Here is a list of some titles of books by Black American writers: THE OUTSIDER, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, INVISIBLE MAN, THE SLAVE, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, THE WEARY BLUES, BENEATH THE UNDERDOG.
It is this particular vantage point: OUTSIDE, that qualifies Black Americans to see what goes on in America in a way almost all white Americans cannot. So when you hear some young white, male college student talking on the radio or Ken Starr and his cronies going on and on about "the rule of law," understand that it is a question of WHOSE rule of law.
Black Americans know that the rule of law used to say that slavery was just fine and only two generations ago the rule of law prevented them from drinking at certain water fountains or sitting in the front of the bus. So much for the sanctimonious old white guy appeal to "the rule of law." THE RULE OF LAW DEPENDS ON WHO YOU ARE AND WHO IS AFTER YOU.
Which is why, On Sunday December 13th at a newsstand in Canton, Ohio, when asked about what he thought of the attempt to impeach the President, Jack Mayle, a retired steel worker said, "It's wrong. I'm an African-American and I recognize a lynch mob when I see it."
It's why when Noah Adams asked Dubra Lazard on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED recently: "What about the issue of perjury? As you know there are people in prison right now on charges of perjury," it is why Dubra Lazard replied: "Yes, and they had to dig like ferrets in order to find enough people who were actually serving time for perjury in order to parade them before . . . the American people . . . . If you think about the O.J. Simpson case with the police officer [Mark Furman] who lied over and over and over. . . . He's not serving any time for perjury; it was a big deal about his perjury and for some reason he could not be tried for the perjury."
Proving yet again that we white folks had better listen when our Black brothers and sisters break it down for us, because they understand how the white world works--they know from painful personal experience about the essence and the mechanics of "the rule of law" in America--far better than we in our white privilege ever have or ever will.
© 1998, 1999, 2000, by David Budbill, all rights reserved,
permission to reprint must be gotten in writing from
David Budbill: budbill@sover.net
or from the publication in which the essay first appeared.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel THE SCARLET LETTER is everywhere these days. You remember the story. Hester Prynne bears a child fathered by someone other than her husband and, as condemnation for her sin, is forced to wear the red letter A as a symbol of her adultery and shame.
Now the Republicans in the House of Representatives have said The President has to wear the scarlet letter also, for he must be punished for his sin and for lying about his sin. They argue there cannot be a double standard for justice, one for the president, one for the rest of us.
There also cannot be a double standard for honesty. We cannot insist the President tell all while the rest of us cower, hoping--as Henry Hyde and Bob Livingston did--that our own adulteries will not be discovered. We have absolutely no legal or moral right to know what we know about the President's private life, but since Ken Starr, Linda Tripp and the Morality Police have forced all this on us, the only way out of this devious, hypocritical mess is for all of us to come clean now.
So, if you have had sexual intercourse, the President's definition, with someone other than your wife or husband while you were married, or if you have had sex by the definition Ken Starr prefers, whatever that is, or if you have committed what Jimmy Carter, and Jesus, called "adultery in your heart," by lusting after someone other than your spouse, then you too must confess. For the sake of our country. In the name of honesty. It's only fair.
Let me begin. I have been married for 32 years. I am guilty of adultery by at least one of these three definitions. Any more than that I won't say. We do not need to go into the lurid details Ken Starr lusts after. We can be discrete about this, but, in the name of what is right and just, we MUST do this.
Therefore, with this confession I join the President and put on my scarlet letter. I cut mine out of cardboard, painted it red and duct taped a safety pin to the back. Make yours any way you want, but join me, please. For the sake of honesty and unity, all of us who are guilty must step forward. And I mean ALL of us. I assume Henry Hyde and Bob Livingston will put on their scarlet letters, and I hope those in the media will do so as well. Think how nice the scarlet letter will look on Sam Donaldson's black camel hair coat as he stands out in front of the White House or on Cokie Roberts' blouse pinned there just above her left breast. I mean, of course, if they are guilty.
So, please, put on your scarlet letter, let it say that you too are fed up with this divisive, sanctimonious, self-righteous finger pointing.
If the President has to wear his scarlet letter, then so must we. Put on your scarlet letter. Let's see how many scarlet letters there will be.
This essay about the tension between activism and the reclusive life first appeared in the
January 1999 issue of Shambhala Sun and
subsequently in a very condensed version the July/August 1999 issue of Utne Reader
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
When I was a boy growing up in the Methodist church in Ohio I remember hearing again and again that passage from Matthew. Even as a child I knew going into your room meant withdrawal, a place away from the world, a place where, even though as a boy I didn't know these terms, one might enter into a state of meditation or contemplation. Thus prayer, and by inference religion itself, had some important things to say about removing oneself from the world in order to see the world and the self and God more clearly.
At the same time that this message came through to me, I was growing up in a family where my maternal grandparents had spent time in Africa as missionaries, and upon their return to America had taken a church in the heart of downtown Cleveland, in what came to be known later as "the inner city." My grandfather was an exponent of Walter Rauchenbush's "Social Gospel." My grandmother was a medical doctor who ministered to the men in Cleveland's factories and to the needs of their wives and children.
Thus I grew up understanding that the religious urge had, among other things such as the moral strictures requiring that I not play cards or go to movies on Sundays and in general be a "good boy," the religious urge had a dual purpose: on the one hand withdrawal from the world for prayer, and hopefully enlightenment, and on the other hand engagement with the world in order to join in the battle for truth and justice and so forth.
As a child and young man my efforts at contemplative prayer were manifested for the most part by spending about half my life fishing. By the time I was in college my social conscience was fairly well developed and I was involved in political causes of various kinds. Looking back now over thirty years, one particular involvement comes to mind, because in it, it seems to me now from this perspective, lay the kind of naive goodwill that would later be dashed, as all naiveté must always be dashed, and lead to a crisis in my understanding of religion's dual purpose: engagement and withdrawal.
It was 1961 and I was 21 and the leader of my college's delegation to The National Turn Toward Peace Movement, a nationwide effort organized by college students to urge President Kennedy not to resume nuclear testing. There were thousands of students in Washington out in front of The White House, and students in front of every State House across America. You may remember this event. It's the one where John Kennedy, seeing the demonstrators out in the November cold, had coffee and doughnuts sent out to them. A shrewd political move no doubt but one also from some other age.
I led a contingent to the State House in Columbus, Ohio. I remember my sign. It said: NO NUCLEAR TESTING. END POVERTY, HUNGER AND DISEASE. It was as if since tens of thousands of college students were getting together for the weekend to stop nuclear tests, we might as well get more done than that, we might as well, while we were organized and at it, also end poverty, hunger and disease.
The assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 began a descent out of that kind of naiveté for many people my age which I think continues to this day. Nevertheless, over the years that followed I worked as a street gang worker in Cleveland and Hoboken and was engaged in various ways in both the civil rights movement and the protests against the war in Vietnam.
Then from 1967 to 1969 my wife and I went to work at Lincoln University, an all Black college in southeastern Pennsylvania. Living as a part of a small minority of white folks in a predominately Black world two years after the Watts rebellion and the assassination of Malcom X and at the height of the Black Power movement was an experience that let me see the depths of racism in America, and see also white America's recalcitrant unwillingness to do anything about that racism, that radicalized me for the rest of my life. During this time also, you will remember, the war in Vietnam increasingly disrupted American life as no war since The Civil War has done. Then it was 1968 and Martin Luther King was killed, then Bobby Kennedy and less than two months after that the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
That August as the streets of Chicago smelled of tear gas and blood from the cracked heads of demonstrators and all of America watched on TV as Abraham Ribicoff castigated Mayor Daily for his Gestapo police tactics and Daily responded, his hand cupped to his mouth, soundlessly, yet very clearly for all to see: "You motherfucker!", it seemed to me that America had fallen into a state of total anarchy. I was done with anything political and ready for complete withdrawal, retreat into something smaller, more personal, and I wanted to get as far away from the center of America both physically and spiritually as I possibly could. Therefore, coming to the mountains--the mountains, the forest, the desert: the wilderness: all traditional places for retreat and withdrawal--seemed like a logical step. We came to northern Vermont to homestead, to start a new life, to escape a totally disintegrated society.
We had had our naiveté beaten out of us, but not our vanity, and we imagined we might not only start our lives all over again but perhaps even America all over again also. I went to work in the woods with my neighbors. My wife got elected to the local library committee, I got elected to the local school board.
By the time I moved to Vermont I was reading Lao Tzu's TAO TE CHING. This tiny book of eighty little chapters half of which are about the way to personal enlightenment, the other half concerned with a vision of what the good society should be, became as important to me on a daily basis as The Bible had been to my parents and grand parents. My political activism transformed itself from trying to end all poverty, hunger and disease in a single weekend to trying to get the 4th grade teacher in one tiny elementary school in the mountains of northern Vermont to stop making kids sit in their chairs until they peed in their pants. There is a moral in this story, in this progress from the general to the specific. Any writer or Taoist can tell you what that moral is.
At about this time I discovered a book by Thomas Merton, who also, by the way, died in 1968, called THE WISDOM OF THE DESERT, a collection of Merton's translations of the sayings of the 4th century hermit/monks who populated the deserts of Egypt, Arabia and Persia and who have come to be known as The Desert Fathers. In Merton's Introduction to that book he says these men, who were the first Christian hermits, abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude because they saw society as corrupt beyond repair. They believed that to "drift along, passively accepting the tenets of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster." They regarded the society of their time "as a shipwreck from which each single individual . . . had to swim for his life." They were, in other words, genuine anarchists "who did not believe in letting themselves be passively guided and ruled by a decadent state." They went into the desert, the wilderness, into solitude, in order to become mature in faith, which means, as Merton puts it "humble and detached from [the self], to a degree that is altogether terrible."
"The Desert Father . . . could not risk attachment to his own ego, or the dangerous ecstasy of self-will. He could not retain the slightest identification with his superficial, transient, self-constructed self. He had to lose himself in the inner, hidden reality of a self that was transcendent, mysterious, half-known and lost in Christ." The end of all this striving was "purity of heart"--a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs [and] an intuitive grasp of one's own inner reality as anchored, or rather lost, in God through Christ. The fruit of this effort was quies: rest . . . . The rest which these men sought was simply the sanity and poise of a being that no longer has to look at itself" because the self, in a real sense, is gone; it has become self-transcendent.
In order to achieve this selflessness the hermit had to abjure all pretension, all self importance--"a detachment from [the self], to a degree that is altogether terrible"--all artifice of any kind, including literary artifice. He had to become plain and simple and common, a common man among common men. In doing this, in leaving the world to save one's self, one ends up helping to save the world by transcending the superficial, transient, self-constructed self and thus being able to see beyond the self and into selflessness, into what various eastern religions would call The Universal Soul, The One, The Tao, and what these Desert Fathers called "The Mystical Body of Christ."
Well, words to strive for if not to live by. My own engagement with the world, the constant shuck and jive and hustle for money, the struggles of ambition and career and the conflicts of jealousy and resentment, anger and bitterness that always accompany such struggles, in other words, the dark and dreck, the sturm und drang of everyday life, leave me personally a lot further from the visionary insightfulness of quies than I would like to be.
I've been haunted by these ideas of Merton's, however, ever since I first confronted them more than 20 years ago, and haunted by the questions inherent in what this kind of withdrawal into the self in order to escape the self in order to achieve selflessness has to do with anything, how it can be applied to the general good, to the active, engaged Social Gospel my grandfather believed in. In other words, even if I could achieve the selflessness of quies what earthly good would it do anyone beyond myself?
The answer is simple: the self who knows selflessness is better able to see "the true state of affairs," as Merton puts it, and thus better able to step beyond the self and be helpful.
But. We are all so stuck in the practicality of our all American pragmatism, our can-do optimism--or at least we were. As Merton says in another of his books, a collection of essays called CONTEMPLATION IN A WORLD OF ACTION, "Let us start from one admitted fact: if prayer, meditation and contemplation were once taken for granted as central realities of human life everywhere, they are so no longer. They are regarded, even by believers, as somehow marginal and secondary: what counts is getting things done." It's true. How then does the contemplative, the one in withdrawal, in the wilderness, relate his or her efforts at insight in the quiet mountains to a world interested only in action and results?
Last year I read a wonderful book by Bill Porter called ROAD TO HEAVEN: ENCOUNTERS WITH CHINESE HERMITS. Porter had heard that there were still Taoist hermits living in the mountains of northern China. He began his search and everywhere he went people told him that there were none left, that the Cultural Revolution had wiped them out completely. Porter persisted and finally found someone who said, "Of course there are still hermits in China . . . .But when you meet them, you won't know them. You won't find them, unless they want to be found." Slowly he discovered them--or they him--dozens of hermits, both men and women, living alone in huts and caves and sometimes in small groups scattered everywhere in the mountains. ROAD TO HEAVEN is mostly interviews with these hermits. These contemplatives and recluses share with the Desert Fathers and with all other hermits throughout the ages, I believe, the same qualities of simplicity, straightforwardness, lack of artifice, common sense, good will, ordinariness and delightful good humor.
I'll quote at random from some of the interviews.
"Jen: Taoism teaches us to reduce our desires and to lead quiet lives. People willing to reduce their desires or cultivate tranquillity in this modern age are very few. This is the age of desire. Also, people learn much more slowly now. Their minds aren't simple. They're too complicated."
"Hsieh: Lao-Tzu said to cultivate tranquillity and detachment. To be natural. To be natural means not to force things. When you are natural, you get what you need. But to know what's natural, you have to cultivate tranquillity." I think I can see the monk who said this laughing. I also note he says "get what you need" not what you want.
"Hsueh: You can't be in a hurry. You have to be prepared to devote your whole life to your practice. This is what's meant by religion. It's not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life. Not many people are willing to do this."
"Q: What sutras do you study?
Kuo-shan: I can't read. I never went to school. I just meditate."
"Q: What sort of practice do you follow? Do you chant the name of the Buddha or meditate?
Chi-ch'eng: I just pass the time."
"Hui-yuan: No I don't plan to go down the mountain again. First I'm too lazy. Second, I'm too ill. I can't walk so far anymore. I don't want to go anywhere. I just eat and sleep and sit here all day."
"Ch'en: What I'm telling you comes from my own understanding, not from books. People lose the Tao when they try to find it."
In the early pages of ROAD TO HEAVEN, Bill Porter quotes an article on shamanism by Mircea Eliade saying that in central and northern regions of Asia the religious life of the people used to center around the shaman. The shaman in an ecstatic trance "leaves his body, passes through a series of heavens, and communicates with all manner of spirits, seeking and gaining knowledge for the welfare of his community. By providing a link with the spiritual world and bringing back knowledge gained there he defends his society against darkness. But at the same time, he lives apart from the society he protects." When I read that my head almost flew off, not because the shaman leaves his body and passes from heaven to heaven gaining knowledge and talking to spirits, but because these people who believe in this shaman see this hermit/recluse as someone who actually seeks and gains knowledge for "the welfare of his community." The shaman is a defender of his society against darkness; he is actually the protector of the society he doesn't live within! Imagine such a society where hermits, recluses, the contemplative, is valued and supported as an important member of that society.
Porter also points out that throughout Chinese history there has been a dialectic between public service and withdrawal, between the hermit and the activist. "Seclusion and public service were seen as the dark and light of the moon, inseparable and complementary." Yin and Yang. "Hermits and officials were often the same people at different times of their lives. And officials who never experienced tranquillity and concentration of spirit in pursuits other than fame or fortune were not esteemed in China." Perhaps the most famous example of this way of life is Wang Wei, the T'ang poet and painter, who, after a distinguished life as a public official, became a hermit and a Taoist of the most extreme order.
The aim of this dialectic between public service and withdrawal was always the application of the principles of the Tao in personal and societal, that is, in human, affairs. Thus the TAO TE CHING speaks to both the individual and the community. In other words, the conflicting pulls I have felt throughout my life between "getting things done," as Merton puts it, and the urge to withdraw, between ending poverty, hunger and disease in a weekend and going into my room and shutting the door to pray have in some societies from time to time been seen not as contradictory but complimentary.
Such a blending of Yin and Yang, the dark and the light, the active and the passive in one's life, if not to be achieved, is a goal at least to be reached for. For me in recent years it has meant time alone in the mountains in silence, time reading THE TAO TE CHING, time walking, and it has meant involvement with the Vermont Community Loan Fund, a group that helps finance low income, perpetually affordable housing. I can take you to a Single Room Occupancy in Burlington's north end where 45 formerly homeless men have a place to live or to a renovated house on St. Paul's Street where a mother and a father and three kids live in a first floor apartment and not on the street. No end to poverty, hunger and disease here. These are modest achievements to be sure, simple and concrete but better than the street.
Yet this back and forth between the hermit and the activist, the dark and the light, the active and the passive, in this ancient Chinese tradition still seems in some way so American, so practical and utilitarian, and I suspect in most people's minds, and perhaps in my own, the activism justifies the withdrawal and therefore clearly indicates that the withdrawal is not as important as the activism. Do you go into your room to pray only in order to come out again and "get things done"? Thus, after these twenty years, I am still haunted by the radical nature of the Desert Father's withdrawal or by Eliade's comments that the shaman by virtue of his reclusion actually "defends his society from darkness," actually protects the society he doesn't live within.
To see the hermit and the activist as different parts of the same person's movement back and forth from Yin to Yang should be easy for well intentioned Americans with some sense of public good to comprehend. But to see the hermit as an activist, his or her withdrawal and passivity as activity, requires in our time a leap of mind and faith altogether radical.
What if it isn't necessary for the hermit and the activist to be the same person? What if the hermit in the mountains who lives his or her life entirely alone doing nothing but "passing the time" and the activist who is "in the world" at work "getting things done" . . . what if both these totally separate, different and opposing people are actually the same person, actually unified, at one, in the Mystical Body of Christ, The Universal Soul, The Tao, The One?
My own reading and contemplation over the years has convinced me that there must be a place for the life of the total recluse, the hermit who gets nothing done. The notion of this kind of total withdrawal is unappreciated, even hated, by Americans. We as a people are still too empirical, too practical. We need to work our way toward an understanding that these kinds of contemplatives, even though we never see them and they never "do" anything at all, can become the defenders of the society in which they don't live, the guardian's and protector's of the public good. This is a very old idea, so old in fact that it is new.
An essay about the value of public education and how it influenced the lives of two men,
one black, the other white, plus novelist John Irving's elitist reaction to Vermont's Public Education Funding Act.
This essay first appeared in The Sunday Rutland Herald/The Sunday Times Argus on November 1, 1998.
A couple weeks ago I toured New England performing ZEN MOUNTAINS-ZEN STREETS: A Duet for Poet and Improvised Bass, with my friend, avant garde bassist and composer, William Parker. William Parker was born and raised poor and black in the projects of the South Bronx in New York City and educated in the public schools there.
I come out of a white, working class background in Cleveland, Ohio. Many of my people, like William's, were factory workers, domestics, and postal workers. Neither one of my parents graduated from high school; in fact, I am the first person with my name to have a high school diploma. In other words, William and I, two people obviously so different, from such different places, have much in common also.
As William and I drove from town to town through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont we visited about our pasts, our childhoods, our educations, and the school teachers who inspired us.
Both of us would readily admit that our families and the way in which we were raised had much to do with what we've been able to accomplish as adults, but we both would also say that the teachers we encountered in school, the ones who saw our potential, also had much to do with our futures. In other words, for both William Parker and myself what happened to us in public school made a big difference in our lives.
When I was in elementary school in Cleveland, every couple of years we were taken to Severance Hall to hear The Cleveland Symphony. ALL public school kids got to do this, not just some from the more affluent neighborhoods or from private schools. I can remember those trips to this day, sitting in the 3rd balcony listening to the symphony. I'd never heard anything like it before.
William Parker has similar stories to tell about how--even though when he was in the 8th grade a guidance counselor told him that because he was young, male and black, he was destined to push a clothes rack through the garment district for the rest of his life, even though that happened to him--there were other teachers in his life who saw his great potential with writing and music and who encouraged him, fought for him, to accomplish something more with his life than what the guidance counselor said he was destined to become.
Both William Parker and I were given the chance in a public school to see possibilities greater than we had imagined.
As William and I traveled through New England I told him about the controversy raging now here in Vermont over Act 60, whose proper name, by the way, is The Equal Educational Opportunity Act.
I told him also about what novelist John Irving has been saying about how this act, because it takes money from rich towns and gives it to poorer towns, is Marxist. I told William about how John Irving said, "There's a minority which is an open target in this country which no one protects, and that's rich people." I told William about how John Irving didn't want to send his son to the public school because he didn't want to expose his son to "trailer park envy." I told William that John Irving said, "My response is as brutally upper class as I can make it: I'm not putting my child in an underfunded public school."
William sat quietly in the car for a while and then said, "What makes rich people harden their hearts? If you see children who are hungry, don't you feed them? If you have enough, why wouldn't you share it with those who need more? What makes rich people harden their hearts?"
I had no answer.
We can infer from what John Irving says that he does not care that thousands of kids in the poorer towns may not get an equal, even start, the same chance to succeed that the kids in the more affluent, better funded, better staffed and equipped school systems get. Clearly John Irving does not believe in equal opportunity.
But for the rest of us, if we believe that poor kids in poor towns right now, or in some other generation, kids like William Parker or David Budbill, if we believe that poor kids, like these kids, should not be penalized for the place or the class into which they are born, then we must support Act 60.
Beyond all the arguments about how Act 60 will be implemented there is a fundamental question and it is: Do we as a people here in Vermont believe our children, ALL our children, no matter where they come from or how rich or poor they are, deserve an equal opportunity to an education?
Our reputation as a fair minded state is at stake. And so is the future of our children.
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