So I'm thinking about EC this morning realizing that the 450 self-portraits post only went through a portion of my life. Why do I write, and what value is psychological honesty in writing? They are core.
I am a writer and I have become one by writing in public. When I wrote for myself in private, I made myself into a puzzle, an enigma. I was answering questions posed by myself to myself and giving congratulations to myself for answering them to my own satisfaction. It exacerbated what was already a smug disposition.
Spy and I were roommates in college, and we had a fight about my intellectuality. He thought I was full of shit and I told him that I was headed to Harvard. So he repeated to me all night, yeah whatever you say, but you're never going to get into Harvard. He was right, I was not headed there, even though I got invited to the seminar, but that's another story. So I had to take him somewhat seriously because my application to transfer to Stanford had not been accepted. I was bored to death at Cal State even though I was kicking butt as a BMOC. The thumbnail sketch was that I was a 3.0 in my major and a 4.0 in my general ed requirements, I had 3 internships (with the MBAs) at Xerox, I was a national officer with NSBE, I was a student adviser to the Minority Engineering Program Board, I was on the Student Senate Finance Committee, I was Alpha Phi Alpha chapter secretary, I had a part time job, a car and an off-campus apartment. I may have been juggling one or two girlfriends at the time, that part was a blur. I was an over achiever because I had to be. It doesn't matter what you do at Cal State, it's not UC, it's not Claremont and it's not Ivy League. I over compensated because of my anonymity.
Now that I think about it, my nemesis was a very cool guy whose name I can't remember. He was a liberal arts major of some sort at Wesleyan or some prestigious place, and he had a yacht. He invited us to go sailing and cruise some chicks. Two of my buddies were down, but quit out when they discovered they had to man the ropes. We needed a crew of four at least, but they just wanted to carouse. So I had to decline the invite. I remember being very disappointed at the time because, like most pretentious people who were clueless about the real deal, I was infatuated by William F. Buckley and his infatuation with sailing. It's not to difficult to admire his prose when you are spending your time in the Valley in the 80s at the very center of the Valley Girl universe.
I began to think of what I should do to manage the excess brain cycles. The answer was to experiment with myself, and it became something of a black man thing. I recognized that if I never got into Stanford or Harvard, I would always have to spend my life explaining to people to take me as seriously as I take myself. When you own the yacht you don't have to do any explaining. I wouldn't own the yacht. If I were to be a bit pitiful in my writing I would extend the metaphor deeper into my life, and the the hook I use when I am being pitiful to myself is two turntables but no microphone. I am one leg short of a three legged stool, always a little off balance. I know from experience that brains are a cheap commodity.
So writing became more important as an expository vehicle to me personally because I didn't have the money to play practical jokes. I could not afford the time to go and do what I would have liked. I had enough experience, hanging around some trust fund kids not to be intimidated by them. I can remember the praise and glory that Bret Easton Ellis was getting, and it pissed me off. I knew everything about that life on the black side and might have easily crept through on the white side too, and I was a way better writer. I knew those degenerate little fucks, but I just didn't have the time nor the money, so I couldn't afford the patience. It was already decided for me, I had to work for a living. Saturday's child.
And yet I couldn't bear the idea of being that thing which we were all destined to become were it not for the coolness of Steve Jobs, geeks. I studied Computer Science, because I *knew*. I got it, just like Steve Jobs. I still have it and I still have 3 insanely great ideas that have still not yet been realized. I'm going to work, OK, but I'll work in the corporate corridors, Wall Street if I can make it. I needed social space. I needed presence. I needed the world to recognize that thing that blackfolks had seen in me all my life. He's special. He's destined for something. He's not ordinary.
So I became a writer like all college students do. To revolutionize consciousness, to turn the world upside down, to boldly go into cognitive science and create a new way of understanding the very essence of thought itself. And to make a boatload of money and score hot chicks and drive fast cars and wear designer clothes and close down restaurants in New York City at 3 in the morning and then go crash on the beach in the Hamptons. Typical undergrad collegiate fantasy for the 80s. Probably more Bret Easton Ellis than I'd like to admit. But I would say, if there is a defense in my defense, that of all the Brats in the Pack, my favorite was James Spader. Still is. Spader was non-plussed by all of the decadence, he had a sense of detachment and control. He was too smart to be self-destructive and understood life was too complex to be self-deprecating or ironic. Spader was a tortoise, expressionless, wise, destined to survive.
That is my writer's eye. I read Henry Miller and loved Warren Beatty in 'Reds' because I would dare to be never surprised. I am a black man, how could I possibly be surprised about man's inhumanity to man? The trick, or so it seemed to me, was to be a black man at Harvard, or at least one with a yacht. Having a yacht means that you can watch the riots from two miles offshore. When there's a riot, everybody thinks about throwing molotov cocktails at the Man in Beverly Hills, but they can't touch you on sea, even if they could swim. The writer's distance was appropriate for eyewitness. I was the right kind of black man, the kind who never had existential doubts about himself or his identity. I thought everybody got it. I thought everybody understood in the wake of Martin and Malcolm that we were to be fearless and bold. I thought the only thing we don't have is wealth and power and a way to communicate. So I had the writer's eye and the writer's mouth - to communicate, if I had time. For time, I needed money and power, just like everyone else.
My girl L told me that there is an easy way to tell how enslaved black people are, in fact all people who suffer in the proletariat no matter how elevated they see themselves to be. That is to ask them their salary. If you are middle class, and you are trapped in the middle class by its morality, there is no truer indication. To say, I make 38,500 is to declare yourself naked. To say my SAT score is 1020 is to tell the world how you think of yourself. Human beings have been reduced to statistics about human beings and the proof is that it's too personal to say. My penis is exactly 6.05 inches is not only an inconvenient truth but an inexpressable truth. Everyone has the secret that silences them so what if all of that is just average. The writer destroys that silence. The writer allows people to say what they can't say themselves. But the writer is better than the singer, because the writer frees the soul.
My ambition was naked. I have stood so many times for office, for scholarships. I have filled out so many applications for so many jobs. I have told my life story to so many buxom girls trying to trust me. I have made so many obvious statements that I thought that was how life went. I've been a golden boy for various short periods. I have been the hearer of confessions. I expect to hear the truth. I expect to tell the truth. Why would I lie? I'm creative enough to tell a story and ever since high school I stopped telling it like it was my story. People laugh. People get the joke, they respect the tale, they hear me out. So I had no problem telling L my salary. She had no problem riding shotgun in the BMW.
And yet. Telling a black man story. How should it be done? What is the purpose? What is the point? Why should anyone listen? Why take it public?
I've been thinking more often about what kind of book I should eventually write. It's a very tough choice. I haven't really thought that I might do much before my retirement in terms of writing full length books. But several ideas do have appeal. I blog because it's the right length for spewing off what I think. I'd have to research and polish...
..this is the thing I hate. That I am a creation and that I write about me. That I'm supposed to represent. But knowing myself makes me a greater writer, and knowing all that I write helps me know things in the world, but it also helps the writer's eye, and sometimes possession of that eye is a fascinating story. How you make sense of it all, how you maintain sanity in the face of cruel reality, the cruel reality you capture in words and phrases and essays and rants. The interaction of emotion with characters. I have cartoon characters, not novel characters. But I keep promising that when I have time, when I retire, I'll write the big book. So I turn outward, I don't want to write about me, I want to write about people in the world, black people from my secret world that the world doesn't seem to recognize. Stuggling people in the shadows of life who work, monk-like to push back the darkness and have a little more life than they thought they might get. Brilliant people who bang their heads against the wall to invent a little something and altruistically give who are beat down and reduced to zero for not watching their own backs. Monstrous people whose twisted vision of the world cannot be held in abeyance because of the cowardice of the ordinary man he bumps into on the sidewalk. There are so many subjects and so many stories to tell.
I write to reprogram people, and yet I debate in blogs, and invite conflict and clarification. I don't have enough ambition to stop being interactive and just sell you something I packaged up. I want the holler back.
(incomplete and rambling and impossible to finish)
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