Up From Freedom

(I think I have discovered in answering Barbara's question, a good preface for my book)

I'm glad that you make the connection between gayness and misogyny. Think of that anytime someone proposes Gay Marriage as an advance in society. Not many people do, and I'd think that as defensive as black women can be we'd hear more beef.

As for literature, I would say there are three kinds aside from simply bad literature. There would be that stuff which is of the nature of 'why the caged bird sings'. Poems of pain that give illumination to the suffering... aahh. I can't be so flip.

The last book by a black woman that I read was called 'Pushed Back to Strength' and that was somewhere back around '96. Up until that point I had read pretty much everything that black women wrote that Masters in English were reading at the time. I can't say that I have any expectations of writers because they are black women, but I am sure that whatever lesson is to be learned by the insinuation, I have already learned it. Which is to say I cannot imagine any 'upliftment' that genre writing can possibly give me. I've already been as high as it pushes. Which leads back to a number of difficulties which I am accustomed to.

In the first place, one you've read all of Toni Morrison, you have to recognize that there isn't much out there of her caliber. She spoils you. I could go on about her gifts, but the point is that there is no other writer quite as talented as she is sui generis, and really to hold other black women to her standard is not fair to them. Secondly, the implications of what she has written still fall on deaf ears. Then again we are reflecting on the *purposes* of literature to inform and shape character. But in that narrow light let us call black literature a tool for moving people forward. With regard to positive existential karma I refer to this as 'the sound of the drum'. If you hear it enough, sooner or later you get the beat and you begin marching rather that groping around in circles.

How many millions of done their marching? How many have reached the mountaintop and are now truly free? Now what are we to say to the truly free man?

So then let us come back to reduction. There is bad literature, which does nothing for anyone and there is 'up the mountain' drumming, there is 'top of the mountain' drumming and there is 'beyond the mountain' drumming. But only great literature survives multiple generations.

It is towards this greatness that I am aimed, because my intent is to inherit all that is great about Western Civilization. I am investing in the fact that I am in full possession of the language of the most advanced civilization the world has ever known. I am free to pursue it unfettered by poverty or any other sort stumbling block that might hinder me. In fact I am at the point of consumption at which I find myself speaking in tongues foreign to most of my company. In other words I am practically academic, which is to say I know things that I'll never use and spend time outthinking my circumstances. Rather like E. M. Forster (except not gay) I have more literary tools than arms with which to swing them and as I stop to select them, the time spent wastes the opportunity. Cast in the mold of 'up the mountain' literature, why can't (black) folks be as well-read as me, that is because they.. blah blah blah. What they need to do is.. blah blah blah... until one day.. I am Oprah!

As you might realize, I am Cobb. I've written my own up the mountain story within the narrative of this blog, the struggle to articulate and defend black conservatism. I've been playing around on top of that mountain for a year or two, which would have been a lot more fun if the president were Dwight Eisenhower instead of GW Bush, and I've only recently decided to ramble in this mode of alternative mental provocation loosely pertaining to myself as a (black, male, straight) writer beyond the mountain of political economy.

I don't think gay literature has anything to tell, rather something to prove. But I think of culturally sophisticated homosexuality in the context of a society of luxury and excess. Indeed when there are millions of us in Western Civilization who can afford faux decadence as part of a lifestyle oriented around disposable income, we ought to be watching our backs. Not as in what backs baby got, but as in clash of civilizations. So I find it both ironic and silly that blackfolks, among the millions only recently legally sponsored to enjoy the full privileges of Western society have not more altogether pushed themselves towards the task of fully understanding its structure, undertaking its maintenance and investing in ownership of it. Instead we flaunt our difference within it, even to the point of subversion and curse its origins even to the point of historical revisionism. This is the legacy of hard multiculturalism of which the entirety of gay pride is but a forward, loud section. You'd think the gay critics might have taken some loyalty from the movie '300' but we got little of that in defense of Western Civ.

It is my estimation that the great lesson of the African American is expressed completely in the three words 'Up From Slavery' and that is a narrative that independently confirms the value of the society in which we live. And yet for all the greatness that Frederick Douglass and those who lived and wrote like him have shown, there are no material heirs of his estate. Perhaps it's just me but I should think that the Douglass family estate ought to be out there somewhere in Newport, RI. Alas it is not. We are free and symbolic of freedom, but our journey is not complete. We are 'diners' at the American table, but we don't own any farms, distribution chains, restaurants or even table manufacturers. Sure, we eat fine and there's plenty of 'got mine', but we're not as responsible for the good life as much as we consume it.

That is why I would name my book 'Up From Freedom'. I want my strength raising that American flag, and I'm trying to figure out the way, given the few and short lessons I have inherited, from consumption to production. Many of those lessons were from the wrong sort of drum, and were meant for landing me on a shorter or alternative mountain than that of Western Civ. But some of my life experiences were princely despite all that. When my running buddies were saying 'you da man' in the late 80s, that's what we meant. We weren't trying to stick it to the Man, or get as much as possible from the Man, we were trying to be the Man. I'm not sure how popular it is to maintain such an unselfish attitude about The System, and as long as the term 'Uncle Tom' has currency, then there will be a fraction of people who still are listening to the wrong drumming. I can't tell you how much blackness of the sort we informally ascribe to blackness survives the transformation from Black Man to The Man. I think that may all be in the eye of the beholder, but I am not beholden to it. My direction is clear, and furthermore I must be reconciled to my own failure so that my children aren't poisoned by some new form of hateration which is bound to emerge. I never thought it would be easy. Once you stand on top of the mountain, you gain a new class of enemies.

I am a nationalist. I want to belong to a nation more than I want to belong to a church, or to a race. My soul is my own business, as is my family. But my citizenship is public business and I like it that way. As we negotiate our way forward, as we decided how to prioritize the work of the nation, I am always glad to take part in that conversation. But I don't think identity is part of that equation and if it is, then there is some self-actualization that hasn't taken place. Somebody needs to get back to drumming their way up until they become confident that their own feet are moving them up the mountain and that gravity acts on us all equally. Some folks are dragging a lot of existential baggage up the hill and lots of Jacks and Jills break their crown on the way down. My writing is my hiking song. You can hear me hum it as I take a break and enjoy the view. You can hear me huff it and puff it as I blow by slackers. You can hear the tremble in my voice as I grunt it hanging by bleeding knuckles on the sheer face. I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free.