conversation

 

The Dead/The Living

 

"Culturally the Negro represents a paradox: Though he is an organic part of the nation, he is excluded by the entire tide and direction of American culture.  Frankly, it is felt to be right to exclude him, and it is felt to be wrong to admit him freely.  Therefore if, within the confines of its present culture, the nation ever seeks to purge itself of its color hate, it will find itself at war with itself, convulsed by a spasm of emotional and moral confusion."

Richard Wright, "The Man Who Went to Chicago" in Eight Men

 

Mr. Wright, you have lit a match and set a fire in my mind.  When in the 1940 you annotated the 1930s, you spoke of a future, our future that is now a present.   What you say about the Negro (who now wears many names, some of them inscrutable) now applies to all of the organic parts or ethnicities  of the nation.  All the organic parts are simultaneously included and excluded, for time is enhanced the paradox.  What remains true beyond dispute in 2020, however, is the pandemic of spasm.

 

Recognition enables me to have frequent conversations with the dead.  It is frightening.  Much that the dead have to say is more intelligent than the regurgitations of the living ----the menus which  mass media and social media serve up 24/7/365. Thus, conversations with the living are abjectly dreadful, mainly because we find ourselves imitating the media, however much we intend to do otherwise.  Even when we remain silent, we speak.  That is part of our 21 century paradox.  It tempts us to hold fast to depression, despite continuing efforts to hope.  Many of these contemporary conversations among the living leave us more distracted when we exit than when we entered.

 

I suppose we are damned by the blessing that neither death nor life successfully lies about peace and perfection.  Mr. Wright, your insights about psychological distances still motivate our talking, our actions;   they still help us to abandon the option of suicide. We are much indebted to you for speaking to us from an elsewhere space.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            September 23, 2020

 

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