FRAGMENTS

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Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin

 

James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni’s extraordinary forgotten conversation about the language of love and what it takes to be truly empowered

 

Quote

In November of 1971, fifteen months after his remarkable conversation with Margaret Mead about race and identity, James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) sat down with another extraordinary woman, the poet Nikki Giovanni (b. June 7, 1943), for another conversation of astonishing timeliness today.

The event was hosted by the PBS television series SOUL! and took place in London. Baldwin was forty-six and Giovanni only twenty-eight. For hours of absolute presence, intellectual communion, and occasional respectful rebuttal, they explored justice, freedom, morality, and what it means to be an empowered human being.

The transcript was eventually published as A Dialogue (public library).

 

 

A dialogue (PDF)

 

GIOVANNI: Would you say, to sort of sum things up here, that you tend to be optimistic?

BALDWIN: When I pick your kid up in my arms, yes. When I look at you, yes.

GIOVANNI: Not me. I'm very pessimistic.

BALDWIN: Oh no, you're not as pessimistic as you think you are.

GIOVANNI: I'm pretty pessimistic, though.

BALDWIN: No, I think you're pretty realistic. I think you're pretty cool. I think you're pretty clear. But pessimists are silent; pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

GIOVANNI: People really feel the need to feel better than somebody, don't they?

BALDWIN: I don't know why, but they do. Being in competition with somebody is something I never understood. In my own life, I've been in competition with me.

GIOVANNI: Which is enough.

BALDWIN: Enough? It's overwhelming. Enough?

GIOVANNI: Just by fooling yourself.

 

BALDWIN: That'll keep you busy, and it's very good for the figure.

GIOVANNI: It makes you happy, you know.

BALDWIN: Well, it means that in any case you can walk into a room and talk to somebody, look them in the eye. And if I love you, I can say it. I've only got one life and I'm going to live my life, you know, in the sight of God and all his children.

GIOVANNI: Maybe it's parochial, narrow-minded, bullheaded, but it takes up so much energy just to keep yourself happy.

BALDWIN: It isn't even a question of keeping yourself happy. It's a question of keeping yourself in some kind of clear relationship, more or less, to the force which feeds you.
Some days you're happy, some days you ain't. But somehow we have to deal with that on the simplest level. Bear in mind that this person facing you is a person like you.
They're going to go home and do whatever they do just like you. They're as alone as you are.

GIOVANNI: Because that becomes a responsibility, doesn't it?

BALDWIN: Well, it's called love, you know.

GIOVANNI: We agree. Love is a tremendous responsibility.

[Hermetico]

"They are everywhere.

The tragedy-sniffers are all

about

they get up in the morning

and begin to find things

wrong

and they fling themselves

into a rage about

it,

a rage that lasts until

bedtime,

where even there

they twist in their

insomnia,

not able to rid their

mind

of the petty obstacles

they have

encountered.

They feel set against,

it’s a plot.

And by being constantly

angry they feel that

they are constantly

right.

You see them in traffic

honking wildly

at the slightest

infraction,

cursing,

spewing their

invectives.

You feel them

in lines

at banks

at supermarkets

at movies,

they are pressing

at your back

walking on your

heels,

they are impatient to

a fury.

They are everywhere

and into

everything,

these violently

unhappy

souls.

Actually they are

frightened,

never wanting to be

wrong

they lash out

incessantly

it is a malady

an illness of

that

breed.

The first one

I saw like that

was my

father

and since then

I have seen a

thousand

fathers,

ten thousand

fathers

wasting their lives

in hatred,

tossing their lives

into the

cesspool

and

ranting

on."

 

-Charles Bukowski, They Are Everywhere

[Lena]

 

"Magija vode", Japan, 1951. Autor fotografije je Koji Takashima, fotograf amater, radnik Kawasaki kompanije za proizvodnju lokomotiva. Fotografjia je osvojila peto mesto u kategoriji crno-belih fotografija na međunarodnom takmičenju koje je organizovao Popular Photography Magazine 1951.

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