A mid-morning (1:00 p.m.) walk after scrambled eggs led us
to the doorstep of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad or his neighbor’s at Armando’s
Tire & Auto Repair. Malcolm X was in the dead leaves fallen from the ginkgo
tree pink, and his widow was the pigtailed girl on her scooter talking about
the imminent arrival of first-grade school supply shopping. Probably J.D.
Salinger lives in the crooked roof of the apartmentgarage on the corner and the other
old recliner on the corner, too, is where he does his writing. All of it, the
scene, was a Dave Chappelle sketch, with the joke’s punch line being three
young women passing on the sidewalk and asking, “how y’all doin?” and us saying
“hello, how are you?” on the way south to Comcast Cable headquarters (neither
of us trust the television in the living room enough.) I had thoughts of my
body flopping in the skin of my body unfamiliar. There were German Shepherds
standing upright like humans. There were “No Trespassing” signs. There were shantytowns
of gray-capped mushrooms and a woman I went to Spanish class with smoking a
cigarette in front of her children.
James Baldwin met Elijah Muhammad at his South Side Chicago palace
for a dinner of white devils and not-pork. Stuff was probably mad tense because
the writer was raised deep Southern Baptist while the Prophet or whatever had
spiritual slumber parties in state prison cells with X (says the Spike Lee
joint, at least.) And the Prophet always, especially around dinnertime, had a
hankerin’ for ideological hard sells. Also, there was a gaggle of Fruit of
Islam tightening their belt buckles and fiddling with their cufflinks, and
white-clad sisters a table over minding their food with a reverence usually
reserved for hypnotists and game show hosts. Knowing the religious sales pitch
would eventually come, Baldwin decided to wipe his mouth with a spiritual declaration
and tuck it in his shirt, over his heart, like a napkin.
“I left the church twenty years ago and I haven’t joined
anything since,” he said with a look and tone I know nothing about.
“And what are you now?” Elijah Muhammad asked.
A question that chips its own ice with a dull metal pick (to
get to the bottom of things.) How often, in the actual words, does someone ask,
“What are you?” (“What makes up all that you are and define yourself as?”) Of
course, it’s furtively asked all the time (the McDonald’s billboard on the
raised train tracks, with its glistening patties, asks me “Are you the person
who will 99-cent-menu a block north on your right with the rest of the
drive-thru line?” And I say, “No, those burgers in your microwaves are not the
what of me.”) But rarely do leaders of major political, religious, or social
movements confront people with questions about their ideological makeups over
decaf coffee. Barack Obama has not asked me about my political party
affiliation. Donald Trump has not asked me about my views on global capitalism.
The Pope has not asked me about my takes on theology and Italian cuisine. I
wonder, though, how I would react if they did ask me. Would my
reactions/answers to these figures, because of who they are, be any different
than my reactions/answers would be if I was asked the same questions by friends
or colleagues or strangers? Would the pressure of having to answer for the
“what” of who I am to a major figure push me to dumb-down my answer, or clam up
with charismatic leader stage fright, or change the subject over cheesecake?
Baldwin, bold, answered “I’m a writer. I like doing things
alone.”
And for this answer I find Baldwin a brave man with bullfrog
cheeks and neck. Not because he got all “holy artist” and started spouting off
lines about how his intellectual and creative work were his religious
affiliation (thus, declaring that his spiritual alliances lay preoccupied elsewhere.)
But instead because, when confronted with a pointblank identity-validation
proposition (my nightmare because of the confrontation sweats), he calmly
answered by stating what he did best and how he liked to do it. He answered,
“Would you like to join our herd?” not with, “No, thanks, I already belong to
another herd,” (probably what I would do with my baby wildebeest backbone) but
with, “No, thanks, I’m not really into herds right now.” Which is brave because
herds are so comforting and safe (ask a baby wildebeest) that people often make
concessions (political, moral, personal, spinal) to be parts of them. To reject
the comforts that come from comrades watching your tail at the watering hole (in
favor of watching one’s own tale, drinking less, or drinking alone [and
probably at a different watering hole]) signals an individual courage I don’t
see enough of in the small corner of academic/professional/social jungle I live
in.
Maybe Baldwin’s maverick bad-assery is what we should expect
from our forward-thinking artistintellectuals. After swiping a copy of Russell
Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals: American
Culture in the Age of Academe, off the “free books” table (which doubles as
the “chips and salsa and leftover donuts” table) in the English Department mail
room and reading the preface in my upstairs bathroom by the trashcan of beard,
I’m more and more on board with his notion that “In the life of the mind, as in
life itself, vitality requires resisting the lure of the familiar and the
safe.” If the herd mentality could constitute part of the “familiar and safe”
Jacoby is referring to (which I think it could and does or I wouldn’t be
bringing it up), then an (as much as possible) independently formulated system
of self-identification is crucial to those pursuing “the life of the mind” (Whatever
that is. Sound gross though.)
While I still might not have the mettle to lay down a
cold-blooded “what” of me declaration to the prominent leader of a social
movement (or anyone) if confronted, Baldwin’s handling of the Elijah Muhammad
Nation of Islam pressure cooker gives me an example of courage. And courage could very well
be the most necessary tool towards self-identification we got.
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