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Raise a Glass to James Baldwin
12 Plays20 hours ago
Hunter shares one of his favorite writers with Eric.
Sonny's Blues: https://docdrop.org/ocr/download/SonnysBlues.Baldwin-bqzsx_ocr.pdfAu
Autobiographical Notes from "Notes of a Native Son." Pdf (Pages 18-22). Extra credit is "Alone in Paris," which starts on page 118: https://dn710006.ca.archive.org/0/items/notes-of-a-native-son_202101/Notes%20of%20a%20Native%20Son%20.pdf
Pages of Devil Finds Work (bottom left page number 508-504 + 576-580): https://archive.org/details/JamesBaldwinCollectedEssaysLibraryOfAmerica1998/page/n507/mode/2up
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Transcript
Identity and Societal Changes
00:00:29
Speaker
The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic, a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall. This question can scarcely be said to exist among the wretched who know merely that they are wretched and who bear it day by day.
00:00:48
Speaker
It is a mistake to suppose that the wretched do not know that they are wretched, nor does this question exist among the splendid, who know merely that they are splendid, and who flaunt it day by day.
00:01:01
Speaker
It is a mistake to suppose that the splendid have any intention of surrendering their splendor. An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never thereafter to be a stranger.
00:01:21
Speaker
The stranger's presence making you the stranger, less to the stranger than to yourself. Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self,
00:01:33
Speaker
in which case it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which robes one's nakedness can always be felt and, sometimes, discerned.
00:01:46
Speaker
This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.
Introduction to the Hosts and Podcast
00:02:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Raise a Glass, the podcast where we talk about the stories and storytellers that shape us. My name is Eric Lintola. And I am Hunter Danson.
00:02:19
Speaker
We're so excited you're here with us today to discuss James Baldwin. A certain collection of short stories and pieces and essays that Baldwin wrote. Hunter's going to lead us in that discussion in a little bit today. But before we get there, Hunter, I gotta know, what's in your glass?
Drinks of Choice
00:02:42
Speaker
Well, I have my trusty Aldi's Hopping Nomad IPA here. It's all about the sound. Yeah.
00:02:55
Speaker
yeah it's It's a good beer. You know, Aldi beers, they're not as flashy as your juice forces and whatever's that they're coming out with, all the fancy names and stuff, but...
00:03:11
Speaker
It gets the job done.
00:03:16
Speaker
what What's in your glass here? How long ahead you have on that beer right now? I know. It wasn't a smooth word. Not the most impressive. um I'm actually coming to enjoy IPAs a lot more now that we're past the ah IPA whatever we had about 10 years ago.
00:03:33
Speaker
where things were just so hoppy that they were just in ah they're not inedible, like, i don't know, indrinkable. I don't know what the undrinkable, I guess. um I also brought a beer today. um It's very rare that we bring the same type of drink.
00:03:48
Speaker
um I have a barrel-aged Casey's Christmas Ale. It's an imperial brown ale with tart cherry. I have yet to taste the tart cherry, but I'll try real hard today. It's from Rohrbach Brewing Company here in Rochester, New York.
00:04:11
Speaker
I was told that this is the... For Guinness, you're supposed to just like flat out let it drain into the can. The the nitro? But this is not a nitro, and I should not have done what I just did. said that yours had a lot of head. Mine's like is that half the pint.
00:04:32
Speaker
So give me about five minutes, and I might take my first sip um of non-foam. ah while Before I get there, Hunter, what are you raising and pouring out for?
Current Events and Music Reflection
00:04:45
Speaker
Well, my raise and pour are connected this week. um
00:04:53
Speaker
I'm pouring one out for
00:04:59
Speaker
potentially ah another forever war in the current events and when I ran and
00:05:09
Speaker
It's just shameful. There's no other way to put it. um But I'm raising a glass to a song by Roger Waters that came out on an album called Amused to Death.
00:05:25
Speaker
um And the song is called The Bravery of Being Out of Range. And it's just such a Roger Waters is from Pink Floyd and he has...
00:05:39
Speaker
The ability to write songs about current events in a way that is artistic and emotional and very human, it's not... like He does make political statements, but they're not... like That's not all there is. you know He gets to the heart of matter and...
00:06:04
Speaker
the bravery of being out of range, you know, the refrain is we're still playing the game with the bravery of being out of range, referring to the fact that wars now, we just dropped bombs from 3000 miles away. Yeah. And, um, great song. I, I highly recommend giving it a listen.
00:06:25
Speaker
Um, and the whole album, honestly, it's, it's a great album. Um,
00:06:36
Speaker
about you, Eric?
00:06:39
Speaker
Well, before we get there, I did manage to pour my entire beer into this cup. I did not expect it to be as
00:06:51
Speaker
as exactly a pint size as it actually ended up turning out to be. So, Hunter, I'll let you see it.
00:07:00
Speaker
I don't think I can ever drop to this cup without spilling over. There you go. um So let me just take my first sip.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's a very strong beer.
00:07:17
Speaker
i will likely not finish it by the time we finish this conversation. Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, my poor, I'll start with
Media's Desensitizing Effects
00:07:29
Speaker
there, because that's the one I've been thinking about this morning kind of came to me. it's ah It's somewhat related to what you shared. It's not about the war in Iran, and um or but the computer I work on um uses Microsoft for everything.
00:07:50
Speaker
And there's a little button, like the little Windows button in the bottom corner of Microsoft. computer and if you accidentally touch it it opens up at a ah browser not a browser but like a browser type thing it's about two thirds the size of your screen that has news and the stock market and all this other stuff everything we don't want and and the thing is that it's really hard it's I haven't figured out how to exit out of it but
00:08:24
Speaker
And while that's annoying, that's not what I'm pouring one out for. What I'm pouring one out for is the...
00:08:33
Speaker
And I haven't figured out the right wording for this, but it's like almost the the desensitizing of content on media and news outlets. And so I accidentally clicked on this button and the news outlet was showing me a scene of police brutality.
00:08:54
Speaker
a video that I couldn't exit out of and that I didn't want to see. Not because I don't want to not be aware of those types of things happening, but because it's a traumatizing type experience or can be.
00:09:10
Speaker
And, and that's something that's becoming more and more, i don't know what happened or what, where the moment was. And if social media is what's driven this, but even like professional news outlets, like,
00:09:24
Speaker
are just showing dead bodies and like these really intense scenes like without without the opportunity to choose whether you consume it or not.
00:09:35
Speaker
like I feel like if I'm going to read an article or choose to read an article and there's going to be graphic content, I feel like at the very least, maybe it should let you know, hey, there's graphic video pictures or videos in this or like have it be blurred and you click on it to open it or something. it feels like um I can't see how that's a benefit to anybody.
00:10:00
Speaker
um It's a benefit that we are able to, with social with our devices and other things, capture things that we haven't captured before, right? To make sure that these these terrible things, whatever they might be happening, wherever they might be or wherever they might be from or however they might be happening, are are captured so that justice um can be met. Yeah.
00:10:24
Speaker
at least retributive justice and hopefully restorative as
Winter Olympics Recap
00:10:28
Speaker
well. But um to then ah have it be so you can't, even if you accidentally click on something or accidentally see something or or choosing to read something, but that you can't like not consume the visual image of it.
00:10:44
Speaker
Right. Because there are visual images that live in all of our brains that you can't unsee or you can't forget. And I think more and more of that is happening to more and more people. And I can't imagine that it's good for any of us.
00:11:01
Speaker
That's what the whole album Amused to Death is about. Okay. He wrote it in like the 90s and about television. And it's based partly on a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death.
00:11:17
Speaker
And it was... You know, just the title is Amused to Death. This fact that news infotainment, you know, this this genre was created where the news, they profit from holding your attention.
00:11:36
Speaker
Yeah. And the best way to hold your attention is to shock you yeah and um keep you watching. Yeah. um Well, I will raise a glass of something that we've we've talked about recently, but i don't think it's made on our last podcast.
00:11:52
Speaker
um And that's the Winter Olympics. Yay! Winter Olympics have finished. We're now looking ahead to 2028. And then the French Alps in 2030.
00:12:05
Speaker
twenty thirty um and So those are, I think, will both be really fun Olympics. But it was a really, there there were there was a lot luck going on in this last Winter Olympics. Lots of highs, lots of lows, lots of like moments of celebration and sadness and You know, you can you dive too deeply. You could end up having lots of different types of conversations, but that's not the point of of this this this phrase. um I love the Olympics.
00:12:30
Speaker
I know you love the Olympics as well, Hunter, and we've talked about it for hours. And and i i think they were genuinely fun, and there was some really incredible competition, and among the athletes, some really beautiful moments of celebration and of camaraderie and peace and unity.
James Baldwin's Influence
00:12:49
Speaker
um and so that's what i'll that's what i'll raise too
00:12:56
Speaker
all right so hunter you've been wanting to talk about james baldwin for quite a while um baldwin has had an impact in your life um i know the goal was to get this this podcast out in february um it's it's going to come out in march instead um But can you tell me why why are we discussing James Baldwin? and then And then after that, can you share a little bit of what we will be discussing?
00:13:23
Speaker
Yeah. And of who James Baldwin is. The why, the what, and the who. Maybe not in that order. So I'm actually going to read this little us in bio, I guess, from the copy of Sonny's Blues that i sent you sunny's blues that i sent you to read.
00:13:44
Speaker
um
00:13:47
Speaker
Born in New York City, the son of a revivalist minister, James Baldwin, 1924-1987, was raised in poverty in Harlem, where, at the age of 14, he became a preacher in the Fireside Pentecostal Church.
00:14:04
Speaker
After completing high school, he decided to become a writer, and with the help of the black American expatriate writer Richard Wright, won a grant that enabled him to move to Paris, where he lived for most of his remaining years.
00:14:16
Speaker
There he wrote the critically acclaimed Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953, a novel about the religious awakening of a 14-year-old black youth. Subsequent works focusing on the intellectual and spiritual trials of black men in a white racist society included the novels Giovanni's Room, Another Country, both famous at the time for their homosexual themes, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, If Beale Street Could Talk, Just Above My Head in Harlem Quartet,
00:14:44
Speaker
The play Blues for Mr. Charlie and the powerful nonfiction commentaries Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time. baldswin Baldwin's short stories are collected in Going to Meet the Man.
00:15:03
Speaker
So I met Baldwin in my library. i was there's this They have this classics section. which is great that I just wander around in.
00:15:13
Speaker
And I saw Go Tell It on the Mountain. there was I think it was around Black History Month and I was looking for um black writer to read.
00:15:24
Speaker
And I i've picked up Go Tell It on the Mountain um and it changed my life. I was like,
00:15:36
Speaker
I'll get into more of it later, but It just, the language captivated me. He was wrestling with things that I had been struggling with for a really long time, conflicting feelings of love and also disappointment in the church and spiritual
00:16:02
Speaker
struggle and awakening and, um, tied all together with with race and experience of poverty. and it's just And it's just a beautiful, his language is beautiful. He said in his essay about Shakespeare that he has sort of, he listened a lot to jazz, very closely to jazz and blues. And he tried write sort of like the jazz in the way that he writes and the cadence of his sentences and
00:16:35
Speaker
thanks It's just, it's beautiful. It's it's it's a great book. um And so after that, i just, ah they had an essay collection. So I picked up the essay collection and I read lots of essays. And I think I've read all the nonfiction stuff now um in the and the essay collection.
00:16:57
Speaker
And I've read a two more of his novels and I'm going to read more. I want to read everything eventually, but, um, Baldwin to me is just, he's a friend to turn to when i am, i need some comfort from everything that is going on in the world and the um the pain and the suffering and, and it's, and, but I also, i want comfort, but I don't want to turn away from, I don't want to escape.
00:17:34
Speaker
I want to, I want someone to like, what do i do with all of this pain? You know, and Baldwin for me really, um
00:17:48
Speaker
he, he's honest and he confronts it and he makes something beautiful out of it. Um,
00:17:58
Speaker
And as we talk about Sonny's Blues, um
00:18:03
Speaker
Baldwin, for me, does something similar to what Sonny does for the narrator of that story. yeah
00:18:16
Speaker
So ah
Discussion on Baldwin's Works
00:18:19
Speaker
the stories we're going to talk about um are Sonny's Blues, the short story, and then... um the nonfiction.
00:18:28
Speaker
I had Eric Reid's introduction to Notes of a Native Son and then also some of Devil Finds Work. And I chose these because i feel like they are... When you mentioned Baldwin, he's known for Go Tell It on the Mountain and for The Fire Next Time and some his other nonfiction and stuff.
00:18:48
Speaker
um
00:18:51
Speaker
which are things that you should definitely go and read. um But I wanted to bring something that maybe wasn't talked about as much, but have arguably shaped me more that I i refer to frequently. And I think about a lot, several quotes, ah especially in in Devil's Spine's work.
00:19:16
Speaker
um I also want to mention that there is a great podcast called called Sacred and Profane Love, and they have an episode with Dr. Cornel West ah where they talk about go tettleant go tell it on the mountain and the fire next time.
00:19:34
Speaker
And you should go listen to that, too. um I can say that you should not listen to it on anything faster than one-time speed. Maybe you should listen to it on.75 speed.
00:19:49
Speaker
Cornel West is one of the most brilliant thinkers of our modern age, maybe ever. And to follow his thinking at the speed in which he's communicating it, it's... He's a great communicator, and he communicates so deeply, so quickly, so across such a breadth of things that that I found and continue to find that I need to listen to him slower. but Like, like if you're go to you know, it's like you're to read something, you to read it twice in order to like really. Yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
Yeah. Mind the depths. Now I also haven't read the fire next time or go tell it on the mountain. So maybe it would have made more sense to me. Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:45
Speaker
I mean, I've listened to it multiple times, so, you know.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, but there's because there's so much there. Yeah. Well, um Hunter, I would love to follow your lead on this, but i I guess I would say that we should probably start with notes of a native son, right? that That's the the autobiographical notes that you had me read.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yes. Okay, because I feel like that's... It's actually one of the things that I found with at least these three pieces you gave to me
00:21:18
Speaker
um is I had a really challenging time having started with the hide of but the the notes, like this the autobiographical notes is what the subtitle of this this piece was, um trying to divorce...
00:21:33
Speaker
what I then knew about James Baldwin from the characters in the other stories. So the narrator in Sonny's Blues, and then the also, i guess, the the narrator in Devil Finds Work. Is that what you just called him, a narrator?
00:21:49
Speaker
um ah which Which, from what I could tell, is is also part of... One of Baldwin's strengths from what go cornewa Dr. Cornel West was saying, and maybe a little bit of even what you shared, is is and and what I've read other spaces, is his the autobiographical nature which he even brings into his fiction. Hmm.
00:22:10
Speaker
Or are both of these considered nonfiction, which I guess is maybe a better question, too. Yeah. So Notes of the na notes of a Native Son and Devil Finds Work are nonfiction. Okay. But Sunny's Blues is fiction.
00:22:23
Speaker
Fiction, yes. it but Yeah. Okay. I'm excited to discuss these pieces. Yeah. But, you know, the interesting thing is that Go Tell It on the Mountain is really...
00:22:36
Speaker
really rooted in Baldwin's childhood and his relationship with his father. um you know, and I think that's what a lot of great fiction is, to be honest. Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
Um, yeah, but
00:22:55
Speaker
okay. You read the autobiographical notes. Uh, what are some things that, that jumped out to you that you, uh, might have underlined or... Yeah. um Well, I had a big question for you, but we'll get to that in a minute because that's not the question you asked me.
00:23:16
Speaker
I've
00:23:22
Speaker
i've underlined lots of things, so you will you'll have to wait a ah moment for me to share exactly what comes to mind first.
00:23:32
Speaker
I guess there are three three at least three passages that... I'll just kind of read. Maybe you can bring some further context to them after I read them. The first one is um on the third page of this.
00:23:45
Speaker
and He's talking about um the past. And he says, but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent and further that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.
00:24:04
Speaker
He's talking about the writer's prime concern. um And and that piece stood out to me.
Baldwin's Love and Critique of America
00:24:13
Speaker
um yeah
00:24:18
Speaker
There's a lot of...
00:24:21
Speaker
ah kind a combination of very deep thinking shared very plainly, but in ways that are very... like full of emotion and maybe not necessarily even like crying emotion, even though it's very clear that like, this is a man who's like search the depth of his souls. And like that, that's what he sees as the role of the the author of the writer um or the artist.
00:24:46
Speaker
He says, right. They are the, this is the only real concern of the artist to recreate out of the disorder of life, that order, which is art. Um,
00:24:59
Speaker
He talks so much about hatred um and and and fear. um i feel like if I were to read some of those quote quotes, I'd need to read the whole paragraph, and I'm not going to do that at this moment.
00:25:17
Speaker
And then I'm going to bring us to the end the end of the last page, the last paragraph.
00:25:24
Speaker
I love America more than any other country in the world. And exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
00:25:36
Speaker
I think all theories are suspect that the finest principles may have to be modified or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world, hoping that this center will guide one aright.
00:25:59
Speaker
I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this, this to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
00:26:10
Speaker
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
00:26:15
Speaker
Maybe the the the singular sentence that I connected with the most in what he shared, and and it's...
00:26:27
Speaker
very much driven by the current historical context and my experience within it is this phrase is this sentence.
00:26:39
Speaker
I love him, Erica, more than any other country in the world. And exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. Hmm.
00:26:51
Speaker
I think there's something really beautiful in that. Um, um, And I don't want to get the conversation too far afield. But I feel like within the context in which we are Americans, and we both are, I don't think it is either of our primary identities.
00:27:11
Speaker
But within within our identity of being American, one of the... things I still find incredibly beautiful, or maybe even find more beautiful now in the midst of what's been a very contentious and challenging um political moment and historical moment, I would say, is that as is that collectively Americans
00:27:43
Speaker
still hold to the view the vision of what America is. And I think the reason why there's at any point, and and this point being one of them, protests and frustrations and anger and debate that happens within this country
00:28:08
Speaker
is because there is still a collective vision
00:28:16
Speaker
For what America can be or should be. and don't know if it's safe to say we ever have been it.
00:28:27
Speaker
I'm not sure those words written on the Statue of Liberty were ever actually true. Actually true for some people at some times in some situations who look a certain way and come from a certain place and speak a certain language and have a certain job.
00:28:46
Speaker
which by definition doesn't connect with give me your tired, you poor, your huddled masses, your refuse, you know, it's, and yet, even though then but being American is not my primary identity, I still do love this country as well.
00:29:08
Speaker
And
00:29:13
Speaker
love,
00:29:16
Speaker
that that I have the right and and then maybe insist on the right to criticize where I see issues. um And I think the moment that we stop criticizing is probably the same moment that we lose the vision for what this country could be.
00:29:37
Speaker
and at that moment is the moment of the fall of this country. um When one could rightly use the word um as loaded of a phrase word of as it is of empire.
00:29:52
Speaker
um I wish that weren't a word that I would feel comfortable with, would use, but um I think the moment we lose that vision is the moment this country ceases to be.
00:30:11
Speaker
That's what I have for you, Andrew.
00:30:16
Speaker
Thanks. Well, you know, I think that's actually a great
00:30:23
Speaker
example of what reading Baldwin is like to me because he, you know, he says, i want to be an honest man and a good writer.
Baldwin's Writing Style and Influence
00:30:34
Speaker
And Baldwin was amazing to me is that he contains everything. Like when you read his nonfiction, he
00:30:46
Speaker
he he doesn't limit himself to any subject. And, and yet he, he like, he stays on the line of, of what the essay is about. He's not just throwing stuff out there, you know, but he's, he, he goes into all of the nuances of what a thought can mean and the feelings and what it's actually like to live with it and to, um,
00:31:15
Speaker
he refrains frequently and he says, i do not believe that the unexamined life is worth living. Um, which i was attributed to, Socrates is the, the unexamined life is not worth living. Okay. Yeah.
00:31:33
Speaker
that, that is why that, um, Cornel West calls Baldwin a Socratic prophet because Baldwin is incredibly well read.
00:31:46
Speaker
Um, in his autobiographical notes, he says that he would have his most recently born sibling in one hand and a book in the other hand.
00:31:59
Speaker
Um, and for him, the early books he talks about in everybody's protest novel about, um, uncle Tom's cabin and, uh, A Tale of Two Cities, I believe, and and also Crime and Punishment, I think, were pretty formative early on.
00:32:14
Speaker
But, like, you know, he's quite young and he's reading these books. So, like, you know, he's always reading. He's spent a lot of time in Paris. um He's very well educated.
00:32:30
Speaker
And so he has this
00:32:34
Speaker
way of thinking that he is, you know, sort of learned from the West, this, this Western yeah way, but he's, he is also black and he's seen how he is despised by this Western tradition. And he, um, yeah. So that's why he's like a Socratic prophet because he is also, his father was a preacher. So he's very well versed in the Bible and, um, in the old Testament and the tradition of prophets who are, uh,
00:33:08
Speaker
you know, crying out to God and um a lot of times criticizing their people, you know, um one for disobeying God and being hypocritical. And um e so so he's, and and that's honestly, it's just,
00:33:30
Speaker
That's what I love is because he's so honest because, you know, there's, there's one, there's great things to be said about critical thinking and, uh, being able to write a quote unquote, unbiased essay.
00:33:48
Speaker
But the flip side of that is that no essay is actually unbiased. You can do everything you can to remove your bias, but you're still a person yeah writing an essay. yeah And um it's a great exercise to, to, to learn more about yourself, to try and remove your own bias.
00:34:07
Speaker
But it's also in a way sort of disingenuous yeah because you're trying to remove the humanity from it. And Baldwin doesn't remove the humanity from it. He, he is always attuned to the experience of, of his life and, and what these ideas mean to him.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I, as you were sharing that, that was helping clarify some things for me, but I was also looking at, um, one of his paragraphs,
00:34:45
Speaker
the third page of this story, and of this this autobiograph of autobiographical notes, and I was trying to figure out what what part I would quote, and then as I guess I would just have to quote the entire paragraph.
00:35:00
Speaker
um And it probably is important to note, and when we we've talked about this in other episodes, that we are both white men, um and that We bring ourselves into this conversation where we are. um
00:35:20
Speaker
Especially as he... This became especially clear to me, or maybe I wanted to share it, because his... I've got nothing to add. You named it.
00:35:35
Speaker
And if if I were to try to add more, it would be taken away unless I read just this entire thing, so... um I actually, this is, i really glad that i read this first.
00:35:51
Speaker
um Yeah. and And I did wonder, Hunter, Hunter, you said, I want to be an honest man and a good writer. And I know you were quoting Baldwin, and and I think it was pretty clear that you quoting him in that.
00:36:07
Speaker
But,
00:36:11
Speaker
is Isn't that your goal?
00:36:16
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, Baldwin, I guess it must've been several years ago now that I discovered Baldwin. And as I read more and more of him, I just,
00:36:32
Speaker
um,
00:36:35
Speaker
I'm not sure personal I want to go, but I, this point, have not made any money from my writing. I've made $7 from my writing. had one article on Medium.
00:36:46
Speaker
um And
00:36:55
Speaker
I think the the difficulty that I've faced is that
00:37:03
Speaker
It's not that I don't think that there's a market for my writing or the type of writing that I do. It's that I think the type of writing that one can make money from most easily these days um is not writing like Baldwin's.
00:37:31
Speaker
it's more It has to be...
00:37:35
Speaker
slick and um you know uh more like a ah traditional essay and i guess as as i have developed my own voice uh as a writer i i've turned i've i've looked at baldwin in the way that he's sort of Like i I said, I think I said he contains everything. He he doesn't shy away from any thought.
00:38:06
Speaker
And he... um And because when I started writing, like, I guess I have a ah website where I blog and I put my essays and stuff. um i sort of tried to adapt what I had learned in college, um which is critical thinking, you try to remove yourself as much as you can from it, you know, use your evidence and, and those are all useful tools that sort of research and things, but it's not very entertaining to read.
00:38:41
Speaker
And, um, it's, um, like I said, it's a little bit disingenuous when you're trying to remove yourself from it.
00:38:52
Speaker
And, i've i so I read Baldwin and I was like, oh, this is what I want to do. And so asve as I've tried to develop my own voice, I've tried to not really copy Baldwin, but just sort of try to find my way through everything. So I feel like ah one of the essays I'm most proud of is The Last Recovery, which is an essay about rereading Tolkien.
00:39:21
Speaker
And ah if you read it, you'll see that I have a lot of my own lived experience in that essay. I'm sort of examining my own experience and my own memories for for what Tolkien means to me and why I think it's important to reread it and what rereading it did for me and what I was able to you
00:39:46
Speaker
discover about myself and about Tolkien in the Lord of the Rings. um And so that sort of, that Baldwin has really been an inspiration for me in in bringing my own experience into my writing um versus trying to remove my own experience as much as possible.
00:40:14
Speaker
We live in a moment where there's a, there's probably, there's a cultural
00:40:23
Speaker
I like to use the phrase cultural lie. i don't know if that's the right word for this, but our phrase for this but it's a cultural lie that we we tell ourselves through what we consume, how we consume it, that we don't want to think.
Escapism vs. Depth in Media
00:40:43
Speaker
We don't want to be challenged. We don't want to be, named it earlier, comforted. As much as we want to escape.
00:40:55
Speaker
And that the role of.
00:41:00
Speaker
Movies. TV shows. Books. Music. Is primarily a role. Of escapism.
00:41:16
Speaker
And it's one driven by a specific time. And specific techniques.
00:41:27
Speaker
and And I'll name it. I really like a lot of escapist books and TV shows and movies. I do. I really enjoy that. um And we talk about some of them on this podcast.
00:41:39
Speaker
um But if if you you've listened with us up until now, props to you. um You probably notice that in our podcast episodes, most of them are not driven by the depth of the things I consume because they're not all that deep.
00:42:04
Speaker
A lot of them are driven by the deeper thinker of the two of us, which is very clearly Hunter. ah I can thankfully do just enough to keep up in some of these conversations.
00:42:17
Speaker
um But I...
00:42:23
Speaker
we've I've used a language before. It's the difference between eating delicious dessert and a five-course meal.
00:42:33
Speaker
Um...
00:42:37
Speaker
And
00:42:42
Speaker
if your voice isn't coming out in what is ah incredibly vulnerable situation in which you're writing, then why are you writing? Yeah.
00:42:57
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:02
Speaker
Exactly.
00:43:05
Speaker
You brought up earlier, Hunter, that
00:43:12
Speaker
one of the ways Baldwin writes, and and this might be something he's named or it's just something that's become clear over time, is that he writes jazz into the cadence of
Jazz in 'Sonny's Blues'
00:43:23
Speaker
his sentences. That's what you said.
00:43:26
Speaker
And, oh my goodness. Was that clear? Or is that clear in the reading of Sonny's Blues? This was my favorite piece that we read.
00:43:37
Speaker
um I mean, it took me on a lot of a whirlwind of things. um But the, especially the the the ending of it.
00:43:49
Speaker
um yeah it He has a way of of, in the middle of a sentence, he'll just change to another sentence. Let's see if I can find one of those good examples.
00:44:03
Speaker
um
00:44:07
Speaker
Where is this? He italicizes it. He doesn't do it all that often, but you don't need to do it that often. In fact, it's stronger when you only do it
00:44:21
Speaker
On occasion. Honestly, I'm not sure if he's telling two using two sentences here or writing one sentence in two ways. um But here on page 141.
00:44:34
Speaker
um
00:44:37
Speaker
They're listening to ah somebody sing. um They were singing. And then he italicizes.
00:44:48
Speaker
If I could only hear my mother pray again. And so as I was reading that, i was like, there's no period after the word singing.
00:44:59
Speaker
And yet there's a capitalized eye for if I think those are the lyrics that they're singing. Okay, because that's what I couldn't tell. it was what the words they were singing. but i i I don't think it actually is the words they were singing.
00:45:13
Speaker
To me, that's an internal thought he had. Because we'd heard his mom praying multiple times. And there's this these aren't logical words for a song or for the song that these these these women and this man were singing.
00:45:29
Speaker
I think... And there's no quotes. I think he's narrating. They were singing. And then in the midst of that narration, he's just living into it so much. He's like if I could only hear my mother pray again.
00:45:46
Speaker
Like, that's how I read. I read it as as one cohesive moment where is the where his thoughts broke into his experience or his, like, narration. Hmm.
00:46:02
Speaker
and And that's not something that people do. They would say, most people would say they were singing. And then I thought, if I could only hear my mother pray again, or their singing reminded me i get don of my mom's praying, or or something that's maybe more grammatically accurate, and yet way less accurate to how any of us actually experience life.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah. So i I experienced the jazz of this. um I also love playing jazz. I don't get to do it very often. Yeah. So but can I respond to the... Yes.
00:46:47
Speaker
Okay. Because i i I think that it is the lyrics, but I think that it works both ways because something about Baldwin is that he...
00:47:00
Speaker
um he uses lyrics from a lot of black spirituals and songs, um and blues songs and everything, and he uses them in his writing.
00:47:13
Speaker
And I think this is a great example of how he's, it like, it works both ways, because if they are actually singing, if I could only hear my mother pray again,
00:47:24
Speaker
it is, even if it's not technically his intention that he's thinking it, it does represent how we interact with songs where we will hear song and then we'll think of a memory of our mother or someone.
00:47:46
Speaker
Um, and, you know, and then the next one later on, he says, um the three sisters and the brother heads bowed. We're singing, God be with you till we meet again.
00:47:57
Speaker
Um, and so this, he's just really, he's really good at using lyrics like that in a way that is just, it just fits so perfectly and it's so elegant. And, um, and to your point about like his, his music is like his writing is like jazz.
00:48:20
Speaker
Um,
00:48:23
Speaker
He's like a master of commas. um Like, because it just has a beat. His commas, like, have a... They have a beat in the sentence, it like, just just the rhythm. um Like, on page 140 at the beginning, It was strange, suddenly, to watch, though I had been seeing these street meetings all my life.
00:48:47
Speaker
The way he just kind of puts in suddenly there. Um, and then to watch, it's just, it was strange suddenly to watch. It's like, it has a, it has a beat, has a rhythm, you know, and it wouldn't quite, it wouldn't really be the same if he was just like, you know, it was strange to watch though. I had been seeing these street meetings all my life. It would, that's like the flavor of his writing is this like sort of cadence that I just find utterly attractive and just, um,
00:49:20
Speaker
really pleasant um to listen to, even if I'm not reading it out loud. you know i I'm hearing it.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah. And they that that same language and choice of of commas and and length of sentences are the things that would have gotten marked red and in in school.
00:49:44
Speaker
Exactly. Too many commas. Yeah. Too long of a sentence. Simple function sentences. Yeah.
00:49:55
Speaker
Hunter, what is Sonny's Blues? So, Sonny's Blues is about two brothers. It's narrated from the point of view of the elder brother, who's a teacher by now.
00:50:13
Speaker
And um he finds out that his brother almost overdosed on heroin. um And they had been sort of estranged they at this point for i think over a year and
00:50:33
Speaker
you know he says in the beginning like i couldn't believe it um it's like because i couldn't believe it but i but what i mean by that is that i couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me um
00:50:51
Speaker
And he's sort of trying to to accept that it yeah he's he's seen it happen to so many other kids. yeah um it But he didn't want to believe that it was happening to his brother.
00:51:04
Speaker
So Sonny goes into a like rehab. And then he comes out and um the teacher, older brother, ends up sending him a letter.
00:51:17
Speaker
um and
00:51:23
Speaker
basically it it all culminates in sort of a reconciliation where the Sonny asks the teacher, the older brother, to come with him to one of his performances to see it.
00:51:38
Speaker
The teacher just never really but didn't really get jazz. He just didn't really listen to it. you know He wasn't into it. And um and
00:51:52
Speaker
the part of their estrangement is the fact that Sonny, like, basically dropped out of school to study jazz and play jazz, and and he ended up, you know, doing heroin because there were a lot of players who ended up on drugs, and,
00:52:09
Speaker
um you know, so so they were always fighting about that, but but what the teacher begins to see is that you know Sonny is really like struggling with something. He's is he's struggling for his for how how to make you know how to make sense of it all, and his way of doing that is playing the piano.
00:52:35
Speaker
And it culminates in quite honestly, the most beautiful description of music that I have ever encountered in print. Accurate. i read this and I was just crying. I was like, that makes sense. Someone just captured what the blues is like in, in a story.
00:52:56
Speaker
And it is, it's just, you should read it. It's a short story. You know, it's not too long. I'll put it in the show notes. There's a free PDF you can print out. and
00:53:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:13
Speaker
If I could add the one of the only pieces that might might shed some light, additional light on it, is at this point, Sonny's and that this teacher, is his his older brother's, um both of their parents have died.
00:53:26
Speaker
yeah And so, and right before, or not right before, but before she died, um the older brother, the narrator, his mom told him to to watch out for Sonny.
00:53:40
Speaker
um And it was a pretty, pretty moving scene. um
00:53:46
Speaker
And so that's, he said he would, but that's been going on in his brain for
00:53:54
Speaker
For a lot of this time as well. And I think it's part of what's gnawing at his conscience. Yeah.
00:54:04
Speaker
Um, yeah. And there's this little, exchange that they have where they're able to sort of have a heart to heart. So he's able to talk to him and, um, and they're talking about suffering, uh,
00:54:24
Speaker
"'The narrator says. "'I said, "'But there's no way not to suffer, "'is there, Sonny?' "'I believe not,' he said, and smiled. "'But that's never stopped anyone from trying.' "'He looked at me. "'Has it?' "'I realized with this mocking look "'that there stood between us forever, "'beyond the power of time or forgiveness, "'the fact that I had held silence so long "'when he had needed human speech to help him.' "'He turned back to the window.' No, there's no way not to suffer.
00:54:55
Speaker
But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it and to make it seem, well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you're suffering for it, you know?
00:55:07
Speaker
I said nothing. Well, you know, he said impatiently. Why do people suffer? Maybe it's better to do something to give it a reason, any reason, But we just agreed, I said, that there's no way not to suffer. Isn't it better than just to take it?
00:55:24
Speaker
But nobody just takes it, Sonny cried. That's what I'm telling you. Everybody tries not to. You're just hung up on the way some people try. It's not your way. And then, um... In the... Culmination of... Before we get there. Yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:46
Speaker
good There is so much in this story, this short story, that it very well could be and probably deserves to be an entire episode. Oh, yeah.
00:56:04
Speaker
So I want to want to say that. I wanted to maybe share a the interaction with
00:56:17
Speaker
between this teacher and his mom because I wanted to show that there's other characters in this this story that and including their dad um who had a brother who passed away in this terrible tragedy um that is race-based and also involved a lot of people being drunk um and and it's it's um
00:56:50
Speaker
But I wanted to read this this this little interaction between um the narrator and and his mom.
00:57:02
Speaker
um
00:57:05
Speaker
Before we go right to the end, um because I think this whole thing is worth reading. Oh, yeah. And also the ending of it is so powerful.
00:57:17
Speaker
um that it it can, I think, overshadow the rest, but it doesn't actually, as you're reading through it, like everything builds to it. so But here, this is page 133. The um
00:57:34
Speaker
this the narrator has just learned that his dad had a brother, that his brother i was killed. Um... um um a few paragraphs that before um his, his mom says this.
00:57:51
Speaker
um Oh yes. Your daddy never did really get right again after his brother died till the day he died. he weren't sure, but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.
00:58:06
Speaker
Skipping forward.
00:58:10
Speaker
I ain't telling you all this, she said, to make you scared or bitter or to make you hate nobody. I'm telling you this because you got a brother. The world ain't changed.
00:58:25
Speaker
Skipping ahead even more. This is mom's crying. And he's been like paralyzed. She was crying again. i Still, I couldn't move. I said, Lord, Lord, Mama.
00:58:37
Speaker
I didn't know it was like that. Oh, honey, she said, there's a lot that you don't know. But you are going to find it out. She stood up from the window and came over to me.
00:58:48
Speaker
You got to hold on to your brother, she said. And don't let him fall. No matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you get with him.
00:59:00
Speaker
You're going to be evil with him many a time. But don't you forget what I told you, you hear? i won't forget, i said. Don't you worry. i won't forget.
00:59:10
Speaker
i won't let nothing happen to Sonny. My mother smiled as though she were amused at something she saw in my face. Then, you may not be able to stop nothing from happening, but you've got to let him know you're there.
00:59:27
Speaker
And I'll pause for a moment before I read the next sentence.
00:59:34
Speaker
That interaction.
00:59:41
Speaker
There's so much depth to it. And there's there's so much to the story that's been communicated. ah lu but
00:59:50
Speaker
Both from what's said and what's not said. like in the pauses. And I think that that's what's that interaction
01:00:04
Speaker
is what drives this story and drives this relationship between the narrator and his brother, Sonny.
01:00:15
Speaker
The next sentence, which is in a new paragraph, a whole break. It says this. Two days later, I was married and then I was gone. And I had a lot of things on my mind, and I pretty well forgot my promise to Mama until I got shipped home on a special furlough for her funeral.
01:00:37
Speaker
And that's afterwards when when his brother Sonny, who is much younger than him, tells him that he wants to go into the Navy or Army. He wants to be a musician, sorry. Tells him that he wants to be a musician.
01:00:49
Speaker
and And then this whole like brother acting like a father... thing happens and there's so many cool things in that i think that's what built I just I think that that I want to share that before we yeah dive into the end yeah thank you
01:01:14
Speaker
I'll just say if you if you don't want have this spoiled for you ah turn the podcast off and Go read it. You can't have this spoiled though. I mean, it's, every yeah I don't know if it'll be any less powerful. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah. right It's not like, it's not a twist. it's and There's no, this is no twist ending. yeah It's a combination.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yeah. I just mean, if you, if you want to experience it fresh, you know, um, this whole thing probably takes 30 minutes to read. Yeah.
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah. Just sit down. Have a glass of something calming.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's 27 pages. Yeah. About 30 minutes. 30 to 60 minutes. you You can read it slow and and take as much time. um
01:02:10
Speaker
ah But I'll read this and then we can get the devil finds work. If we can. Yeah.
01:02:27
Speaker
So there's there's just a lovely buildup in it. I'm just going to read this second to last paragraph of the story. um And Sonny is kind of, he's getting his feet with the piano.
01:02:42
Speaker
And then finally, the musicians kind of sense that he he's got it. And if you've ever jammed with people like this is this is exactly what it's like. It's like sometimes you you play for like half an hour and you're just not.
01:02:58
Speaker
You're not like in it. And then all of a sudden, like you just you sense either you've got it or someone has got it And you're just like, okay, now it's go now now it's go time. And when you're all really listening to each other and your ears are open, it's this is what happens.
01:03:17
Speaker
I want to add, Sonny hasn't played the piano in over a year. um Because he had an overdose and and was recovering and was in type of some type of facility.
01:03:29
Speaker
um He hasn't seen these people in forever. I think they know he's back in town. um And and these are also people he's played with for a long time as well, like before this happened.
01:03:42
Speaker
So there's also something, and this is something i never really got to, which I got to with with maybe one or two people.
01:03:50
Speaker
He's not just jamming with people he doesn't know. like they they They know each other. they're and and and they're all They know that this is Sonny's time to to to to speak out.
01:04:03
Speaker
And Creel, who's the bass player and leader of this band, has been is like giving this push and and giving go. and He's holding things in tight. and then He's moving things around.
01:04:16
Speaker
um yeah This is where
01:04:21
Speaker
at one point they They're starting to get it, and there's this communication happening, and and and the narrator's sitting in the back corner, and and he doesn't know music, but he clearly knows his brother, and he clearly can can can read a scene yeah and read people communicating. Yeah.
01:04:43
Speaker
And then they're they're they're just celebrating with Sonny when he gets it. And then Creole's like, no, no, we got to remember that this is the blues. And he brings them back into the blues.
01:04:56
Speaker
Which is why they were all gathered together.
01:05:01
Speaker
and now you can take it away.
01:05:04
Speaker
Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again, one of them seemed to say, Amen. Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life.
01:05:16
Speaker
But that life contained so many others, and Sonny went all the way back. He really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his.
01:05:29
Speaker
It was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried, and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting.
01:05:44
Speaker
Freedom lurked around us and I understood at last that he could help us to be free if we would listen.
01:05:53
Speaker
That he would never be free until we did. Yet there was no battle in his face now. I heard what he had gone through and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth.
01:06:05
Speaker
He had made it his, that long line of which we knew only Mama and Daddy, and he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that passing through death, it can live forever.
01:06:18
Speaker
I saw my mother's face again, and felt for the first time how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father's brother died, and it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it.
01:06:34
Speaker
I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise, and I was yet aware that this was only a moment that the world waited outside as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us longer than the sky.
01:06:54
Speaker
Then it was over. Creel and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet and grinning. There was a lot of applause, and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by, and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand.
01:07:07
Speaker
There was a long pause while they talked up there in the indigo light, and after a while I saw the girl put his scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me and nodded.
01:07:24
Speaker
Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling.
01:07:42
Speaker
Where does this bring you? where Where are you, Hunter, as you read this? I'm in a specific place when I read this, so where are you? Where am does it bring play Does it bring you to a physical space, a physical memory?
01:07:54
Speaker
um
01:07:59
Speaker
I don't know. I'm very stuck in the story. i um I have visions of moments when I have felt like I've come close to something like that.
01:08:11
Speaker
in my playing jamming with people specific, like solos or moments, um, that have felt important.
01:08:26
Speaker
Um,
01:08:30
Speaker
What about you? It brings me back to sitting at the Green Mile. It's Al Capone's bar. ah the you know The bar known for Al Capone in in the city of Chicago. um And it's a when there's a band playing, you are not allowed to stand. i mean, some people can go to the bathroom, but like you're not allowed to talk or move. like it is You are there to listen. It's not quite a listening lounge, but it is...
01:09:00
Speaker
It is the step just below it. And and it is... It's a little dank in there. It's a little... You know? And it just... It brings me into that space.
01:09:12
Speaker
And ah seeing a specific group... Not because that group reminds me especially of this group, but this seeing that group just jamming away together. The... When...
01:09:25
Speaker
when
01:09:29
Speaker
Writing
01:09:35
Speaker
for all the beauties of its medium is so much less subtle than almost any other form of art.
01:09:49
Speaker
Cause you're literally putting black on white or, you know, white letters on black but paper, whatever it might be like try to, and it's just, it's so, had the word barbaric. It's coming to my mind, not in the sense that it's barbaric, but in the sense of like, it's just, it, it is what it is. And yet with music, you know, you are communicating so much.
01:10:17
Speaker
In every beat. I mean it's why 10 people can listen to a song played for three minutes, and each of them can write 30-minute article on it, and none of them will be the same.
01:10:37
Speaker
Because there's so much communicated, and it's so personal. And it's really, i mean, I've never tried to write a scene of music playing. i don't, I think I'd be scared to if I, if I started, I think I would be like how do i how do I communicate this?
01:10:53
Speaker
How do you communicate music? Like the way that most books communicate music is just by writing the words of the song. And the way you then consume it as a reader is as a poem.
01:11:09
Speaker
right And it's it's only if that book is made into a movie or into an album that you hear a version of it. some right it's It's why one of the most powerful scenes in...
01:11:23
Speaker
in Return of the King, Lord of the Rings, is is when bill um is punoous is when Pippin is singing to Lord Denethor. ah it's it's a It's a song from the first book.
01:11:37
Speaker
I think it's a song sung in Fellowship. It might even be a song sung around...
01:11:51
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
01:11:53
Speaker
And all right, that home is
01:12:02
Speaker
There are many paths to tread. Like they have that whole zooming in of Gandalf. You're brought to it. Tomato. Yes. Like. like how do you How do you communicate music? this is what i'm The reason I'm bringing us there is that's it's an example I have in my head of like how how do you communicate that in writing?
01:12:23
Speaker
You don't, right? You communicate it by writing the words of it and then like trying to set the ambiance and then going on to the next scene and maybe talking about how people are responding afterwards. you you don't You don't get writing, at least I don't see writing often,
01:12:41
Speaker
That's able to communicate the actual playing and the interactions and and the the movement of the music and the soul of the music and and the the depth that people bring with them to a moment when they are the musicians.
01:13:02
Speaker
right Because the way you show up to to playing impacts how you play. yeah When you are like frustrated and you you go to but band practice, it's clear. you know and at This scene that you read, it capture and and as well as the many paragraphs before, captured the depth of it and and are even deeper and and more full when you've spent time Sonny's story.
01:13:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:42
Speaker
I was not planning on going all the way there. was planning on just talking about my experience in that particular bar that one time, but oh I'm so glad you read the whole ending of this. And yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker
And I want, I want to stop talking and hear all of your thoughts because I've, I've monologued. i mean, you, you've said a lot of what I would want to say.
01:14:07
Speaker
um i guess I guess what I'll, as a sort of transition to Devil Finds Work, is um
01:14:17
Speaker
when Baldwin writes, I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting.
01:14:30
Speaker
Freedom lurked around us and I understood at last that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.
01:14:45
Speaker
He had made it his, that long line of which we knew only mama and daddy, and he was giving it back as everything must be given back so that passing through death, it can live forever.
01:15:09
Speaker
Baldwin, ah he does for me what Sonny does. Like he made he made life his.
01:15:20
Speaker
and And you can sense in his writing, like with what burning he had made it his, like with what pain. and And the thing about Baldwin is that as as much as he
01:15:39
Speaker
is is dealing with pain and, you know, some of the most painful history in the history of the world. He, he's never like despairing or unpleasant to read for me.
01:15:57
Speaker
um like it had so Like it had ceased to be a lament, you know? And that's on our on our episode when I talked about the blues. I said, you know, blues is like redeeming our pain.
01:16:11
Speaker
Redeeming our pain. And that's what Baldwin is like for me in writing is he's he's redeeming his pain. And um
01:16:22
Speaker
he's not a perfect writer. There's things that sometimes... you know he he takes He just takes on so many battles a lot the time and he doesn't always win. But he
01:16:36
Speaker
but he made he made life his and he gives it back to us. um
01:16:43
Speaker
So that passing through death, we can live forever.
01:16:55
Speaker
And With that, we'll go to Devil Finds
Critique of Films in 'The Devil Finds Work'
01:17:00
Speaker
Work. um
01:17:04
Speaker
devil The Devil Finds Work is, believe he wrote it later on after fire Next Time and Notes of a Native Son. um It is a series of of essays. it's It's quite long. It's book length.
01:17:23
Speaker
It has chapters. um And he he just talks about films, basically. And he said in in his autobiographical notes, he has like ah a morbid desire to like buy a 15 millimeter camera and shoot film, experimental film movies.
01:17:44
Speaker
um So he has a fascination with the cinema. Um, but the, uh, and so that's mostly what the devil finds work is, um, is just him watching movies and,
01:18:02
Speaker
But this is Baldwin where he's he doesn't limit himself to just the film. You know, he talks about what the film is saying, not just in the film, but what it's saying about the people who make it and the people who see everything.
01:18:18
Speaker
the lies that are being corroborated on the screen, ah and, and what it might say about the fantasies of the people who are making these things, um, and paying for them. And, and the devil finds work for me.
01:18:36
Speaker
I've this, I read it for the third time for this, uh, episode. and for me, it has really been a
01:18:48
Speaker
a key that kind of unlocked
01:18:54
Speaker
the screen to me, like how we interact with screen with screens. Um, and there are several quotes that I'd like to share from Devil Defines Work.
01:19:07
Speaker
Um,
01:19:13
Speaker
go for it. Do you have anything? Okay. Um, I have a couple of thoughts, but ah okay not enough to drive a conversation. Yeah. So the first one is... um I am quoting from the...
01:19:29
Speaker
the
01:19:32
Speaker
Baldwin Collected Essays Library of America. So that's where my page numbers are coming from. um I believe this is in chapter one. It's on page 500. says...
01:19:45
Speaker
says
01:19:50
Speaker
he talks about how a movie star is sort of like an escape personality ah and how like the movie goers sort of can escape into the personality of the movie star when they're watching the movie.
01:20:03
Speaker
And he says that the movie star is an escape personality indicates one of the irreducible dangers to which the movie goer is exposed. The danger of surrendering to the corroboration of one's fantasies on the screen.
01:20:28
Speaker
And this to me
01:20:33
Speaker
unlocks not just how we respond to movies, but how we respond to social media and any image on a screen is, is we're in the danger of surrendering to the corroboration of our fantasies.
01:20:48
Speaker
Whether that fantasy is, you know, for me, I, uh, I watch a lot of reviews on about guitar pedals and guitars and sometimes lessen content about guitars and stuff.
01:21:05
Speaker
So, you know, for me, it's a fantasy of being guitar hero or something like that, or or being an expert on guitar gear or something. But like, you know, I don't buy as many pedals as I watch, so I don't actually know...
01:21:23
Speaker
you know I don't know. And there's so many variables when it comes to sound when you're listening to something versus how something sounds in person. That's why it's always important to play the instrument that you're going to buy before you buy it. Because even if they have a demo and some other guitarist is like, yeah, it feels great. That doesn't mean it's going to sound and feel great to you.
01:21:48
Speaker
And this is the lie of the screen is that we sort of take it for reality and and it's the corroboration of our fantasies. And so often we put onto it what we want to believe.
01:22:05
Speaker
And if you think about news and the, the, the bias that different news channels show and how people can get funneled into believing things because they're only seeing one side that is only, even if they're sharing accurate facts,
01:22:23
Speaker
the facts that they choose to share and the news that they choose to share influences what you think. And it's just why it is important to read lots of different news outlets with lots of different biases so you can compare and fact check them, um even though it's incredibly exhausting to do that.
01:22:44
Speaker
But so that's, that's like the first thing. quote that I just I think about it all the time in in our screen based society at this point yeah and it sort of leads into the next one if you want to respond I'll just read this first he on page 504 this is at the end of chapter one says
01:23:17
Speaker
It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else. Since the camera sees what you pointed at, the camera sees what you want it to see.
01:23:29
Speaker
The language of the camera is the language of our dreams.
01:23:41
Speaker
and And just before that, he was talking about how he went and saw an all-black production of Macbeth. Yep. Which... And it, like, totally changed his life when he saw it because...
01:23:56
Speaker
he uses the phrase like it was flesh testifying to flesh. Like, and if you've ever like gone to live theater, there is something different in the air when there's a real live person in front of you.
01:24:12
Speaker
Oh yeah. Like testifying, you know, um, especially with Shakespeare and Beth, like we saw King Lear over the summer and it was like, and you, you can tell,
01:24:26
Speaker
If somebody is reciting lines versus as if they understand what it is they're saying, there's a difference. And and and you can hear that as a listener. um He also says they could be Macbeth only because they were themselves.
01:24:48
Speaker
And he compared that again to to the film. Yeah. Yeah.
01:24:57
Speaker
So we skip ahead few dozen pages. Yeah. There's so much. and i I'd say that you know I would recommend reading, like, if you're going to do the nonfiction, Notes of a Native Son or um probably The Fire Next Time. Because so those are great.
01:25:19
Speaker
um The Devil Finds Work is... It's less like focus. He's talking about films and things. And to me, Baldwin, you could take, you know, every every couple pages, there'll be a quote or paragraph that you could just take that and sit on for weeks just thinking about it. um And there's a lot of great stuff in Devil Finds work. um There's this whole part where he...
01:25:50
Speaker
he talks about the McCarthy era and the sort of, um, like living through the paranoia of it and just how, um pathetic it it was like the, the hysteria and everything really fascinating.
01:26:09
Speaker
Um,
01:26:18
Speaker
and I guess, uh, Before we get to the end, I'm going on a lot, but, you know, that's what a podcast is for, I guess. um Reading Baldwin, to me, almost in a way, it was like rediscovering history.
01:26:33
Speaker
Because we learn about the civil rights movement in school and, ah you know, the mc McCarthy era, the the Red Scare.
01:26:44
Speaker
um Like, we learn about these things, but we don't really... um,
01:26:54
Speaker
we don't take the the time to like, think about what it was like to live through it, to be there and, um, to see a different side of it.
01:27:06
Speaker
Um, what would have been like to be a black man during that time? And, ah
01:27:17
Speaker
And because Baldwin is so committed to his experience and examining his experience, he he has a way of like, if you if you let him, he'll he'll draw you in to to what it is like to be there and to really imagine it.
01:27:31
Speaker
um and to And it's really helped me in imagining history as not just a collection of dates and things like that, but, you know,
01:27:53
Speaker
and watched some of the films that he talks about because he talks about a lot of them yeah so with that why did you choose the exorcist why what that's that's the one you chose ultimately i mean there's a couple pages we read before that but yeah
01:28:12
Speaker
So i don't think I've seen this version of The Exorcist. I don't think I want to, but... Nope. I think...
01:28:28
Speaker
What I remember from my first in second read, is like... the he says um The Americans should really know more about evil than that.
01:28:45
Speaker
Because... the Exorcist is sort of...
01:28:51
Speaker
um
01:28:55
Speaker
Well, I should get... Uh, actual...
01:29:04
Speaker
The film terrified me on two levels. The first, as I have tried to indicate, involved my deliberate attempt to leave myself open to it, and to the extent indeed of reliving my adolescent holy roller terrors.
01:29:20
Speaker
It was very important for me not to pretend to have surmounted the pain and terror of that time of my life. Very important not to pretend that it left no mark on me.
01:29:32
Speaker
It marked me forever. In some measure, I encountered the abyss of my own soul, the labyrinth of my destiny. These could never be escaped. To challenge these imponderables being precisely the heavy, tattered glory of the gift of God.
01:29:50
Speaker
To encounter oneself is to encounter the other, and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too. And if I can respect this, both of us can live.
01:30:04
Speaker
Neither of us truly can live without the other, a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not endlessly compelled to repeat it, and further believe it and act on that belief.
01:30:17
Speaker
My friend was quite right when he said, so we must be careful lest we lose our faith and become possessed. For I have seen the devil by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me.
01:30:31
Speaker
in the eyes of the cop and the sheriff and the deputy, the landlord, the housewife, the football player, in the eyes of some junkies, the eyes of some preachers, the eyes of some governors, presidents, wardens, in the eyes of some orphans, and in the eyes of my father, and in my mirror.
01:30:50
Speaker
It is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. This devil has no need of any dogma, though he can use them all, nor does he need any historical justification, history being so largely his invention.
01:31:08
Speaker
He does not levitate beds or fool around with little girls. We do.
01:31:22
Speaker
That makes sense. That, that was, that, that was, that was what I got to. I skipped over some parts of it cause they were too creepy and I didn't want to. Yeah.
01:31:34
Speaker
But it's, that's, that's the thing is about the exorcist is that like, yes, like so he describes some really messed up things in there. He's like, you know, um,
01:31:49
Speaker
yeah Just really obscene and gross castrations and murders. and just But the thing is, is that like, what is actually more terrifying?
01:32:05
Speaker
Because like, what is actually more evil? Because if you think about slavery and just the unimaginable horrors that people were put through that's way more terrifying um and and yet you know when Hollywood goes to make a horror film they they fill it with all of these obscenities that are just kind of shocking to see on a screen yeah um and that's I think why he says know they should really know know more about evil than that um
01:32:45
Speaker
And he says, if they pretend otherwise, they are lying in any black man and not only blacks, many, many others, including white children, can call them on this lie.
01:32:56
Speaker
He who has been treated as the devil, recognizes the devil when they meet. Yeah.
01:33:11
Speaker
So I guess... I guess for me, I didn't know quite what I was reading. Like when I read the devil finds work the first time until I read this last part and I started to realize that like films,
01:33:34
Speaker
they reveal ah in a sense, they reveal more about the, the the terrors or the joys or the fantasies or the, the pain or the hope of, of the people who are making it, then it does, then it says anything about the audience, you know?
01:33:55
Speaker
Um, and in a way, like there's sort of like, like a mirror, um, but a mirror that, that lies. Yeah.
01:34:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:12
Speaker
The devil is much more often communicating in soothing, calming, logical voices. Yeah.
01:34:29
Speaker
Yeah. Because otherwise, devil causes people to run to God. Mm-hmm. Thus defeating the devil's entire goal. Right.
01:34:40
Speaker
Right.
01:34:45
Speaker
Nothing so terrifying as the slow path that leads to destruction. Yeah.
01:34:59
Speaker
In our church, the devil had many faces, all of them one's own. He was not always evil. Rarely was he frightening. He was, more often, subtle, charming, cunning, and a warm.
01:35:13
Speaker
So one learned, for example, never to take the easy way out. Whatever looked easy was almost certainly a trap. In short, the devil was that mirror which could never be smashed.
01:35:25
Speaker
One had to look into the mirror every day. Good morning, blues. Blues, how do you do? Well, I'm doing all right. Good morning. How are you? Check it all out and take it all in.
01:35:37
Speaker
Travel. The pleading of the blood was not for us a way of exercising a Satan whom we knew could never sleep. It was to engage Satan in a battle which we knew could never end.
01:36:00
Speaker
that line, the mirror which could never be smashed...
01:36:07
Speaker
Like I read that and i immediately thought of smartphones because as much as we want to, we can't smash them. Yeah. We need them to live. Now we've created a world where you can't really live without a smartphone.
01:36:26
Speaker
Much as you want to smash it.
01:36:41
Speaker
Are there any thoughts to leave us with tonight? a
01:36:48
Speaker
I guess ah I'll leave us with how Baldwin's writing kind of has affected me. um I'll leave us with a story.
01:37:01
Speaker
I was um going, i was at ah on a vacation in Massachusetts. and we were at a hotel, and it was sort of like a rainy day. We didn't have anything to do, and the kids were going crazy.
01:37:17
Speaker
So they had a movie theater at the hotel, and the only movie that was kid-friendly was the Minecraft movie. um So we went to the Minecraft movie, and ah this is not relevant, but while we were waiting...
01:37:38
Speaker
in it, there were a couple of goons, I'd say anywhere from fifth to seventh grade, making hentai noises on their phones, just like walking in and making these, ah make having their phones make inappropriate noises, um like giggling.
01:37:59
Speaker
And they walked in and I just ended up yelling at them to just leave. If they're not going to watch the movie, just leave. And they did. um And so I was sitting with my kids on my lap, feeding them Sour Patch Watermelons and watching the Minecraft movie, which ah is not so much a movie, but it's like a collection of memes.
01:38:25
Speaker
um And there's a black character in the movie. And I was reading Devil Finds Work at on this vacation um And so I was paying attention to the black character and how they were treated, because that's something that Baldwin does a lot when he talks about the movies that he sees.
01:38:44
Speaker
um And I noticed that...
01:38:54
Speaker
This is a movie that was made in, like, 2024, whatever. um and yet there was almost the the black character was the same like black friend character. The way that they treated the character was like, as a way to say like, we have a black character in the movie.
01:39:17
Speaker
So everything's fine. Our conscience is okay. um And every time you started to learn something about Dawn's character, Like, and and I don't care that this movie doesn't make any sense. I don't care that it's a bad movie because we're still watching it.
01:39:37
Speaker
Like, you know, it doesn't matter if it's bad if it's a bad movie or not. Like, i you know, i'm I'm going to take the messaging seriously. um And
01:39:51
Speaker
every time you learn something about Dawn's character, she has like, quote unquote, 15 side hustles. Um, you know, she's ah she's a black woman who has to work 15 side hustles to make ends meet.
01:40:05
Speaker
She's helping out these white brother and sister, you know, every time you start to learn more about Don's life, which honestly sounds a lot more interesting and stressful than all the white characters in this movie.
01:40:19
Speaker
Um, certainly, certainly more interesting than Jack Black's character. um But yeah it pivots away to like a joke or something.
01:40:32
Speaker
um And so she's just sort of there to like b
01:40:38
Speaker
be a black person in the movie and be like the the black friend. um Key and Pill have a great skit about the like magical black character in ah in a movie.
01:40:53
Speaker
um and But anyway, so That's how the double fines work has, has, has shaped me is now every time I watch a movie, um, I just try to pay attention to what it's saying about race and, and not necessarily about race, just about the people who are making the movie and what we believe about them.
01:41:15
Speaker
Um, yeah and what they're asking us to believe. yeah.
01:41:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:29
Speaker
dry. Have our our next episode. Okay. Hang on. I have one more quote. Sorry. no no ten its out End of the quote. I'm going to end this out.
01:41:44
Speaker
I'm to shout out to Equal in Paris, which was one of my favorite essays from Notes of a Native Son. Just the sardonic tone and like the dry humor that that Baldwin has.
01:41:58
Speaker
It makes me laugh. But um he's talking about culture when he's in Paris and he sort of accidentally gets arrested
01:42:12
Speaker
because his friend like stole the bed and put it in his room or something like that. um He didn't do anything wrong. But he ends up like in jail for like a week or something.
01:42:23
Speaker
because in real life. In real life, yes. Colin Parris. It's... It's really sad, but it's the way that he narrates it just is really funny.
01:42:39
Speaker
And he talks about culture. And this is, to this day, like the only... true statement I've ever heard someone say about culture because we say so many things about culture, but I don't think any of us under really, really understand what culture actually is.
01:42:55
Speaker
Like what is cultural and what just human and it's all money. But he says, one had in short to come into contact with an alien culture in order to understand that a culture was not a community basket more or less than the recorded and visible effects on a body of people, of the vicissitudes with which they have been forced to deal.
01:43:36
Speaker
and their great men are revealed as simply another of these vicissitudes, even if, quite against their will, the brief battle of their great men with them has left them richer........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................