— Richard Wright in Native Son.

“Many a man thinks he is making something when he's only changing things around. But God let Moses make.”

— Zora Neale Hurston in Mules and Men.

Well I am ten days late and I don't have much of an excuse. I am somewhat behind in my novel writing, which has been sporadic, so I tend to put all my other writing off until I put time in on the novel. In this case I am just choosing to get this update done instead of doing something else. For me, that is really the only way anything gets done. I do not have a normal work day. I have a full time home gig that doesn't really allow days off, or any breaks at all. To say more would be to wallow in a bit too much bitterness, I think. Really I am thankful to be able to do this. The typing of this is something like talk therapy. You should only be worried if you stop hearing from me.

Writing

I put out a sonnet which you can read on this website. I am making sporadic progress on the novel. I draft with pen and paper, typing pages in—(really re-writing them)—to the computer as I go. I have a fair few pages that have been sitting in my journal that I need to get into my hard drives (I do not believe in the cloud, but I do believe in backups), before they fall into a lake or a fire or something. I started writing a song (I guess I am pretty much always writing one, I just don't get around to recording them because of the aforementioned job and my other work). And I am working on another essay.

Music

I am currently on vacation, and decided to bring my acoustic and work through a fingerstyle guitar course I bought awhile ago. It is by Jamie Dupuis and it has been immensely helpful. As a self taught guitarist, I never really had anyone tell me what scales/chord/shapes/picking patterns etc. I should learn, and this course is really filling in all the gaps. You should click on that link and listen to his harp guitar songs.

Reading

Last month and part of this month I read Richard Wright and James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men. Richard Wright's Native Son was something of a shocker. I knew there would be murder but it happened so fast that it just sort of swept me up like a thriller. I read it, then read Baldwin's essay, Everybody's Protest Novel, which mentions Wright's Native Son. It was very cool, and (to nobody's surprise) I found myself agreeing with Baldwin. I like to give myself little reading quests like this. If I could attempt to extract a nugget of wisdom, it would be to point out the fact the Native Son is told from the point of view of the murderer (like Crime and Punishment, which I am sure Richard Wright had to have read at some point, but it is not Crime and Punishment that concerns me). In other “thriller” novels I have read that are written by white folks like myself, the identity of the killer is held until very last, often by withholding essential information and only dropping impossibly unrelated clues from which you could never make a connection (looking at you Agatha Christie!). If I could theorize a bit about this, I think that maybe from a white person's point of view, especially if they have the privilege of never even coming close to something like murder, they would probably have no idea why anyone would want to go and do something like that to them. So the identity of the killer is really a mystery for the white man or woman, but for the black man or woman (especially before the Civil Rights Act) who has had to watch their kids and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers get murdered, the identity of the killer is so painfully obvious and so blindingly white.

Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston is a beautiful collection of folktales and hoodoo lore. There are stories, sermons, curses, blessings, rhymes, songs, all told with a deft pen and a fun-loving voice. A real change from Wright and Baldwin. Reading her dialectic and following the stories feels to me something like reading Shakespeare. And the fact that she is collecting these “lies” from poor blacks in Florida and New Orleans is a fact that might rankle your stereotypical Shakespeare fan, or not, I don't know what your stereotypical Shakespeare fan is like. There is a lie she collects at the end of Chapter V where 'Ole Massa' (A slaveowner) has a slave named John. Ole Massa's kids go out in a boat and almost drown, but John saves them, so Ole Massa promises to set John free by the end of the year. Well the year comes around and Ole Massa sets him free, but he keeps calling after John, “John, Oh John! De children loves you. And I love you. De Missy like you.” And John hollers back, “Yassuh,” but he keeps walking. And Ole Massa hollers this too, “But' member youse a n—er, tho!” And Hurston ends it (or she faithfully records the ending this way):

“Ole Massa kept callin' 'im and his voice was pitiful. But John kept right on steppin' to Canada. He answered Ole Massa every time he called 'im, but he consumed on wid his bag.”

If that does not say the un-sayable, then I do not know what to say.

Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

#update #March

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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Writing

I am now at the end of any previous draft material, so it is exciting but also difficult to keep pushing. One page at a time though. I also wrote a lent reflection, which I will post on here after this. Subscribe if you want to read it!

Audiobook/Music

Work on the audiobook fell to the wayside. I'll get to it eventually. I've been playing more guitar and feeling some of the old amp/gear lust I felt in high school (I used to watch the proguitarshopdemo YouTube religiously). In the end though, a good guitarist can make almost anything sound good, and my gear is more than adequate. I've been transferring some tracks to audio.com, which will be the new home for my music. I'm kind of amazed that it exists, and really grateful for an ad-free, unlimited platform to share and collaborate on.

I also entered the TinyDesk concert for the first time. Thank you to my friend for encouraging me to do it. You can watch my entry here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4jY1hLQ_sM

Podcast

I think we're coming out of hibernation. Hopefully you will hear something by the end of the month!

Reading/Listening

I read Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin and loved it. There is a great podcast in which Dr. Cornell West says that James Baldwin wants to be an honest man. He tells the painful truth with so much tenderness and passion, and the story of salvation and the struggle of faith resonated with my soul. John's (the main character's) conversion is some of the most visionary and powerful writing I have encountered.

For listening I enjoyed Son House, and also discovered Earl Hooker, who as far as I can tell is a criminally underrated blues guitarist. He has an effortless style and a great amount of restraint when playing, but the effect he achieves is really impressive. I found him because I was looking for some examples of slide playing in standard tuning, as I'd like to use the slide more.

Here's a quote from Go Tell it on the Mountain:

“Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel's wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever — and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.

“Elisha?” he said.

“If you ask Him to bear you up,” said Elisha, as though he had read his [John's] thoughts, “He won't never let you fall.

“It was you,” he said, “wasn't it, Who prayed me through?”

“We was all praying, little brother,” said Elisa.”

#march #update #jamesbaldwin

First, thank you for reading! To echo a sentiment from Thomas Hardy, I greatly regret that I will never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.

Send me a kind word or a cup of coffee:

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