In Paris: An Excerpt from RA Washington's "Baldwin Notes"

Excerpt, with permission from the author, from Baldwin Notes | RA Washington | 2019 | Outlandish Press | 135 Pages

Purchase the book here.

RA’s description of the book:

This book had its start as a small chapbook within a chapbook called Baldwin Notes.
I forget now what the original intent was, but over the years I would add a poem or two to the pile.

That was a decade ago or so, for time is my enemy sailing a paper ship. The concept of time I am still not all too comfortable with, but there has been a remarkable resurgence of Baldwin themed work both written and filmic. Collecting itself on both sides of the divide. For as a country we do not give each other flowers when alive, we prefer to honor the dead, and try to kill the living.

Most of the work being money pushed as the “AUTHORITY” on all things Baldwin—— either glosses over or is a navel gaze toward his queer self gives me pause. There is a certain malice underneath both approaches. It also misses an opportunity to delve into the unique source of his perspective, both as an other and in his deep capacity for understanding the frailty of love. I do not think it is necessary to provide an analysis of Baldwin’s written work, or to pile on even more postmodern critical [un]theory that passes for social commentary today.

IN PARIS.

PARIS.

24.

its no wonder so many have fled to paris. there is a violence there that is so ancient, so hidden that a black man would not recognize it at first. there was a freedom there against the tower, against the old cathedrals and winding alleys. the nooks hide the poets, the thieves, the thinkers, the crooks. for five old francs you could have a crust of bread, soup, sometimes with a few chunks of roasted pork, or a bit of chicken, a thimble of wine. you find yourself amongst the expats, sharing what they have with each other, drinking and dreaming. Jimmy was no different.

and who will remember

an algerian summer

the brown laid out against nightstick pummel

the deep cuts of broken french spoken

to the inn keep

who demands rent in full

there will not be another time

to be alive.

here i will make a name

an equal in paris.

HOTEL DE ROME.

found a room compliments of Wright

perhaps he will regret not letting you starve

Mary keeps you as her namesake kept Jesus

you are instantly looking for a shadow

to call out and say you ain’t from here

you ain’t supposed dream

an impossible sentence along the meander of H. James

and who knew old Henry would give you a form

and you would take the pages heaven?

first you must find a small flame along the Seine

and let it be your North Star.

like Harriet, you will not leave anyone behind.

pen as pistol.

you borrow a typewriter

you starve

the novel doesn’t come.

you turn in small assignments for money

the vestments of ideas

you as metaphor. the pace and beat

of heart. you do not recognize it as freedom.

it must be someone elses.

a thousand dead sentences along the lines of a mother’s face.

do not take it to mean she doesn’t want you to live

she does, its just not a thing that should be said

when all sons die.

and the daughters bury the tattered remains.

the black men, some of letters, some remnants of the war. many jazz musicians all trying to escape the clutch of a hang rope. paris, they frolic free and discuss their lot. paris, they fuck french and algerian girls and boys and send pennies home to the folks left behind the shield of jim crow.

it was indeed a shield, it was the protection for a whiteness an american identity, built on Native land, and backs. built by the hands of the less than. this Brown, this Blue, this Black.

this this?

                                                “THE MAN I LOVE”

the late night discussions, the bubble up of rage, the preacher in you looking out, and then that toothy smile set all at ease. for the sermons were and are still too terrible in the power. of a weeping, of white guilt. the gaze too much. your good friend Morrison would kill that gaze but that would be much later, after your death or perhaps because of it. the earth can only take one prophet at a time.

one night after a particularly drunken time, songs flew, the wine was consumed as if communion, the pages began to flow and soon the book had shape. Elijah spoke to you as clear as the Sunday morning white of the ushers. harlem sprang forth from your mouth, a raging jungle cat wishing that everything could and should be eaten. demanding that you to be consumed.

you pack a duffle, the manuscript gripped against chest, send it off. and the stepfather you buried years before is finally, finally put to rest like so many ghosts we call.

“Of these Parisian streets, do we see each other? do i understand that even i am fleeing the hatred of my birth, i am an American here.”

there is something to this. REGARDLESS OF YOUR STATION in america, abroad you hold the blue passport and its that passport that makes the blacks of paris hate you. you try to connect, to see them but you are distracted by language, by your aloof manner set forth in the bottom of a shot glass, in the dull orb of a glass of wine. we will not see ourselves in each other. maybe you are fine with this, your biography is littered with white patrons, large and small. they have the apartments, and typewriters to borrow. they have the money and food to eat. they know your worth. but they do not know your name, the gut of you screams how can you know me if you cannot see how to love me?

you let them ease their guilt by helping you. no shame is felt by their company unless you are seen by brothers and sisters in this paris, this savage and magical place. Your Fanon vs. your Langston. if you are to survive it will take the “white devils” knowing your name. and know they name is what happened. for before you were no name in the street.

perhaps you are Joyce fleeing ireland and the triple threats of nation, family, and religion.

what about the old hag who inherited the shittiest bar on rue blah, blah. her face beat with the filterless cigarettes she smoked since she was a girl, the rancid soup and

the six-day-old bread. she cuts it into hunks that could choke a horse. we will never know her last name, for she’s had a hundred thousand husbands, lovers sniffing at the ancient twat. she loves to call you and yours faggots— for your ability to dance and drink and sing and fuck and cry all in the same minute makes her envy rise to derogatory slur.

GIOVANNI::LUCIEN

found giovanni in the mouth of a bar

said you wanted love and it came

first because he didn’t want to starve

later because you had won his heart

even then you were never lovers.

just a voyeur with a lil’ girl’s mouf

he tried to break free

paint and live

yet he come back

always the confidant.

always the mystic singing.

and what can we know of love

beyond the body

the mouf lays open

the cock seeks a hold

you saddle up in details

black skin, white loathing

we inch despair

odd looks the ugly word[s]

call him lucien

and it was not his room, but yours

for once you had a home to give.

they say, write harlem.

you say —— i wrote harlem

but i am not of protest.

i have to be considered a writer.

first and always ———

you ain’t gonna get me dancing minstrel Hughes

or singing murderous wright[s]

and if GO TELL IT was your Joycean nightmare

giovanni would be a love song to the tiny bits

you tuck in dark corners

the alley awash with zippered lions

their lust blending in the red brick.

these american nightmares ain’t gonna see me comin’

unearth the whole damn thing. them men sissy

they don’t mind black cock, they seek the dark.

they seek a me.

i ain’t have ‘em mine.

they say write harlem

i say no.

they publish me anyway

i’m gonna slaughter Faulkner

gonna slay Hemingway

we and them. its the only salvation

you gonna  have to confront me

i ain’t hiding in no harlem sanctuary

won’t slither past on some freedom ride

won’t author your murder

you gonna know me

and the sex you hide.

during the day eyes can not hold our love

you so long and dark, oblivious to danger

the flint blue eyes like sky

or the absence of a cloud.

or me, the toad in ebony

smooth as a pebble worn on mountain river

cobblestone clinks, the click that hold up cafes

one old franc at a time.

you will not let me mouth you

for the skin has survived too much.

but i want a love that moves history

and shutter to think nigger in my mirror

past my own

the old frayed bible in my stepfather’s hand

you don’t know enough

just hills and milk

but you love like a God

that can build life in just one week

rest on the eighth day

hold me Bessie

rock me asleep

the tired no call on the ’78

pushed up against needle.

like so many galleries of zombie

shoot harlem

my only pawnable item.

“AND when I say everything .  .  . I mean all the serious, dreadful things, like pain

and death and love, in which you Americans do not believe.”

                                                            - Giovanni to David

i sent a picture of us at your father’s villa to my mother with $25 and letters to all of my siblings. she wrote back that i looked thin, and happy so she ain’t a worry, gonna let God is how she put it.

no mention of you my love, for she ain’t gonna acknowledge that i love a man. she still hears me a  Sermon, a tiny version of her husband, not the bastard she made.

we gonna lay here a bit my love, just look up at the ceiling, white.

we gonna look up and see where we can fit, speck in all that white.

you don’t wanna be my lover

possession is foreign to you.

more america than you wish to consume.

you say you are not a blonde

i can never tell dark from fair

you wanna drink baby?

let me finish this page of you

ain’t me you typing baby— you say.

its you.——-i reply.

ain’t me its us. as you walk back toward the window seat.

well, get my hair right or you sleeping down here —— we laugh.

this my room baby, ain’t yours to say. you better call me Mr. when you say my name.

AND if GIOVANNI was your life in the village, paris in the 40s and 50s

who is DAVID? is it you? wrestling with a wanting a country that doesn’t want you?

that falling down that no man can escape?

we are ANOTHER COUNTRY      .           .           .

YOU loved eugene, and you never told him.

your kindred spirit, now dead. jumping off the George Washington

bridge as your rufus. we are alone now. me and you.

did you regret not loving eugene, Jimmy?

not telling him that you wanted him in your bed?

after arnold, and lucien and the parade of straight lovers

both men and women ——-you were alone.

you had to confront eugene. his ghost haunted you

along the coast of corsica,  mario was away.

arnold had failed you ——— you were alone.

just you and Bessie.

the brandy, the odd hours.

the pages grew.

i want to find you through a time machine listener

and let you weep at my chest, all the secrets

all the scars, out.

between us.

both preachers, both tormented by stepfathers

our faces reminding them someone else had got there

put the seed there in that slow ride home.

who will you be today? rufus or vivaldo

ida or some man with no face.

“Its not so much to play,” says Sonny to his brother. “Its to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level .   .   . in order to keep from shaking to pieces.”

                                                                                    —— Sonny’s Blues

we must contend with the Bridge, eugene is gone now. and the regret remains. there is no peace without facing the Bridge, no mind can escape clutter, the emotional heavy rocks that you seem destined to carry.

do you think it is you that should have died? would it have been better if it was eugene writing about you? i’m of the same baptist cloth, the whole of my head holds the weight of a death, too soon. the guilt of surviving. i am not worthy of a rest. he is looking at me from his Bridge. pushing for the man to pull the trigger.

                        *                                  *                                  *

I was aimless. taking the transit to the end of the line and back and then again ——- the corner of Warrensville Center Road and stopping at the used bookstore there. it was the night of a grand discovery, your book, Another Country.

i poured over its contents, taking the 41 bus toward Euclid. the hill we went down showed just how segregated Cleveland is and i related to rufus. was surprised when he met leona and awful rowing occurred. there was nothing taboo about the meeting of a black man and a white woman. i had seen that in my own early life, my stepfather had taken several white mistresses and had left my mother holding on to a black love that never could never have existed between them. it was a fiction i think she still clings to. in order to have that deep racial love, the lover must contend with the fact that they do not love themself. that this country had bred a deep hatred of the mirror and that all the black men and women saw was the generations of tearing, the country of violence so unrelenting.

a cutting of the very heart that could and should soften when thinking about one’s self. this is not what happened. what would often occur was a hatred of the face that reminded you that this country was trying to kill you. that this america, your home,  held a violence toward you as well, and there was nothing to be done about it but try and forget. to seek spaces where it wasn’t sitting on you like boulders on a chest. you a gasp for air and singing into the water of its history. you are drowning in an unlegacy and this UN is not an illusion, it is very real. its manifested in every nook and crack along the miles that make up a land. blood in, BLOOD OUT.

I was to rufus, what Dwayne was to vivaldo and at times we would flip roles. it was easy to see that both of us needed the other to reflect some sort of calm, a place where the other could experiment with the various selves we carried. at first, he was my model, the path toward a spirit connection to me being a maker. and later, much later, i reminded him of his humanity. i treated him as if nothing that happened in the past affected our twin-ship.

there was a time throughout our 25 years where we could talk without speaking, just a look was all it was. that looking eye just before the state thumbed down on our black heads all of the scarcity it could muster.

when i was vivaldo, you would hold onto me, as if there was no tomorrow, no people, no problems. i chafed loving you this way, was much more comfortable with the rufus role. the damned was easier to imagine. i do not think you ever understood it was you as vivaldo that i cherished. had you, perhaps it would not have ended with your murder.

it became a game of can anyone see that i love him, but i am not him, theses are not my problems. see! look at me, i am a citizen, he is not. and in those times where i found myself in the position of the unworthy, the unfaithful, the un-human, the liar, the coward——- it was him that kept me from my birthright, the Bridge.

now i cannot even bear the guilt of living. why am i alive and he is not. and at the funeral, so many leona[s] cried for you. so many. where were they when you were alive, how come they didn’t help us? help you live? i hated them for being there, i hated your family for acting the way they did. how come so many cried with you there, looking like a shrivel of the big and black man i loved?

CONCERNING ida. ida was for both of us, a lover, a wife, a friend, a protector, an enemy. we envied her ability for survival. she was bigger than us. his and hers was not of  their lexicon, ida was the best of all of us.

sometimes a lift up and kingship would be present, sometimes, the princess was played, very rarely would we see the queen. if i am vivaldo, then ida is angry that i cannot love, and is angry that i let you die.

when i am rufus, ida is in awe of me,  and in grief angry that i was not in awe of myself. for ida you are rufus always. never vivaldo. never the lover.  you are the future that ida fears will be a fate if they stay with me. i cannot deal with ida’s powers, ida is not able to be a queen, for i demand through my insecurity ida be the princess, the meek try to inherit the earth. the meek will inherit nothing.

ida is not the returning singer of the Baldwin myth, ida has always been here. we do not accept ida as croon, woe be ida that sings for them. this is what our eyes say. even if we are the author of the song, we pretend that it is a threat to us. as if the only thing a black man can do that’s of any value, the US, the THEM of it,  is held in our entertaining within the violent torment of a country that maims all. what is the singer without the crowd? and if ida is truly just Bessie —— “an alive and horrible telling” ——- what is the black man but her jail?

if ANOTHER COUNTRY is the very shapelessness of the american myth, then it is truly without form. the foundation of which is built on a horrible lie told to all its people.

——-IT IS OKAY TO STEAL, KILL IF IT PROTECTS THE COUNTRY. ITS OKAY TO RAPE, RENDER ALL THAT IS NOT WHITE INHUMAN.—————-

AND it is that first lie, the lie of white skin, that begins the torment for all of US. the removal of history, a where we come from, is one of the biggest invisible travesties. for without place we feel as if we are new, absent of our collective forefathers, not of the past is US.

                                    Come and take my blues away.

                                                            - Bessie Smith “Do Your Duty”

without real love, it is impossible to have self-knowledge and self-esteem. we cannot see each other as human beings so we can never understand and build a future

where the lies and divisions can finally be seen as they are.

in the process, the earth is taking the brunt of our denial, and is finally starting to perish. and if we are truly of a God, how we can we be so destructive to what the Lord has made?

rufus is that floating nothing that is the soul of it all, or an US. it is fitting that Baldwin would take the death of Eugene Worth and cast the larger metaphor. for he is the pen-ultimate in his sermonizing, and this is one does when preaching——-

“let me take you on a journey where a man realized that without his humanity it would be better to be dead.”

who is vivaldo in this larger metaphor? is he the white hipster figure who shuns his white skin, and finds a place to hide by mimicking the back alley talk of black jazzmen without the shadow of a lynching.

is he the white liberal, who we know does not understand that his efforts ultimately do not move the needle of racism at all. he feels better, and you, black enjoy some measure of a rest—— the second hand of an hour weighed clock.

as savior, in the delusional Christ casting make them even more of a threat? and if rufus takes leona does the vivaldo character secretly wish youblack dead? for his is his.

and what of the vivaldo that i play, and that i wish for you to play my brotherlove? we cannot hold ourselves,  so we secretly seek the arms of another, and in that one of us must play the savior, as if no human can love another hueman  unless one is Christ?

if i am rufus, then i love that vivaldo loves me. if i am vivaldo, then i am thankful that rufus will allow me to pretend that i can love him. there is something sinister with the connection, for both rufus and vivaldo are the same person, depending on who is around. if it was the white woman she will love rufus as a signal that she can love without the white man at the center.

if the rufus becomes animal, the imagines in her bed, then she will feed the jealous rage at the mouf of vivaldo. she doesn’t love either of them, each is a source of pain, and ultimately they are both male. and both of them can will choose themselves over all. the fascination of BODY is not without a bit of fantasy made real by the creation of a whiteness. this BODY.

“He cursed the milk white bitch  .  .  . Rode his weapon between her thighs.”

                                                                        from Another Country

In the novel, sex for rufus in the novel was a beating that produced VENOM. it is how rufus describes her that is the most jarring aspect as reader, for as he made love to her as he let her ride his “weapon”. we see his hatred for his own future, and that his seed represents a venom——-the internal disaster that screams ———— jump. jump. JUMP.

he rejects love from leona, rejects love from vivaldo, rejects the adoration of ida. rejects the liberal pretense of richard and cass. the only love he accepts is that of eric’s.

 in that, ultimately he is doomed for the very love of a white southern man creates too much shame to bare.

the guilt that his desire betrays a racial history is something that Baldwin leaves for the reader to sift. it is in his own battle with that guilt at the center of ANOTHER COUNTRY, and its something that he wrestles with until his death. we still are wrestling with it even now. even in the wake of Tamir.

richard represents the success rufus will never feel for his skin.  and for vivaldo, it is the whiteness he has escaped. for cass, she seeks out eric, realizing that if she is to finally have rufus, she must consume him through the only person he truly loved. she will use them, fused together as an erasure of what she helped richard make. another white man who must protect his image as WHITE from the clutches of the truth. she resents richard giving in, even as she benefits from the selling of his soul, and he knows that he is ultimately being judged by her, and must keep to the script. the patriarch.

BALDWIN shows us that what is truly wrong with richard is that he is afraid to look at the things deep inside of him, and therefore hides in his authorial role, a role that is a metaphor for all whiteness. the silent agony that he is in is what cass is attempting to escape, for she knows that without him there would be someone else. she knows that she will never be truly free for that cowardice. she resents his cower, and she resents that she cannot be brave enough for them both. she comes to eric because he is no longer a part of the machine, he is gay, white and is hated nearly as much.

he sleeps with cass because he is missing a mother, like all of us, we want to be held without judgement and cass can provide this, but only for a night. when they awaken they are still in their roles, for the roles are etched in the fabric of the nation. neither of them is willing to let go of their characters and so, in the end, they cannot see each other. the night is the setting of Baldwin’s canon. it is where he discovered the zippers roaring, a biblical perversion and, in its dark,  his powers emerge.

vivaldo seeks out eric to finally shed his innocence,  and in this, the shame of innocence,  that he cannot love ida. eric becomes the mouth of Baldwin, for he knows that unless he can accept himself for what will be his forever, a forever in the torment of the country’s demise, he will never truly love.  vivaldo takes eric as a cleansing pool for all he denied rufus. for his jealousy of ida’s power and his cowardice in the face of rufus and leona. not him, never him.

i’ve never been eric. i know an eric or four, but i have never been him. what keeps eric from coming home is not mine for this has never been home. for you, Jimmy, maybe eric was an extension, but you never had a home either. you thought you were leaving, but you took this unhome with you to paris,  found yourself adrift with no place for the bags. its a strange place to find one’s self, nowhere to put the bags down, and your shoulders, however young,  did droop from the wear.

and when you came back to this place, where you ran from eric, the mouthpiece of your acceptance, the placemark for things your skin would not allow you to express, you cast him older. you knew as we are learning,  that age can give you the shield needed to survive a home that wants to kill you.

so many have died so that you will know this. the burning corpse of your stepfather, eugene, that little boy preacher, all the selves that you no longer need to hold in your mouth. who is yves? is it lucien? a lover who will only love you as shelter? is he rufus, the alternate universe of living? this is what rufus could have been.

                                    “The blues has got me on the go.”

                                                                        - Bessie Smith

the innocence of the european? surely you know that there is none. that instead it was too ancient to trace the crimes to these shores, of africa, of asia. and with that,  you chose to cast an air of the baby, the innocence of your european lover?

i went to find a place of passion, a blueprint for witness. it was too much for me to hold, and yet the kinship i felt all those years ago still holds me weeping and humbled. for you were the bastard ME.

and you were the young of the cloth, as ME. and your stepfather tormented, as ME. the cuts almost proved deadly.

in you, i found myself thinking there must be some salvation in the very idea of love, above my head. just before i let the hell on these shores sweep me in. love above my head. i often pretend that you are sitting across from me, at the welcome table. your pages fluttering in the window breeze. it is barely autumn and the sky is pitched just below the color of your skin. we will not be heroes, and martyrs serve no aim. this is my testify to a country that won’t say my name.