Connecting To Baldwin on Art and Community

 

This weekend, I read "James Baldwin The Last Interview and Other Conversations" which is a collection of four interviews and/or conversations with James Baldwin. I found two of Baldwin's comments really spoke to me in particular.

The first comment that spoke to me was from a Stud Terkle interview from 1961, which talked about the importance of the arts in being able to make us feel seen and not alone.

If you have been reading this blog or if you get my poetry e-news, you know how much I take this to heart. My best friends and "found family" often contain characters. These characters are always there for me and are able to explain humanity to me in a way my neurodivergent brain can absorb better than dealing with humanity in flesh and bone. I often find "people" confusing and strange, whereas characters are often easier to understand. 

The fact that characters and stories make me feel seen and understood while also reminding me that I matter and that life matters is why it is always important to, in the words of Neil Gaiman, "Make Good Art." Shout out to every creative person whose works I have or will ever cross paths with. Art has meant so much to me, and I will always be grateful for everyone who helps bring art into my mind and into my soul.

The second comment that spoke to me was from a 1984 interview in The Village Voice.

I am someone who, ever since discovering that I am Ace, has been very open and vocal about being so. I also enjoy hanging with LGBTQA+ and queer communities in LGBTQA+ and queer spaces. But I also feel removed from those spaces for a number of reasons.

One of those reasons is that, as an Ace, I interact with those spaces differently:

Yes, I believe that anyone should be able to love, kiss, or have sex with anyone who enthusiastically consents to do those things with said person.

Yes, for me, LGBTQA+ kissing and sex is more logical than heteronormative versions

Yes, I attend a Black LGBTQA+ centered church where sex is talked about. (I will always remember when my pastor preached about how "God intentionally gave men prostates for pleasure," something not preached at most churches LOL )

But no matter how much fanfiction I read, I still don't fundamentally understand why anyone does those things, so I sometimes feel a little remote from others in those spaces. 

Like if someone really loves visual art but happen to be color blind. While they like hanging in visual art communities and spaces, they also might not always feel able to participate if the aspect that seems to be the focus in such spaces is how color is being used in the visual art.

While I enjoy that others are able to express themselves and be themselves in LGBTQA+ and queer spaces, it can feel like I am trespassing into something private or into someone's holy ground. I know they are both spaces for me and not for me at the same time. 

Connecting the complexity of community back to the power of art to show that we are not alone, actor Wentworth Miller gave a moving speech at the 2013 Human Rights Campaign Dinner. That speech that I have excerpted below shows that neither James Baldwin nor I am alone in sometimes feeling remote from community or even the idea of community, even communities we objectively belong in. 

I’ve had a complicated relationship with that word, ‘community.’ I’ve been slow to embrace it. I’ve been hesitant. I’ve been doubtful. For many years I could not or would not accept that there was anything in that word for someone like me. ...

 

It has been natural to see myself as an individual. It’s been a challenge to see that self as part of something larger. Like many of you here tonight, I grew up in what I would call survival mode.

When you’re in survival mode, your focus is on getting through the day in one piece, and when you’re in that mode at 5, at 10, at 15, there isn’t a lot of space for words like ‘community,’ for words like ‘us’ and ‘we.’ There’s only space for ‘I’ and ‘me.’ In fact, words like ‘us’ and ‘we’ not only sounded foreign to me at 5 and 10 and 15, they sounded like a lie. Because if ‘us’ and ‘we’ really existed, if there was really someone out there watching and listening and caring, then I would have been rescued by now.