“To accept one’s past– one’s history– is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.” – James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time” (pg. 81)
This past weekend I went to a flea market in my neighborhood. It was a rare moment for me to do something where I’m just floating among vendors, observing, watching and just being. It was, for me, a rare moment of active stillness in the presence of my chaotic life. When I say “chaotic” I mean it in the sense that I am rarely present in my own life. This chaos was mirrored back to me when I stopped at a witch vendor who did a Tarot reading for me. The darkness was prominent in all three of the cards they pulled. What is this chaos? On the surface, the chaos is working a full-time job and attending an MFA Creative Writing program full-time. Beneath that surface, it is relying on the stability of a full-time job to survive, save and live in a city. Slightly beneath that, it is the tension between loving writing and not knowing how to do it without also providing for myself. And deeper? Well, it is the fear of not working insane amounts to sustain myself. Does this sound privileged, insane and irrelevant to this annotation? Probably yes, but perhaps I can go a bit deeper.
I am not only a writer, I am a writer who is also the oldest child of four, from a parent who never worked because she lived with schizophrenia that inhibited her ability to function in the world we live in. My life has been shaped into being a responsible adult since being a child, yet I have a heart of an artist with the desire to freely create without being held down by the matters of the world. The irony here is that I write about my childhood, the traumas I’ve faced, about the relationship I have with my mother and her schizophrenia. I also write about my father and his alcoholism and how it shaped my life. These are the stories I find important, because I know I am not the only one with this experience. I know that somehow sharing these will help the healing, progression and life of someone else. Sometimes this writing isn’t pretty or lyrical, sometimes it is ugly in all its rawness. I try to stay true to how my writing shows up with the intention that its sparseness will blossom in the life of a reader far away from me and my knowing.
I have been reading about the term “duende.” When I think of duende, I think of an artist who has lived. It may not be a long amount of living, but perhaps it’s an experience that is so earth shattering it must be shared. That sharing is what inspires a fervor in those viewing, reading or listening. While reading Baldwin, I am reminded of how he invoked such a fervor in those who read him, listened to him or met him. It was his awareness of the world around him that, one could say, is duende. It’s the mysterious result of the combination of trauma, hope, resilience, understanding and love. I understood Baldwin when he wrote about using the past and not drowning in it. When I think of my writing practice and what I write about, I am constantly balancing the ability to float above the immense reality of the life I am writing about. It is balancing the freedom and privilege to tell a story with the pain of the story and the life I write from. When I think of myself as a writer, I think I must embody not only a love for the act of writing, and all it’s difficulties, but of the story and people that have inspired me to write. This isn’t always easy considering the tough nature of those relationships. Yet, Baldwin talks of love. He talks of the ability to not drown. What does this mean to me as a writer? What can I learn? Perhaps it’s the ability to enter the vortex where the difficulty and necessity of love is present, where the spirit of duende sits, waiting to rear its head in the art that comes from the hard work of loving.
– 2018 WROB Gish Jen Fellow, Tatiana M.R. Johnson
