HONESTY

What is honest survives. What is untruth perishes.

A very good friend met me today for lunch at a nearby hotel. A journalist, artist, and most recently, filmmaker, she called me because she's teaching a workshop at the Mid Atlantic Creative Non-Fiction Conference in my area. We embraced. I caressed her locs in my hands, shoulder length ropes of soft auburn, the texture of my purple wool. I was delighted and encouraged at how beautiful she is becoming as she ages. She is well into her fifties with skin that is still as taut as a twenty year old's. She is graceful, her teeth -- having been released one year ago from her braces -- are perfectly straight. When I'm with her I feel like someone has pulled the clock down from the wall, jimmy-rigged it to spin at warp speed. There is so much to share, so little time.

She told me about a book idea from a man she recently met. He is the founder of a group of single men who are raising daughters alone. The idea promises to go beyond the discussion of "how/when we talk about sex and periods," and expand into the realm of "how we have made peace with our daughter's mothers so that we can raise them to be confident, strong, intelligent women." She discussed the idea with a former colleague who said it's a nice idea but the market is too narrow: how many people are willing to read about single black men raising daughters? I say, there are plenty and I directed my friend to shoo off the naysayer as quickly as possible.

The problem with tunnel vision is that it only leads you where everyone else has already been.

Having had the pleasure of hearing Dorothy Height this morning on NPR's Diane Rehm show while driving to the hotel, I can only imagine what our fate would have been had Dr. Height not followed the honesty burgeoning in her heart. Her work with Dr. King was groundbreaking, as was his vision for the country in which he lived. I think, again, as I have said many times that we artists have to first commit to honesty. And I am expanding my view of just who Artists really are. Not just those who paint, write, make music .... but those who envision something that does not exist and work to bring it into fruition; that something being in service of Change; Change that seeks the greater and higher Good. As writers, how dangerous is it for us to only consider the well trodden path? To not consider the thicket, chop through it with our scythes until a new path is cut? I, for one, would be the first to purchase this kind of book because I want to hear more from the Black man. I want to hear of his travails, I want to see his face in all of its ugliness and pain and heartache. I don't want him to "be a man, hold a stiff upper lip." I want to see the human who happens to be male and black....who grieves, who struggles, who wants what I want without needing to be first in line for the receipt of validation from the mainstream. I want to hear what he has to say about rearing children and I want others to know that there are black men desirous of the monumental task of childrearing. I want honesty. I want honesty. And I want truth.

It's interesting that last week, from my stack of 5-for-a-dollar library sale books, I pulled two Pulitzer prize winners: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, a South African writer. I know Toni, so I challenged myself to read Gordimer to see what she has to say. The story is intriguing but what I am most encouraged by is her willingness to challenge form, structure......RULES. Her telling of the story in its own way, the way that best suits the story. She opens up with an omniscient narrator that gives a bird's eye view of a woman stuck in traffic, car having broken down. The narrator gives only sparse details and then switches to a 2nd person sort of voice/view:

There. You've seen. I've seen. The gesture. A woman in a traffic jam among those that are everyday in the city, any city. You won't remember it, you won't know who she is. But I know because from the sight of her I'll find out --- as a story --- what was going to happen as the consequence of that commonplace embarrassment on the streets: where it was heading for her, and what. Her hands thrown up, open.

This doesn't happen in everyday fiction. Fiction -- most these days at least -- conforms to what will sell. Don't change the rules or no-one will buy your book. Don't make it difficult for the reader. Don't make the reader have to work. Give it as straight and easy as possible. And in non-fiction, I suppose, stick to an established audience.

I say, to myself and my friend, there are those in search of truth. And all art must first seek truth if it is to survive, if it is to stand on its own two feet, if it is to have any breath at all.

Be Good.

ANGEL