Baldwin goes on to say a bit more after this cuts off: "It is spectacular for example, to have been forced ultimately to bring in the entire whatever-it-was... militia, US marshals - to get James Meredith into school, and from a certain point of view, which I do not at all share, I can see that one could say that no other country would have done it. It's escaped everybody's notice that no other country would have had to. It is easy to admire the sit-in students in the South, and nothing is more delightful than to talk to Martin Luther King, whom I very much admire. But it is too easy to admire a Christian minister, especially if you take no responsibility for what's happening to him or to those people that he tries to represent. It is hard to begin to understand that the drift in American life towards chaos is masked by all these smiling faces and all these do-good efforts."
Yes thank you so much for posting the end. Where is the complete recording or the complete transcript? The soundcloud recording also cuts off at the same time - it's linked from the Brainpickings post about this speech. THANKS AGAIN
"It is hard to begin to understand that the drift in American life towards chaos, is masked by all these smiling faces and all these do-good efforts" .....wow.. if this isnt relevant today..
His genius is mind blowing. His wit, brutal honesty, passion, suffering, procrastination that comes with being an artist at times, and love of humanity. Sharing pain will elevate a person’s spirits, therefore it elevates yours. Artists are soul doctors...
baldwin is the comfort i've been waiting to hear. to hear my feelings back to me and it takes incredible courage to understand yourself and to get to the state of self expression, fluidly... but because you need it.
This is the cry of every Artist alive in this country. I have listened to this over 40 times in the past 6 months as his refusal to be comfortable, his ability to incisively cut into and stay in this excruciating reality is sacred. "For something awful is happening to a civilization when it ceases to believe in the report, that only a Poet can make." If you don't understand his words, listen again. and again. and again. and read every one of his essays.
This is sort of inaccurate and not so inspiring to would-be artists who have yet to make. Maybe if he said only a 'poet', i.e., any one of the types of artists, can make something good, then it would make more sense.
@@BeastNationXIV Well, I generally like what he says, but I think he slipped and was not as precise as he could have been with the message that ‘only poets can make’ because, of course, all poets were once not a poet…and then they made something eventually. I guess I’m nitpicking a little, considering how it might not be as inspiring to people who change their minds and become artists when originally they never thought they would go down that path.
[22m35s] …But then one has got to understand-that is, I and all my tribe (I mean artists now)-that it is hard for me. If I spend weeks and months avoiding my typewriter-and I do, sharpening pencils, trying to avoid going where I know I’ve got to go-then one has got to use this to learn humility. After all, there is kind of a saving egotism too, a cruel and dangerous but also saving egotism, about the artist’s condition, which is this: I know that if I survive it, when the tears have stopped flowing or when the blood had dried, when the storm has settled, I do have a typewriter that is my torment but is also my work. If I can survive it, I can always go back there, and if I’ve not turned into a total liar, then I can use it and prepare myself in this way for the next inevitable and possibly fatal disaster. But if I find that hard to do-and I have a weapon which most people don’t have-then one must understand how hard it is for almost anybody else to do it all…
You are compelled, you are corralled, you are bull whipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you, and what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, if it hurt you, that is not what is important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what bull whips you, what corrals you, what drives you, torments you, is that *you* must find some way, of using this to connect you with everyone else alive, this is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial, except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain and insofar as you can do that with your pain you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too. In so far as I can tell you what it is like to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.
@@JOEFRO2What got deleted was an explanation of what pain is, and how it's inherently the opposite of trivial. Pain saves your life. Ignoring pain and abjectly trivializing it is exactly how we got here, to planetary mass extinction.
the internet can b a very terrible place but stuff like this is why i love it. i never heard about james baldwin in school, i should have, a lot of ppl should. thank you for the upload
“The poets, by which I mean all artists, are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t, statesmen don’t, priests don’t, Union leaders don’t. Only the poets.” - James Baldwin
Thanks for a great man's great words. All I know as a serious writer is that every minute of experience and work toward producing worthwhile things was like an act of plotting, conniving, stealing and "getting away with" the literal time to get the work done. Everything else in the world had a dull mindless gravity dragging me back to itself, to the world of profit and merely having things, and away from the creative. Sure paid my prices for it, but I've gotten the work done, and laid it on the altar.
A visionary. Considering the moment we find ourselves in, this is as prescient today as was back then. He was somebody who was aware and we are fortunate to benefit from his craft/life/insight of the human condition.
"The human conditon" always reads to me as a subtle disdain for all humanity, as if blaming the entire species for the horrors of a relative few. Like a sneaky semantic trick no one notices, letting those relative few horrormongers hide and control the narrative at the same time. Not saying anything about you yourself, just commenting a thought on language
Just listened to this again, so great. Swann Stewart Thank you for posting for us the end of the speech, shame it got cut off. If I wasn't able to get the conclusion I would have felt totally ripped off. Is that, in fact, where the talk ended? If so, his conclusion hinted at exactly where we find ourselves today as a civilization: In dire need of Another Civil Rights Movement-After The Movement. Alas, we have something with BLM movement but sadly we have no MLK or James Baldwin.
I would like a rethinking of the beneficial proposed programs actions of the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. outside of the L.A. riots there has been nothing but talk. Even during the Obama administration. The opposition has no problem getting their tiki torches and terrorizing people. It's time for action. Baldwin gives us the reason for taking action and the BPP gave us action.
@@PNSFOOD The BPP was ruthlessly taken down by the FBI, CIA and the police. How to organise on a mass scale in these conditions of illegal actions against the movement? Its been done before and needs to be studied.
A Prophet is his calling, his peers are Gwen Lansberry, Emmet Tillman and Medgar Evers. Just to inform you on how long he has inspired my era to keep the deferred dream alive. We as motivators are willing to share his living legacy with this era that hasn’t given up on us. God Speed
"...And in so far as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it..." And what I think of is a lyric, "When I'm writing I'm trapped in between the line, I escape when I finish the rhyme"
@@roseneal2392 Greed Gluttony Pride Sloth Lust Anger Envy these are the Catholic 7 deadly sins (I'm pretty sure) As far as what Bukowski meant in that quote, I think I understand but it's hard to explain. It was biographical, coming out of his own life experience. Basically. Life sucks. Find something you really love to do and do it, just to keep your sanity, but you're going to die anyway, and the energy you pour into your passion (his was writing) will sometimes feel like the using up of your limited supply of life force. It's dark, funny, and, perhaps, somewhat the truth of the matter.
He is only a genius because he knows himself. He is no better or worse than any of us. No better citizen, nor writer, nor thinker. We all have it within us to choose a life that is as powerful and impactful and genius and Baldwin's. We must all personally choose to accept the burden that that life comes with at every step.
To know yourself requires introspective work and honesty. After one has done the work, they can become prolific thinkers and writers but please don’t assume, we all have DONE the work and therefore, we all are at this moment, prolific thinkers and writers WITH moral courage. Many of his counterparts during his generation, lacked moral courage and self introspection……and therefore, failed to meet Jimmy where he was.
Here is a partial transcript. I did not transcribe the very important part which is the last 5 minutes. Can someone else do it? [feel free to pass this on and make use of it - it is really hard to get access to this book and it is hard for people who are hard-of-hearing to hear the tape! I really don’t like words like “artist” or “integrity” or “courage” or “nobility.” I have a kind of distrust of all those words because I don’t really know what they mean, any more than I really know what such words as “democracy” or “peace” or “peace-loving” or “warlike” or “integration” mean. And yet, one is compelled to recognize that all these imprecise words are kind of attempts made by us all to get to something which is real and which lives behind the words. Whether I like it or not, for example, and no matter what I call myself, I suppose the only word for me, when the chips are down, is that I am an artist. There is such a thing. There is such a thing as integrity. Some people are noble. There is such a thing as courage. The terrible thing is that all of these words - the reality behind these words depends ultimately on what the human being (meaning every single one of us) believes to be real. The terrible thing is that all these words - the reality behind them - depends on choices one has got to make, for ever and ever and ever, every day. I am not interested really in talking to you as an artist. It seems to me that the artist’s struggle for his integrity is a kind of metaphor - must be considered as a kind of metaphor for the struggle, which is universal and daily, of all human beings on the face of this globe to get to become human beings. It is not your fault, it is not my fault, that I write. And I never would come before you in the position of a complainant for doing something that I must do. What we might get at this evening, if we are lucky, if the mike doesn’t fail, if my voice holds out, if you ask me questions, is what the importance of this effort is. It would seem to me, that however arrogant this may sound, I want to suggest two propositions. The first one is, that the poets - by which I mean all artists - are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only the poets. That’s my first proposition. We know about the Oedipus complex not because of Freud, but because of a poet who lived in Greece, thousands of years ago. And what he said then, about what it was like to be alive, is still true, in spite of the fact that now we can get to Greece in something like five hours, and then it wold have taken I don’t know how long a time. The second proposition is what I really want to get at tonight. And it sounds mystical, I think, in a country like ours and at a time like this, when something awful is happening to a civilisation, when it ceases to produce poets, and what is even more crucial, when it cases to believe in the report that only poets can make. Conrad told us, a long time ago, (I think it was in a book called Victory, but I might be wrong about that), but the line is, “Woe to that man, who does not put his trust in life.” Or, Henry James said, “Live. Live all you can. It’s a mistake not to.” And Shakespeare said - and this is what I take as being the truth about everybody’s life all of the time, “Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.” Art is here to prove, and to help one bear, the fact that all safety is an illusion. It is in this sense that all artists are divorced from and even opposed to, necessarily, any system whatever. Let’s trace it, just for kicks, for a minute. And I’ll use myself. I won’t say, me, but it’s my story. The first thing an artist finds out, is when he’s very, very young. When I say young, I mean, before he is 15. That is to say, before properly speaking, he or she can walk or talk. Before he or she has had enough experience to begin to assess his or her experience. And what occurs at that point in this hypothetical artist’s life, is a kind of silence - for reasons he cannot explain to himself or to others, he does not belong any where. Maybe you are on a football team. Maybe you are a runner. Maybe you belong to a church. You certainly belong to a family. And abruptly, in other people’s eyes - this is very important - in other people’s eyes, you begin to discover that you are moving, and you can’t stop this movement - to what looks like the edge of the world. Now what is crucial, and one begins to understand it much, much later - is that if you were this hypothetical artist - if you were in fact the dreamer that everybody says you are - if in fact you are wrong not to settle for the things that you cannot, for some mysterious reason settle for - if this was so, the testimony in the eyes of other people would not exist. The crime of which you discover slowly that you are guilty, is not so much that you are aware - which is bad enough - but that other people see that you are, and cannot bear to watch it because it testifies to the fact that they are not. You’re bearing witness helplessly to something which everybody knows and nobody wants to face - least of all the hypothetical misfit who has not yet, as I said, learned how to walk or talk and does not know enough about experience to know what experience he has had. Well, one survives that - no matter how. By and by your uncles and your parents and the church stops praying for you. They realise it won’t do a bit of good. They give you up. And you proceed a little further, and your lovers’ put you down. They don’t know what you’re doing either. And you can’t tell them, because you don’t know. You survive it. And in some terrible way, which I suppose no one can ever describe, you are compelled, you are corralled, you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here, is that if it hurt you - if it hurt you - that is not what is important. Everybody is hurt. What is important, what bullwhips you, what corralled you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except in so far as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain - and in so far as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully, it works the other way around too - in so far as I can tell you what it is like to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less. Then, you make - oh fifteen years later, several thousand drinks later, two or three divorces, god knows how many broken friendships and an exile of one kind or another - some kind of breakthrough, which is your first articulation of who you are: that is to say, your first articulation of who you suspect we all are. Let me put it another way. When we were all very young - when I was very young (and I am sure this is true of everybody here), I assumed that no one had ever been born who was only five feet six inches tall, or been born poor, or been born ugly, or masturbated, or done all those things which were my private property when I was fifteen. No one had ever suffered the way I suffered. Then you discover, and I discovered this through Dostoevsky, that it is common. Everybody did it. Not only did everybody do it, everybody’s doing it. And all the time. It’s a fantastic and terrifying liberation. The reason it is terrifying is because it makes you once and for all responsible to no one but yourself. Not to God the Father, not to Satan, not to nobody not anybody. Just you. If you think it’s right, then you’ve got to do it. If you think it’s wrong, then you mustn’t do it. And not only do we all know how difficult it is, given what we are, to tell the difference - not only between right and wrong, but the whole nature of life is so terrible that somebody’s right is always somebody else’s wrong. And these are the terrible choices one has always got to make.
1. the comments here are crazy 2. everthing said with this ton and this audio becomes a great speech , no matter how much rhetorical curves you need for me philosopher it sucks to hear something without organization, or some voice ton as it were the ultimate wisdom but is not, unless i am hearing Alan Watts before sleep
Baldwin speaking in 1963 -------------------------------------- 🤔 he begins by talking about abstract nouns (courage, democracy, etc which exist in folk's imagination, not the touching, seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, etc. world of bodily senses) 🤔 he says the poets (meaning all artists) are 'the only people who know about us' and that any country which ceases to produce and/or believe in poets is destitute 👍 'out of this [danger] ...we pluck one flower of safety' [quoting Shakespeare] 👍 me: same message as so many songs such as 'Guantanamera' 👍 'you are corralled, you are bull-whipped to dealing with what hurt you ... and [this allows you to] connect with other people's pain ...and it works the other way around too ❤ 💙 💜 💖 💗 💘 [so that there is #unity #togetherness #wherethereislove] 👍 🤔 he draws the analogynof the artist as a person who stands alone in a field watching the warmth and light and comfort of a home into which they can be incited but must leave through their own artistic need] 👍 🤔 he describes his 'tribe' as 'artists' so this would cover all space, all time, all cultures 🥳 🎉 🪅 🎊 #unity #togetherness #wherethereislight - the light of understanding or 'enlightenment' as he calls it 👍 🤔 a people 'unlettered in language... totally unlettered in the language of the heart 24:59 wholly distrustful.of whatever cannor be touched ... who believe that they can make suffering obsolete...[but know that] the pain which sings a toothache is the pain which saves your life' 👍 'there is no negro problem ... [but we do live] in an emotional kindergarten' 👍 27:20 ... there is nothing that can be done for me; there is nothing that can be done for negros: it must be done for you [of such a myopic, immature brain]' 👍 ' we have arrived at a point where we do not know what to tell our children' 28:28 👍 🤔 'gonorrhea is not preferable to siphilis: the framework in which we operate weighs too heavily on us and is about to kill us' 👍 29:15 👍 the system operates 'not to change the situation but to have seemed to have done it' 30:01 👍 me: 🇯🇲 what Bob Marley and so many singers call 'Babylon system' 👍
it's printed in THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION: UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS! along with a lot of other great essays and speeches he wrote that have been unpublished for a while.
frankie boyle brought me here and I wish I could thank him in person one day.. to me frankie is a modern genius (flowery term but still..) who is a modern genius to you? (or just people you enjoy listening to.. I'd add akala, christopher hitchens, stephan fry and others to my list but I want to make it bigger.. any suggestions appreciated)
God will punish all the evil demons worldwide. If the rich were not so greedy, heartless, and evil, there would not be poverty any where in the world. Karma never loses an address..
Basically, people got to tell their offsprings that it is wrong to mock, joke and tease people due to their differences especially skin colour. This type of education can only come from parents of 4 year olds upwards cause that’s about when the kids notice that we all come in different colours. It’s a parental responsibility that’ll give the future generations hope and better life for all. If it comes from a black person of mature age who’ve been a victim of such life that person will be killed/jailed.
With all due respect, that's where offspring learn they are different from their nuclear family's. Maybe if our biological parents set an example of simply being human as a common trait of acceptance then our offspring will mock their peers. Out grow this hereditary human stain of what it takes to be important. Denial is an adaptation not a mutation🦋
James Baldwin - "I would never come before you in a position of a complainant for doing something that I must do." [...] "I want to suggest two propositions. The first one is: the poets, by which I mean all artists, are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don't, statesmen don't, priests don't, union leaders don't; only the poets - that's my first proposition. [...] The second proposition... is what I really want to get at tonight. And it sounds mystical I think - in a country like ours and at a time like this, but something awful is happening to a civilisation when it ceases to produce poets and what is even more crucial, when it ceases in any way whatever to believe in the report that only poets can make." Genius up there with Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain. Kudos to a legend.
