Copyright 1980- All Rights Reserved
Note: This piece was originally written and published in September 1980.
There is an ancient Greek myth about a monster called Medusa—who had snakes instead of hair growing from her head and whose face was so horrible, so terrifying, so repulsive that anyone who dared look upon it was instantly turned to stone.
That legend captures the way I used to feel about death. I’d always backed away in terror and dread from the Reaper. Thinking it an abomination. Thinking it a jeering, pitiless specter that mocked the very essence of life. I thought of death that way until the time that fast, black train boarded someone dearest to me in all the world.
When that happened, the ground under my feet shook and slid away…the bottom fell out. And I knew I had to confront the enigma of death, look it full in the face—because my life depended on it.
It has been said that death and life are twins born of yet unfathomed mysteries in the womb of time. Death and life, two sides of the same coin, bound together like beginnings and endings, a continuum whose parts cannot be separated.
A beginning for me was in 1967 when I came to Evansville, Indiana. At 23, I hardly knew anything of Black pain, Black survival, the Black streets. I understood nothing, then, of the Black, smiling faces masking festering wounds. Understood nothing of standing in unemployment lines stretching around the block; of dodging the rent man ‘cause you got laid off last week and the rent’s due today; of kissing up to Miss Ann at the Welfare Office for food stamps; of the ritual of last hired and first fired. Understood nothing of smashed hopes struggling to live anyway in back alley crap games; of the eternal dream of hitting the numbers for two thousand; of sudden violence waiting at the next corner; of Blue Monday at the joints—laughing to keep from crying, or fighting cause you’re too damn mean to cry; of searching for someone on Saturday night to please, God, give you hard loving and make the night sweet as blackberry wine. Understood nothing of what did I do to be so Black and Blue?
I had yet to taste, in those days, the bittersweet juices of living the Black life—and surviving. For I had not yet found myself trapped. I had yet to hear the underbelly of the blues whispering to me about the bitchiness of a lady called life and the odds of getting over with her. I had yet to come eyeball to eyeball with the truth: You live for today ‘cause tomorrow ain’t promised.
I understood none of these things when I came to Evansville. Nor had I found the precious legacy of Black folk which had been hidden away behind Hollywood mirrors, at the bottom of politicians’ trunks filled with smoky illusions, in the dusty, spider-webbed basements where historians had, fearfully, buried it. The paradox and genius—the essence, the spirit and legacy of ordinary, everyday Black folk had not been my teacher. And at 23, I did not understand it. Not then.
While he lived, Ronald Lee Johnson was, in a very real way, my mentor. Was a man who taught me, by his example, about the Black life. And now his death, though it seems a useless and wasteful one, is teaching me even more. Now, as I try to tally up the things, the events, the people who have influenced my life most deeply, changed it most profoundly—now, in all honesty, I have to admit that what has caused me pain and what has nurtured me must be given equal weight. Both are intertwined. Both are father and mother to the person that I am. For you cannot grow without pain and joy, without setbacks and encouragements, without endings—which are, in themselves, beginnings.
In the thirteen years I’ve lived in Evansville, I’ve seen the complexity, the toughness, the brilliance of the Black spirit. I’ve witnessed the courage, the laughter, and the tears—the resiliency that makes Black folks who they are. I understand, now, that the blues and the spirituals are not divorced from each other, but are one and the same: songs celebrating life. And I have finally seen that nothing is constant. Everything is risk. And perhaps our only hope in this life is sharing and giving love.
Sudden death is no stranger to Black folk, and my anthem is not the first written for a man who was gentle of spirit and who died before he could grow old. From the beginning, Black people learn to live on the cutting edge—with death lurking just beyond the shadows, with promise and despair hovering just above the head and heart. Our lives smolder with the possibilities of hope and despair. Our lives—like a splendid, but tattered cloth—are weaved of light and dark. Of dreams, needs, and disappointments. Of blemishes and of perfections. Our lives are shot through with gold and dross, with midnight tears and noonday laughter, with the copper taste of blood-pounding rage, and the sweet, night-smell of jasmine. Our lives are a testament to the circle of life, affirming its balance, its unity—recognizing no separation in the contradictions of life, recognizing that there are no beginnings without endings, no loving without hurting, no up without down, no life without death.
And so, now, I write a testament, an anthem to my friend who was a Black man. My friend who was of the light and dark. My friend who was a human being—indefinable, unpredictable, ambiguous, paradoxical—a man of tremendous complexity, just as we are. And like us, he was something of a mystery: bewildering, frightening, magical. A delightful tease. A salty pirate. An old-fashioned romantic. A man who tilted at windmills. A human being who saw his own shortcomings and who doubted himself.
Yet, perhaps one can fathom the mystery of a man through those who loved him through those who walked the lifelong miles beside him. Through those to whom he told his dreams. Through those to whom he gave the gift of himself.
For, in the end, it is not a man’s weaknesses, his transgressions, or his faltering steps that he is judged by. A man is judged by those whose lives he touched… and who grew because of it.
(end)
