Art and Black History

Hi, this is Steve Barnes here with today's Life Writing Live once again. If you enjoy these, please share them. That's how I know that it's reaching you and that you enjoy the subject. Today's kind of special. I'm saying goodbye to a friend. You see my obnoxiously exuberant T shirt here? That was a prompt that Ed Bryant gave me. That's what he considered me to be. And I've often been considered to be obnoxiously exuberant. I've had people ask, you know, do I have a happy tree in my backyard? Don't I ever get depressed? What's going on? Of course I get depressed. And of course I look at the world and I'm not happy with some of the things I see. That's only human. And of course, some of the things I try to do don't work. And this is Black History Month. And if you wonder why I don't talk about that issue more, it's because I believe that you should spend no more than 10% talking about the problem, at least 90% dealing with the answer. It's when the problem gets big enough, it can weigh on you to the point that you can't really even see the answers. But if I'm going to talk about this honestly today, then I have to say, of course it's hit me. I mean, from the time that my mother, when I was 10 years old, actually earlier than that, when I'm like 6 years old and my teacher put me in the slow reading group in first grade because of my skin color, when my mother, who had been raised in segregation in the south in an atmosphere of lynchings, told me, when I'm 10 years old, Steve, if you let white people know how smart you are, they will kill you. When everybody says, well, the science fiction field is great and it's open and it's wonderful, and yes, it is in many ways. On the other hand, I hadn't been getting reviewed in one of the largest magazines in the entire field. And after the editor died, after the publisher died, two of his editors, one current, one past, came to me independently and told me that I had been banned from the magazine on the basis of race. So, yeah, it hits me. And I saw, I realized when I was in my 20s and I had this ambition to be a writer. And I realized that if I did not, if I was accurate in my assessment of the way the culture was, if I could analyze the trend lines properly, as measured by things like image systems in movies and on Television, that I was going to be in my 60s before the culture shifted enough that I was going to be able to accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish. Good God. I was going to have to wait 35 years before I could have a chance of my skills and my talent, my heart, my passion, having the kind of effect on the world that I really wanted it to have. Could that be true? Could I? Conceivably. Is there even any way to do that? Could I have the emotional endurance to keep getting up day after day after day and doing the things I needed to do? Could I? Was it possible? But there was also the sense that if I didn't do it, I was letting down the people before me. It's like, no matter how hard it was for me, it had been harder on my father, who was a backup singer for Nat King Cole and who could perform in hotels in Las Vegas, for instance, where he could not legally stay. He could not sleep in a hotel where he could perform. Whatever was going on in my life, however bad it was at times, it wasn't as bad as that. So if I didn't step up, if I didn't find a way to master my emotions, my fear, my anger, my resentment, I was betraying the people whose shoulders I was standing on. So I needed to know how to control that anger, that fear, to be able to be optimistic day after day, that obnoxiously exuberant thing that Ed Bryant said about me. So the question was one of, how does one master one's emotions? Luckily, Jerry Pornell made the comment that once you've learned how to master anything, you know how to master anything else. So I could go to anyone who I believe was a true master and ask them important questions. And I was lucky that I was able to identify a bunch of people like this. And I didn't realize everything that they had given me. But looking back over my life, I realized that if I was to boil it down, it came to a conversation I had with my karate instructor, Steve Muhammad, who is one of the greatest, strongest men I've ever known in my life. And he has the kind of strength that comes from how he was raised. He was raised by his grandparents who had been slaves. They had been born in slavery. So the strength that they had, even though their lives had been greatly limited, was tremendous strength. And I asked him who had created not just masters, but grandmasters. And I'm a master in his martial arts system after many, many years of practice. And I said, what is mastery? Because a person who can raise Other people to the level of master must have clarity on what master is. And he's a very simply spoken man. I'm slightly rephrasing what it was he said, but he basically said that when you have the basics of your skill at the level of unconscious competence, such that you can create spontaneously under pressure, your master. If I was to combine that with some things that. George Leonard, who was the former sports editor for Esquire magazine, wrote a wonderful little book called Mastery that deals with the question why so few people ever achieve it. It's because most of the time your growth isn't apparent. It's a little bit like opening an oven all the time to check on a souffle or digging up seeds to see if they've sprouted. You'll kill them like that. You'll crash the souffle. Mastery is a matter of doing certain things day after day after day. What Musashi Miyamoto referred to as the Thousand Mile Road. That in essence, then, if I was to combine their advice. As soon as you have learned your basic skills, whatever your basic skills about the craft that you're trying to master, and you have committed to practicing those skills for a lifetime, you are on the path of mastery. That mastery, then, is a verb, not a noun. It's a vector, not a position. And once you're on that road, you are as much on the path of mastery as anyone on that road, no matter how far they are. Because what you'll find is that no matter how excellent you think someone is, what, when you get close to them, all they tend to see is their errors. I can be better. I can be better. I can be better. They might giggle a little bit at the skills that they've acquired. They enjoy that. But they know that the skill, the real skill, is can you continue to motivate yourself every single day? Can you do that? I believe that my gift to the world is my writing. And I believe that the world needs people who will tell the truth. Then I had to manage my emotions enough to be able to keep going every day and find joy every day so that I could continue to develop the skills such that when the world finally changed sufficiently and I could be part of the change of that world, I'd be ready for it. A lot of the things I've developed relate to this. The machine concept, the idea of doing a book a year and a sentence a day, the morning rituals. It's what do you do every. Every single day? If I were to take a large view of what it is I'M trying to do. I've said it's 1 million Awake Aware adult human beings in the arena of race. And when it comes to Black History Month, once again, what is the single thing that I would like to do? And if there was a single thing I would like to do more than anything else, it would be to destroy a lie that I think is held by better than 25% of the people in this country. And if that lie was dispelled because I said I want to create 1 million Awake Aware adult human beings, I'd like to wake people up to something. And it is, I would like to give people an understanding that given the same history, white people would have been damaged just as much, done no better, and complained no less. But the flip side of that, of course, is that given the same history, black people would have been just as self righteous and, and self servingly oblivious. Now, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who disagrees with this is on a different train. And I hope that they will be happy with the people they find sitting next to them on that train. But I'm interested in my tribe, the people who are on my train with me, black, white, gay, straight, whatever, who believe in the unity of human beings, who look at the terrible things that human beings do to each other, but also the wonderful things. Because you know, I'm in an inner city school when I'm a kid and the National Conference of Christians and Jews comes in there, mostly white people, and take us out of there and take us to leadership camp, brotherhood camp, and teach us about the connection between human beings. And I looked at this and I said, these are good people, these are wonderful people. I'm not going to hate them, I'm not going to be afraid of them. How do I communicate? What can I do to be part of this process? What I'm asking you to do, I'm offering you an opportunity. Whoever you are and whatever it is that you're doing, the opportunity presents itself for us to change the world right now. And all of my brothers and sisters who believe in that unity of humanity can do that. And you can find out who's a part of that tribe just by asking people that question. Given the same history, do you believe white people would have done any better if they fumfa about it and hesitate and say, well, it's a theoretical question, just let them sleep, let them sleep. But if they can honestly say yes, we'd be the same. Now, how do we look at the problems that we have to deal with to bring Some very specific metrics. Infant mortality rate, inherited wealth, incarceration rates, percentage of marriages and how long they last. Those basic metrics. Get those metrics together. But the thing that stands in the way is, like I said, better than 25% of the people don't believe that. Better than 25% of the people believe that their group is innately superior. And I'm sorry, when you are outnumbered by people who feel that way, you run into them everywhere, and they can put the brakes on for change, and they will very rarely speak honestly about what they're doing. Just like that guy at the magazine did not tell me honestly when I spoke to him on the phone. What? Why won't you review my books? He lied. He just lied to my face. That's what they'll do. There are smiling monsters, but most people are just asleep. What I've done is I've tried to take all of the emotional tools that have helped me to survive and put them and teach them to my students and then encourage them to tell their truth, whatever their truth is, whatever their politics. I don't care. There's something you care about. Whether you're gay or straight or black or white or liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, whether you have. No matter what you care about, if you're willing to tell the truth, if you're willing to see the united nature of humanity, then I want you to tell your story. I want you to join the conversation. That's what I care about. Can you look at me? And in the phrasing of the South African Khoisan people, there is one soul looking out through many eyes. Can you see that? Can you feel that? That you are a brother or sister? I want you to accept a challenge to help me create 1 million awake, aware human beings on this planet that can change anything. And being the change that you want to see in the world will change your life and will change the life of your family and your neighborhood and your community and everyone that you touch. And your country. And our country needs this right now like roses need rain. There are people who are dying out there, who are terrified, who are ripping themselves apart, their families apart, their friendships apart, and ultimately our country apart. And the answer to that is for those of us who see the connection between human beings to tell their stories, tell the truth and get it out there. Don't be afraid that the road can be long. Live every single day, one day at a time, one day at a time, and have confidence and belief. What we have done. What we have done is we've put all of this into our membership program, Life Writing Premium, and you can try it for the first month for $1. $1 to find out whether or not this, this is your path. This could work for you. If not, no harm, no foul. But I'm telling you that if you'll give us a year, if you'll give us one year of writing one sentence per day. One year of writing one sentence per day. Let me say that again. One year of writing one sentence per day. We will change your life and we'll make it possible for you to share with the world the beauty that is within you. Nothing will be able to stop. You will learn so much because I will give you everything that enabled me to survive for 35 years of pain and fear and hopelessness at times and still stay obnoxiously exuberant. Go to www.lifewritingpremium.com www.lifewritingpremioium.com Now, I'd like to close this with a quote from the late Maya Angelou that I think is so pertinent and so important and so powerful. And she said, out of the huts of history's shame, I rise up from a past that's rooted in pain. I rise. I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling. I bear in the tide, leaving behind nights of terror and fear. I rise into a daybreak that's wondrously clear. I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise. You are now the hope and the dream of that slave. You are the hope of the dream of this country. I invite you to be the change you want to see in the world and have a wonderful, wonderful day once again. If you like this message, share it. Bless you. Have a great week. Bye bye.