Subject in Search of an Author 2

Struggling to write one day last week  my mind found myself thinking of a Jayne Cortez poem,

 “You Know:”    

      “You know
            I sure would like to write a blues
      you know
                   a nice long blues
     you know
        a  good feeling piece to my writing hand…”

I was struggling to write something for Juneteenth as I was to do a television show for Kiilu Nyasha “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” and I wanted a new piece.  You know, a piece that would present Juneteenth in a new light, you know a light that was historical and modern, reflective and real, you know. But I could not get a toe hold on the subject.

Since the day commemorated a historical event, I started with research.  Yes, I knew that Juneteenth represented June 19, 1865 when a Union Army General (Granger) came to Galveston, Texas to let it be known that slavery was now abolished nationwide and from that day forward the relationship would not be slave and owner but employer and employee and that the overwhelming majority of “employees” left their “employers” to seek real opportunities, traveling west and north for the most part.

But what I was seeking was the why, why when the war ended on April 9, 1865, and when the Emancipation Proclamation became law January 1, 1864 did the amazingly effective grapevine miss the African enslaved people of Texas.  The articles I found talked about the fact that Texas had few Union Army soldiers to spread the world, and that the state was far from the centers of battle.  But still it seemed strange.

Other articles cited the maybes, maybe someone was sent to tell Texas but he was killed along the way, maybe the soldiers decided to let the farmers bring in one more harvest of cotton, maybe the farmers convinced the soldiers to wait another couple of months.  But all the sources said, “No one knows.”

I found that hard to believe.  Someone knows.  Some soldier’s diary notes the delay.  Some plantation owner’s journal celebrates the slavery extension. Some messenger’s family found out he was murdered and knew his mission.  Somewhere are the facts, buried for sure.  But I really think the facts are there.  It is too big an issue.  Personally I favor the waiting until the crops came in because money drives the train and bribery is easy.  But that may just showing my deep cynicism.

Unable to find a definitive history that would give me more to hang my poem on I started to write.  I found myself knotted around the idea of freedom.  After all this was the end of chattel slavery and most of the records of that day speak of celebrations and feasting because of the deliverance, the liberation, the freedom, the end of slavery.

But here I was stymied.  The United States is the only nation on the globe where slavery is inscribed into its constitution in the 13th amendment.  (The one we are taught ended slavery.)  Slavery remains legal “”Insofar as the party has been duly convicted” and we are a land of government and for profit prisons which have prisoners doing billions of dollars of work a year for corporations with little, if any, remuneration.  Slavery lives! These jobs on the outside would keep many, if not most, of the  inmates out since they are often convicted of crimes brought on by a response to poverty.

Then too there the other types of slavery- the slavery to addiction, the slavery to television, the slavery to apathy.  We are not a free nation, rather we are a nation with some freedoms.

I did not get the piece written.  I have the beginnings of a poem looking at slavery and freedom as terms needing redefinition.  The piece will not reference Juneteenth at all.  But that is the seed that birthed it.  (When I finish it I will post it.)  My point is that when writing sometimes the best thing to do is simply to follow the road you are on and see where it gets you.

Of course writing for an assignment forces the subject, usually the deadline, most times the length and the form, but if you are just trying to write something pick a subject that interests you.  Look up some facts about it.  Chew on those facts.  Fiction, create a character that is a part of the subject or craves the subject, be it a rebellion or an orange.  Poetry strip away the facts and find the truth they rest on and write poem around that.  What makes one rebel?  Where does the craving for that orange come from? Memoir, where were you when this event or that event happened.  Remember the park before it was torn down?  What was the first protest you participated in or turned from?

Sometimes what we need to write is not what we want to write, what we think we are going to write about.  Sometimes it is only the diving board which helps us leap, gracefully or not, into the pool where we can swim.

                                                                                                    Writing Prompt

Take out a piece of writing that you couldn’t make work.  What is the sub-text?  Were you writing about an argument but the sub-text is frustration?  Write about frustration.  Were you writing about a wonderful walk in nature, but the sub-text is a moment of pure joy? Write about joy, or maybe you will find yourself writing about the sadness you were escaping when you took that walk.  Often what stops us from writing is the fact that we don’t want to write what we need to write.