“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”
from The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
“Chapter & Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin is a 21st century ritual tool kit for justice. A call for revolution. A gift during turbulent times” created by Meshell Ndegeocello and Charlotte Brathwaite
https://meshell.com/see
My notes to Baldwin’s Collected Essays
https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2019/01/james-baldwin-collected-essays.html
Notes to The Fire Next Time and Nothing Personal, Balwin’s collaboration with his DeWitt Clinton HS schoolmate, the photographer Richard Avedon
http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2018/07/james-baldwin-fire-next-time-and.html
Perhaps Baldwin’s “human trouble” can become John Lewis’ “Make good trouble.”
I like to think I make my way through life getting into good human trouble.
But I could always be wrong.
