Another Country by James Baldwin
Book One: Easy Rider - Chapter 1, 2 & 3
Book One: Easy Rider - Chapter 1, 2 & 3
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He remembered Leona. Or a sudden, cold, familiar sickness filled him and he knew he was remembering Leona.
“I’m your boy. You know what that means?” “What does it mean?” “It means you’ve got to be good to me.” “Well, Rufus, I sure am going to try.”
With a start in life like that...A nigger, said his father, lives his whole life, lives and dies according to a beat. Shit, he humps to that beat and the baby he throws up in there, well, he jumps to it and comes out nine months later like a goddamn tambourine.
The Avenue was quiet, too, most of its bright lights out. Here and there a woman passed, here and there a man; rarely, a couple. At corners, under the lights, near drugstores, small knots of white, bright, chattering people showed teeth to each other, pawed each other, whistled for taxis, were whirled away in them, vanished through the doors of drugstores or into the blackness of side streets. Newsstands, like small black blocks on a board, held down corners of the pavements and policemen and taxi drivers and others, harder to place, stomped their feet before them and exchanged such words as they both knew with the muffled vendor within...
... The great buildings, unlit, blunt like the phallus or sharp like the spear, guarded the city which never slept.
The colored people were having a good time because they sensed that, for whatever reason, this crowd was solidly with them; and the white people were having a good time because nobody was putting them down for being white.
I picked up on this too. This story has deep energy. It's a form of self-destructive behavior and one I imagine stems from knowing he's got amazing talent as a drummer but can't seem to rise out of the rut. Seems I read somewhere that jazz musicians of the period didn't get the recognition they deserved pay wise.Mr. Pessimistic wrote:He doesn't reject people who love him, he tortures them. Destroys them. And all because he hates himself. Loathes himself.
“You know, every time they give me one of them great big checks I think to myself, they just giving me back a little bit of what they been stealing all these years, you know what I mean?”
As a musician, I can totally feel this pain... The pay to play shows, selling your own tickets to get paid, no free bar tabs at the least. Talent has always gotten screwed.“Nobody ever has to take up a collection to bury managers or agents,” Rufus said. “But they sweeping musicians up off the streets every day.”
More evidence of how Rufus see those close to him (and himself) Pretty harsh, but if I am being honest, I can relate. I like to seek the good in folks, but I can never totally get past the cancer that lies, and lays, beneath the surface. Human nature is not inherently good...in fact I think it is inherently ambivalent...if not apathetic. But I want there to be good.There was something frightening about the aspect of old friends, old lovers, who had, mysteriously, come to nothing. It argued the presence of some cancer which had been operating in them, invisibly, all along and which might, now, be operating in oneself.
Vivaldo is different though, although, only by a matter of degree. I believe he is the closest thing to a real relationship Rufus has. I am not quite sure about the Jane/betrayal part... And what that has to do with anything, but the passage struck me. Still thinking.Vivaldo was unlike everyone else that he knew in that they, all the others, could only astonish him by kindness or fidelity; it was only Vivaldo who had the power to astonish him by treachery. Even his affair with Jane was evidence in his favor, for if he were really likely to betray his friend for a woman, as most white men seemed to do, especially if the friend were black, then he would have found himself a smoother chick, with the manners of a lady and the soul of a whore.
Different by degree.Rufus watched the tall, lean, clumsy white boy who was his best friend, and felt himself nearly strangling with the desire to hurt him.
When I read this, my mind screamed turning point. Only because I have these feelings...when the familiar turn unfamiliar and portend a major life change. In the past, I have had this feeling many times and can so relate. We shall see if I am right as the story progresses.He looked around the room, which had once been so familiar, which now seemed so strange.
And it's always the best venues that do it too, the one's who get loads of free press at the universities from the article written by the local college journalist who meets with the band in the tiny room behind the stage wreaking of urine, beer, vomit, and smoke to conduct an interview for the local scene mag. Yup! You're rising to the top when you get this experience.Mr. Pessimistic wrote:selling your own tickets to get paid, no free bar tabs at the least.
Quote 1: I sense this as a judgement call against himself, one of those internal arguments asking himself if he's wasted time by spending time with those who wasted theirs.Mr. Pessimistic wrote:There was something frightening about the aspect of old friends, old lovers, who had, mysteriously, come to nothing. It argued the presence of some cancer which had been operating in them, invisibly, all along and which might, now, be operating in oneself.
Quote 2: I agree. This is a good one. Kind of like walking into an apartment you had good times in yet the room looks bigger because it's empty. You move on, yet it hurts to see it unoccupied with heart.Mr. Pessimistic wrote:He looked around the room, which had once been so familiar, which now seemed so strange.
HAHAHAAAA!! YES. I won't even mention the honor of having to stand next to the bathroom at CBGBs for the honor of playing there. That was a great club. Not sure if you've been?Brooks127 wrote: When the floors sticks to your tennis shoe and the couch crackles when you sit, you know the owner cares about the band. lol