ON WRITING - AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
On Writing: and Social Responsibility
James Baldwin calls us to a world ‘outside the system’, because the system offers the world an illusion of ‘safety’. The artist has to work at a distance from the system to quell the effect of the illusion and give us freedom from the power of ideology.
James Baldwin - An Interview with Julius Lester – The New York Times Book Review. May 27th, 1984.
Lester: You have been politically engaged, but you have never succumbed to ideology, which has devoured some of the best black writers of my generation.
Baldwin: Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology as you put it, because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised, you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is.
Lester: What’s the difference between a spokesman and a witness?
Baldwin: A spokesman assumes that [they] are speaking for others...What I tried to do, or to interpret and make clear was what the Republic was doing...No society can smash the social contract and be exempt from the consequences, and the consequences are chaos for everybody in society.
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Let’s talk about the social responsibility of a writer. Do you have one? What does it look like to you? How does it frame your work?
For me, well, when I started out as a writer, I didn’t know that I had such a thing, but it has grown on me slowly through the years of reading about the likes of James Baldwin and movements like the White Rose, in 1940s Germany.
One of their mottos was:
“We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace.”
These few words have stuck with me and moved from a surface memory to being rooted itself in my heart. No matter what I’m writing; a political horror novel, human trafficking stories, dark comedic tones or urban fantasies; there seems to be a common thread in all of these and that is what James Baldwin called ‘consequences’ from bad choices.
Not just personal choices of a microcosmic world, but of social choices and perhaps what Lester called ‘succumbing to ideology’.
Now I have to admit, that I am only aware of this through reading widely. I was not mentored or coached in this way of thinking of being a writer. My reading, whether of a German Resistance movement, James Baldwin or James Cone, Danah Zohar’s books on Quantum Reality, the poems of Rumi or Joy Harjo. Something stuck and then travelled deeply into my heart. It is responsible for growing some interesting projects. Watch this Space!
PROMPTED BY THE UNIVERSE
I will keep on writing because this is what the Universe prompts me to do. It is as simple as that. There have been no career ladders, developmental routes to navigate; just the desire to respond by writing. I do it, not because it’s easy, it’s not, but it’s harder to watch your mother succumb to Alzheimer’s Disease; watching her fade away. It’s a matter of perspective.
But even from her current state, she asks when she can buy my novel, or when ‘that’ film is going to be made. She may of course not get to see the film, but the fact that she continues to hold on to, somehow, this thing that her son is doing, shows just how deep love during suffering, can go. It inspires me to continue, to persist.
Writing is a gift and so is perseverance.
So, I’m writing this whilst Mum is asleep upstairs and I have a short time to put down my thoughts. In her mind, I’m not a failure, I just need a break! Yes, she talks like that.
In my heart of hearts, most days, I’m not a failure. I continue to do what I’m supposed to do, what I’m passionate about, even if for now I remain anonymous in the public domain and you have no clue who I am.
Yes, it’s true, that the worst curse on the writer is one of anonymity, but my heart cries out for success. What do I mean by success? That I become an accomplished writer and that I fulfil my social responsibility in the public, cultural domain. That will be enough...
Geoff Hall
