My friend
Maggie posted a link to Amiri Baraka's
Sometbody Blew Up America. It made me realize I'd seen him perform this. Can't remember where - when - NY - LA - SF, but I was moved to write a response. I'm guessing this was back in 2002 or 2003.
I didn't always agree with him, but I always had a sense of his incredibly importance in our evolution as people, as artists, writers, poets. From the first time I picked up
Dutchman and read it.
His presence and art taught three things very well: to be necessary, to be urgent, and to be fearless.
Response To Amiri Baraka’s “Somebody Blew up America”
“who" is greed
"who" is racism
"who" is sexism
"who" is age-ism
"who" is rabid nationalism and xenophobia run
rampant
"who" is homophobia
"who" is untamed desire overweening need
untempered passion lust for power
"who" is ignorance abetted by the state
"who" is what happens when too many i's form
ill-fitting we's
"who" is misery loving company
"who" is confusing survival with much more than
ample thriving
"who" is willful blindness
"who" is absence of compassion
"who" is mistaken principles
followed by mistaken logic
followed by mistaken actions
"who" is giving in to the fear of a world that
might exclude you
"who" is confusing opinions with well-drawn
conclusions
"who" is substituting profitability for growth or
well-being
"who" is capitalism unfettered by humanity
"who" is embracing any -ism without accounting
for inherent human
contradictions
“who” is
giving over to worst selves temporarily,
for extended periods,
or permanently
if the rewards are great enough
"who" always takes the first and largest slice of
the pie
"who" is reading too much --or not enough --
between lines
"who" forms judgements without first-hand
experience, yes
"who" is tricky slippery and ubiquitous
"who" militantly guards the status quo generation
to generation
"who" is love buried under piles and piles of
burning anger and hatred
"who" is taking power only to make your own
existence better
"who" is forgoing a life to have an agenda
"who" is the identification of more than
well-matched enemies requiring constant vigilance
"who” has developed quite a super-hero complex
in fact, “who” might
be more than a little neurotic even borderline psychotic
"who" is a force to be reckoned with
defeated only by great courage
"who" is outside of us only as a mirror
the reflection of absolute fear
"who" is walking away from bliss
“who” is no in the face of life saying yes
i've seen god, and i've seen the devil
they co-exist in every being
live on different floors of the same building
each moment i must choose which to go a-visiting
"who" is in all of us
"who" is in each.
e. amato
