James Baldwin's music
"The wind of my life was blowing me away"
I know what you are thinking.
James Baldwin was not a musician.
I know.
And yet, the way his pen danced on the page, following the musicality of his speech makes him - I think - some kind of musician.
I’ve just broken my rule to only read books written by women to read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. A rule I’ve been following since 2016, bar for three books: Sapiens, Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography - which, I must say, I have not finished yet.
I had been wanting to read Giovanni’s Room for a long while as it kept coming to me through different routes. But I kept leaving it “for a better moment” because of my commitment to women writers.
And then I thought, well, as I embark on an adventure, a bit of a hiatus on my life in London, why not pausing that too. Let’s leave my ‘principles’ on the side for a moment. After all, he was a queer black man so perhaps he can be exempt from my ban on the man.
We - or I should better speak on the first person as I don’t know you -, I rarely listen to writers speak. Their speech limited to paper. Voiceless voices that nevertheless speak to us so loudly. However, I have listened to Baldwin speak a fair bit. For not only I am fascinated by what he said, but also how he said it.
The man sung. A poet in front of a crowd. His tone and the cadence of his voice making his words dance through the air to reach his listeners’ souls and hearts.
The king of oratory. Eloquent, sharp and captivating.
So when I started reading Giovanni’s Room a week ago I could hear him speak. It was as if he was in the room, reading his book to me, which made the story ever so intense.
“But Joey is a boy, I saw suddenly the power in his thighs, in his arms, and in his loosely curled fists. The power and the promise and the mystery of that body made me suddenly afraid. That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came, (…)”
If you are looking for a (very) good book to read; a page-turner for the fast-approaching Winter break, James Baldwin is all you need.
AND if you have any recommendations you would like to share with me and the other readers, please leave a comment. Sharing is caring!
“Nevertheless, beneath me—along the river bank, beneath the bridges, in the shadow of the walls, I could almost hear the collective, shivering sigh—were lovers and ruins, sleeping, embracing, coupling, drinking, staring out at the descending night.”
Other than that…
… greetings from Dakar!
I write from the Senegalese capital where I am going to be based for the next six or seven weeks before I head to Nigeria.
If there is anything you would like me to write about while I am out here, just holler! If there is something I now have is time. At last!
