Daniel Carlton, Poet, Actor, Writer, Director

Uptown People’s Assembly: Facing the Raging Pandemics June 12, 2020 7pm Session Facilitator: Daniel Carlton, poet, actor, writer, director Daniel Carlton: Yes, good evening, everybody. Are we doing introductions, or should I just introduce myself? Ok. So my name is Daniel Carlton, and I am so happy to be here with you tonight, not because we are here for happy reasons but because we can collectively, think about breath. And we can collectively, think about sharing and we can collectively talk about what it is that we need to talk about and we can collectively unmask, at least for this time that we have together and that we can see ourselves and others, as we have these conversations. You wouldn't be here if you were not interested in the collective breath, and you wouldn't be here if you weren't interested in dismantling what needs to be dismantled and build what needs to build. So it's really beautiful to to be a part of this and all of the work of the Wallach Gallery. I've been in contact with Jennifer mostly but I know that she has a team and I found in these zoom situations that what used to be a team is probably two or three people who sort of manage like a whole lot of squares. So tonight, hopefully we can dismantle the square as much as we can and acknowledge that we are in a square. So, it is really beautiful to see everyone and I know that many of us are strangers to each other. It would be amazing if we could all just for a minute or 30 seconds just to unmute our video so that we can all just look at each other so that we can see each other. Is it possible to do this? This is so beautiful. Please let let's unmasking meet each other. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes, Deirdre Harris. How are you? Yes, Nambi Kelly… i'm, i'm saying hello to the people that I know. Richard Green. Yes, but I'm really saying a collective hello to everyone as much as we can just unmask and see each other. Yes, right now. We can go back in. We can mute. I would love to see you the whole time, but I understand that it's really It's, it's such a decision to sort of hang out in these spaces and have ourselves so visibly at home in our spaces being seen. But if we see ourselves in the other this is the beginning of that, just to kind of look at each other. I'd also like to make a request and that request-- I have a few requests. One of the requests is that whenever you are feeling anything about this moment, about the times that we are in something that you want to say just write it in the chat and we will see if we can also create a collective piece of art. 1 I'm going to share just kind of a personal story that sometimes we don't realize the trauma that we're in until we are traumatized and re-traumatized and most of us have seen the murder and the call for breath and the denial of that breath and we are traumatized. Right. Um, I can't define your trauma for you. But what happened what I really-- a space that I'm in is that I keep being reminded of the only situation in my life that I thought was artless and it involved the police, it involved a gun and it involved me just hoping that I lived through that situation. And I think the saddest part of that was I just cannot find the art in that situation. You know, it just seemed like time stopped and I couldn't think of a poem, I couldn't think of a song. I couldn't think of a painting. I couldn't think of that thing that art does to take you out of the spaces or to bring you closer into spaces. And so as we think about the trauma and even the energy in this country right now and not a new energy, but what is encouraging is that it seems like there's a new sort of collective action that is starting to really, as youth led as it is, is starting to bring so many people together that at some point maybe we do dismantle a lot of stuff, but at least you know that you have allies. Can we all take a deep breath in? Let's take a deep breath and take your breath, claim your breath. Take a deep breath in. And hold it until you're ready to release it. Take a deep breath in, and breathe in an intention for all of us in the squares tonight. Let's take a breath for our own fears. And releasing them is trying as we are here. And while we are here, our breath is revolution. So when you are ready, just I really encourage you to put what you can in the chat box. I've had a very long day, so forgive me if I, if it seems like I'm rambling. I want to use as much as we can his opportunity to sort of visit how poets and how people throughout the time that we've been here in America, particularly using African Americans poetry and I'm really focused a lot on Langston Hughes, but also on Paul Laurence Dunbar and some other folks Audre Lorde, Claude McKay and… and just a couple of more, Margaret Walker. Langston Hughes once said, and I'm going to paraphrase this. He said that as tough as times get, that the one thing that we don't want to leave is ourselves as, as death. And that if we leave ourselves as death than those who tried to kill us won. And so we… I was thinking about Margaret Walker. This is kind of a really I'm all over the place, so thank you all. This is from a poem called African Village, and I was thinking about how dark faces of our living generation hear voices of our loving dead go echoing down corridors of centuries But those who suffered, led and died Let this be monument. So I don't know that that poem just, it just, it's been circulating in my head when I first talked to Jennifer at Columbia I was really thinking about the poem We Wear the Mask and at the time, it was, it was much earlier in our knowledge of the pandemic and of the virus. And I was just thinking how problematic when they were asking us to wear a mask a problematic that could possibly be. And I was thinking about the poem, We Wear the Mask and just about how masking works on so many levels and how even when we see a masked Black person. 2 How suddenly that that imagery starts to change. I was thinking about people who did not were not able to go to stores and order medical masks at that time who were wearing bandanas, and who were wearing what they can wrap around themselves. And I was thinking, Man, this can, this could get real ugly really fast. Right. And I was wondering for myself, can someone see you smile, like really, under a mask? Can somebody tell that you are thinking about something that you've been lost in thought about under the mask. Can someone see your hopes and dreams through your eyes when you are masked and you're dealing with sort of the double consciousness that many African Americans, most African Americans, have to deal with constantly and how many people are familiar with DuBois’s concept of double consciousness, you can. Thumbs up, raise your hand. I'm just seeing who I see so. And then that that concept of thank you, that double consciousness. DuBois says: It's a, it's a peculiar sensation this (this) double consciousness. This this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others. of measuring one soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his tunis American Negro Two souls Two thoughts Two unreconciled strivings Two warring ideas in one dark body Whose dogged strength alone Keeps it from being torn asunder So I imagine the how when you don't understand double consciousness and you start to even criminalize people for-- one where people weren't wearing masks and then two where they were wearing masks and I think about these young people, even now in these, in these revolutions, dismantling and how I wonder how what the unmasking this of that is really all about, you know. I look at it from two different perspectives and how that works with double consciousness. Are you just tired of being masked up? Are you tired on two different levels? on a physical level and on an emotional level? and say, I just, this is it. Now I didn't, I don't want to do this talk in a way to sort of bring us down. But I do want to do this talk in a way that sort of even gives context. So we think about--thank you, Margaret Walker-- The African Village.

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