0:00

Before we get to the show today, I

0:02

want to tell you about a journalist and podcaster

0:05

I deeply respect and enjoy,

0:07

Dan Harris. He

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hosts the podcast 10% Happier,

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which is a program with a guiding philosophy

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that happiness is a skill you can learn.

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And Dan's personal odyssey to pursuing

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transformation for himself and others

0:23

came by way of a panic attack on

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national television. He

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talks to scientists and meditation

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teachers and the occasional celebrity

0:33

on subjects like productivity, anxiety,

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enlightenment, psychedelics and

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relationships. Listen

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to 10% Happier with Dan Harris

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wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Support for On Being with Krista Tippett comes

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supports a movement of organizations that are applying

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Learn more at Fetzer.org.

1:01

There's an evocative phrase that recurs

1:03

throughout Clint Smith's writing. The

1:05

phrase is, in the marrow of our bones.

1:09

This, to me, is an example of how words

1:12

can carry almost encrypted wisdom. In

1:14

this case, the truth that memory

1:17

and emotion lodge in us physically. And

1:20

words and phrases have carried this insight

1:22

forward in time long

1:24

before we had the science to understand it. And

1:28

I've been following Clint Smith for a few

1:30

years, first through his wonderful book,

1:32

How the Word is Past. I

1:35

thought I would speak with him about the physicality

1:37

of his approach in that book to know

1:40

and grapple with and beyond the

1:42

American history of slavery. But

1:45

as I delved into the fullness of his work, I

1:47

found that he also, and I would say

1:49

first and foremost, is a poet.

1:52

And that he's had many life chapters

1:54

that have been kind of real world

1:57

laboratories

1:57

for him to investigate the entanglement of

1:59

his life. entanglement between language

2:02

and the intelligence of the body and

2:04

the related entanglement between history

2:07

and place, laboratories

2:09

like a high school classroom, teaching

2:12

in prison to people facing life without

2:14

parole, and pilgrimage to

2:16

historical monuments. In

2:19

a revelatory way through all of this,

2:21

I find Clint Smith eliminating why

2:24

poetry helps us get into our

2:26

bodies and the particular

2:28

wisdom we can access there. A

2:30

few of his poems become a wonderful

2:32

part of this conversation, and

2:35

I think it is his poetic sensibility

2:37

that has singularly opened readers

2:40

to approach a generative reckoning

2:42

with American history on whatever

2:45

side of that history our ancestors

2:47

stood and participated. Clint

2:49

Smith has a way of making reckoning

2:52

possible at a humanizing, softening,

2:55

bodily level in the marrow,

2:57

you might say, of our bones. I'm

3:00

Krista Tippett, and this is On

3:02

Being.

3:12

Clint Smith is a staff writer at

3:14

The Atlantic. His narrative

3:16

nonfiction book, How the Word is Passed,

3:19

a Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across

3:21

America, won the National Book

3:23

Critics Circle Award for nonfiction

3:26

and many other honors. His

3:28

poetry collections are Counting,

3:30

Descent, and Above Ground.

3:37

So one thing I want to share

3:39

with you is that I think the producer you've been

3:41

dealing with is Kayla Edwards, and you

3:44

probably haven't made this connection, but she

3:46

was the opinion section editor of the

3:48

Davidson newspaper Like You. Oh,

3:51

wow. I think you met her a couple

3:53

of years ago and took a picture and shared it on

3:55

Twitter. Anyway. I remember

3:58

that. Oh my gosh.

3:59

I said she said because she put this in the prep

4:02

and I said did you tell him did

4:03

you know? She said no. So

4:05

I want you to know that. And now she works for you all. Yeah

4:08

and she's on this line somewhere. That's phenomenal.

4:10

Yeah it's very exciting. Hello,

4:13

hello. Oh that's so cool. Yeah I

4:15

know I got such a kick out

4:17

of that. I think that was five

4:19

or six years ago now. Yeah it was it

4:21

feels like a nice personal connection here and so

4:23

we're she's excited

4:24

and we're all excited.

4:27

So I think you know I never I

4:31

never quite know what the shape

4:33

of an interview will be until I actually

4:35

do the prep even though I might think I know

4:38

and this time something really emerged that

4:40

may be a little different from what I

4:42

thought or from what you've done before but I think

4:45

we I hope we can have a little adventure

4:47

here. I will follow you wherever we go.

4:49

Okay so I mean

4:51

as you know you know basically what

4:53

we do is you know our lens on

4:55

everything is the human condition and then we

4:58

can pick up any subject and look at it in that way. And

5:02

you very importantly

5:04

were born and raised in

5:06

New Orleans and then

5:09

very dramatically was it your senior

5:11

year in high school that Hurricane Katrina

5:13

happened? It

5:14

was three days into my senior year of high school.

5:17

I kind of have this picture of you

5:19

yeah three days into your senior

5:21

year in this

5:22

place where you and your family were so

5:25

rooted and then you end

5:27

up in Houston in a new world and

5:29

new school at that moment

5:32

in your life when we're all on a kind of hospice

5:34

catharsis anyway.

5:37

I don't know I know sometimes you invoke physics

5:39

and you're as interested in those things as I am it almost

5:41

feels like you kind of stepped

5:44

into this multiverse version

5:46

of what your life might have been. I wonder I wonder

5:48

how that felt to you

5:50

that drama. Yeah I think in

5:52

so many ways I'm still

5:56

sort of understanding and unpacking.

5:59

the sort of repercussions

6:02

and implications of what Katrina meant

6:05

in my own life, in the life of my family,

6:07

in the life of my city. And

6:11

I just recently turned 35. Hurricane

6:15

Katrina was when I was 17. So this

6:17

past year, I had been thinking a lot about how

6:19

it sort of bifurcated my life

6:22

and that it was half a

6:24

lifetime ago that I was

6:27

displaced in that way. And I

6:30

think having been removed

6:32

from New Orleans so suddenly,

6:36

so unexpectedly, so violently, in

6:40

many ways, what

6:43

I do think it did was sort of give

6:46

me a deeper appreciation for the way that the

6:48

sensibilities of New Orleans, the texture

6:51

of New Orleans, the culture of New Orleans remained

6:54

a part of me, even when I didn't know it was

6:56

still a part of me, because it felt like I

6:59

never got almost a sense of closure.

7:01

Like, my group

7:03

of friends and I from high school talk often about

7:06

just like what our senior year would have

7:08

been or could have been. It's

7:10

the culmination of this lifetime

7:13

of childhood, memories

7:15

and opportunities. And it

7:18

kind of, it felt

7:20

like we were moving into our fullest

7:22

selves, that we had a sort of more

7:24

grounded sense of who we were, who

7:27

we wanted to be. And so I do think sometimes

7:29

about what, you

7:32

mentioned the sort of multiverse, sometimes

7:34

I imagine what an alternative

7:36

reality in which there was no Katrina. What

7:40

sort of shape

7:41

my life would have taken on. And it's obviously

7:43

impossible to know,

7:45

but it is something I sort of think

7:47

about, not with any sort of regret,

7:49

mostly with just a sense of curiosity.

7:52

I actually wonder at the end,

7:54

I mean, you continue to write about this, so

7:56

clearly, as you say, it's something that's with

7:59

you.

7:59

I suspect that you'll be processing it for

8:02

all of your days. One

8:04

thing that's interesting to me is you've

8:07

also written essays about it. But I think that

8:09

in this story,

8:12

this part of you is

8:14

such an amazing example of how much poetry

8:17

can convey in so few words. So

8:21

I was wondering if you might read this poem from

8:24

Counting Descent, which is on page 45,

8:28

on observing my home after this storm. Would

8:30

you kind of set the scene for this poem?

8:33

It's so interesting to return to sort

8:36

of old collections and old books

8:39

and to think about where you

8:42

were when you wrote this. I wrote

8:44

so many of these poems over

8:46

a decade ago. And

8:48

I can't remember the last time I read

8:51

this poem. Either to myself or out loud. But

8:54

when we returned to my home in New

8:56

Orleans for the first time, it was in October,

8:59

I believe, October or November, following

9:01

the storm that happened in August. And

9:04

for weeks, for months, 80% of the

9:06

city had been underwater. And

9:10

our home was included in that. And

9:13

so writing for me is and

9:15

always has been an attempt

9:18

to sort of capture

9:20

a moment in time, to capture a feeling,

9:22

capture a conversation that

9:26

serve as a sort of time capsule that

9:28

allows me to remember who I

9:30

have been in relationship to the world around me. And

9:33

this poem is an attempt to have

9:35

done so.

9:38

On observing my home after the storm. One,

9:43

the smell so pungent

9:45

you can see it. The fermentation

9:48

of sky prickling at your skin. An

9:51

alloy of brackish and sewer water stinging

9:54

nostrils. The residue

9:56

of cries for help. Eyes

9:59

unprepared for this.

9:59

The maggot

10:02

to demarcate the space between what was

10:05

and what never will be again. Steel

10:08

door hinges split at the seam, every

10:12

wall a ground-swell of

10:14

lustreless green. Glass

10:16

has meandered across the floor, a

10:19

cacophony of shattered skin. The

10:22

overturned dinner-table sits on its side,

10:25

as if to protect the rest of the house from the

10:27

night it knows will come.

10:29

The floorboards do not creak.

10:32

They whimper,

10:33

distraught by all they could not prevent.

10:39

But what are these words but an empty lyric?

10:43

What then is anything beyond the language

10:45

we give it? What else

10:47

do we have to describe the carnage we see

10:51

but all that is woefully inadequate?

10:56

You know that line, that question,

10:59

and of course poetry

11:01

is such a wonderful container for questions. What

11:04

then is anything beyond the language

11:06

we give it?

11:08

That is such a striking

11:10

question and I just wonder, like how

11:12

do you, what does that

11:14

question mean to you?

11:15

How do you start to answer it? I

11:18

think it's something I sort of wrestle with, you

11:20

know, all the time. As

11:23

I said, sort of writing is almost

11:26

an act of mindfulness for me. It's

11:28

an act of being present, of

11:30

being present with my memories, of being present

11:32

with that which is in front of me and

11:34

attempting to use language as

11:37

a way to sort of home

11:39

in on the specificity,

11:42

on the granularity, on the

11:45

minutia, the specific texture of what

11:48

a feeling is, what a moment is, what an observation

11:50

is. And I think it's something

11:52

that I'm interested in both in the context

11:54

of language but also in the context of

11:57

art and a lot of my sort of knowledge.

12:00

nonfiction work, my journalistic work. I've

12:02

been thinking a lot about monuments and memorials

12:04

and museums. And I think, you

12:06

know, whether it be sort of visual art,

12:09

whether it be language, I'm always

12:11

interested in the extent to which our

12:14

efforts to remember

12:17

our past,

12:18

our efforts to understand what we see in front

12:21

of us, if those attempts

12:24

at language or attempts at art can ever fully

12:26

capture what these things are,

12:28

what these things have been. And I

12:30

don't know that they can, but I also don't know

12:33

that that means that we stop trying. You

12:36

know,

12:37

if I think about some of the different places

12:39

you've inhabited in your

12:43

professional

12:43

life, and if I think about the most kind of laboratories

12:46

where you're working through some of these questions that you've

12:48

already been surfacing, you know,

12:50

you're

12:50

becoming a high school teacher feels

12:53

like it continues to be something that is just

12:56

absolutely central to your identity, how it kind of

12:58

set you off on everything you did after that.

13:01

And I would love for you to just

13:04

introduce Apollo Frere, who

13:07

is a really a Brazilian educator and philosopher

13:09

who's really formative, in I think

13:12

a way of, you know, not just thinking

13:16

about educating, but thinking about life

13:18

and everything you have continued to do. What

13:21

was that formation for you?

13:24

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're spot on

13:26

being a high school English teacher, it helps

13:28

shape everything for me. I feel

13:30

very lucky to read and write and

13:33

think and for a living. But

13:36

man, like sitting in a high school

13:38

classroom with a bunch of teenagers and just

13:40

talking about books was, it was

13:43

the best job I ever had. It was

13:45

so fulfilling. It was

13:47

so remarkable

13:50

to sit with a group of 15 and 16 year

13:53

olds, talking about the way

13:55

that a book is

13:57

in conversation with the various facets of their

14:00

own lives and to see that that

14:02

could serve as an entry point for them

14:04

to understand the way that their lives

14:07

are in conversation with one another in

14:09

ways that might have never been possible, without

14:11

that text, in ways that might have never been possible,

14:14

without that one sentence and that one paragraph

14:16

that one student pointed out in

14:19

a way that illuminated something for everybody

14:21

else in that classroom. Those

14:24

specific moments of magic were so, I

14:27

mean, there's nothing like it. And

14:29

Paulo Freire, he is a

14:32

Brazilian scholar and educator who, as

14:36

you say, was incredibly formative for me. I read

14:38

his book, perhaps his most popular text,

14:41

Pedagogy of the Oppressed. And the

14:43

essence of that book is thinking about

14:45

how part of the

14:48

role of education is to

14:51

help people who

14:53

have been subjected to violence, who

14:56

have been subjected to oppression,

14:58

who have been subjected to despair,

15:01

how

15:04

education can be a way to

15:06

help them understand that

15:08

the world is social construction

15:11

and that can be reconstructed and deconstructed

15:13

and made into something new. And that once you understand

15:16

that, you know, part of what Freire talks

15:18

about is it helps disabuse you of

15:20

the idea that your station in life is

15:23

something that is sort

15:26

of inevitably a facet of who you are. And

15:30

for me, that

15:32

idea is so freeing. It's so profound.

15:35

Because I remember, I remember being a kid growing

15:37

up in New Orleans in the eighties

15:39

and nineties and just

15:42

being inundated with messages about

15:44

all the things that were wrong with black people. And

15:46

that, you know, the reason New Orleans had so much crime

15:49

and so much poverty and so much violence

15:51

and so many people in prison were

15:53

because of things that were wrong with black people

15:56

and things that black people had failed to do. And

15:59

I know

15:59

I knew it was wrong, but

16:02

I didn't know how to say it was wrong. I didn't have

16:04

the language. I didn't have the toolkit. I didn't

16:06

have the historical context with which

16:08

to push back against it. It was a sense

16:10

of paralysis almost. And

16:13

I knew the way that

16:15

books had freed me in that way.

16:18

And I wanted to bring that

16:20

to my students to the extent that I could. I

16:23

taught in Prince George's County, Maryland, a

16:25

school that was predominantly black

16:27

and Latino, a school that was predominantly

16:31

students on free and reduced lunch, students who

16:34

were undocumented, students who were

16:36

in and out of the criminal legal system. And

16:38

I wanted the conversations

16:42

we had in our class to help

16:44

them understand that the

16:46

reason their community looked the way that they did, again,

16:50

were not inevitable,

16:51

but were the result of decisions that people had made.

16:54

But also, I feel like what's coming through here

16:56

is

16:58

language as more than mere words,

17:01

language as power. To

17:03

have the language to name something or

17:05

not to have it is also

17:08

about how one can move through the world and

17:11

move the world.

17:12

You've written and spoken about an interesting

17:15

kind of transition you made, following

17:18

on how that approach you were

17:20

taking to seeing the

17:23

world that your students inhabited and how

17:26

it constricted them. And you've talked about

17:28

how you, for a while,

17:31

you wanted to go head on to the

17:33

issues, to these societal problems and

17:35

these societal constructions. And you

17:37

started to find that that actually

17:39

wasn't the way or the only

17:42

way for them to do the work to

17:44

actually step into that agency. Like

17:47

you've found that you had to actually draw

17:49

out their identities. Would

17:52

you say some more about that?

17:53

Yeah, I think another

17:55

way of putting that is that I came in real hot.

18:00

read a lot of Paulo Freire and I

18:02

was a young 22-year-old teacher and

18:04

I was, I came

18:06

into my 10th grade English class

18:09

and I remember there was this moment where

18:14

my students were walking into the classroom on

18:16

the first day and everybody

18:18

sat down and I went to

18:21

the board and I very dramatically grabbed a piece

18:23

of chalk. I think I had watched

18:25

like too many Denzel Washington movies and

18:28

I grabbed a piece of chalk and I wrote like on

18:30

the board mass incarceration, school

18:33

to prison pipeline, immigration

18:35

reform, climate change

18:38

and just like kept writing all these different things and

18:41

I turned around and I put the chalk

18:43

on the very dramatically like kind of threw

18:45

it on the ground and I was like this year

18:47

we're

18:48

going to solve all that and

18:50

they just looked at me and were like, like

18:53

man where's the worksheet? Like what

18:55

are you talking about? Like who is this

18:57

kid who's like not that many years older than

18:59

us in here doing a

19:01

terrible Denzel Washington impression?

19:04

And I think that was the beginning of me realizing

19:06

that like you know these kids are

19:09

kids and they're, which is to say that they're

19:11

human and they are full of

19:13

complexity and a three

19:17

dimensionality and that like they are not

19:19

simply avatars

19:22

of political ideology

19:24

or they are not simply people who will

19:27

like look at an issue and

19:29

see it exactly in the same way that I do and

19:32

so I think that part of what I realized

19:34

as I wrote there

19:36

was that I had to step back

19:38

and before books and

19:40

literature and history could be

19:42

used as a way to politicize

19:45

or radicalize young

19:47

people that

19:49

books had the opportunity to help young people understand

19:52

who they were and the

19:55

sort of sense of a political

19:57

identity is merely one part.

20:00

of a much broader ecosystem

20:03

of the self that would develop

20:06

over the course of our time together

20:08

and obviously throughout the course of their life.

20:42

I want to talk about how the word was passed.

20:46

Where again, we've been talking

20:48

about word and body and language

20:51

and who you are and story

20:53

and how all of that is intertwined. One

20:57

of the distinctive contributions of this

20:59

book, I don't know that I saw this word,

21:02

but to me it's a pilgrimage

21:03

that you took.

21:05

Two places.

21:07

You mentioned monuments a little while ago

21:10

and it was sparked, it gestated

21:12

in your mind as statues started coming down

21:16

which were

21:17

symbolic and not just

21:19

symbolic but these physical things.

21:23

So this was really a pilgrimage. It

21:26

was about history but it was about standing

21:29

on certain ground. It was about being

21:30

physically present to it.

21:35

Well first of all, would you talk about this phrase, how

21:38

the word was passed, where

21:41

that came from, why that is

21:42

the title of the book? Yeah,

21:45

I think maybe for some context for

21:47

folks, it might be helpful to understand that

21:50

the origin story for this book was

21:52

in 2017 when I

21:54

watched several Confederate statues come

21:56

down in my hometown of New Orleans, statues of

21:58

P.G.T. Beauregard,

21:59

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee. And

22:02

as I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about

22:04

what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city

22:07

in which there were more homages to enslavers

22:10

than there were to enslaved people. And thinking

22:12

about what are the implications of that? What does it mean

22:14

that to get to school, I had to go down Robert E. Lee Boulevard.

22:17

To get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis

22:19

Parkway. That my middle school was named

22:21

after a leader of the Confederacy. That my parents

22:23

still live on a street named after someone

22:25

who owned over 150 enslaved people.

22:28

Because the thing is that we know that symbols

22:31

and names and iconography aren't just symbols,

22:34

but are reflective of the stories that people tell. And

22:36

those stories shape the narratives that communities

22:39

carry. And those narratives shape public policy.

22:41

And public policy shapes the material conditions

22:44

of people's lives. Which doesn't mean that if you just take

22:47

down a statue of Robert E. Lee or

22:49

racial wealth gap where you change

22:51

the name of a Jefferson Davis sign, you

22:53

create more economically egalitarian

22:55

schools. It does help us understand

22:59

the ways that certain communities have

23:01

been harmed throughout

23:04

American history and helps us understand how

23:09

certain stories are told through

23:11

the images and the narratives

23:14

that are represented and embodied.

23:16

And therefore the import of starting

23:19

to shift those. Absolutely. I

23:21

did sort of at this moment where

23:23

I was like, I am

23:26

the descendant of enslaved people. My

23:28

grandfather's grandfather was

23:30

enslaved. I

23:33

grew up in a city that was the heart of the domestic

23:35

slave trade. And I don't know enough

23:38

about the history of slavery in a way that feels commensurate

23:41

to the impact and legacy that it's had on this

23:43

country. And so I did feel like I had to

23:45

go on a sort of pilgrimage. I

23:48

wanted to go visit monuments,

23:51

the memorials and museums and cemeteries

23:53

and prisons and these places that

23:56

told the story of this history in their

23:58

bars and their soil. in the

24:01

buildings that still stood from that period of time.

24:03

And so, yeah, I traveled across the country,

24:06

visiting all of these different places and examining

24:08

to what extent these places were reckoning

24:11

with that history, to what extent they were failing

24:14

to reckon with that history, and to what extent they were

24:16

kind of doing something in between. And

24:18

for me, the title, How the

24:20

Word is Passed, comes from, one of

24:23

the first places I went was Monticello Plantation, which

24:26

is Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia.

24:30

And

24:31

they've done a lot of work on trying

24:33

to excavate the histories and stories

24:36

of the enslaved people who were held there. Thomas

24:38

Jefferson owned over 600 enslaved people over

24:42

the course of his lifetime. And part

24:44

of what is so fascinating about Monticello is

24:46

that

24:47

there's such an incredible example of how, if

24:50

you are a historical site or a museum, that

24:52

the story you told yourself about yourself,

24:55

with a story you told the world about yourself, five, 10, 20,

24:58

30 years ago, doesn't

25:01

have to be the same story you tell about yourself

25:03

today, that you can learn

25:06

and learn about your own history and recognize

25:09

that you have a set of responsibilities

25:11

to tell a set of stories that maybe you hadn't told

25:13

before. And

25:14

just the way you said that, that's also a

25:16

description of a life

25:17

where you are growing more mature and more

25:19

wise, right? Absolutely, anything from- You

25:21

and I wouldn't tell the same, and I'm

25:23

almost 30 years older than you, I would tell

25:25

a completely different story of myself now than

25:29

I would have, 20, 30.

25:29

Absolutely, and I think sometimes

25:31

we think about that, that feels intuitive for

25:34

us with regard to individuals.

25:36

Individuals, yeah. But I think what

25:38

I wanted to convey in part in

25:41

the chapter about Monticello is that institutions

25:44

can do it too. Yeah,

25:45

I think it's human. It is the same

25:47

pattern at the collective level that it

25:49

is at the individual level.

25:50

It is, and so the descendants,

25:54

they have something called the Getting Word Oral History Project

25:56

in which they, the public historian

25:59

and researchers, at Monticello, who look

26:01

for people who are the descendants of folks who were enslaved

26:04

at Monticello. We have very little from

26:07

enslaved people because they

26:09

weren't allowed to read and write. But what we do have

26:11

are stories. What we do have are oral

26:13

histories that have been passed down through

26:15

generations. And one of the descendants of

26:18

someone who was enslaved at Monticello said, this is

26:20

how the word is passed down. And

26:23

you kind of have these moments as a writer where you

26:26

just, you see the title and it's almost like you're reading

26:29

something, you're reading this long transcript and

26:31

it's just kind of like stars start to sparkle around

26:33

it. And again, it's

26:35

like the word, it's so

26:38

much more than a word, right? It is

26:40

the reality, right? It

26:42

is the truth that has been passed.

26:50

There's something so interesting about

26:52

the arc of

26:55

this pilgrimage and the book. It

26:58

feels to me like at some point,

27:02

you kind of personally went

27:04

through the same kind of transition in yourself that

27:06

you made with your students all those years

27:08

ago. That you went

27:10

to all these places and you kind of looked

27:13

at the history from all these different directions.

27:16

And you ended up going

27:18

back to your own grandparents at the end

27:20

of the journey. You wrote,

27:23

I had forgotten that the best primary

27:25

sources are often sitting right next to us.

27:28

And I wonder, I feel like you asked

27:30

them, you have two living grandparents

27:32

and I thought you asked them questions

27:35

that you'd never asked them before. And

27:37

I wonder if you just share a little bit of, maybe

27:39

some of what you learned that you were astonished

27:42

you'd never

27:42

heard or known or internalized

27:45

before. Yeah, I did

27:47

have this sort of realization that

27:49

I spent these years traveling across the country,

27:52

across an ocean, asking

27:54

strangers to tell me these intimate

27:57

stories about their lives histories.

28:01

And I realized that I was

28:03

doing so with a level of intentionality

28:05

that

28:06

I had never brought to my own family. And

28:10

so it felt incumbent upon me that I

28:12

asked those same sort of questions to the people

28:15

who have been around me my entire life. And so I ended

28:18

up going to the National Museum of African American History

28:20

and Culture with my grandparents, my

28:22

grandfather born in 1930,

28:25

Jim Crow, Mississippi, and my grandmother born in 1939, Jim Crow, and

28:29

we're walking through the museum. And

28:31

I'm pushing my grandfather in his wheelchair, his

28:34

cane is laid across his lap.

28:37

And my grandmother is walking a few paces ahead of

28:39

us.

28:40

And at this moment where I'm looking

28:43

at them,

28:44

look at the exhibits in this museum,

28:46

and realizing that so many of

28:48

the things that are documented in this museum

28:52

are things that they experienced firsthand. And

28:55

I talked to my grandmother after the

28:57

museum after we left. And she

29:00

kept using this refrain, she kept saying, I lived

29:03

it. I lived it. I

29:05

lived it.

29:07

And I think about the woman who opened the

29:09

National Museum of African American History and Culture,

29:11

a woman named Ruth Bonner,

29:14

who sort of rang the bell to signal the opening

29:17

of the museum,

29:18

alongside the Obama family in 2016.

29:22

And she was the daughter of an enslaved person.

29:25

Not the granddaughter, not the great granddaughter,

29:27

the woman who opened the National Museum of

29:30

African American History and Culture

29:32

in 2016 was the daughter

29:34

of a man who was born into slavery. As

29:37

I said, like my grandfather's grandfather was

29:40

enslaved. So when my

29:41

six year old and my four year old sit

29:43

on my grandfather's lap,

29:45

I imagine my grandfather sitting on his grandfather's

29:47

lap. And I'm just reminded that this

29:49

history we tell ourselves was a long time

29:52

ago just wasn't that long ago at all. We can talk

29:54

about it. We can literally touch it. There

29:56

are people alive today. Yeah. Who

29:58

knew, who loved. who

30:00

were raised by people

30:03

who were born into American chattel

30:05

slavery. And so the idea that

30:08

anyone would suggest that this

30:10

history has nothing to do with

30:12

our contemporary landscape of inequality,

30:14

the idea that anyone would suggest that

30:16

it has nothing to do with what our social, political,

30:19

and economic infrastructure

30:21

in this country look like

30:22

is being morally and intellectually

30:25

disingenuous.

30:25

Because this history

30:27

and the scope of human history

30:30

was just yesterday.

30:31

And I think the contribution

30:33

you're helping to make to this reckoning that

30:36

is before us, just to this

30:38

telling of the truth,

30:41

is also to help, you know, there's

30:43

this phrase that

30:44

recurs in your writing, in the marrow of our

30:46

bones, right?

30:47

It's this phrase in English that we feel

30:49

something in your gut, you feel it in the marrow of your bones. It's

30:53

actually language that points at how we're

30:55

learning,

30:57

how emotion and memory

30:59

actually work that they are embedded

31:02

physically. But it's like

31:04

the words knew it before we had the science

31:06

for it. And I feel like, you

31:09

know, we are in this time of where,

31:12

well, there are all these levels that

31:15

we have to bring forward, right? We do have to bring forward the

31:17

ideas and the stories and the history and the facts

31:19

and all of that. But there's also this level

31:21

of us being able to internalize

31:23

it as a human level, whoever we are on

31:25

whatever side of this history

31:27

our ancestors stood

31:29

and

31:30

participated. And I feel

31:32

like that's, you know, that thing we're talking about

31:34

here, this connection between

31:37

word and story and embodied

31:40

reality. I feel like that's what your work

31:42

kind of helps people, it helps it

31:44

sink into that level. I wondered if you

31:47

would read, I was also so struck with

31:49

that. My grandmother kept saying, I lived it, I lived

31:51

it. And I wondered if you would read

31:53

in how the word was passed this

31:56

section. It's the paragraph that starts a

31:58

silent, settled.

32:05

A silence settled between us,

32:07

and I kept thinking about her refrain.

32:10

I lived it.

32:12

I lived it.

32:14

I lived it.

32:16

It echoed throughout the room

32:18

and became the gravity around us.

32:21

It crept into my ears

32:23

and made a home in there.

32:26

I watched the realization wash over

32:28

her like a tide had risen

32:30

around her body. There

32:33

was so much I had not known about my grandmother's

32:35

life until this moment.

32:37

So many painful experiences that

32:39

she still carried deep in the marrow of

32:41

her bones. I thought of how

32:43

easily these memories might have slipped away from

32:45

her

32:46

had we not sat down. These

32:49

stories might have remained grains of sand

32:51

at the bottom of an hourglass.

32:53

I thought about all the ways the world today

32:56

is at once so different and

32:58

not so different at all. The

33:01

exhibits at the museum

33:03

were not abstractions for my grandparents.

33:06

They were affirmations that what they had experienced

33:09

was not of their imagination

33:12

and harrowing reminders that

33:14

the scars of that era had

33:16

not been self-inflicted. When

33:19

my grandmother said I lived

33:21

it,

33:22

what I heard was

33:24

this museum is a mirror. When

33:27

my grandmother said I lived it,

33:30

what I heard was my memories

33:32

are an exhibit of their own. When

33:35

my grandmother said I lived it, what

33:38

I heard was always remember

33:40

what this country did to us.

33:43

When my grandmother said I lived it,

33:45

what I heard was

33:47

don't let them tell you we didn't fight back.

33:51

When my grandmother said I lived it,

33:53

what I heard was I did

33:56

not die.

33:57

I have somehow made it here. when

34:00

so many did not. I

34:02

escaped the jaws of the cruel thing

34:05

and lived to tell this story. When

34:08

my grandmother said I lived it,

34:11

what I heard was,

34:13

I am still alive.

34:18

That's an incredible passage. When

34:21

I was reading that, I was also feeling like as a writer

34:23

that I mean, I don't know, I may

34:25

be a medic. I just feel like that must have been an incredible

34:28

few. I

34:30

just feel like I'm a paragraph

34:32

reader, right? Yeah, it's, you know,

34:36

I just never done anything like that before.

34:39

I just had never, you know,

34:42

you spend your whole life

34:44

surrounded by someone,

34:46

surrounded by people you love. And

34:51

then you realize that you've

34:54

only ever known like

34:57

a

34:58

very brief part of their story. And I think

35:00

that it's something I tell educators

35:04

all the time now. I mean, you know, if I had

35:06

a magic wand, you know, other than

35:08

paying teachers much more

35:10

money than they make and, you know, giving

35:11

school all the resources they need, if I

35:13

had a magic education wand,

35:15

I would wish that

35:18

every history and social studies

35:20

class would have students interview their

35:22

elderly students whether

35:26

it be their parents, their grandparents, their

35:28

great grandparents or the, you know, the

35:32

neighbor who, you know, is always sitting on her

35:34

porch. Yeah.

35:36

I just understood, I

35:39

feel like I understood my grandparents in a way

35:41

that

35:43

I simply couldn't have otherwise.

35:46

And I remember talking to my

35:48

grandmother and as she described what

35:50

she was subjected to and

35:53

the, you know, there's this moment where she talks

35:55

about how as a little girl, she's walking to school

35:59

on the sort of red clay.

35:59

in Florida. And

36:02

these white students are passing by on

36:05

a bus and

36:07

they start to spit

36:09

at her. They start to throw food at

36:11

her. And they call her the N-word.

36:14

And there's this woman who is a

36:17

sort of magisterial

36:20

figure in my life, who

36:23

is sort of the embodiments of grace

36:26

and elegance and generosity and

36:29

kindness. You suddenly,

36:32

you know, it's not this 80-something

36:35

year old woman sitting in front of me anymore. Suddenly

36:37

it's this nine-year-old girl.

36:40

And it, you know,

36:44

we kind of have these recurring things that keep coming up in our conversation,

36:46

but like it allowed me to see the humanity of my grandmother.

36:49

Yeah, right. The totality of her

36:51

and the complexity of her in

36:54

a different way. And the same thing with

36:56

my grandfather. And I feel very lucky

36:58

to have been able to do, have these conversations

37:00

with them. And, you know, I only wish that

37:03

I had the opportunity to have had this

37:05

conversation

37:05

with their respective spouses

37:07

before they passed away.

37:35

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38:11

I found as I was reading

38:12

into you that you and I have a shared

38:15

something we're interested in which is this question

38:17

of public memory and I'm

38:19

currently writing a book about that involves

38:23

Germany. I spent most of my twenties

38:25

most of the 1980s in divided

38:27

Berlin and I'm also

38:30

pondering how

38:32

I saw that country

38:34

reckoning with its history 40 years on from

38:36

the war and now 40 years from

38:38

that and being able to look at that entire

38:41

arc and also

38:44

being so aware of myself

38:47

in my twenties in Germany

38:49

and

38:51

the grappling they were doing with that burden

38:53

of history was very messy at that

38:55

point and complicated but it was never

38:58

present. It was in every conversation.

39:01

It was in every room and

39:02

I'm so struck at how

39:05

I was so

39:08

both to them and to myself was

39:11

from this much more innocent country. They

39:15

were from the country that had this crushing

39:18

guilt of history and I

39:21

was from the country that wasn't

39:24

perfect but was always getting better. You

39:27

also note the Germans

39:30

were walked through the camps. They

39:33

were walked through the concentration camps. They were

39:35

made to bear witness. They were made to remember. There's

39:38

a lot of complexity to

39:40

how the whole world was also watching.

39:43

There

39:51

were these concentrated places

39:53

where this atrocity had happened in

39:55

a concentration of years. But

39:59

when she

39:59

were kind of town by town

40:02

and tree by tree. There's

40:04

no single place to walk through.

40:07

There's not that concentration of place

40:10

and of years, but there's an accumulation

40:12

across many generations. And

40:17

what would be our equivalent, right,

40:20

of that kind of reckoning that they've done?

40:24

Just free flowing with you. Yeah,

40:27

no, that's the... It's

40:31

an important question and one that I've been thinking about

40:33

a lot. And then thinking

40:35

about a lot now is I'm

40:38

working on a book project that has

40:40

sort of grown out of my trip to Germany.

40:43

And my trip to Germany grew out of my

40:45

examination of monuments

40:47

and memorials here in the United States. And I wanted

40:49

to understand how,

40:52

you know, Germany is often lifted up, as

40:54

the sort of exemplar of memory,

40:57

the exemplar of a nation state that

41:00

has accounted for and has come

41:03

to terms with, that has demonstrated

41:06

a sense of regret for

41:09

what they've done

41:10

and what they did during the Holocaust and World

41:12

War II more broadly. And

41:14

so I went there because I wanted to understand

41:17

what that looked like. And as I'm

41:19

sure you know, probably even better than me, having

41:21

lived there for so long, it is

41:23

not a singular story. It is not a story

41:25

of like, wow, Germany is so

41:28

great at this. Like we should be like Germany, which I think

41:30

is how sometimes in the United States

41:33

the narrative exists. Right. I think sometimes from

41:35

this vantage point, people look

41:37

at Germany and say, well, you know, we just do it like Germany.

41:40

Why don't we, without thinking

41:42

about the complexities

41:44

and the unevenness and

41:46

the sense of disagreement

41:49

that exists among communities in

41:52

Germany about how this

41:54

has been done. But I think one of the things

41:56

that motivated me, there's this essay that W.E.R.D.

42:00

UB Dubois wrote about his trip that

42:02

he took to Warsaw, Warsaw,

42:04

Poland in 1949. Dubois

42:08

is the most preeminent black

42:11

scholar of the day, perhaps of all time.

42:14

He is someone who spent his

42:16

life thinking about the specific

42:19

contours and manifestations of anti-Bigness

42:22

in the United States. He

42:24

goes to Warsaw and he goes to the land

42:26

where the Warsaw, the former

42:28

Warsaw ghetto, where the Warsaw uprising

42:30

happened. And he's standing

42:32

on

42:33

this land where thousands

42:35

of Jewish people fought back against

42:39

the Nazis. He's standing in this country

42:42

where

42:42

three million Jewish people were

42:45

killed in a matter

42:47

of years. And he's standing there

42:51

and he's like, I have stood

42:55

on the land where the KKK

42:57

has burned crosses. I have

43:00

stood under the trees where

43:03

black bodies have been lynched. I

43:06

have worked my entire life thinking about

43:09

this question

43:11

of what white people in America do to

43:13

black people and how we

43:15

can

43:16

overcome it.

43:19

He talks about how he never experienced

43:22

the kind of feeling that he did when

43:25

he was standing on that land in Warsaw.

43:28

And he talks about how it stripped him of a sort of

43:30

what he calls a sense of social provincialism

43:34

and it expanded his understanding

43:37

of the interrelatedness between

43:41

anti-blackness in the United States and anti-Semitism

43:43

in Europe and allowed him to

43:45

more fully understand the

43:47

global contours

43:50

of state sanctioned violence and all the various

43:52

forms that it takes on. And

43:54

I feel like

43:55

I've had a very similar experience. That's

43:58

what going to Berlin and going to Munich.

43:59

going to docile.

44:02

That's what those experiences were for me. I

44:04

mean, I've

44:06

stood on plantations, I've stood in

44:08

execution chambers, I've stood, put

44:12

my hand on the

44:14

poles where enslaved people were

44:17

held, where they were beaten

44:19

within an inch of their lives. I

44:22

put my hands in the soil where

44:25

lynchings happened. But

44:27

the feeling I felt when I stood in a gas

44:30

chamber

44:31

in docile

44:33

was unlike anything that I had ever experienced

44:35

before. And I think it was a very sort

44:37

of Du Boisian moment for

44:39

me, because I think it also expanded

44:42

my understanding of

44:44

the interrelatedness and the

44:46

relationship between the

44:48

various forms of violence that happened

44:50

in different geopolitical contexts and

44:53

expanded

44:55

almost my historical empathy. It

44:58

made me feel more proximate to that

45:00

history. It made that history more intimate.

45:02

It made it less of a historical abstraction

45:05

and more real,

45:08

more tactile, more personal. And

45:11

I think that for me, that is why this has become

45:13

a sort of larger project for me, whether

45:15

it be in the context of slavery or in the context of World

45:18

War II or anything else. There's something

45:20

about putting your body in

45:22

the place where history happened

45:24

that

45:26

reduces the gap

45:28

between you in that period of time

45:30

that creates this sort

45:33

of temporal proximity between you

45:35

and that history. Josh,

45:36

I feel like that's such a strong summation,

45:38

I think, of the core of this work. I

45:41

mean, I do also

45:45

want to just raise up this

45:48

very stunning and shameful reality

45:52

that you also have lifted up in

45:54

the context of this discussion that Angola

45:58

Prison, which is also a place of

45:59

of pilgrimage for you, I would say,

46:02

is built on

46:04

the land of a former plantation. And

46:07

you have pointed out that in the

46:09

book, if in Germany today there were

46:11

a prison built on top of a former concentration

46:14

camp, and that prison

46:16

disproportionately incarcerated Jewish

46:18

people, it would provoke

46:21

outrage throughout the world.

46:23

This is not something that

46:25

is in American awareness.

46:27

If not, it's not. I think it reflects

46:30

a failure of our collective

46:33

memory around what slavery

46:35

was and the sort of reverberations

46:39

of how it continues to shape our lives

46:41

today. There was a study not too long ago that talked

46:43

about how most high school

46:46

seniors, when asked what

46:48

the Civil War was about, only

46:51

a small handful of them said

46:53

slavery. Yeah, that was shocking to me. All

46:57

you have to do is look at the declarations of Confederate

46:59

secession, where a state like Mississippi

47:02

in 1861 says, our position is

47:04

thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery,

47:07

the greatest material interest in the world. So

47:10

they're not vague about why they're succeeding from

47:12

the Union. They're very clear about it. But again,

47:15

part of what I learned in this journey is that for

47:17

so many people, history is not about

47:19

primary source documents or empirical evidence.

47:22

It's a story that they're told. And it's a

47:24

story that they tell. It's an heirloom that's passed

47:26

down across generations. It's something where loyalty

47:29

to an idea, to a family, to a community,

47:32

to a sense of self

47:33

takes precedence over truth.

47:36

And I think that that

47:39

prevents us from

47:42

collectively remembering what

47:44

slavery was in

47:46

a way that would prevent us from building a

47:48

prison on top

47:51

of land that was once a

47:53

plantation, a prison

47:55

that disproportionately,

47:57

in which 70 percent of the people who were held

47:59

there are Black.

47:59

men

48:01

and 70% of the people held there are

48:03

serving life sentences

48:07

in a way that we would never allow in

48:09

a different geopolitical context. So

48:12

there's a specific sort of American failure that

48:15

allows that place to exist in that way.

48:38

So you are now the father

48:41

of two children? Mm-hmm.

48:43

Of young children in

48:45

this world. And of

48:48

course parenting is the ultimate whole body,

48:50

whole mind, whole spirit, occupation, word,

48:53

deed, thought and emotion are all just

48:56

utterly physical. You've

48:59

written, my children are both respite

49:02

from all the tragedy transpiring in the

49:04

world and a reminder

49:06

of how high the stakes are. I wonder if you'd

49:09

say some more about that.

49:12

Yeah, I think

49:14

about these trips

49:17

that I took when I was writing How the Word

49:19

is Passed and

49:22

how I would come

49:24

back from Angola or come back

49:27

from the Whitney plantation. I

49:31

spent time standing

49:33

in a cabin where enslaved people lived.

49:36

I spent time walking through the fields

49:38

and slave people weren't in.

49:41

I spent time

49:43

looking at the names of enslaved children

49:46

who didn't make it past their fifth birthday. I

49:50

think of my kids and I think about how,

49:55

what responsibility I have to them

49:58

to tell these stories.

50:00

and to honor these histories. So

50:03

they have a better sense of who they are in relationship

50:05

to their history, but also so this country

50:08

can better situate

50:10

the lives of my children and

50:13

the lives of each of us more accurately

50:16

and more humanely. And so

50:18

I'll be thinking about that. And then I

50:20

will come home and I open the door and my

50:22

three-year-old, you know, they

50:25

don't, he doesn't say like,

50:27

man, dad, like,

50:28

come sit down, I have a cup of tea, it

50:31

seems like you're processing a lot right now, you got

50:33

like, you just had this really profound

50:36

and dramatic and jarring

50:38

experience, like, let's sit,

50:40

let's process this. No, I come

50:42

through the door and he's like, where you

50:44

been, like get on the ground and be a Brachiosaurus.

50:47

It's time to play. And

50:49

I'm so

50:50

grateful for those moments like that, where

50:54

my kids sort of take me out of my own

50:56

head. My kids have made me

50:59

a much sillier person.

51:00

They've made me a more

51:03

present person,

51:06

which isn't to say it happened automatically. I think I had

51:08

to proactively remind

51:11

myself to sit in that presence and not

51:13

to simply allow the things that are

51:15

sort of moving through my head all the

51:17

time to preoccupy me

51:20

so that to the point that I don't fully appreciate

51:22

what's directly in front of me.

51:24

I wanna ask you

51:26

a couple more questions about this and

51:28

then ask you a reason with poems. But I wonder if just right here, if you would read

51:30

this ode to those first 15 minutes

51:33

after the kids fall asleep, which is in the

51:35

above ground book. Yeah. Before

51:39

you're a parent, you know, the meaning of bedtime,

51:44

getting to bedtime

51:44

and post bedtime. If

51:47

you don't fully appreciate how

51:50

sleep deprivation is

51:53

a torture tactic

51:55

until you have kids. The poem

51:58

that precedes this is... Ode

52:01

to bedtime, and then this one

52:03

is ode to those first 15 minutes

52:06

after the kids are finally asleep.

52:10

Praise the couch that welcomes

52:12

you back into its embrace

52:14

as it does every night around this time.

52:17

Praise the loose cereal that crunches

52:20

beneath your weight, the whole grain

52:22

golden dust that now shimmers on the backside

52:24

of your pants.

52:26

Praise the cushion, the one in

52:28

the middle that sinks like a lifeboat-beaking

52:30

air, and

52:31

the ottoman covered in crayon stains

52:34

that you have now accepted as aesthetic. Praise

52:37

your knees and the evening respite

52:39

they receive from a day of choo-choo training

52:42

along the carpet with two eager

52:44

passengers in tow.

52:46

Praise the silence,

52:48

Ode the silence,

52:50

how it washes over you like a warm bed-sheet.

52:53

Praise the walls for the way they stand there,

52:56

and don't ask for anything. Praise

52:59

the seduction of slumber that tiptoes across

53:01

your eyelids, the way it tempts you to

53:04

curl up right there and drift away even

53:06

though it's only 7.30 p.m. Praise

53:10

the phone you scroll through, without even

53:12

realizing that you're scrolling. Praise

53:15

the video you scroll past of

53:17

the man teaching his dog how to dance merengue.

53:20

Praise the way it makes you laugh, the way someone

53:22

laughs when they are so tired they don't know

53:24

if they will ever stand up again.

53:27

Praise the toys scattered across the floor,

53:30

the way you wonder if it might be okay to just

53:32

leave them there for now,

53:34

since you know that tomorrow

53:37

they will simply end up there again. So,

53:42

you know, this, this,

53:45

this phrase, like, what I want for my

53:47

children, what we want for our children, I wonder,

53:51

given how much you're steeped in, the

53:54

language we use communally,

53:58

the work we're doing and not doing communities. the

54:00

way we educate and impart knowledge around American

54:02

history and history of slavery and our racial identities

54:05

and who we can be to each other in this

54:09

future.

54:10

How would you start to talk about

54:12

what I want for my children? Disregard.

54:19

I want them...

54:23

Hmm. I

54:26

just want them to be

54:29

joyous. I want them

54:31

to

54:33

be joyous and

54:35

I want them to recognize

54:40

the sort of larger

54:43

responsibility that

54:45

they have. Which is to say, you know, I think

54:49

all the time about

54:51

how the first enslaved people who came to this country,

54:54

they came to the British colonies

54:56

that would become the United States in 1619. Slavery

54:59

wasn't eradicated until 1865, formally anyway.

55:05

But

55:06

what's also true is that from the moment enslaved people

55:08

arrived on these shores, they were fighting

55:10

for freedom. They were fighting for emancipation.

55:13

They were fighting for liberation.

55:16

And what that means is that the majority of

55:18

people who fought for freedom never

55:21

got a chance to experience for themselves. But

55:25

so many of them fought for it anyway

55:27

because they knew that someday someone would.

55:30

And I think about how my life is only possible, how

55:33

my children's lives are only possible

55:36

because of generations of people who fought for

55:38

something they knew they might never see, but

55:41

who fought for it anyway because they knew that someday

55:43

someone would. And

55:46

I want my children to recognize that. I

55:49

want them to hold that. I

55:52

want them to sit with that. Not in a

55:54

way that's meant to overwhelm them. Not

55:56

in a way that's meant to

55:58

cause them despair. But

56:01

in a way that is meant to help them

56:05

accurately situate themselves

56:08

in this sort of long lineage,

56:10

this long historical arc

56:13

that they are a part of.

56:15

And to remember that

56:18

that is a part of what

56:21

should animate how we move through the world and

56:23

what decisions we make and

56:26

how we treat people

56:27

and

56:28

what we work toward. And

56:30

that does not come at the exclusion

56:33

of or the expense of joy

56:37

and love and laughter and

56:39

levity. But

56:42

part of what I think about all the time is the simultaneity

56:45

of the human experience. How our

56:48

lives are both defined by that love, that

56:50

joy, that laughter, but also

56:52

defined

56:54

by

56:55

anxiety,

56:56

fear,

56:57

despair. And somewhere between

57:00

those is, I think, a responsibility.

57:03

Both recognizing the

57:06

truth

57:08

of our past and all that has preceded us.

57:11

Not in a way that's meant to

57:13

paralyze us or overwhelm

57:15

us

57:16

or

57:17

trap us in a sense

57:19

of despair, but

57:22

in a way that is meant

57:24

to help us recognize

57:27

and remember our own agency. Yeah.

57:29

And I feel like the way you're describing that

57:32

would also be true of what

57:33

you would want for the white children that they're growing up

57:36

with.

57:37

Absolutely. I mean, I think that's

57:39

what I want for my children,

57:41

but it's what I want for all children. It's

57:44

what I want for all of us. I

57:47

want all of us to understand that

57:50

what our lives look like are only because of

57:53

people who've created the

57:56

circumstances that have given rise to our lives.

58:00

today in ways that are

58:03

generative and wonderful and in

58:05

ways that we're grateful for, and

58:08

in ways that we recognize are

58:10

profoundly unjust, and in ways

58:12

that are profoundly unfair, and in

58:14

ways that

58:15

should not

58:17

exist in the way that they do. And

58:19

I think it's about holding and

58:21

recognizing and sitting with both of those

58:24

and figuring out how we move forward collectively.

58:29

So I do want to ask if there's anything you want

58:31

to read. I feel like I'm really keeping

58:33

you, and

58:33

this is heroic now at this point. No,

58:35

it's okay. I

58:38

think

58:39

because we've been talking about

58:42

a lot of heavy stuff, but

58:44

I also want to

58:47

name and reaffirm the joy

58:50

and the levity and the laughter. So

58:52

I was thinking maybe a dance party. Yep.

58:58

I see

58:58

it on page 89. Is that right? And above

59:00

ground dance parties?

59:01

So, you

59:04

know, I talked about how

59:06

for me poetry is

59:08

the act of paying attention, the

59:10

act of capturing a moment, a feeling. And,

59:13

you know, a lot of what we've talked about has been

59:16

on the heavier side and things that

59:18

have been

59:21

capturing those moments, observations, feelings,

59:23

histories that

59:25

might

59:26

elicit anxiety, despair,

59:28

fear, or speak to violence

59:31

or oppression. But

59:33

that's only part of the human experience.

59:36

And there are other parts that are worthy

59:38

of

59:39

our attention and our

59:41

gratitude. And one

59:43

of those things for me is that we

59:47

have dance parties after we finish

59:49

our dinner sometimes in our house. And

59:52

it's a delight. Unfortunately, my

59:54

children have no rhythm, which is

59:56

like, it's fine for a six-year-old.

59:59

a four-year-old, but if it continues

1:00:04

through their adolescence, it'll be devastating for all

1:00:06

of us. So to everybody listening,

1:00:09

please pray for my rhythmless

1:00:11

children that they can get it together.

1:00:13

But this poem is called Dance

1:00:16

Party. Sometimes

1:00:19

in the evenings after dinner, after

1:00:22

the spaghetti has been slurped and I've bribed

1:00:24

the broccoli into their bellies, I

1:00:26

give both of my children the

1:00:28

look. When my eyes meet theirs,

1:00:31

they know what time it is. They push in their

1:00:33

chairs, they stretch their legs, and

1:00:35

we move the table to the far end of the dining

1:00:37

room to clear space for what we all know is coming.

1:00:40

Alexa,

1:00:41

play the post-dinner dance party playlist.

1:00:44

And within seconds, Martha washes booming

1:00:46

voice rolls like thunder over our bodies.

1:00:49

Everybody dance now. The

1:00:52

electronic keyboard and the drums meet in the

1:00:54

middle of the room, like two dinosaurs

1:00:56

ready to claim the kitchen as their own. Immediately

1:00:58

the jumping begins, and my daughter is flinging

1:01:01

her limbs like an offbeat octopus, hand-slapping

1:01:03

the air behind her as if she is trying to smack

1:01:06

anyone who enters her sacred space. I

1:01:09

turn around and my son is doing the robot,

1:01:12

or is being eaten by a robot,

1:01:14

or is trapped in a universe where robots take over

1:01:16

the bodies of little boys in peanut butter pajamas.

1:01:19

Nonetheless, there is a robot somewhere,

1:01:22

and my children,

1:01:23

bless them, have not yet learned how to clap

1:01:25

on the two and four.

1:01:27

So I laugh, but also cringe as

1:01:29

their small hands make a mockery of the melody

1:01:31

around them.

1:01:33

Now, halfway through the song,

1:01:35

everyone is jumping,

1:01:36

and I, caught up in the ecstasy of this

1:01:38

moment, fall to the ground and convince

1:01:41

this no longer young body that it is a good idea

1:01:43

to start doing the worm. And when my children

1:01:45

see me, their eyes become pools of possibility,

1:01:48

and it is clear they see this as a clarion call to

1:01:50

climb onto my back.

1:01:51

And now, here we are, this strange

1:01:53

trifecta, this unlikely trio, a

1:01:56

robot and an octopus riding on the back of

1:01:58

a worm who will certainly need some type of worm.

1:01:59

all before bed. And

1:02:02

it is in this moment that their mother comes home. And

1:02:05

when she opens the door, everyone is screaming. The

1:02:07

speakers are blasting, and the percussion

1:02:09

is shaking every wall around us. We

1:02:13

look up at her, and she looks

1:02:15

down at us. And we have

1:02:17

no explanation for this strange scene.

1:02:20

Only an invitation for her to join. Clint

1:02:30

Smith is a staff writer at the Atlantic. He's the author of The

1:02:55

Word is Past, a Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, and

1:02:57

Two Collections of

1:03:06

Poetry, Counting Descent and

1:03:09

Above Ground.

1:03:17

The On Being Project is

1:03:19

Chris Heagel Lauren Drummerhausen Eddie

1:03:21

Gonzalez Lillian Vo Lucas

1:03:24

Johnson Suzette Burley Zach Rose Colleen

1:03:27

Scheck Julie Seibel Gretchen Hahnold Patrick

1:03:29

Otuma Gautam Srikishin April Adamson

1:03:32

Ashley Herr Amy Chatelaine Ken

1:03:34

Gautama Kaitlin

1:03:35

Cameron Musar Kayla Edwards

1:03:38

Tiffany Champion Juliette Dallas-Feni Vanessa

1:03:41

Hale Andrea Provost

1:03:43

On Being is an independent, non-profit

1:03:46

production of The On Being Project. We

1:03:48

are located on Dakota land. Our

1:03:51

lovely theme music is provided and composed

1:03:54

by Zoe Keating. Our closing

1:03:56

music was composed by Gautam Srikishin.

1:03:59

you for singing at the end of our show is

1:04:04

Cameron Kingherd. Her funding partners include the Harsland

1:04:06

Foundation,

1:04:07

helping to build a more just, equitable

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and connected America, one

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creative act at a time. The

1:04:14

Fetzer Institute, supporting a movement

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of organizations applying spiritual

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solutions to society's toughest problems.

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Find them at Fetzer.org. The

1:04:25

Talia Paya Foundation, dedicated

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to cultivating the connections between ecology,

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initiatives and organizations that uphold

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sacred relationships with the living

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