Category Archives: Traffic

The Melancholia of Completion. Maybe.

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler (credited, but I think the quote is older still)

I have (virtually) finished my book. Six-seven years in the making, I’m (virtually) finished with Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, Volume 1. Oh, there is still the odd nit to pick. And, once I send it to the publisher (Penn State University Press), there will likely be lots of email flurries between my computer and their editors. It ended up at 83,000 words, for those of you who are interested in such things. More than a thousand footnotes. And only one or two snarky comments.

That means I am free to resume blogging, which I’ve missed. Once I started the actual writing, I put almost all of my other writing aside. Thanks to Gardner Campbell, I’d found blogging to be a helpful tool, emotionally and creatively.

As those of you who have written books, dissertations, theses, screenplays, songs, symphonies, and very, very long letters home may know, it is a curious feeling to complete something this large, something that has been a this big of a part of your life for such a long time. I’ve moved (twice!), kids have gotten married, dictatorships have (hopefully) fallen, Baylor’s athletic programs have flourished, my knees have failed me. The feeling of finishing is not really sadness, it’s not really relief. It’s just … curious. As Robert Haas once said: “It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

I’m not so sure about that. The research (for the most part) was exciting. The writing (for the most part) was exhilarating. The rewriting (for the most part) was rewarding. The finishing? Slightly melancholy.

It’s not so much that Volume 2 is left to do, either. I haven’t discussed a deadline with Penn State. (For you blessed few who have NOT heard me rattle on about the book, Volume 1 covers the use of black sacred music as a form of protest from the American Civil War through the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Volume 2 will cover from the earliest Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides through Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago and Memphis through the Poor People’s March and Resurrection City. At least it will if I live that long.) For me, the act of completion the last couple of days has been something akin to … melancholy. It is bittersweet. I’m not sad or blue, just … reflective.

Part of that may be due to devoting so much of my life to a single topic, even something as far-reaching and complex as this one. You wonder, at least I do, did I miss something along the way? What did I give up over the many weeknights, weekends, and supposed vacations I worked? Yesterday, I heard Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” on the radio and all but broke into tears. How many times did I tell the kids “No, I’ve got to work. You go on and play.”? Once is probably too much. Sorry guys.

But what has kept me from completely wallowing in morose introspection has been my unshakeable belief that this topic matters. The longer I got involved in the interviews and research, the more convinced I became that this vast, far-reaching subject is worthy of continued study. I suppose every writer, fiction or non-fiction, thinks the same way, ultimately.

But here’s why I believe that a better understanding of the Civil Rights Movement is important today: It’s an on-going process. WAY too many people in this country of all races and creeds, of all genders and ages, still do not enjoy the full fruits of democracy. Too many poor people, too many people with differing ideas about sexuality, too many people with various physical, mental and emotional challenges do not share equally in the guarantees built into our Constitution. And when one person is denied their civil rights, we all suffer…

Is the study of the power and influence of African-American sacred music of the past 150 years still relevant? I really, really think so.

Perhaps you saw this little story, tucked away in the margins of most news sources. An African-American couple – male and female, for those of you who care about such things – sought to get married in a Baptist church in Mississippi. The congregation denied them that privilege. Even the Tea Party Republican governor was appalled: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/mississippi-governor-wedding-ban-unfortunate

Alas, this just as easily could have happened (and probably has, we just don’t know about it) in Texas or Alabama or Illinois. This topic will never go away. In a nation that was founded with a significant portion of the population considered to be inferior, this problem is likely to always be with us, in one form or another. It’s like racism (and the other –isms) are in our national DNA somehow.

So, I’ll take a little break. I’ll wait for the edits from the Penn State University Press editor. I’ll begin to leisurely organize yet again the mountains of research I’ve accumulated for Volume 2. I’ll vow to spend more time with Mary and the kids and grandkids and friends and family. I’ll read more. I’ll email you.

And I’ll out-wait this odd little feeling of … (virtual) completion.

Til We Have Faces

I’m looking for a girl who has no face
She has no name, or number
And so I search within his lonely place
Knowing that I won’t find her

— Traffic, “No Face, No Name, No Number” (Winwood/Capaldi)

Patricia Wilson in the Baylor Law School asked me to be the client for the finals of the ABA’s National Client Counseling Competition last week. And since I have trouble telling someone as giving and generous as Pat “no,” I agreed.

I was given a couple of pages of description, both about me and my problem, which I was to more-or-less memorize. And then, over 40-minute intervals, I would be interviewed by three teams of two young lawyers, while a number of Waco lawyers watched and listened and eventually judged. I had to stay in character, so if one team asked something not on my sheet — I had to improvise. But I then had to remember what I’d said so in case the next team asked something similar, I’d give the same answer. Consistency is important.

It was nerve-wracking, but fun. The three collegiate teams were all excellent. All three put me through the wringer. My “role” was to be a basically nice guy who had done something really, really stupid. And, because of it, I was being blackmailed by a former employee.

I wasn’t to volunteer anything that wasn’t asked … and their job was to ferret out the real story from all of my rationalizations, dissemblings, evasions, and self-serving proclamations. It gave me the chance to be an actor, without having to memorize hundreds of lines.

The winning team, by the way, went on to the International Client Counseling Competition in Hong Kong.

I’ve been told that all lawyers (out of a sense of self-preservation) have to assume that virtually all of their potential clients are lying to them. You need to discover as much as you can as soon as you can about your client. It’s not a good thing when a client suddenly “remembers” something damaging while on the witness stand under intense questioning by the opposing attorney.

But what I realized on the way home was that even when we’re not in court, we wear a variety of faces. We’re all actors, in a way. We want the world to think well of us. That’s why we smile in photos. We have all faces or masks. Very, very rarely do we ever allow someone to see the “real” us behind that cheery mask. It’s a scary prospect to let someone see us as we really are (or believe we really are).

I present a certain persona to my classes. I think I need to project an air of confidence. In the class with 280 students in particular, I think need to project a presence of being in control. (Meanwhile while it is about 35 years too late for them to think I’m cool, I don’t want to be seen as a someone who is desperately “uncool,” either!)

We do it in our jobs, within our churches, even to those who love us.

My question is this: Is that what other people, other students, other Christians REALLY want? Do they really want this fake, smiley, confident face? Or are they searching, waiting, hoping for the REAL me?

Would I be a more effective teacher if I were more honest, more open, more vulnerable, more transparent?

Or would it be a feeding frenzy — with the sharks smelling the blood (and weakness) in the water?

Teaching is such an odd thing anyhow. Standing before dozens (sometimes hundreds) of young faces, most of whom whose names I don’t know, nonchalantly sharing my wisdom. Some are eager, some are indifferent, and some are absorbed in text-messaging friends and never once look up.

Would I reach those text-messagers better if I were more real?