No Time for the Blues (Aesthetic)

Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer and performance artist, columnist for the Atlanta Tribune, and founding editor of Catalyst Magazine. We commissioned this essay for an issue of High Performance called "The Blues Aesthetic." —Eds.

I don't know if I want to think about a Blues Aesthetic. It might be too dangerous. Or too scary. I am, after all, a 40-year-old black woman writer, living in the Deep South with a 15-year-old daughter, and a way of making a living that depends largely upon the kindness of African-American strangers, the accessibility of the public dole, the benevolence of corporate America, and the availability of white critics to review my work.

What I mean is, I don't know if it's psychically safe for me to pause and consider my blues aesthetically. I don't think so. I'd probably have to spend the rest of the day weeping, and I've got too much stuff to do. Thinking about my blues doesn't help me get my work done, which is, after all, the point.

We are at war, right? Fighting for our lives, right? Struggling ceaselessly for our freedom? Taking our blues underground to teach it how to be a demolitions expert? Right?

I do, after all, live in a place where women are routinely beaten, tortured, mutilated and murdered by men and almost nobody talks about it. A place where the jails are full of black men, and the housing projects are full of black women and children, and nobody seems to notice. A place where there is rape. The kind of place where blues is always the dominant state of mind for anybody who's got half a brain and an ear to the ground.

I am, after all, a member of a group that is in a state of serious and probably terminal crisis, caught up in a weird, high-tech, MTV kind of crack-fueled genocide that we don't even understand yet. It soon come, as the Rastas will tell you. Soon come. And it will be easy to recognize that terrible moment because the realization of where and what and who we are really will be so overwhelming that we will all stop working or hanging out or making love or raising children or cooking dinner and just wail, moan, holler, beat our breasts and tear our hair and ask the goddess to please explain what the hell we did to deserve to be black in the belly of the whale, locked into a decadent goose step toward the decline and fall when we never even got to run the damn thing.

And if we're not careful, somebody will hear all that terrible, hopeless, helpless, angry sound, clean it up, put some biking pants and dread extensions on it and sell it to our enemies and less-enlightened comrades for a bundle. Langston already told us they had taken our blues and gone and you know Langston did not lie.

See what I mean about a Blues Aesthetic? It has a good beat but you sure can't dance to it.

I don't want to think about the blues. I want to think about victory chants and warrior wails, the stuff my people should sing when they go into battle and kick ass and right the wrongs and sing the songs of our own black loveliness.

I want an aesthetic that is based in struggle, energized by commitment, deeply rooted in and reflective of our own specific community, crisis and culture. I want an aesthetic where slavery is not one of the acceptable options and a good review in The New York Times is cause for serious self-criticism and major regrouping.

I want an aesthetic that screams and hollers and tells people it's time to rise. I want an aesthetic that is stockpiling weapons in the basement and books in the attic. I want an aesthetic that is not afraid of politics or propaganda or popular culture or women's wisdom or the phases of the moon. I want an aesthetic that will not go gently into this or any other good night. I want an aesthetic that doesn't simply describe the problem eloquently, but proposes some solutions, some perspective, some points of view that lead to clarity, not confusion.

What I mean is, I know I've got a right to sing the blues. I just don't have the time right now.

This essay originally appeared in High Performance magazine, Winter 1990.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2002