Well, well. Weeeeeeeeell. It’s good to be well, whatever well can really be said to mean. It might be enjoying good exercise, a good diet, and good health. It might be enjoying and accepting yourself however you are. It might be celebrating your mental health, which you have worked so long, and so hard, to improve. It might be loving and cherishing yourself no matter what the chaos of your mind is inflicting on you. It might be enjoying your sleep, working towards personal or creative goals, learning when you put your phone away, making a little time only for your self-care and benefit, or simply getting up at 6am to go for a jog when the world is quiet, and the light is golden and stirring. Whether it’s healing, satisfaction at accomplishing a long-term goal, or just contentment in the pleasures of the every day, there is a lot to be said for #wellness, whatever it can really be said to mean.
Whatever your definition, it feels good to feel well. Maybe it’s something that feels a little bit different to everyone, and that’s OK too. In any case, there’s a lot of folk posting about #wellness on the dashboard right now, and it’s good to see.
“I’m not a surrealist. I just paint what I see.“— Frida Kahlo
THE PAST AND THE PRELUDE
In his introduction to the classic novel Invisible Man (1952), ambiguous
black and literary icon Ralph Ellison says the process of creation was
“far more disjointed than [it] sounds … such was the inner-outer
subjective-objective process, pied rind and surreal heart.”
Ellison’s
allusion is to his book’s most perplexing character, Rinehart the
Runner, a dandy, pimp, numbers runner, drug dealer, prophet, and
preacher. The protagonist of Invisible Man takes on the persona
of Rinehart so that “I may not see myself as others see me not.” Wearing
a mask of dark shades and large-brimmed hat, he is warned by a man
known as the fellow with the gun, “Listen Jack, don’t let nobody make
you act like Rinehart. You got to have a smooth tongue, a heartless
heart, and be ready to do anything.”
And Ellison’s lead man enters
a world of prostitutes, hopheads, cops on the take, and masochistic
parishioners. He says of Rinehart, “He was years ahead of me, and I was a
fool. The world in which we live is fluidity, and Rine the Rascal was
at home.” The marquee of Rinehart’s store-front church declares:
Behold the Invisible!
Thy will be done O Lord!
I See all, Know all, Tell all, Cure all.
You shall see the unknown wonders.
Ellison and Rinehart had seen it, but had no name for it.
In an introduction to prophet Henry Dumas’ 1974 book Ark Of Bones and Other Stories, Amiri Baraka
puts forth a term for what he describes as Dumas’ “skill at creating an
entirely different world organically connected to this one … the
Black aesthetic in its actual contemporary and lived life.” The term he
puts forth is Afro-Surreal Expressionism.
Dumas had seen it. Baraka had named it.
This is Afro-Surreal!
THIS IS NOT AFRO-SURREAL
A) Surrealism:
Leopold
Senghor, poet, first president of Senegal, and African Surrealist, made
this distinction: “European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism
is mystical and metaphorical.” Jean-Paul Sartre said that the art of
Senghor and the African Surrealist (or Negritude) movement “is
revolutionary because it is surrealist, but itself is surrealist because
it is black.” Afro-Surrealism sees that all “others” who create from
their actual, lived experience are surrealist, per Frida Kahlo. The root
for “Afro-” can be found in “Afro-Asiatic”, meaning a shared language
between black, brown and Asian peoples of the world. What was once
called the “third world,” until the other two collapsed.
B) Afro-Futurism:
Afro-Futurism
is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science,
technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in
the future. Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for
tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps,
bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already
happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen
rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has
been around so long it is now the past.
Afro-Surrealists expose this from a “future-past” called RIGHT NOW.
RIGHT NOW, Barack Hussein Obama is America’s first black president.
RIGHT
NOW, Afro-Surreal is the best description to the reactions, the
genuflections, the twists, and the unexpected turns this “browning” of
White-Straight-Male-Western-Civilization has produced.
