Read Kiese Laymon
Every force evolves a form. Mother Ann Lee said that. Guy Davenport made it a book title. Brother Guy had this to say in the way of elaboration: “A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.” Art gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. William Shakespeare kindasorta said that. Brother Shakespeare knows that art is a feat of attentiveness.
Feeling finds a form. I said that. I’m now rambling my way toward lifting up and begging you to love yourself enough to read what I take to be today’s Public Service Announcement, which is to say, today’s art. Kiese Laymon speaks of it as “a personal essay” he’s tried to turn into “a sorrow song.” Don’t get tangled up into reading something else before you read Brother Laymon’s sorrow song, but you’re going to want to read (or read again) W.E.B. Du Bois on sorrow songs.
There are too many holy sentences to highlight, but I’ll offer one before I leave you to it. He’s speaking of an exchange he had with American children: “They wondered how to make essential labor into pleasurable labor for essential laborers when the nation insists on treating them as expendable at best, and big-hearted collateral damage at worst.”
Please read and share it aloud with someone you care about today.