échanges & idées

Patrick Chamoiseau /
William Parker
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Epistolary discussion

In February 2022, William Parker will be invited by Sons d’hiver to present his symphonic poem Trail of Tears – which evokes and invokes the spirits of a tragic moment in North American history, in world history: the deportation of the Cherokee to the land thought to belong to no one. We won’t have the indecency to make striking leaps, but it seems that humanity is moving today towards another one of these moments, on the same trajectory, and that we will need treasures of determination, intelligence as well as sensitivity to really get through these times, this bad mirror.
To address these sensitive issues, and because the Sons d’hiver festival has a long history of parallel events to its programming, we had the idea of organizing an epistolary dialogue prior to this performance, between two people made to get along. We asked William Parker and Patrick Chamoiseau if they would maintain a weekly correspondence before the concert.
Martinique writer-poet Patrick Chamoiseau and New York bassist-activist William Parker are united if only by the art of storytelling that they practice, with which they infuse everything they do, each in his own way, in writing and in music, and by an deep understanding of the hybrids and mutants that we all are: of the myriad of relationships to be made and of the relationships that make us. Patrick Chamoiseau’s relationship to music and William Parker’s relationship to literature – to the human imagination in general; a poetic relationship to existence, to life in society; vessels of transculturality and their necessity in a world that is digesting its globalization so badly, if we want to finally envision a “New World Order” as Curtis Mayfield would sing…
Alexandre Pierrepont

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Coordination & traduction des lettres de William Parker : Alexandre Pierrepont
Traduction des lettres de Patrick Chamoiseau :  Ìyá Aláàṣẹ
correspondance à l’initiative du festival Sons d’hiver

 © Jimmy Katz

William Parker

William Parker est le muse-physicien, au gouvernail de sa contrebasse et d’orchestres qui sont toujours des assemblages et des assemblées, des communes libres. Grand mémorialiste et visionnaire de l’idée que la musique est une arche, qu’elle est magie et poésie. Pour cela il a été surnommé « le maire de New York », le vrai maire de New York, le maire initiatique d’une ville, Gotham ou Zion, qui n’aurait en réalité plus besoin de maire.

William Parker is the muse-physician, at the helm of his double bass and orchestras that are always assemblies and assemblies, free communes. A great memorialist and visionary of the idea that music is an arch, that it is magic and poetry. For this reason he was nicknamed “the mayor of New York”, the true mayor of New York, the initiatory mayor of a city, Gotham or Zion, which would not really need a mayor anymore.

letter 1 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Mana, French Guiana, 17. 11. 2021

Dear William Parker,

The world we live in creates these improbable fraternities. It is made of so many moving things, some flowing to us, inhabiting us, generating magnetic alliances. These are not fueled by actual encounters, rather they are outlined against certain converging visions of the world. I have read your words. I have meditated on your music. We never cease to imagine the world, to be alive in the world, to feel how intensely this world travels through us, allowing such unforeseen fraternities to emerge; especially when this our sentient attention, turning to the matter of the world, first and foremost inclines towards what suffers, and can be heard screaming still, and has disappeared — or rather, has “unappeared”, leaving us with strange wakes of absences in which, beneath the glitter of oblivion or the froth of indifference, do remain great lessons to gather for all our humankinds.

 To experience the world first and foremost through pain and suffering, is what prevents us from putting up with the forces of domination, crushing verticalities, overwhelming “becomings” devised by the self-declared mightiest, bringing together the darkest parts of mankind. Yet this, our way of experiencing the world, allows for no pathos, no dolorism, none of that sour lucidity which only serves to dishearten the vital enjoyment of the soul; it is rooted in some childlike care for the hurting, a feeling of enhanced proximity, whereby anything that touches another being, or is moved by another being, simply brings about a life expanded, articulating the infinite joy that every living presence necessarily contains. “Brother-World”, that is how we relate to one another, I know it, I sense it, and this commencing correspondence of ours, I am telling you, will spell it out for us.

Our times require that we seek an understanding of those newly forged alliances, which our worn-out imagination is now unable to decipher. New alliances with the living. New alliances with our unknown “becomings”. New alliances with our selves, and most importantly — new alliances with a substance of the world made of unprecedented creativities in language, music, rhythm and polyrhythmic improvisation, regardless of scores and borders. I have always felt this secret, helpless desire to be a musician. I had a brother, he was a musician, gifted, a master of drums. Oftentimes I would tag along to his events, carrying his gear to gigs, standing just behind him on stage, playing the bell or some other minor, superfluous instrument — clumsy, low-keyed enough so as to not cause too much damage in these oceans of polyrhythmic sounds that are the stuff of Caribbean music. And this much I know: to be a musician is to exist in a poetic state, an acute sensitivity to invisible forces. By that I do not mean the kind of sensitivity associated with the mystic, the religious or the superstitious; I mean the kind that feeds on the “spirit of science”, on the splendors of Reason, on the salts of lucidity. Such a “poetic state” is peculiar to artists, who carry forth an ability to marvel, and celebrate, and hear and read all things as though they were so many languages, and hence, will not miss an ounce of what makes the infinite stuff of reality, from the most insignificant to the most spectacular, from petty thrill to major swell. All great music, first and foremost, tells that story.How strange it is that this first letter should be written here in Guiana, in this little town called Mana, in particular circumstances that have delayed my writing to you but which, as such, also constitute a poetic sign. I am here with my friend the film director Guy Deslauriers, working on the shoot of a documentary about the sinking of a slave ship. Leusden was the vessel’s name. You certainly know this better than I do, how over the span of a few centuries these barbaric ships, thousands of them, have ripped away part of the soul of Africa; how millions of Africans have been engulfed in the abyss of the Atlantic; how those who could survive the Middle Passage have splashed the islands and the depths of the American continent with a mixture of blood, pain and screaming, which we still sense and hear, but which, in the poetic state that we share, emerge in flurries of creative energy. We do endeavor, each of us in our own way, each of us with our own art, to decipher these signs, so highly charged, clearly, with the potential to humanize what we are and what we are to become. Great suffering carries teachings. And compels us, too.

The horrendous vessel had already carried out numerous deportations. It had precipitated thousands of Africans into hell, and on this final voyage, it had come in sight of the coast of French Guiana on the 1rst day of January, 1738. It was headed for Surinam, and had originally cast off from The Netherlands. It had sailed along the West African coasts for months, collecting its miserable cargo from port call to port call, from Elmina, Ghana, in particular. It had managed to cross the Atlantic without too much difficulty apart from the intrinsic atrocity that pertains to such a voyage, until its arrival here, in the middle of a storm, curtains of fog and rain, on this coast where it ended up impaling itself on a sandbank, entering a syndrome of bad luck that will eventually cause it to slowly capsize. It appears that the whole crew had time to abandon the ship, but the captain — and this is where I am standing now writing to you — had ordered the hatches to be nailed shut so that the captives below deck could not escape the hold. Is the captain’s decision a matter of protecting his own life and the lives of his men, who undoubtedly would have been massacred by their victims? Could it be that he made this deliberate decision out of his own utter barbarism? Of what substance is a slave ship captain’s mind made? So it was that 664 Africans were left to perish in the hold, while the crew managed to escape aboard small sailing boats. The ship sank with them, all irretrievably sealed in, instantly immersed into oblivion, in this grave of a ship’s hold.

The dread in this story is that moment when the captain decides to order the hatches to be nailed shut; and to think that some of those sailors should comply, all the while hearing all the cries, rising from the abyss of the hold. That moment — is an eternity. In the history of mankind these eternity-moments of barbarity are countless. Everything that is human is capable of the worst and has often been found mingling with the worst. The slave-owning colonialist Western society has no specific flaw in this matter. What remains, it seems to me, is the imagination that presides over our acts: this blindness of mind, of sensitivity, of reason, of dignity, which at any time may subject us to those forces of darkness that we ourselves have created, that we inhabit as much as they inhabit us, and eventually dominate us. I am as much in the hold of the Leusden, screaming, as I am above deck nailing down the hatches. I am drowning in the waves rushing below deck, and I am escaping aboard the lifeboats sailing to Paramaribo. I am wrenched apart in that gap, hovering right above this darkest of shadows, which calls for new light. For another degree of humanization. Another music of the soul. An ardent, generous, improvisation of thought.

Brother, here I stand, in Mana, at the mouth of this river of tragedy, wafts of salt, dark of skies, I hear nothing but howling wind, carrion birds, coconut palm leaves singing their song, this wake of musicianless music that inhabits, I know this to be true, all kinds of music in the world. There is some strength in being here imagining this African presence bound to rusty irons and sightless sands, engulfed by patient mud, this presence there, wakeful and then some, commanding itself to our attention, compelling us to step beyond the crime in a just expression of art, commencing with just a song, a dance step, a gesture in music to make sure we forget nothing.

Yours.
Patrick Chamoiseau

lettre 1 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 24. 11. 2021

Patrick, cher frère,

Comment faire pour que les choses s’arrangent ? Comment initier la danse quand il n’y a pas de plancher. Le bateau d’esclaves n’a pas de fond. Il continue à tourner et à tourner, sans jamais faire de cercle. Il nie que certaines personnes puissent même rêver de liberté. Il n’y a pas de sol fertile pour planter les graines de la divine créativité. Quand je regarde par la fenêtre, je vois beaucoup de gens marcher dans les rues de New York – marcher dans un monde qui n’est pas réel. Qui n’a jamais été réel depuis la fondation de ce pays. Nous avions l’habitude de l’appeler le cauchemar américain. Le poète Bob Kaufman dirait le monde illusoire. Des écoles sans cahiers pour les élèves, mais avec des détecteurs de métaux et la police pour les accueillir à la porte. Que reste-t-il en notre pouvoir – avec ces réserves indigènes appelées HLM, avec la drogue et l’alcool à chaque coin de rue ? Tout ce que cette brillante minorité touche (la musique, la danse, la littérature, la science…), résonne et nous élève à l’intérieur d’un monde que j’appelle The Tone World. Les choses resteront déséquilibrées ; le mal continuera à prospérer. L’impact du passé se répercute indéfiniment à travers le monde.

Nous plongeons à l’intérieur de nous-mêmes pour devenir comme des surhommes emplis de compassion – pas pour collecter des faits et des chiffres, mais plutôt pour manger et boire l’art qui nous mènera à la prochaine phase de notre existence. Ressentir. Pardonner, ne jamais oublier, se laver dans la vérité, boire et manger de la musique, se réjouir d’être soi-même – voilà le message pour toutes et tous.
Croyez au conte de fées, pas au capitalisme ! Revenons à l’idée de départ : comment faire pour que tout aille bien ? Comment ramener les morts à la vie ?
Les objectifs sont peut-être démesurés, mais cette conversation et cette communication font jaillir quelques étincelles, en ce moment même, et elles ne font que commencer. Le temps ici est en train de se refroidir. Ce matin, j’étais assis dans ma voiture, et je faisais semblant d’être dans le Vermont, à siroter du thé et à passer des appels téléphoniques.
Dans l’ensemble, c’est un bon moment pour se remettre à pratiquer. Cette lettre est peut-être le début d’une reformulation ou d’une redirection vers l’idée même d’acceptation, en accord.

William Parker

letter 2 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 1. 12. 2021

Brother,
Dear William,

Here I am back home, Martinique, after quite a time spent in Mana, Guiana. The scientific team could not locate the wreck of the slave ship Leusden. They sent a drone equipped with a magnetometer to survey hectares of sludge and mud at the mouth of the Mana River, which confirmed the presence of significant magnetic anomalies. A team of divers then proceeded to scrape the mud above these anomalies, hoping to find some remains, albeit tiny ones, that might suggest the presence of this 17th century shipwreck underneath, only a few meters below the surface. Eventually they had to give up the search due to technical difficulties and bad weather conditions. Their budget was insufficient and their equipment ill-suited for the rough weather conditions at the mouth of the river. They will be back next year, hoping to have gathered enough money, by then, for better equipment. I am thinking of launching an international support campaign to help fund their mission.

The thought of these magnetic anomalies moves me deeply. They are probably the result of distortions caused by some cannon gun, or rusty irons covered with coral, or perhaps chains and links still clasped onto whatever human relics may remain after so many centuries underwater; perhaps even those very nails used to lock the hold down with all its cargo stuck inside. Oftentimes I have stood before this river mouth, gazing at the waters — sometimes still, sometimes running, sometimes clear, but mostly brimming with blackish mud and vegetal shreds. All around the banks grow mangroves and the outsets of a forest, and the sky above is an immensity, filled with the steady ever-returning splendor of dawn and dusk.
The poet Edouard Glissant wrote that the only monuments we do possess, here in the West Indies, are landscapes. What he meant by that was that our ancestors, those thrown into slavery, and the genocided Native Americans, and the migrants forced into eternal wanderings, they all inhabit these paradise landscapes, not only with what they’ve planted in these soils to escape starvation (survival gardens, nourishing trees, edible plants, emblematic flowers), but also with the magnetic fertilizations of their suffering, their blood, their dances, their songs and their desires. With the wreck in mind, buried some place below, I look at this river mouth and see a tremendous monument. A monument that is yet to be named — to be made legible.

How absolutely right you are when you say that slave ships are bottomless. In the works of poets Glissant and Césaire, the ship’s hold functions as a major poetic statement. The ship’s hold is where Aimé Césaire locates the starting point of his cri-négritude, his blackness-cry, while Edouard Glissant, of that same hold, made a gulf — a bottomless abyss of sorts, in which millions of African captives did end up either buried or forced into “rebirth”, a rebirth on these lands of the West Indies and Americas, with barely a few “traces” remaining from their past existence on the great lost continent.

This idea of an “abyss” also implies a collapsing of the ancient world into the horror of the slave ship, opening up the route to our contemporary era. From then on, Western colonialism would pave the way for the triumphant advance of capitalism and the globalized economy of neoliberalism. Our times are thus immersed in a religion of markets, in which consumption, capital and commodities have become more important than the becoming of mankind. I like this idea, however, that another world was born in the wake of those slave ships, and this world is ours, a world to be enjoyed or be inflicted upon, a world to experience, a world to ponder over — subjecting it to the chorus of all our creativities gathered in unison.

Creativity is the core of us human beings. Each time a controlling power is being exerted, each time the first thing to disappear is creativity. And when that happens, we are forced, fatally, into adapting to that dominant order, those dominant forces taking hold and controlling. Any imposition of an order, any submission to that order, will result above all in sterility. Those who dominate, and those who are dominated, being equally affected.

On the American plantations, the African captives who will fight to recover their own humanity, will do so mainly with and through their particular creativity. Creativity of the dancers who regain, in the grace of their choreography, the memories of their own bodies. Creativity of the drummer who, in the heart of the slave plantation, conjures back the African polyrhythm. Creativity of the singers who retrieve ancient chants from their long-buried memories. Creativity of the storytellers who weave new languages from the threads of their remaining scraps of tongues, and from the existing fabric of other local languages. This creativity, this resistance, happens rather unforeseeably. Unforeseen is indeed the individuation process, with no community system to lean on; unforeseen is indeed polyrhythm, which deconstructs all existing foundations, opening onto every other possibility; unforeseen is indeed improvisation, which rises from the unique experience of each individuality, expressing itself through a confrontation with the particular experience of others. The jazz orchestra is a wonderful illustration for this. I see individual equations gathering, in some extraordinary moment, an ocean of polyrhythmic sounds, all improvisation, calling-and-responding with each other, feeding on the fleeting presence of one another. The human societies created in the West Indies and the Americas are made of this stuff, this “jazz spirit” so to speak.
“No soil” for “divine creativity”, you reckon?
The spirit of jazz — keeping in mind how the word “jazz” itself remains questionable — is to me an unforeseeable soil to inhabit, such a fertile mysterious breeding-ground.

About this idea of an “American nightmare”, which you so rightly pinpoint — the United States are but the archetype of this planetary system called capitalism, which has transformed us into mere data-generators and consumers. This is some kind of collective death happening, a dehumanization, and yes I feel this intensely, and so I seek, against this, relentlessly, a truly human alternative. Capitalism controls us so tightly that it might seem impossible for us to imagine a global alternative to its reign — and yet we will have to. This is the crucial task of our generations, who can no longer stand in observation and protest, but need to seize the impulse to creativity, activate the ferment of imagination. Cultural creativity is of the essence — and thus all arts, and cinema, and literature, and music… Those are all extraordinary languages, bringing us closer to the complexities of the living world, and therefore initiating us to new potentialities. Great musicians know the language of trees, winds and landscapes, they hear the language of animals, decipher the sign-less sigh of stones.
Poets, too.
How I wish I were a poet.
When I write, I do try to listen to forgotten languages. Every language contains a multitude of lost others, like so many hiccups in the making. Any given language holds every possibility of all those languages that Western-style humanism (placing itself at the center of all things, and thus cutting itself off from all things) has forgotten, or is incapable of hearing, reading and understanding. It seems to me that our main task is to keep the dream burning at the very heart of the nightmare, dreaming in spite of all (in other words, create), until everything collapses… so that life, and colors, and poetry, and dance, and joy, may come back to us as the most powerful, spectacular, inner cataclysm.
The dead we have to bring back to life — they are not from the past. They are not lying in the belly of the Leusden wreck, lying in the mud at the mouth of the Mana River. The dead calling us now are ourselves, nothing else but ourselves. To reanimate a body, a spirit, an imagination or a soul, we just need all of literature, music, dance, language, and a certain amount of madness — which is wisdom’s most precious horizon. Brother, if some bird in the sky above your head ever beckons you, that bird is me, no doubt, greeting, and if a sound as yet unheard reaches you, reminding you of one Miles Davis, greeting, maybe just greet back with a smile and say: that sound is nothing else but me…

Yours ever.
Patrick Chamoiseau 

lettre 2 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 5. 12. 2021

Cher Patrick,

Fascinante aventure. N’étant jamais allé par là-bas, m’intrigue la perspective de retrouver un navire perdu. Pour moi, les choses les plus constantes et les plus fiables ont toujours été l’eau, le ciel, les arbres et les montagnes, liés à un lieu quelconque. Les sources de vie qui proviennent de la nature, de la terre et de l’espace. Les arbres poussent de bas en haut, la pluie tombe du ciel sur le sol, parfois interrompue par les toits. J’espère que les Français ne pensent pas qu’ils possèdent le soleil ou la lune, qui se couchent et qui planent au-dessus de la Guyane. Comment s’appelait un pays avant que l’impérialiste n’arrive et ne bouleverse les choses ? Il m’est arrivé de discuter de l’existence des Français noirs. De mon point de vue, vous étiez soit de France, soit d’Afrique, soit des îles liées à l’Afrique.

L’Amérique du Sud est assez éloignée de la France. Le trompettiste Jacques Coursil était né à Paris, mais il était d’origine martiniquaise. Un musicien merveilleux qui m’a montré que son origine en tant que telle n’avait aucune espèce d’importance ; ce qui comptait, c’était qu’il jouait merveilleusement de la trompette et qu’il était entré dans ma sphère – qu’il apportait du bonheur dans ma vie. Le concept de colonialisme est toujours si problématique lorsque la question de la liberté est abordée : qu’advient-il des sujets nés en Afrique, une Afrique qui appartenait à la France, à l’Angleterre ou à la Belgique ?

Les Européens ne voulaient que de l’or, des diamants ou toute autre ressource naturelle disponible. Qu’est-ce que cela fait d’être indésirable, sauf en tant que source de main-d’œuvre bon marché ? Je suppose que c’est là que le concept de compassion entre en jeu. La capacité de ressentir la douleur des autres et de s’efforcer de la soulager en ayant recours à toutes les méthodes possibles de la science, de l’éducation, de l’art de vivre et de la communication – tout en sentant l’humidité des larmes des orphelins.

La question est de déterminer si des artefacts comme ces chambres de torture au plus profond d’épaves de navires négriers, des momies, des pyramides, ont jamais fait progresser des civilisations ? En particulier, les sociétés qui ont construit ces navires négriers. L’art et les artefacts sont gaspillés par les riches. Lorsque je choisis un musicien pour jouer avec lui ou avec elle, je ne veux pas savoir comment il ou elle sonne avant que nous ayons fait ensemble les premiers sons du concert.

Je vous ai précédemment envoyé une lettre dans laquelle je me demandais comment améliorer les choses.

J’ai réalisé hier à quel point la vie ne dure qu’un temps. En Amérique, ce que nous appelons une courte durée de vie. Je crois que je me sens un peu déprimé. Il semble que non seulement beaucoup de mes héros musicaux sont morts, mais que beaucoup de musiciens avec lesquels j’ai grandi et joué sont ont également disparu. Jemeel Moondoc, Billy Bang, Roy Campbell, Jimmy Lyons, Henry Grimes, David S. Ware, Fred Anderson, Don Cherry, Rashied Ali, Milford Graves, Joseph Jarman, Frank Wright Frank Lowe… autrefois vivants, maintenant disparus. Toute ma vie, j’ai anticipé la mort. J’ai même écrit une chanson à ce sujet : « La mort est morte aujourd’hui / Aujourd’hui la mort est morte, et le monde ne sera plus jamais le même / Dieu est en larmes Dieu est en larmes » . L’idée de guérir l’individu par l’art, les sons et la poésie. Si nous nous aimions suffisamment fort, la mort disparaîtrait-elle ?

La mort fait partie de la vie, le meurtre non. Les erreurs font aussi partie de la vie, mais pas les prisons et leurs barreaux d’acier. Ma réponse au problème ? Chantez ! Embrassez la beauté pour comprendre, pour accepter, et pour résoudre les mystères.

Bien à toi,
William

letter 3 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 7. 12. 2021

My dear William,

Before Western colonialists boarded that coast, changing its name to “Guyane française”, the Native people did call their land “Guiana”, a name which could translate as “land of the great waters”. The First Nations of Guiana understood water as the one source of all life, they understood the forest and its lushness as the requisite for great rains, streams and nourishing rivers. This animist system of thought, through which they perceived themselves as mere elements of their natural environment, being neither lords nor possessors of it — was that not a prefiguration of what we now try to retrieve in a desperate attempt to save both the planet and ourselves?

It is true, though, that the colonialist mind, the Western thought, which considered itself to be the sole human entity in the world, had already elaborated, by means of its genocides, conquests and dominions, this kind of “humanism” that would soon distance itself from nature and the living order, to the point of absurdity, this extremity that we are now experiencing as an ongoing ecocide and already announced mass extinction. And they’ve turned Guiana, as they did of my homeland, present-day Martinique, into a “French possession”, a territory to be governed from Paris. But the term “French” only designates their own colonial history, it says nothing of this anthropological magma in which Natives, Africans and Europeans all together collided, crashed against one another, and blended within the plantation system that would ultimately structure the societies of the Americas. “Black Frenchmen”, in my mind, would stand for individuals who, originating from Africa, were swept up in the cogs of colonization. So, to me, it denotes a new kind of complexity that we do need to interrogate — which I try to do in most of my books.

I’m glad that you mentioned Jacques Coursil. I knew him well. He was a good friend, a prodigious, baffling mind — a linguist, a writer, a poet, a mathematician — and such a musician! He had already widely explored his unbelievable human potential before he finally returned, in the twilight of his life, to the sole expression of his trumpet — which, I find, was ultimately the vessel that could truly contain and accomplish the whole of his brilliant intensity. Music can, of course, as can poetry, and all arts surely, express the frequently inextricable complexity of our being in the world. Don’t you think that dwelling in one’s own music, dwelling in one’s own art, is probably the surest way to keep all of our human potentialities, all of our becomings, unscathed?

In the face of a persistent colonialism, which continues to scatter us into different nationalities, forcing murderous isolating borders upon us, reducing our existence in the world, could we not — as of right now, in spite of everything, and adamantly — oppose a geography of the arts? I mean a deterritorialization, gathering all potentialities into an all-encompassing creative conscience — the only name to be heard, I believe, by freedom itself, in these times of constant attacks on human dignity. Don’t you think so?

The colonial system, which bore the seeds of capitalism as we know it today, triumphing throughout the world, was above all a commodification of nature, a reification of the living, and therefore, obviously, a dehumanization of human beings. African nations and most non-Western nations have paid a high price for this. From this, the lesson we could draw for our days, as you say, is that of “compassion”: the ability to live in empathy with the rest of the world. Not only with the “stranger”, with those who suffer and call out for help, but with all living things, all non-humans included. Our future is so closely linked to the future of all living things that it should be our duty to abandon the vertical humanism of the West for a humanism of compassion, a caring and humble consideration of the Other, inclining towards the horizontal plenitude of all living things.

This shipwreck that we are searching for in Guiana, with hundreds of chained human beings stuck in its belly, forgotten in the mud, this wreck is the ever-screaming sign of a barbarity that has spanned through centuries. This barbarity might have varied in form and violence, but it is still alive and thriving. Our task, today, is perhaps to seek another meaning for the word “civilization”. Not the glorious meaning it’s been endowed with by the Western thought (we see how easily these so-called enlightenments have been able to put up with dreadful shadows), but a modest meaning, a tone of dance or song, to simply serve as a signal, a beacon of human accomplishment, open to all human presences and all states of the living world, without pre-eminence, without conquest, without dominion over others. To some extent, this is a civilization that already exists. I have spent quite some time in its company, reading books. Poets, philosophers, great writers, and spiritual masters too, have always sensed this need that we have, as humans, to feel our entire beings and desires fully alert and receptive to all presences around us. Aren’t musicians a living proof of this prescience? Am I mistaken to imagine that musicians really express themselves fully, and truly feel alive, when playing in unison with others? Just living this way, for every one of us — wouldn’t that already make things better?

Depressive sadness, I believe, is the lot of those who live long. Those who, day after day, all around, will see the dying of the light in the beings whose lives used to make up the fabric on which they would tune up their own existence for resonance. As the fabric is being punctured, as its threads are being broken, as absences are starting to throb, we feel afflicted, we feel diminished. And this, I feel too. Could it be that the only way not to feel distressed and disenchanted, is to convince ourselves that the presence of our dear departed, their vibrations, still circulate in the intimate fabric of our own lives? To convince ourselves that those who have disappeared are now part of us, enriching us with their past life experiences, I mean amplifying what we are, or what remains of us?

Musicians who see the passing of their fellow artists will be deeply afflicted of course, and in many ways, emotionally as well as in their life and creativity. I can understand this perfectly. For writers, it might be slightly different. My first literary companions, in life and art, were often already dead when I made their acquaintance. I would meet them in books, and across centuries. To this day they continue to outnumber the contemporary fellow writers I feel close to. But in the fervor of my readings, every one of them was, and still is, very much alive, alive as can be. In every line that I have written so far, I was born a thousand times, and I died just as many times. I have aged repeatedly, to the point of poetic dementia, and in senseless choices I have lost myself, to the point of wear and tear. All through this, my literary companions, alive as I am, have never left my surroundings. I think the act of creating is truly an act of life, an extremely condensed kind of life, conjuring back centuries of existence with each written line, and offering them to us like brews of sun to sip on, wild brews that we ought to drink, thoroughly, no matter how instantly burning they taste, how obscure the lesson we retain.

You are asking a crucial question: could love, loving each other, be an antidote to death? Love requires so much living, so much giving, so much self-detachment as well as demanding intensity! So many opposing possibilities, closely interlinked and inextricable! I truly think that love is the only entity that can help us come to terms with death as we commonly think of it. When love surrounds us, all that remains of death is that part of it which only serves to salute and enhance life.

Brother, I’ve always cherished the idea of living in Beauty, living with Beauty. Yet, isn’t Beauty itself a mystery? I’ve long grown used to living my life trying never to dispel this swell of great mysteries that shrouds our existences. I rejoice in those inexhaustible mysteries, which we find enacted in works of art or music, offering themselves to us thus haloed with this invincible mystery, this home of all knowledge.

Take good care of yourself.

Patrick

lettre 3 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 12. 12. 2021

Cher Patrick, mon frère,

Dimanche 12 décembre, 6 heures du matin.
La semaine dernière a été assez rude. J’ai parcouru des documents remontant au 4 avril 1978 et au certificat de décès de mon frère Thomas Parker, Jr. « Cause du décès : narcotisme aigu et chronique par voie intraveineuse ». C’est là que j’ai réalisé que, depuis 1978, émotionnellement, j’avais pris ce que l’on pourrait appeler la voie la plus haute. J’ai bloqué cet événement au plus profond de mon esprit. Mon frère était mort, parti, et là il revenait. Je n’ai pas pu assister à ses funérailles, car j’étais coincé sur un lit d’hôpital, pour une appendicite. J’ai tout de même écrit un peu de musique que j’ai envoyée au saxophoniste alto Jemeel Moondoc et au violoniste Billy Bang pour qu’ils la jouent. Je n’ai aucune idée de ce qu’il s’est passé, de qui est venu. Mon frère n’était pas exactement la personne la plus populaire de la famille. Je remercie Dieu d’avoir eu un appendice infecté. En voyant ce certificat de décès, toutes les choses que je ne voulais pas affronter m’ont regardé en face. Comment ai-je fait pour ne pas deviner qu’il se droguait ? Où avais-je la tête ? Pourquoi ne l’ai-je pas sauvé ? Il était étiqueté comme le mauvais fils ; moi comme le bon. Je n’ai jamais aimé cette catégorisation et je ne me suis pas privé de le faire savoir avec force autour de moi, à des oreilles sourdes. Le 10 janvier, j’aurai 70 ans. Mon père est mort à 63 ans, un an avant mon frère. J’ai donc commencé très tôt à me familiariser avec la mort. Elle n’allait nulle part, mais la vie non plus, alors j’ai dû faire un choix. Une formulation plus précise serait que la vie m’a choisi, parce que je ne savais pas au juste ce que je faisais. J’aimais la musique et j’aimais l’art, mais je ne savais pas ce que je faisais, et je ne savais pas si je le saurais un jour. Apparemment, cela n’a aucune importance. Une fois de plus, et comme la plupart du temps, l’amour l’emporte sur la connaissance. C’est probablement la même chose : la graine, la coquille, la plante, le sol, l’eau et la lumière du soleil, tout cela ne forme qu’un seul amour.

Dimanche matin, 12 décembre, 7h03.
On dirait que tout le monde vit sa vie à l’intérieur de soi. Mais nous sommes à l’extérieur. On peut même être à l’extérieur de soi-même. Tu envoies de bien belles paroles de mon côté. Le mot est comme un bateau et je navigue sur ce bateau, à travers l’océan, alors que je ne sais pas nager. En ce moment, je suis sur la terre ferme. J’espère que tout va bien pour toi, et que tu passes une bonne journée. Dimanche est l’un de mes jours préférés. Les choses semblent ralentir et le ciel est d’humeur réfléchie. Je vais maintenant m’habiller et commencer la journée. Je t’en dirai plus très bientôt.

Tout le meilleur,
William

letter 4 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 15. 12. 2021

My dear William,

Certainly the loss of a loved one will make us feel guilty. We wonder if we loved them enough, and if we told them enough that we loved them. I recently lost a brother and a sister. Those same questions and fears welled up in me. I also felt my presence in the world slowly diminishing. Our “being” alone does not completely define us. We are made of all those we feel close to, all those we love.

In fact, those we love expand us, like an aura, and even if we don’t see them every day, even if we never do tell them enough how much we love them, or even if we didn’t get all those little attentions that we felt we should have got from them when we needed them, after they pass we become aware that our “well-being” — I mean, what profoundly nourishes our “being” — included their presence, albeit impalpable, albeit silent. Those we love are part of us, like an extension of the landscape, a landscape for us to inhabit and which inhabits us, a wave swelling under the winds, or the sweet-sounding flight of birds.

But I’ve also learned that the loss of loved ones leaves us with something unspeakable, inexpressible. A nourishing “presence” mostly made of beautiful memories, made of laughter and small insignificant moments that become bracing melodies inside. A bit like those leaves, flowers and fruits that shoot out on trees right after a cyclone.

I’ve learned, too — I turned 68 on December 3rd — that life is made of both light and shadow. If it lacks shadow, if it lacks pain, if loss has not cracked its surface, then the light, our light, our “being alive”, loses its brilliance, its resonance, and most of all its depths. Baudelaire, that master of sorrows, sometimes compared himself to a cracked bell. The sound of a bell, when intact, is a powerful thing. The cracked bell, however, distils a distortion, a twitch of fragility that seems to me rather a strength, or some knowledge — or just: “something more” — which life’s blows will grant to those who live long, or those who outlive others. Every time I hear a church bell at dawn or dusk, I think of that crack. I also think of it when I see and hear the small bells they play in the polyrhythmic music of the West Indies. I used to play those bells myself, in my brother’s band, sometimes. They are actually perfectly unessential, like crazy wings twirling around what really matters, backing the rhythms for sure, and also signaling a certain “outside” in the intention of the piece being played. The expression is all the more powerful when it allows in this “outside of the matter”, this superfluous sparkling.

My writing, each time a disappearance occurs — I know this too — will take on broken echoes, new resonances, murky densities, bottomless shadows, as though amplifying, just like the cracked bell does, what I am trying to express through what can no longer be said. It does not surprise me that music was your answer to the loss of your brother. In bereavement, I resort to little writings, crumpled texts, strange little “things of words” falling out of the alphabet, with sometimes no meaning at all, serving just to channel an emotion, draining it off who knows where. These small things — which I couldn’t possibly call “poems” — exist to simply encapsulate a painful moment that feels both “permanent” and “past”. In the unuttered, the unutterable, they sort of capture something that disappears and at the same time settles, deepens, expands in me, and eventually stays with me.

I was not exactly surprised, either, to find myself dealing with grief in this way. This is something I had identified in what our ancestors created in times of slavery. They were creating art in the midst of death, creating within death, creating in spite of death — thus increasing tenfold the vital incandescence of their works. These work songs, blues, gospels, New Orleans’ funeral marches, improvised sessions of music, as “decomposed” as they are “composed” — this indomitable musical creativity that the word “jazz” tries to convey — have always strike me as being sort of sailing on surges of both pain and hope, turning them into strength. This music has long taught us how all creation is this inextricable web of light and shadow, and that those who have suffered, those whose life-trees were ripped of so many branches, actually hold the power of great cracked bells — the ones that dusk listens to, the ones that dawn greets.

In his “Song of the Poorly-Loved”, Guillaume Apollinaire, another master of sorrows, moaned this:

… I who know lays made for queens
The sad strains of my days
Hymns slaves made to the moray
The ballad of the poorly-loved
And songs for the sirens

Love’s dead I’m trembling for it…*

From deep within a grieving creative being, loss will stir up ancient chants, laments, hymns, ritornellos and romances. Surely they will tremble, for this is new energy offering both muddy ground and brightness of sky. Where love springs, where love falters, its waves point us to vast landscapes and extraordinary possibilities. You are so right, there, to describe this as a transcendence of “knowledge”. We are constantly born and reborn throughout the mapping of our failings, throughout the open bibles of our losses and loves. How depleted we would be without the darkness and the suffering, which polish in us the simple virtue of loving!

Brother, December has already set in. It is a time of rain and cool breezes, over here. The sky retains the blue of dry seasons, but a munificent moistness surrounds us, making everything shine. At night, the glow from streetlamps and Christmas lights multiplies in drops of rain and shimmering dew. December nights are the most beautiful of all nights. They hold the still vivid memory of a past year, as well as the anticipated flavor of possibilities budding at the barely sketched lips of a new year.

Take good care of yourself, take good care of everything.
Patrick

* Translated by Jack Hayes © 2010

lettre 4 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 18. 12. 2021

Patrick, cher frère,

Me voilà de nouveau sur les rails. Désolé pour les tristes tonalités de ma précédente lettre. En me remémorant ces anciennes disparitions, j’ai été décontenancé. Et cette circonstance a trouvé le champ libre pour réhydrater quelques vieilles larmes déjà sèches, mais certes pas oubliées. Plus tard, j’ai tué le temps en regardant la télévision. Frank Sinatra et Dean Martin ont surgi au milieu de nulle part, pour se moquer de Sammy Davis Jr, suivis de Bing Crosby entonnant le Noël des Blancs avant de s’essayer à chanter comme Louis Armstrong. Puis une série dramatique réalisée pour la télévision nord-américaine en 1977. Basée sur le livre d’Alex Haleys, Roots, publié l’année précédente, comme tu dois le savoir : soit la version hollywoodienne de l’histoire des Noirs. L’histoire d’une lignée noire, d’Afrique en Amérique. À travers les lentilles de producteurs blancs, mais en utilisant des acteurs et des actrices noirs. Roots a néanmoins fait ressortir la fierté et la colère des Noirs, simultanément. Tout en effaçant toute culpabilité de la conscience de l’Amérique blanche, tant la question raciale, comme tu le sais aussi, est loin d’être résolue. La question est bien de savoir ce qui se passera à l’avenir. Et nous y réfléchissons alors qu’il s’agit en fait du moment présent. Oui, pensez à laisser de l’air pur et de l’eau potable pour celles et ceux qui ne sont pas encore nés. Même les racistes et les haineux ont besoin d’air pur et d’eau potable. Il est préférable de vivre que de parler de philosophie de la vie. Les réponses se trouvent dans les offrandes – des choses comme le don, la gentillesse, la découverte, et l’art d’aider les gens. Et l’estime, le respect pour tous les êtres humains : cette chanson chante avec éclat, c’est elle qui illumine les cieux sombres.

J’ai reçu ton livre dans le courrier hier*, il semble puissant et poignant. J’ai hâte de le lire. Aujourd’hui, c’est samedi, jour de musique à la maison : nous écoutons de la musique pendant que nous travaillons à nettoyer et à nous organiser pour les vacances.

Pour toi, deux courts extraits des notes de pochette de mon disque…

1) Crumbling in the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller’s Stale Cake (« Le gâteau rassis de Fraulein Miller s’effrite dans l’ombre »)
Fraulein Miller possédait environ 200 esclaves en Caroline du Sud. La légende dit qu’elle fut un maître bienveillant, qui gardait de temps en temps des morceaux de gâteau rassis pour les esclaves. C’était une chose dont elle était très fière. Un jour, plusieurs esclaves sont entrés dans la cuisine et ont volé de grands couteaux. Ils avaient décidé d’égorger les surveillants et de s’échapper. Au moment crucial, juste avant que le sang ne coule, ils ont entendu le son d’un instrument à cordes graves, une contrebasse jouée à l’archet ; cette musique était comme une danse, sauf qu’on ne pouvait pas danser dessus sans l’écouter, et on ne pouvait pas l’écouter sans la ressentir. Ces Africains déplacés et torturés ont tendu leurs bras, ils les ont entrelacés comme les branches d’un arbre. Unis comme une seule voix, ils ont regardé Fraulein Miller dans les yeux, se sont retournés, et ils ont quitté la plantation, ils ont disparu à l’horizon pour ne plus jamais être revus.

2) Winning Wars (« Gagner des guerres »)
Nous n’avons pas gagné la guerre civile, la Première Guerre mondiale, la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Nous n’avons pas gagné la guerre de Corée, ni le conflit au Vietnam. Nous ne l’emporterons pas non plus après les invasions de l’Irak ou de l’Afghanistan. Comment pouvons-nous appeler victoire le fait de tuer des millions et des millions d’êtres humains ? Les survivants restent mutilés, estropiés, marqués émotionnellement. Les vainqueurs aussi sont mutilés, deviennent des morts-vivants. À ce jour, aucun mort n’est jamais revenu à la vie en tuant quelqu’un.

Paix et sincérité,
William

* « L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse », de Patrick Chamoiseau (traduction anglaise de Linda Coverdale)

letter 5 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 27. 12. 2021

My dear William,

We all go through times when old things come back to haunt us, popping out of some pit of our mind, overwhelming us with what we thought forgotten, or outgrown.

I have always considered memory as a kind of vast mapping of our sensitive being, some landscape directly shaped by the ventures of our heart, and which dwells within us as much as we dwell within it. Such a landscape does not belong to the conscious areas of our mind, but to that place in us where our “individual subconscious” as well as our “collective subconscious” are intertwined. I have also always reckoned that these other parts of the mind — our “imagination” (which is our ability to personally rearrange reality’s data) and our “imaginative world” (which nourishes all our choices, actions, fears and renouncements) — are fed by that particular landscape of our sensitive being, and hence, the more extensive and intense this landscape develops in us — the more it clings to the remains of days gone by, the more preserved these remnants of our small disasters, sorrows, painful floods and droughts, the more loaded with the great breathing of happiness or the froth of small joys — the more powerful that imagination and imaginative world of ours will be.

When I write (and I do believe that might be true for you too, as you create music), this mapping of my sensitive being begins to shimmer, and eventually it emerges, not as something I would be conscious of (there can’t be any conscious knowledge of anything in the very act of creating) but at the junction of all the different sensitive areas of my mind and body. In fact, I write with everything that I have experienced in the most intense manner, and with what I sense — or believe I sense — that life is. All arts, without exception, thus feed the mapping of our sensitive being; to spend time among works of art is, indeed, to experience life to an additional degree — that is, to experience in the fullest sense of the term; to welcome forms of ineffable knowledge that will feed us as much as all other forms of knowledge. And in the miraculous rainbow of all arts, I set apart the vibration of music, this powerful vibration, which in my mind adjoins that of writing, in the sense that every ecosystem of sound, above all, is language. Brother, I believe that music “knows” what existed before anything was even speakable, before the very advent of languages; music constitutes a perception of reality that languages also possess, hidden within, and this is what writers also seek, desperately trying to retrieve, in their writing, something that exists beyond all alphabets, beyond language itself. Writing, really, has nothing to do with saying — to write is to make language.

We say that we “play” music. I wish the same could be said of literature: “to play writing”! The very idea of playing is fundamental; it says something of that joy, elation, thrill, escape, inspiration, break and distortion, all of which inhere to the creative gesture — that breaking loose — a bit like those engines that go off the rails because something is working loose in the cogs, the engine “playing” up… To create, fundamentally, is to “play”.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong… These names you’ve mentioned have awaken memories of remote indulgences of my childhood, old adolescent fascinations. And such pride, too. The people of my generation were rediscovering their blackness, in those years, and they were rediscovering it with as much happiness as amazement. At that time, we existed carrying in us an Africa that had been long repressed, in almost absolute denial of our negro phenotype. To break free of these self-negations, to overcome them, was not an easy thing. For me, it took all the poetry of the Negritude movement, and the Black Panther movements, and meditating on having recourse to violence or to non-violence, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and of course the anti-colonialist struggles everywhere, which all shaped the horizon of my teenage years and first years of political activism.

But the truth is, the whole world was feeding on those famous figures. Even the white racists cherished them. The power of the US, their imposing one single model of development — their own — on the entire world, is not just a result of their great economic power. It is also, and specifically, a result of their great ability to spread their cultural productions all around. That country has flooded the world with its own particular tastes and aesthetic explorations, and this has resulted — albeit with all the sterile copycats and lobotomizing mimicries — in original creations, thus revitalizing many damaged sensitivities. I believe that this overwhelming strength of the US, at the time, resided in their cultural productions, which massively fed on various sensitive experiences (again, what I call the “mapping of our sensitive beings”), and which gave them an immediate ability to reflect the world in the making of what it was to become — by “sensitive experiences”, I mean the creative intensities rising from the cultural identities of American Natives, from the Negro condition, from the migrant experiences, all these altogether incessantly nourishing the secret soul of that dominant economic monstrosity called the US. The United States’ cultural creativity has far surpassed, and for a long time, that moral poverty, that ethical indigence, on which their power has been resting. The best example of this is Faulkner who, immersed in the most racist backward darkness of Dixieland, has produced some of most significant pages of literature of the 20th century.

The image of the “stale cake”, which the paternalistic slave owner keeps as a favor for her slaves — I find that quite interesting. It may mean that what remains irreducibly human in us (on that map of our own sensitive being) can take any kind of shape, including that of a “stale cake”. And it doesn’t surprise me, either, that those slaves about to escape the plantation were reminisced of their own humanity by simply listening to a few notes of music. Their decision to run away being already a rebirth to their own human selves, that rebirth is what eventually endowed each note of music played and heard — with the power of sun.

Take good care of yourself, take good care of your music.

Patrick

lettre 5 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 11. 01. 2022

Cher Patrick, mon frère, en ce 11 janvier,

J’espère que tu as passé d’excellentes vacances. D’habitude, je reçois à cette occasion une douzaine de personnes, mais cette année, il n’y avait que la famille la plus proche. Ma femme Patricia, ma fille Miriam et mon fils Isaiah. Et deux invités, Richard et Roberta Berger ; des mets et des boissons, des débats politiques et des muses philosophiques. Isaiah fut le fer de lance des discussions, et même si les choses allèrent plutôt loin, nous gardâmes le cap, avec des points de vue opposés. Une parfaite soirée qui se termina avec la mousse au chocolat faite maison de Patricia. La semaine suivante, nous sommes allés rendre visite à des amis dans le Vermont. Nous sommes revenus la veille de la nouvelle année. Maintenant, tout est à nouveau en place et nous tambourinons, nous courons à droite et à gauche, nous avançons, nous faisons halte et nous sautons. Ce que nous essayons de communiquer a déjà été dit. La vérité et l’amour peuvent être déformés et utilisés à des fins nuisibles. Celles et ceux qui savent et qui sont pénétrés de l’esprit doivent crier depuis les toits des Chants mémorables, pleins de douleur et de chagrin, trempés dans le cri de l’auto-éclaircissement. Afin que ces chants deviennent des lanternes pour celles et ceux qui ne peuvent pas voir. Ce qu’ils et elles veulent, c’est être heureux et dans un bon jour. Être en paix avec leur monde. Le révolutionnaire dit qu’il ne s’agit pas d’être en paix. Il s’agit d’agir et de parler haut ! Et de faire face aux gangsters qui dirigent le monde pour l’arrêter. Arrêtez les guerres, les meurtres, les lavages de cerveau. FAITES QUELQUE CHOSE QUI RENDRA TOUT LE MONDE HEUREUX, ET PAS VOUS SEULEMENT. Lorsqu’une corruption a été démantelée, une autre fait surface. Celles et ceux qui sont enracinés dans le péché continueront à l’être. Pouvons-nous accélérer le processus de changement ?

Je ne sais pas ce qui est urgent. L’éducation se gargarise de mensonges qui se multiplient à mesure que le temps avance. Les êtres spirituels veulent vivre en harmonie avec la planète, avec les étoiles, avec le mouvement. Des hommes et des femmes du Texas, de l’Oklahoma, de l’Arkansas, de Chine, de Corée, d’Argentine. Celles et ceux qui jouent du saxophone, de la batterie et des instruments à cordes. Qui chantent, dansent, écrivent des poèmes et des pièces de théâtre. Qui changeront le monde dans lequel nous vivons avec une activité motivée par le désir de trouver une réponse. Il est temps d’éteindre le cerveau. Temps de croire à la première impulsion qui vous est venue. Ressentir cette croyance, cette foi en l’inconnu. Ayez confiance, aventurez-vous sans carte, soyez déterminés à aimer tous les êtres humains, et parce que vous les aimez, vous provoquerez une révolution à chaque instant ; vous ne laisserez pas les tyrans et les dictateurs gagner. Pas seulement pour mes enfants, mais pour tous les enfants. Celles et ceux qui sont déjà nés, celles et ceux qui attendent d’entrer dans le monde. Je pense que tous les courants se jetteront dans une large rivière qui nous ramènera tous à la maison. Quand nous arriverons, nous serons différents. Je ne sais pas ce que nous serons. Je ne sais pas si j’ai besoin de le savoir.

Je suis sûr que cela revient à l’idée d’Accepter le mystère, mais jamais le statu quo.

Tout le meilleur,
William

letter 5 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 20. 01. 2022

Brother,
My dear William,
Precious is to me the distinction that you make between “the revolutionaries” who actually want to change things and transform the world, and “the spiritual beings” who, as solar models of human elevation, and through their “love” for others, enable us to imagine another world.

Love truly is the foundation.

The word is ever present in our ancient human spiritual wisdoms but has completely disappeared from contemporary political discourses, not only because they are essentially economic in nature, but above all because they no longer include any knowledge of what “human” means. The way I see it, what’s essentially human in us is precisely that part of existence that no longer belongs to the realm of basic needs for attacking, defending, eating, drinking, survival in general — all things governed by our reptilian brain. The way I see it, the most essential part of our humanity is to be found in its poetic dimension: friendship, passion, sharing, giving, solidarity, exchange, dancing, singing, joy, laughter, celebration, creativity, care for the other, a horizontal relationship to all living presences… the list is endless! It is the poetic part of a human life that makes that very life worth living — making it multiple, extensive and intense. It is the poetic part of us that makes us happy.

And all of this poetic art of existence can fit in one single word: “love”. I have written an entire novel about this. Biblique des derniers gestes. It tells the story of an old anti-colonialist activist, one of those “revolutionaries” you mention, a man who, at the very end of his life, finds himself forced to acknowledge that he has failed. Our man will spend his long slow death recalling all the moments in which he felt overwhelmed by love, whether this impulse to love came from passion, or compassion or some refusal of injustice. As he gathers in mind all those fleeting moments, which until then had remained scattered in memory, he feels filled with what I have named “Grand Love”. And with a final breath of this humble plenitude that he has just discovered deep inside of him, he dies. So, yes, I agree with you on this: love nourishes our impulses towards one another, and also the impulse we need for supporting great causes. My feeling is that perhaps we should not only call “love” the feelings of passion we experience, or the compassion we feel for those who suffer, or even our vigilant care for the living, starting with ourselves… I believe that love truly is all of these things, but it is also something else, something just as essential that I have found in the great works of human creativity.

What I find most moving, in the great literary works I was lucky enough to keep company with (and equally with great fine art or visual artworks, or major works of music), is that they each unfurl a wave of powerful dimension, which is nothing but love. Artists, in the practice of their art, do develop a certain appetite, a care, an attention, an embrace of all human things, all living things, all unthinkable things. This deep availability of an entire body, of an entire mind, both concentrating on matter and form, is the very energy of love. I wonder if any great art, in any field whatsoever, could ever originate from anything other than such a predisposition of both body and mind entirely set in creative motion… I believe that, in order for us to fight this capitalist force that enslaves human lives, and reifies living things, and threatens the planet, we do need “revolutionary minds”, of course, and “spiritual beings”, of course, but we also need creative forces, and by that I mean as many creative minds as possible! Because creativity is that wave of love, entering matter, sculpting forms, triggering forces within our minds and within the very substance of the world! To keep company with a work of art, to read, to listen to great music, will lift even the spirits most damaged by the urgency of survival. The most mundane of existences, bustling about trying to simply make it through life, will always find in such works the impulse of a new opening, of an acute care for the living presences around. All creativity is an expression of love. And all creativity, first and foremost, truly opens us to its own mystery.

This is why, dear William, I believe we need more literature, more music, more dancing, many more unprecedented art forms, and languages, visual and hearing thrills, more exhilaration of the senses, more of all these things that carry our existences forth into the swirls of Beauty…

Global capitalism has obviously spotted the value of artistic expressions. There exists a form of “cultural capitalism”, a “market of cultural consumption”, in which we experience this illusion of actually “nourishing” ourselves with art so as to actually “resist” capitalism itself. But the remarkable thing, in these quasi-industrial productions and their temples of mechanical reproduction, is that you no longer feel love overflowing from them. They do not pass anything on to you — no impulse, no overwhelming magnitude, nothing but the vain pleasure of mass consumption! Not a single drop of love, not even a shiver of soul! We need new cultural policies to sweep all of that away, we need to find new and true artistic surges again, true creativity — real aesthetic contacts, in which true “encounters” occur. When such an “encounter” occurs, I believe that is when the wave of love unfurls, that is when it is passed on from the creative mind to the contemplating mind, and hence, that is when the wave can feed our amplified sensitivities, and then it spreads, just like the wide river of your letter, into the very matter of the world.

Brother, the virus has pervaded our existences — here, we may no longer organize large beautiful family and friend gatherings; this a time of slow living that also enables us to escape the deadly “slack periods” of capitalist consumption. This slowing down has its advantages. I try to make writing out of it.

Take good care of your creation.

Yours,
Patrick

lettre 6 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York City, USA, 26. 01. 2022

Cher Patrick,

Nous sommes sur la même longueur d’onde, à découper les choses dans le même tissu et à développer ces choses en fonction de notre perception de la vie. En regardant par la fenêtre, je vois des oiseaux et je vois le ciel, et je rêve de montagnes tout le temps. En réalité, il y a de grands immeubles, des immeubles horribles occupés par des gens, des millionnaires et des milliardaires, qui prennent des décisions concertées pour détruire le monde.

Oui, la solution est d’ignorer les vents gris qui soufflent sur ces villes ; ce n’est qu’une idée. Puis j’entends que des gens sont tués chaque semaine à coups d’armes à feu dans les rues de New York, du Bronx, de Brooklyn, du Queens et de Staten Island. Des armes à feu remontant continuellement du Sud par tous les canaux. Directement dans les mains d’individus qui ne devraient pas être autorisés à les posséder. Qui a besoin d’un pistolet ou d’un fusil dans une ville moderne ? Nous avons plutôt besoin de livres, d’art et de musique, comme tu l’as établi. Nous avons également besoin d’être éveillés aux règles et aux méthodes de la compassion. L’idée centrale est que la société tout entière doit apprendre comment vivre. Certains font cet effort, d’autres pas. Celles et ceux qui savent ce qu’est le swing, à la manière la plus authentique de Duke Ellington, continueront à produire cet effort, sauf qu’ils ajouteront au swing le silence et les techniques étendues, qui sont des techniques humaines remontant aux work songs et aux field hollers. Qui sont des visions du monde intemporelles et éternelles. L’idée même d’individualité vit à l’intérieur des fleurs, et elle est disponible à toutes celles et ceux qui sont prêts à résister à cette thérapie de groupe appelée « être un Américain ». Cette réflexion ne fait que commencer et devrait faire partie de tout programme d’études. C’est celle que tu mènes, et je suis sûr que tu continueras à te montrer créatif. « L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse » est une belle façon d’aborder la triste question de l’esclavage. Car la question la plus déterminante reste de savoir si celles et ceux qui asservissent les gens comprendront un jour ? M’est avis que le vieil esclave s’en moque… Il ne s’intéresse qu’à la liberté. Mais a-t-il gagné ? Je dis que oui, et je dis que non. La vie est profonde. Je crois sincèrement que les opprimés, parce qu’ils peuvent voir, ont peut-être une plus grande responsabilité. Nous portons des lanternes allumées dans l’obscurité ; j’ai beaucoup apprécié ton livre.

Tout le meilleur,
William

letter 7 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 31. 01. 2022

Dear William,

Here on the small island of Martinique, shootings and murders are just as frequent. We live, as the rest of the world, under the yoke of a neoliberal system which, adding to the dreadful values it promotes (consumerism, competition, profit at any cost, ecocidal growth), leads to situations of extreme precariousness across all layers of society. An illicit drug market has taken root among the most uncared-for portions of the population. This drug trafficking is a means of survival for entire families, resulting in coalitions of small local “gangs” organizing their own weaponized networks and shooting at each other.

The truth is, public policies for culture and the arts do not reach these people anymore; most of what is labelled “culture” is now dished out by institutions and events which no longer care to be welcoming places for “the people”, by which I mean places that will seem appealing to the very people who have lost all impulse to desire, those whose “desire”, essentially, has been ripped away, or has receded away, from them.

I was a social worker for quite some time, I got to know these people from up close, and there would be so much to tell about them. But what I found most surprising is that these ersatz gangs do listen to music, urban music, blasts of sounds that serve to intensify both their sense of separateness and some sort of dark resentment. As they listen to their music, they re-humanize themselves without having to socialize; society as a whole being perceived by them as some entity that they haven’t been authorized to take part in, or that is unenviable, or that remains out of reach. Oftentimes I have thought that this might be a doorway to their wounded imaginary worlds: music, singing, an understanding of the world conveyed by the language of sounds, which happens to exceed all languages; by the singing voice, telling us nothing, but filling us with sensations, visions and inexpressible horizons.

It is true, too, that they are not the only ones being uncared for. All of us are, in these neoliberal societies of ours, and so we do have a lot to learn again. You say “compassion”, and I agree: that is the door through which we can leave our own selves and start moving towards the Other. That is the fundamental step. The self-centeredness that has been instilled into us has closed the door to the possibility of such a movement. It keeps us shut inside ourselves, locked inside our own personal buying power and the mechanics of our petty private self-interests. To open that door — “each one of us towards all of us”, and “all of us towards each one of us” — should be the core principle of any public policy for culture and the arts today, of any artistic creation for that matter, whatever the field.

The slave old man in my book, as he sets out to walk towards self-emancipation, does not exactly leave the plantation, perhaps the important thing is not there, for we know of slaves running off and yet remaining slaves inside; my man, first and foremost, hurls himself out of himself, out of what they’ve made of him, out of all the dead parts in him. Whether he won or lost doesn’t matter, what matters is that he tried, thus positing his own gesture at the very principle of creation, for he is on the side of Beauty — not death nor oppression, not submission nor hatred or revenge, but Beauty. The colonialists, the genocide perpetrators, those who have inflicted so much harm on the living, they have this much in common: they know nothing of Beauty, and only envision themselves without it! 

I like your idea that there are things, precious to us, living inside flowers. These things also live in the songs of birds, in the arabesques of butterflies, in the placidity of tall trees… Nature is very present in us, and contemplating it awakens us to inner spaces filled with fresh air and breathing. But the world of modern cities now inhabits our imaginations. Some of those big city landscapes are fascinating. We are, as yet, unable to determine what it is that they rouse in us, because we are still so accustomed to those feelings that we get from contemplating nature. But look, brother, if we think about it, contemporary music, literature, the most fascinating artworks of our times are essentially urban. We are urban people, henceforth this is how we think, and how we create.

The oppressed, they carry a light in the dark indeed. They feel, they experience and they see things that the oppressors, the victors generally, do not see. They feel in the widest degree. But perhaps the most important thing is not that lantern they carry, and the light it shines. The most important thing is probably that they’ve measured and constantly keep in mind — the thickness of the shadows! They know we won’t, ever, rid ourselves of them, and that we simply must prevent them from prevailing…

Be well, be your own music. 

Patrick

lettre 7 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

Berlin, Germany, 16. 02. 2022

Cher Patrick,

Comment vas-tu ce matin ? Patricia et moi venons d’arriver à Berlin, où nous allons donner un concert à Chemnitz, en Allemagne de l’Est, ou peut-être qu’il n’y a plus d’Est, juste l’Allemagne. Quoi qu’il en soit, nous sommes là. Et demain nous irons à Paris. Je dois dire que je perds un peu la tête. Je ne sais pas si c’est ça ou si c’est le manque de sommeil depuis tant d’années. J’ai eu 70 ans. Qui sait ? Je suis toujours en vie et aujourd’hui est un nouveau jour. Depuis mon enfance, pour une raison ou pour une autre, ma philosophie a toujours été que, pour que la vie soit juste, on ne pouvait se contenter d’une unique voie d’illumination. On pouvait apprendre de nos aînés qui étaient tombés dans le piège à ours et qui nous avaient enseigné comment éviter certaines choses, afin de ne pas commettre les mêmes erreurs. Il existait ce que l’on pourrait appeler des règles universelles. Il n’est pas avisé de laisser sa main sur le feu ou de sauter dans l’océan alors que les requins ont faim et tournent en rond. Et pourtant, je suis sûr que quelques personnes savent marcher sur des charbons ardents ou peuvent avaler du feu. En général, on apprend qu’il ne s’agit pas du monde en tant que tel, mais de l’individu qui essaie de comprendre où et comment avancer d’un pas. Quelqu’un peut concevoir une philosophie et partir à la découverte du monde, ou s’asseoir sous un arbre et penser que toute la sagesse et toute la connaissance vont lui tomber sur la tête. Puis la paranoïa s’installe : « le Syndrome Post-traumatique de l’Esclave ». Il y a cette méfiance à l’égard de tout ce que vous croyez être blanc.

Sans qu’on le sache vraiment, la moitié des choses que l’on croit avoir été inventées par les Européens ont également été trouvées et développées par des Africains ou par des Chinois ou par quelqu’un d’autre, bien avant. D’où la nécessité de l’éducation, quels sont les faits et les chiffres, qui a fait quoi avec qui, quand, où. Quelqu’un peut tout savoir des rouages de l’histoire de la Russie, par exemple, puis son voisin qui n’a pas de quoi manger frappe à sa porte et lui demande de l’aide, et il ne sait pas quoi faire. La réponse est de plonger à l’intérieur de soi pour y activer ce avec quoi nous sommes nés, pour activer et nourrir l’âme – à chaque instant.

Elle est là, j’en suis sûr aussi. Asseyez-vous sous un arbre ou sur le toit d’une véranda – les rues de New York, de Paris ou de Dubaï doivent être dans le ciel. Oui, ça doit être dans le ciel, car où il y a du ciel, il y a de l’espoir. Le ciel est à l’intérieur de chacun, il faut être aveugle pour ne pas le sentir. Nous sommes l’autel. Nous sommes l’université. Les arbres et la forêt sont distincts mais ne font qu’un. Combien de temps cela prend-il ? Pour gravir la montagne quand vous avez peur des hauteurs.

Vous finissez par penser que ce que vous cherchez doit se trouver au niveau du sol. Mais le sol est une autre sorte de ciel. Les oiseaux se posent et s’envolent. La chute des feuilles, c’est peut-être dû à la gravité. J’enquête toujours, mais le temps est précieux, et je vais peut-être devoir choisir. Je pense que l’impulsion initiale que, enfants, nous avons eue, continue de résonner.

William

letter 8 : Patrick Chamoiseau to William Parker

Le Lamentin, Martinique, 17. 02. 2022

Dear William, 

This pandemic would not let me meet up with you at the Paris concert. It’s a shame. Even so, I believe our encounter did happen, and nothing can take it away from us. It took place in that “sky” we all carry inside, as you beautifully put it. That inner sky, evidently, is not made up of any of our knowledge or academic skills; merely, it is our quality as humans. To acknowledge this, to actually understand what it means, is not that obvious a matter. 

The highest compliment I can pay to someone is to call them a “human being”. Not in reference to Western humanism, which has cut itself off from the living world and has enslaved it; nor the pity or charity-filled humanism embedded in religious beliefs; nor the easy clean conscience one might get out of perfunctory “values” likely to turn out deadly… Rather, I mean some sort of deep inner injunction, unostentatious, naturally triggering in us everything we deem precious: namely, the care for the Other — anything that is Other, whether human or non-human — the fulfillment of which unimaginable without the fulfillment of the Other. A bit like the African “Ubuntu”. 

I have always endeavoured not to search for “proofs of humanity” outside of myself. It is certainly worthwhile to dismantle the Western way of thinking that weighs upon the world and reduces it to its sole vision, its sole performance. This is a task that must be tackled. However, no list of negro or non-white geniuses will ever serve to convince me of my own humanity. I am aware of it, and need no confirmation whatsoever. Anything human is capable of the worst and the best, equally. “The worst” is not a prerogative of the West, nor is “the best” a virtue of its victims. Our matter of great urgency is to fight, in the most human manner, against the inhumanity that exists within each of us. And to fight against the inhumanity that exists all around us — against the policies and ideologies that have ploughed their furrows deep into the matter of the world, digging the many “trails of suffering and tears” that your concert will conjure up. These are the trails on which we have shed our tears; the trails on which a number of people (ourselves included) have learned about humanity through the extremities of suffering and tears, therefore gaining access to a greater sky, that very sky within us, inclining us to benevolences. The case of the Western world makes for a precious counter-example; it is up to us, in full humanity, to learn the lesson of that crime. 

You are right, ground is another kind of sky. If we seek to experience a particular degree of vibration in life (surely this is the case with music), then we start feeling, with each and every thing, a sense of infinity opening up inside of us, as intensely as it simultaneously opens itself up to all the things that we ever ponder. Towards the end of his life, the West Indian poet Saint John Perse, a descendant of an old lineage of slavers, wrote this: Great age, here we are. Take measure of the heart of man. I have always liked that line. First of all because it pushes “great age” outside of what we actually are, making it clear that it cannot sum up our lives, nor can it sum up our twilight years for that matter, or even our becoming. The poet addresses “great age” as something that exists outside of himself, inviting it to simply contemplate what lies beyond — beyond its own reach: the quality of man, the heart of man, the ability to make heaven out of everything, to see heaven in everything… In my books, I call this “existing in a poetic state”. 

Brother, when you are on stage playing music, don’t forget that sounds become words, just as words become sounds; and that, uplifted by the full resonance of the heart, a music is a text, a concert unfolds into a vast poem forged in the language that we carry inside, larger than we are, a language that knows, better than we do, what is to be said. 

I will be there, with you, playing under the same sky, saying alongside…

Looking forward to seeing you, someday, in brotherhood. 

Patrick

lettre 8 : William Parker à Patrick Chamoiseau

New York, USA, 01. 03. 2022 

Cher Patrick, mon frère,

Comment vas-tu ? Nous sommes de retour de ce bref mais beau voyage à Paris. Tout le monde est encore en ébullition, comme le diraient les abeilles. J’espère y revenir un jour, et ce serait formidable aussi d’aller en Martinique. J’ai la sensation que nos communications m’ont conduit sur un autre chemin d’illumination. Les États-Unis sont une telle déception pour moi. Suis-je anti-américain ? Non, je suis pour tous les êtres humains, sauf ceux qui envahissent l’Ukraine. Ceux qui assassinent, qui violent et qui pillent les villages. Ces gens normaux le lundi qui se transforment en soldats le mardi – et le mercredi, il y a des veuves et il y a des orphelins. Ces soldats qui étaient des êtres humains sont maintenant des robots et ils exécutent les ordres donnés par des maniaques triplement déments. Mais la correspondance entre Patrick et William fut une excellente communication. Les premiers pas se font toujours dans une zone inconnue.

La confiance : notre ami Alexandre guide et inspire la communauté. Au fil des années, il a toujours été une balise pour les idées. Un penseur et un philosophe repoussant les frontières de l’espace-temps. Vive les modes spirituels qui résonnent depuis l’église-de-soi ! L’église de toutes les nations pour écouter et pour sentir le lever du soleil. Qu’est-ce que cela fait ? L’expérience du soleil se levant en Martinique ou se levant dans le South Bronx ? Cela devrait faire comme un rêve. Imagine un rêve quotidien que nous pourrions tous partager et qui serait néanmoins propre à chaque être humain. Un jeune enfant dit : « Je ne sais rien de cette haine, seulement ce que j’ai appris en achetant du Coca-Cola. Je ne veux pas haïr ou chercher de l’or. » Je voudrais formuler une nouvelle forme d’histoire appelée vérité universelle – à partager par tous. Depuis mon retour de Paris, j’ai commencé mes sept semaines d’enseignement au Bennington College, j’y donne cinq cours. Music Labo I sur la composition spontanée pour les débutants. Music Lab II pour les musiciens plus avancés. Mais aussi, The Architecture Of Black music et Deep listening : The Music Of William Parker. Mon cours du mardi s’intitule : Imagination, créativité, esthétique : la musique comme métaphore de tout ce qui est beau. Nous avons discuté l’Ion, le dialogue de Platon : est-ce que la vertu est quelque chose qui s’apprend, ou vient-elle grâce à la divination ? Qui plus est, tout ça soulève l’idée de l’énergie cinétique. La muse créative pour cette classe, ce fut Frank Lowe : j’ai parlé de ma rencontre avec lui, alors qu’il se rendait en studio avec Don Cherry, pour enregistrer la musique du film La Montagne sacrée d’Alejandro Jodorowsky. Puis j’ai montré le film. Le devoir à la maison était de définir la magie, la justice, la vérité, la vertu, et d’examiner l’idée même de démocratie. Peut-elle fonctionner tant que la haine existe ? Le racisme, la cupidité, l’aveuglement dans les actions, tout ça vient de la haine.

Le cercle nous ramène toujours à l’amour, qui semble être la clé de tout. Le super capitaliste peut assumer de dire désormais qu’il aime faire de l’argent plus qu’il ne se soucie des gens. Ce conflit ou cette bataille entre le bien et le mal semble devoir être sans fin. Je t’ai parlé de Little Huey, qui vivait dans le South Bronx. Il voulait être poète. Les aînés autour de lui ont réagi : « Tu veux dire que tu veux travailler à la Poste ? ». Huey a répondu : « Non, je veux être un PO-ÈTE, pas un POS-TIER, mais un POÈTE. » C’est ainsi qu’est né le LITTLE HUEY CREATIVE MUSIC ORCHESTRA. Je suis en train de préparer l’orchestre pour une résidence à New York. J’attends le printemps avec impatience.

Merci Patrick pour tes grandes oreilles et tes mots magnifiques.
Tout le meilleur,
William