Redefining Democracy in America
Keith Antar Mason & Jacki Apple
Redefining Democracy in America Part 6: A Leap of Faith (1992) (excerpts)
Written and performed by Jacki Apple and Keith Antar Mason
In post-riot 1992 Los Angeles, a white woman (Jacki Apple) and a Black man (Keith Antar Mason), born in America in the middle of the twentieth century on opposite sides of the racial dividing line, take an imaginary journey on a ghost train traveling through the fault lines between official history, memory, and experience in the place where our dreams are born and die.
I was born in America in the middle of the 20th century,
into the first generation to grow up with the Bomb and TV,
and the last generation to believe in the future.
I remember when Stalin died.
And when they executed the Rosenbergs.
I remember in exact and vivid detail the day JFK was assassinated,
and Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.
I remember the day John Lennon was shot.
Then I stopped remembering.
Until now, that is.
I was born in America in the middle of the 20th century.
I remember asking at a drive-in movie
‘why are soldiers dying in Vietnam?’
And my mother’s eyes were the only answer.
There was no answer.
I remember people yelling “Free Angela Davis”
and asking for my allowance at the same time
to buy some comic books.
And my father gives me ten dollars more
to give to this man collecting to free Angela Davis.
We planned to meet at exactly noon on the 29th of February at the Library of Congress. It seemed fitting to choose the leap year day, that day that drops in every four years in the presidential election year, a day between times, which was what we were after. That chasm in the American consciousness, like a railway line down the center of a town. On the east side it is already 12:30, while on the west side it is still only 11:30. And in between, in the time between time zones, all of the past and all of the future rush past each other in opposite directions. You can feel that ghost train go past, the wind whipping through your soul. And you think in that fleeting second, maybe if you could just get on it you could find the answers to the way another America could be dreamed, and how we could get there.
(train sound, wind) ...
1992. The year that split itself open, cracking like an egg that's been sat on long past its term. In the fourth month of 1992, on the 29th day, everyone saw the ghost train go by. And everyone began to remember again.
(train whistle disappears into distance)
So we took that day to peer into the space between times, born as we each were on opposite sides of the dividing line, looking for the route to a better future. “But first you got to go back to where it went wrong,” he said. And an unknown finger marked the question on a misted window --- When was it right?
(baby crying)
I was born in America in the middle of the 20th century.
In a country where anyone could be reborn,
with a new name, and without a history.
(So they say.)
Where the past could be shed like a dirty old coat,
left on the deck of the boat.
Unless of course your history is spelled out on your skin,
inherited from those whose passage was involuntary.
Unless of course you were here all the time,
and your history was simply taken from you,
and rewritten in the 20th century in the language of the silver screen,
recast in a mythology you do not recognize.
In America, only the very old, and the newly arrived
can remember where they came from,
while the young anxiously search for their mirror image
in the landscape of electronic dreams.
But who then recognizes themselves in the fleeting images of the present? Those flashing signs that say, 'You're only as good as what you own.'
I was born in America in the middle of the 20th century.
The razor slit opening in a crowded room filled with affirmative action
led to a mirror filled room of dwindling resources, so close
stealing from empty reflections on a crowded mountain top.
Ain’t that much space in the promised land.
Dwindling resources of a great society
from bullet assassination to bullet assassination,
bullet trains coming to personal termination
reflecting empty images, so close.
And blood-filled by empty images in a book.
Nobody thinks in this nation!
So children learn to love guns, and bullets raised them with no names,
And flesh means nothing. And bones mean nothing.
All the heroes are dead. And in the last decade of the 20th century
no one can imagine it any other way.
I remember how no one talked about Hiroshima.
And the color photos in the Life magazine that predicted World War III.
I remember the National Guard at Little Rock High School.
The dogs and hoses in Birmingham,
The flash of Jack Ruby's gun....
After everyone stopped remembering, death stopped being real.
Then violence became our pornography.
And when the train went past, no one saw it.
And it didn't make a sound.
(very low level bass tones growing in intensity)
Until the vibrations from the sound that no one heard
cracked the foundations and the walls came tumbling down,
(bells peeling)
until the record books were reopened and the pitch of lies and betrayals
shattered the windows in the houses of those who hadn't been listening....
(baby crying)
those whose time is almost up,
those who thought the only time is the present time,
those who have waited too long for their time to come,
could feel the waves pounding in their chests
shaking them from their sleep.
(ghost voices — betrayed dreams)
He is wearing a long overcoat and dark glasses. It makes him more conspicuous, not less. The air is a pale yellowish gray, the way it is on most days. We are standing in the station, which isn't really a station, but a long black marble wall following the rise and fall. There are walls like this everywhere now.
(loud snoring)
On the train an old man is slumped in his seat, his chin sliding onto his chest. It rises and falls in rhythm with the rocking of the train. A thin line of spittle runs from his slack lips down the gray stubble on his jowls into his old school tie, as John P. Justice dozes....
(snoring continues)
John P. Justice does not see the mobs of people along the tracks shaking their fists at a train that no longer stops in their station.
The world is coming undone, like a sweater with a pulled thread, unraveling itself. And I imagine that piece of yarn like a strand of pure energy being pulled out into the universe and rolling itself into a new ball. That's what happens when no one can remember, and everyone stops dreaming.
The train becomes more and more crowded
as we stop at each of the walls, and light candles.
The one with the names of those who died defending their land
from the invaders.
The one with the names of those who died in slavery.
The one with the names of the young who died for the folly
of the men who governed them.
The one with the names of all the children killed by stray bullets
in the streets of the cities.
The one with the names of all the species whose extinction
we have caused.
(wind & train whistles)
I run my fingers over the names,..... as we wait for the ghost train in the time between
times...
somewhere between
the past and the future
somewhere between
freedom and authority
somewhere between
the myth of boundless space
and the reality of boundaries
somewhere between
the myth of unlimited resources
and the reality of deficits
somewhere between
the myth of individualism
and the loss of identity
somewhere between
the way we were told it was
and the way it turned out to be
where dreams are born....and die...and are born anew...
(wind..... train coming......)
I think with the unlimited human resources that we have right now, if you are thinking correctly, thinking healthy, that you need to be asking to show great amounts of mercy to every last one.
This piece is dedicated to Annie Reiko Nishida, born June 2, 1992
in the United States of America.
NOTES
A Leap of Faith was the final section of Redefining Democracy in America, a six part radio series that confronted the deep schisms and contradictions of an America in crisis. It was conceived and produced for radio in 1991-92 by Jacki Apple and commissioned and distributed for broadcast by New American Radio, NYC. Partially funded by The National Endowment for the Arts. Available online at http://www.somewhere.org.
JACKI APPLE is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, writer, and audio composer/producer who has received international recognition for her pioneering audio and radio productions that have been broadcast worldwide, commissioned by New American Radio http://www.somewhere.org/ and featured in festivals and on anthology CDs and solo albums (https://www.jackiapple.com/sound/radio.html). Redefining Democracy in America: Episodes in Black and White Part 1 will be featured in the Winter 2021 issue of PAJ (Performing Arts Journal) NY along with her essay American Radio Art 1985 – 1995. New Narratives and Media Strategies.
KEITH ANTAR MASON is Artistic Director of The Hittite Empire Performance Art Collective, an all Black Intergenerational Men’s Cultural Elite. He is the author of For Black Boys Who Have Considered Homicide When The Streets Were Too Much (1986), From Hip-Hop To Hittite And Other Poetic Healing Rituals For Young Black Men: A Retrospective (2005) and New Wine & Black Men’s Feet (2009). His new choreopoem, In The House of a Young Pharaoh, is being developed for Medium Production in Los Angeles in 2021.