On Contending With Black Art, Travel, and Escape
Deep reflections on my two months of European Travel
So I’ve been traveling Europe since early June. I went to St. Paul de Vence, France for an artist residency with La Maison Baldwin, where I was given an artist cottage and unlimited time for a month to work, live, etc. What unraveled was an interesting and stimulating time; drinking at Le Cercle in the main plaza, going to La Promenade Anglais and lounging at the beach, going to art galleries, trying new foods, meeting people that knew James Baldwin, spending my evenings eating cherries at my outside table while editing my book, and hosting friends.
The chance to be in St. Paul de Vence, where James Baldwin spent the last 17 years of his life, both gave me time to reflect on the impact of his legacy on my life, but to also think about ways to forge my own legacy beyond what James Baldwin represented to me a few years ago and what he means to me now.
To put it simply, I do not believe we should revere people in the same way for forever. We change, as well as our perspective on the people that we love and admire. During the month of June, I got to speak in-depth with the other artist in residence at La Maison Baldwin, a filmmaker named Ashunda Norris. We talked about black spirituality, about US politics, about the pitfalls of success as artists, and what it means to keep going.
I respect Baldwin for his craft and his willingness to “witness”, but in my own life, I want to go a step beyond witnessing, beyond finding refugee in far-off lands, beyond succumbing to the needs of people around me, like I’ve often read1 happened to Baldwin during his years in St. Paul De Vence as more people gathered around him, lived in his space for no rent money, or spoke to him in all sorts of odd ways. In many ways, Baldwin’s psyche and ability to run away made him feel alien from the world. To say the least, I got this sense while in St Paul de Vence as I wondered, “What did he get out of being here beyond the age old assumption that he came here to escape and write if so many people tell me that he just seemed to be drinking heavily?”
Even his entrance to St. Paul de Vence was preceded by a bad health scare. Mlle. Faure, Baldwin’s landlord in St. Paul de Vence, was known to be a racist, especially to Algerians, but learned to love Baldwin for the glamour he brought to the home and his charismatic demeanor. A man I met in the the village during my month there introduced himself to me and told me that he was once Baldwin’s gardener and made sure to say several times, “Oh, we drank a lot together.”
As a black artist, there is always the question of staying or leaving to find our subject matter, or to find our peace. At the James Baldwin Conference that happened during my month in Southern France, I met many black writers and academics who had never left the United States before. During a talk about black people moving abroad to find peace or reconnection, a dark skinned woman held the panel to task for “romanticising” the prospect of moving abroad while she, as a woman living at the French-Italian border, had faced and witnessed horrible instances of racism. When talking about race and travel and escape, there is always a class and mental health element involved.
This is why I was grateful to meet so many people from different backgrounds in St. Paul de Vence during my time there - gardeners, adult children of middle class families, artists, gallery owners, and beyond. Having the chance to converse with people opened up my eyes a bit more to the strangeness and complexity of a black person seeking answers in the world. Of the many things I’ve read in the last two months of travel, one of my favorite books has been AFROPEAN by Johnny Pitts.
During a chapter when he is visiting Paris, he goes on a black tour of the city and notices with disappointment when a Black American raves about how living in Scotland allowed him to be “human again”, only to openly express his bigotry against African immigrants in certain parts of their tour of Paris. This and so many other things proves that I must still contend with the violence of xenophobia, bigotry, and colonialism wherever I go, if I wish to be a better human and artist on this Earth.
These thoughts and more will help guide my work in the coming months, if not beyond. So to end this MWL post, I will leave you with this,
You can’t leave home. You carry it with you. - James Baldwin
To preorder my award-winning memoir, When They Tell You To Be Good.
Farber, Jules B.. James Baldwin: Escape from America, Exile in Provence. United Kingdom, Pelican Publishing Company, 2016.