The Dance of Revolution
Jordan, June
JUST INSIDE THE DOOR June Jordan The Dance of Revolution "As a favor to me Let's not talk any more about old dances. I have an entire world on the tip of my tongue." — Victims of the Latest...
...And you know it, you accept that you may formulate political protest or privately comfort a friend, but you can neither cure nor overcome the consequences of defilement and contempt...
...Talk about guts...
...June Jordan appears in this space every other month...
...Suddenly, you're writhing flat at the absolute bottom of your morale...
...I am back on the block, looking for trouble and expecting good news, with nothing less than "an entire world on the tip of my tongue...
...I could hardly breathe...
...The man in the street moved to the left...
...The man in the street jumped on the tank, and threw his body on top of it...
...I needed one...
...Or, yet another woman falls victim to male violence...
...And, sure enough, the world, entirely outside my control, astounded and aroused my sleeping heart...
...Talk about news...
...And the enemies strike...
...Nothing looks clear or tractable or positively guaranteed...
...Second, some friends of mine were visiting from England and, because I knew they were "over the moon" fans of Madonna, I checked the papers to see what might be happening...
...And so you capitulate to all the bad news: You retreat...
...Is it a Latino woman who finds obscene and threatening notes stuffed under the windshield wipers of her car...
...Inside the tank, another man had to stop or run over—and crush— his courageous compatriot...
...Well, to the complete amazement of everyone present, Madonna and Sandra Bernhard then clasped hands and, in each other's arms, sang Sonny Bono's song again, this time as a duet...
...Is it a white woman jogging in the park...
...Victims of the Latest Dance Craze by Cornelius Eady Every once in a while, it happens...
...Cornelius is not stupid or unconscious...
...And when they finished the song, I was on my feet, along with the rest of that packed Brooklyn throng, cheering for them...
...Starring the B52's, Rob Wasser-man and Bob Weir, and the Del Fuegos, among others, the concert raised money and consciousness for the rain forest in Brazil...
...You put your money on surprise, and you wait...
...And so, even if you come upon a city reservoir standing full and sweet and open to the skies above Baltimore, for example, your unavoidable second thoughts will emanate from automatic fears for its safety, and your own...
...Reaching backwards, you embrace perspectives quite inimical to hope...
...On May 24, 1989, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, we found a benefit concert, "Don't Bungle the Jungle!," hosted by Madonna and Kenny Scharf...
...Eleven days later, I stared at that lone Chinese man who stood in front of the advancing line of tanks at Tiananmen Square in Beijing...
...You cannot visualize this horror but you can feel the hideous choke, the gagging agony: ten million gallons of oil spilling into one helpless throat of the Earth...
...Horror and rage capsize into bitterness and self-pity, and the screaming of your soul confirms the wisdom of a miserable inertia...
...Talk about exhilaration of the soul...
...You can't even predict or block this ugly, overwhelming kind of thing...
...Nothing important or good seems possible...
...As a matter of fact, I never before in my whole life saw anything like it...
...But his poetry just flies along with generosity, wit, sexy good sense, and joy...
...The commonplace face of your mother/ your sister/your daughters/your wife/your girlfriend will trigger concern: What are their day-by-day chances up against an omnipresent, statistical countdown to terror and attack beyond recovery...
...Cornelius was not born to silver spoons or crystal stairs...
...And the enemies strike again...
...Issues of right and wrong fail to bestir any response...
...Evil is old...
...First, I happened upon a poem by the young black poet, Cornelius Eady, whose lines appear at the beginning of this column...
...What is to be done...
...And what is to be done...
...Talk about exhilaration of the soul...
...Like the pristine waters of Alaska, the human female of the species cannot escape an apparently American continuum of gratuitous and savage hostility or neglect...
...For sure, you cannot save anything or anybody from the destruction that now preoccupies your mind...
...And I thought, "If Cornelius can hang in here, happily, then who am I to moan and groan around the house...
...And, because there is no such thing as a politics of futility, questions of courage or cowardice do not arise...
...Perhaps they will kill the waters of Prince William Sound...
...Talk about guts...
...After delivering an alternately hilarious and impassioned jeremiad that rallied the crowd against AIDS/homophobia/homelessness/racism and official indifference, she invited the audience to welcome "somebody...
...the ruinous legacy of violence neither shrinks nor fades in the light of another day...
...The man inside the tank drove to the right, trying to avoid his challenger...
...Two months ago, I was waiting for a really big surprise...
...slurs into "What difference does it make...
...The tank resumed its front-and-center position...
...They were dancing...
...At the conclusion of the concert, comedian-singer Sandra Bernhard walked on stage looking gorgeous and wrapped in an American flag while she carried lit incense pushed into the end of an extremely bizarre cigarette holder...
...As Keats wrote, these times lead you to the valleys of the spirit "where but to think is to be full of sorrow/And leaden-eyed despairs...
...Was one of these women well-educated or working class or well-to-do or ambitious or friendly or pregnant or Republican or busy or tired or the newly wed wife of the man who beat her to death...
...You unplug the telephone and call it a night...
...Everything appears familiar and doomed...
...As the London Daily Sun reported, May 26, 1989, front page, "The Love Birds...
...My friends and I attended this event...
...The tank swerved to the left...
...You push along, slowly, from one terrible loss to the next...
...The man in the street moved to the right...
...Impatiently we sat through various performances, waiting for Madonna...
...Is it a black woman, as she approaches the building where she lives...
...stunned an audience with their lesbian romp...
...Evil is long and powerful and everywhere...
...Repeatedly, this happens...
...The courage and the passion of Madonna and Sandra Bernhard in Brooklyn, and then the lone Chinese challenger of Tank Number One on Tiananmen Square have snatched me out of the failings of my own faith...
...Talk about news...
...And so you stick it out...
...I got you to hold my hand I got you to understand I got you to kiss goodnight I got you to hold me tight...
...Whether it's a multinational corporation destroying irrecoverable and lovely parts of our world or suburban teen-agers choosing to gang-rape and sodomize a high-school classmate ("Anyway, she was sort of retarded, so what's the big deal...
...Madonna appeared, dressed in an outfit identical to Bernhard's and, following a final recitation of facts about the jungle (every second an area of tropical forest the size of a football field is lost forever), launched into a fabulous, jump-rendition of the venerable Sonny and Cher classic, "I've Got You Babe...
...In one week, I had seen the dance and the love that genuine revolution delivers into the world...
Vol. 53 • August 1989 • No. 8
