FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Saturday, June 16, 2012

THOUGHTS ON THE RELEVANCE OF FATHERS DAY FOR BLACK AMERICAN MEN...





Our fathers are buried in American soil,

Rain flushes their stories back to the sea,

As I stood by a river, I heard them speaking to me,

Thousands of voices, from some few hundred years,

Their songs battling each other as crashing waves,

Who had held deep silence in the element of their graves,

I felt the history of these strong Black men,

Saw amber’d footage, that had never been shot,

Those rich chapters opened up, having been forgot,

I turned to my father and kissed his hand,

Through our lives he has passed his story down to me,

I will add to his, those gathered on their way to the sea…



Written by David Vollin on 6-16-12
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