Who is the king of love?
James Baldwin's article on the suit he wore to MLK's funeral and its path from sorrow to sorrow
Jimmy Baldwin situates the chain of events he describes in this article as survivor’s guilt; but it also feels like a preemptive eulogy for a time before he was overcome with an almost decadent bewilderment. He’s retracing the steps that led him into quicksand, and reveling in the heave and grip of that doomed and sticky quartz as if he deserved its trappings. Ambushed by the consecutive assassinations of people in such close proximity to him it felt as if he was being spared, warned and called forth as eye witness, he went through a period of terror and disillusionment that he carried graciously, and he was never the same. We objectify this era of history as if it’s cinema and so there’s almost no way to share its archives without knowing they’ll be flung around like carnival flags and dinner party small talk, we can’t metabolize how literal this devastation might have been because its divine witness was as glamorous as he was jaded. Even his sorrow was made spectacle by the same machine that instigated it. But when a childhood friend needs the suit he wore to Martin‘s funeral for his everyday wardrobe, for interviews and such, and calls him just for this reason, it’s so chilling that suddenly all of icy glitz of vintage black suffering dissipates into shame. Shame on us deemed special ones for the void of need we leave behind, shame on our access to formal attire, shame on our alibi of survivor’s guilt, and the escapism it excuses. Should we all sit around together in our childhood apartments and talk about old times until the camera gives out— fin? Is it tenderness to return and supply that suit to the friend who needs it, knowing mutual shame will mean you’ll never speak again. You’ll never walk alone. The ghosts of your lost friends will whisper dress codes and you’ll have to ignore them too, you’ll have to pawn your suits for solitude.