In an early episode, I shared how much the Transcendentalists impacted my decision to major in English. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in specific, captured my imagination with his erudite rallying calls to trust thyself, to never imitate others, to believe in the sacredness of your own mind. In retrospect, I can see how this would be quite appealing to a young man full of ambition and (ahem) himself; however, it was not the Sage of Concord who first introduced me to the power of language. That honor goes to Chuck D. of Public Enemy fame. You heard correctly, dear listeners. Before I studied Emerson and his contemporaries with the zeal of someone parched for wisdom and direction, I was listening to songs on cassette tapes with lyrics like “fight the power” and “Never badder than bad cause the brother is madder than mad at the fact that’s corrupt as a senator.” Looking at the lyrics now, I am amazed that I was ever able to make sense of them all those years ago. Perhaps Chuck D.’s delivery matters. His passion. His intensity. The beat was simply there to scaffold the message.
This, I believe, was my introduction to the power of literature. Yes, the words are important, but there is something about how they come together to become more than the sum of their parts. A good work of literature – indeed, a good song (rap, country, pop, what have you) -- has a soul, if you will, which means that a reader seeking to understand the work dissects the language, yes, but also peers into its core. Mulls over how the words are juxtaposed. Intuits motivation. Appreciates diction. And, importantly, recognizes the work as a living thing. Public Enemy’s songs were appealing not because of their linguistic merit, per se, so much as they were appealing, at least to one kid growing up in rural Pennsylvania in the late eighties, because they had a spirit. And once I grew to understand that, I could easily pivot to a study of the so-called classics to look for the same. Chuck D. introduced me to Ralph E. Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. And he had friends. Thoreau. Whitman. Fuller. Douglass. Transcendentalists by name or, certainly, beneficiaries of an intellectual movement that championed individualism and self-determination. A movement whose members labored to throw off the shackles of groupthink and mindless conformity, fighting their own power so that, as Emerson writes, we can “hitch our wagon to a star” and become all that God wants us to be.
I would, therefore, make the following argument about the humanities: It will not perish. Indeed, it cannot perish because we are all hardwired to seek out the boundless wisdom that can be found therein. We can all recognize the spirit in something. We certainly gravitate to different genres. For me, rap music served as a gateway into poetry and prose. I admit that sounds odd but whatever. Our paths do not have to be orthodox. Indeed, I submit to any one of you, dear listeners, who might now have the enormous responsibility of raising children, teaching, or even mentoring somebody that what you might perceive in your charges as silly or wasteful or nonsensical as possibly being part of a much grander plan that has more color, more texture than you can imagine. I am a tenured full professor of English at Georgia State University – Perimeter College. Decades ago, playing and rewinding and playing again, rewinding again, on and on, I was a youth whose curiosity was piqued by the lyrical vehemence of a man whose life experience was nothing like my own: urban-dwelling and black. But Chuck D. flipped a switch, illuminating a room that still overflows with urgent, impassioned voices.
