LOVE AND REVOLUTION: FINDING THAT ECSTASY WHICH SATISFIES

PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness (2002)

ISSN: 1543-0855

Olanrewaju Williams

Have you known,
have you known,
the power of ecstasy,
when nothing here satisfies?
--Ifi Amadiume, "That Other Ecstasy" (1995)

I have not known that other ecstasy, that bliss which brings “unspeakable adventures” stirring in the midst of my own “vacant nothingness” (Amadiume 1995, p. 108). I have been too doped up on this ecstasy to know of the revolution you want to start with your love.

In her poem “That Other Ecstasy,” Ifi Amadiume implores us to search and find that other ecstasy. I believe with a new look at revolution and love we can arrive at a knowledge which can truly satisfy when nothing else here can.

It is said that when we love, we are forced to come to a new mental way of dealing with the world around us. The arousal in the cortex, where we process our ‘gut’ feelings, the anterior cinguate, where euphoria is registered, and the striatum, where rewarding experiences are chronicled, causes us to respond differently than we would if we were not in love (Knight 2001). All this activation mandates that old stimuli be seen in a different light. As a consequence of the affirmation that a significant love relationship brings, we are made to reexamine those people and structures in our lives that used to give us pleasure and love before this new relationship began. Oftentimes, the old is found lacking compared to what we now have. The tendency is either to cause those things of old to change or we come to a paradigm shift where we realize that we no longer need those things to bring us happiness or self-worth—in either case, those actions are revolutionary.

You have not known the other ecstasy because you have not inquired. What is revolution? What is love? We must first examine the two operative words: love and revolution. A thorough treatment of what each word means or even symbolizes is beyond the scope of this essay but we are all aware of the pre-conceived and personalized connotations of both words. Diaspora literature tells us time and time again, “revolution is bloody, revolution is hostile, revolution knows no compromise, revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way” (X 1965, p. 9).

Love is so quickly ascribed to passivity, but not so. If we examine the meaning that has inspired Diaspora throughout the generations, it was not palsy, warm love that makes you weak to your knees, unable to stand for anything. It is a hot, passionate love, one that energizes you to want to conquer the world, love that is an action verb. “One of the factors that distinguishes humans from the lower animal forms is our “social responsiveness, ability to communicate and having feelings for others.” (Mash and Wolfe 2001, p. 258). “Love is our passport to the perfectability of humanity” (Baraka 2000, p. 247).

Is love revolution or is revolution a manifestation of the love that we have for ourselves, our own? Do we love and therefore revolt or is it that we revolt and then love? Is there even a connection between both phenomena? “Making love, wanting to make revolution… making revolution, wanting to make more love” (Amadiume 1995, p. 15-16). Perhaps these are not just two merely poetic extreme desires after all.

You have not known this other ecstasy because you have not known yourself. “It takes more than a community of skin color to make your love come down on you.” (Hurston 1937, p. 190). We have allowed ourselves to buy into the myth that we cannot love ourselves. The powers that be have lied to us, saying that there is nothing in the person of an Afrikan that is worth loving and we have believed them. They have tricked us into loving and extolling them and we have allowed them to brainwash us. They have played with our minds, our very souls, and we invited them to toy with our hearts and so they did. Within each of us now live the vestiges of those lies and lines that we have been fed; we have been poisoned and how many know it? “You run away hating yourself and loving the man while you are catching hell from the man” (X 1965, p. 93). Do we love ourselves? “I sensed early that the Negro race was not one band of heavenly love.” (Hurston 1937, p. 190). “They are not loving with each other, or forgiving with each other” (X 1965, p. 138). Black is beautiful but is it desirable?

You do not know this ecstasy because you do not want to. In A Taste of Power, Elaine Brown makes it clear that until she was able to learn to accept and love herself, black as she was first, she was not able to join the Black Panther Party. It was not until she came into an awareness of herself as an Afrikan woman, that she was empowered to step beyond her ignorance and actualize a personal change—begin her own individualized revolution. Brown experienced and put up a lot of resistance to this process in her own life. “What made us feel helpless was our hatred for ourselves. And our hatred for ourselves stemmed from our hatred for things African.” (X 1965, p. 169.) While Brown realized it all had to be done to “follow a revolutionary road” (Brown 1992, p. 259), there was still much mental work that had to be done before she could totally become imbibed in the revolution.

“A revolutionary sister can’t have no reactionary man.” (Shakur 1998). Now, this is a tough lesson to accept! The truth of these words shows the internal struggle that must occur for many Afrikan sisters as they search for a balance between the desire for romantic love and that higher good that is ecstasy. Revolutionary love, unlike romantic love, will not give the instant gratification we are used to. Many will get disillusioned with our fight because of the personal sacrifices it demands.

We are held back from experiencing the full force of our revolutionary instincts because we are afraid of, do not want to, or do not understand the change. It is easier to be content with the normal formulations of love and revolution. We have been taught to fear conflict, to deny the very discords that tear us apart inside. If we can be made to believe that love is simply two people consummating, we can rule out the need to be revolutionaries. If we can be made to accept that revolution can only involve men with guns, we can eliminate ourselves from the equation and guiltlessly tell ourselves we are not needed. We can be brain-dead the rest of our lives, unable to think beyond that narrow confine.

You have not known this other ecstasy because you have not remembered. If we fail to remember those who have loved us in the past, or how they loved us, we deny those we love now and those who we will love in the future of a great history. Real love cannot be new. It must have grown from a place within you where you have been taught to love by someone else. Not every memory is good and that is part of the process; we must acknowledge those who have hurt us in the past and seek never to imitate them. Without the memories, we cannot discern the good from the evil. Without discernment, we cannot have a basis from which to change—there can be no revolution.

“Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me... I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her… we came to separation, that place where work begins.” (Lorde 1982, p. 255). From the precise and intentional act of loving and then leaving, came a place for work to begin; a space for revolution.

You have not known this other ecstasy because you have not grown. When you are loved, you are given that foundation from within you upon which you can build a revolution. As described in Amadiume’s poem, “Grassroots Revolution,” we do not begin to love until we have been nourished. Our heart, our mind and soul must be filled with good things, with the truths of life imparted to us from those in our lives. Revolution will cause you to grow up fast. The responsibilities of the struggle will make you a parent, a soldier, a leader before your time. We must embrace this growth and begin to think about our responsibilities to those that will come after us.

You have not known this other ecstasy because you have not understood. Blanket love will not cover up all the hurt, the pain, the lie or the hatred perpetrated against Black people worldwide. “I say that you and I will never get our freedom nonviolently and patiently and lovingly” (X 1965, p. 113). No. Our deepest love must be one sided. We must love each other and ourselves first and it is this love that should prompt us to demand that we be given that which has been held from us for centuries. “’I’m going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.’ No. You need a revolution.” (X 1965, p. 9)

We must still love people though; if we do not we become no better than the brute. We must still have esteem, regard for human lives. “There is a time to love and a time to hate” (X 1965, p. 162), but now is not the time for either. It is time to put aside the emotions of the moment, the “embroidered words” (Amadiume 1995, p. 198), and do something about the way we are feeling. Those who came before us taught us how to make revolution but we have failed to understand their messages and we have forgotten what they said.

You have not known this other ecstasy because you do not believe it has anything for you. “I go for revolution, but revolution should always do something for the people and it should always keep them balanced” (X 1965, p. 127). Revolution is not pleasant; war never is. Anyone who has ever had to struggle for anything will tell you that revolution is draining; physically, emotionally, mentality, spiritually; revolution will deplete you. To ward off this emptying of our very beings in order to allow our revolution to continue, we must be prompted and sustained by love; love for the cause, love for the others we are fighting along with, and love for the way we are fighting. Our revolution must have a “love motive”, because then it “redeems [us], redeems the revolution and alters the sanguine coloring of war” (Jackson 1994, p. 322). If we can go out into the battlefield knowing that we are backed by a host of people who love and need us, fighting daily will be a little easier.

As we perfect the skills needed to fight, we also come to the realization that we have gained so much from our revolution. We are a desperate people and we are indeed “storing [ourselves] up in great abundance, ripening, strengthening, and straining” (Jackson 1994, p. 322) the walls of our imprisoned lives to the utmost. When touched by love, we are ready to explode—Revolution! Were it not for the cause, we would still be aimlessly searching for an outlet through which our pent up frustrations could be released.

As we are loved and as we love someone, we begin to see the flaws in ourselves, those things that stop us from loving as we wish. If we are humble enough, we begin a process of revolutionizing our innermost and deepest parts to clear out the dredges of lost hopes and revitalize ourselves with the reality of this new love. We have been incited by our love, pushed to action.

Revolution is not an easy word to comprehend and neither is love but I have truly come to believe that you cannot have one without the other. Meshed together, they do indeed bring a power of their own, one that causes us to search beyond this here and now for satisfaction. Within each of us lies everything with which to begin, or support revolution and to actualize meaningful love in our lives and in the lives of those around us. I invite you to look with the “mind’s eye” (Amadiume 1995, p. 108) and I think you will see that we have no choice but to desire this love-struggle; that other ecstasy.

References

Amaduime, Ifi. 1995. “Grassroots Revolution” & “That Other Ecstasy.” Ecstasy. Lagos, Nigeria: Longman

Baraka, Amiri. 2000. The Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader: “Afrikan Revolution”. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.

Brown, Elaine. 1992. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. New York: Anchor Books/ Doubleday

Hurston, Zora Neale. 1937. Dust Tracks On a Road. New York: Harper Perennial.

Jackson, George. 1994. Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books

Knight, Sian. 2001. “Parts of Brain Responsible for Love Identified.” Net.Philes (www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/0800/news/264a.html)

Lorde, Audre. 1982. Zami: A New Spelling of my name. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press

Mash, E.J. & Wolfe, D.A. (2002). Abnormal Child Psychology, 2nd edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Thompson Publishing Company.

Shakur, Assata. 1998. “A Message to My Sistas.” Afrikan.net Newsboard (www.mumia.org/wwwboard/messages/430.html).

X, Malcolm, 1965. Malcolm X Speaks. Editor: George Breitman. New York: Grove Weidenfeld.

Citation Format

Williams, Olanrewaju (2002). LOVE AND REVOLUTION: FINDING THAT ECSTASY WHICH SATISFIES. PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: 1, 1.