Juxtaposition

We were asked to contradict Sonny’s Blues to something… opposite. I chose “We will See You Tomorrow”

Early on in the story of Sonny’s Blues, I was reminded of this piece of spoken word poetry, which I saw performed live in person far before it became part of this video, which was filmed and released by To Write Love on Her Arms for World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th in 2015. 

This piece, to me, has always come off as an anthem belted out from the intersection of hope and fear, of heavy and light. Much like the juxtaposition posed in the story of Sonny's blues, the words in this poem feel fraught with importance, with urgency and with pause together winding through the blood in my veins with the type of ice in his guts that Sonny's brother references several times over. 

When sadness curls itself at the foot of your bed.

When grief finds home in the basement of your chest.

When your heart’s garden swears it cannot grow here.

When the day feels too heavy.

When the balcony is a thieving distraction.

When the drawers in the kitchen siren to you.

When the night is as heavy as an anchor

and you cling to your own shore.

Remember: you are the ocean. A single drop in a child’s hand that can hold up a ship.

When you make a mistake. When you misstep or misspeak.

When you find yourself underneath the stains of your human (because you ARE

human). When the heavy of it all calls to you like a wailing animal.

Remember: there is nothing wrong with you.

There is everything significant about you.

From your shoulders to your shins,

from the galaxies in your irises to the orchestra in your throat.

There were numerous times on my printed copy of Sonny's Blues that I noted the juxtapositions, starting with "the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone." followed by "One boy was whistling  a tune, at once very complicated and very simple," to "when she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still struggling woman..." and even as far as "It was as though Sonny were some sort of god, or monster," and toward the end, "What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason." 

The juxtapositions in this poem feel the same to me - comparing the lowest lows of being suicidal with potential sunlight of being helped, of being supported, of being seen - and that parallel made me view the story not as much from the position of Sonny's brother, or his parents, or the sisters and the brother that performed the revival down the street, but from Sonny himself, being at times closer to death and more alive than anyone else he saw. 

When the friends seem so few.

When the phone doesn’t ring.

When it does but you are too afraid

to answer—too afraid you are too quiet

or take up too much space.

Remember: your name does not begin

or end in silence. Your story is not over.

There are still chapters in this book.

There is still time to fall in love. To fall out.

To shatter and mend. To forgive

and be forgiven. Keep reading.

Crown your failures. Scream “I Am Worthy” until the stars collapse upon your brilliance.

Know if depression is the verse, then hope is the chorus.

Allow yourself to exist in this melody even when the instrument of your body is tired of

playing. Self-love is not selfish. It is the mantra of someone who recognizes where they

have been and where they need to go.

And this bolded line above, most specifically to the actual physical story, when the piano was not just a physical machine, or a vessel for music to be created, but rather when the piano became the way that Creole and Sonny had a conversation between their instruments, that Sonny needed to leave the shoreline and strike for deep water, and to learn or to remember that deep water and drowning were not the same thing. 

Find your love in the lake. See how it ripples. How it continues.

It is the Earth’s way of saying “you are important, you are endless.”

Be good to you.

Tell yourself I deserve the keep.

I deserve to love and be loved.

I deserve the whole show, the encore,

the darkness that falls like a curtain and

the morning that will always follow.

We will be the voice that sings behind you.

The receiving end of a phone call

“no, you are not alone”

“no, you are not broken.”

We will run forward to greet you

and together, we will dance like wild fire

because there is reason to celebrate.

We will be. We will finally be.

I will see you tomorrow.

I will see you tomorrow.

We’ll see you tomorrow.

I saw and heard so many things when reading this story, the messages about racism and classism, the lack of safety in Harlem and for children being raised there, the way that trying to escape just meant finding newer or different things to pacify the urge, the need to survive, the way it was for a father who had at times in his life lost his brother, who lost both his parents, who found his wife and built a family only to lose a daughter, who had a job that meant something to him but he felt so unsure of his impact, and who re-found his brother only to be so full of worry on every day moving forward; the changing and transforming of individuals and relationships and perspectives - it was so full of so many messages. But the mood that felt most deeply to me was the one of redemption. 

Towards the very end of the story, Sonny's brother states "He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again, got stuck. And the face I saw on Sonny I'd never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there." and this to me felt like a moment where the narrator transformed, where Sonny transformed, where the image of blues music transformed, where life came back in a new  way to the lifeless, and in many ways, thats what this spoken word poetry feels like to me.

So, although likely different than my peers, I'm sharing this because it's what came up for me just a few pages into reading Sonny's Blues, before I read this part of the assignment, and it's what stuck with me after I finished my second read through too. 

When? Where? What do you see? Whom do you hear? How does it feel?