I Swim In A Shaft Of Light,

The Thing To Remember About The Declaration Of Independence And The Profession Of Freedom Is That It Was Written By People Who Were Quite Free And Who Were Surrounded By People Who Were Not Free. The People Who Wrote The Declaration Of Independence Were Ventriloquists Really. The Obsession With Freedom Makes No Sense When It Applies To Them.

America Is Not So Much A Country As It Is An Idea, And That Must Be Why So Many People Are Drawn To It, The Idea Of It, The Idea That You Might Be Free Of Your Past, Free Of The Traditions That Kept You In Your Own Traditions - That Is The Idea Of It: Freedom From Your Very Own Self.

What Frustrates Me Is To See African-americans Behave As Though What European-americans Say Is Worthwhile. It Simply Isn't. It's Just Some Silly People Who Can Make Laws And Have The Power To Enforce Them. I'm Often Amazed At The Conversations Black People Have About Themselves. They Ought To Be Having These Conversations About White People. It's White People Who Are Flawed And At Fault.

But Some Natives--most Natives In The World--cannot Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor. They Are Too Poor To Go Anywhere. They Are Too Poor To Escape The Reality Of Their Lives; And They Are Too Poor To Live Properly In The Place Where They Live, Which Is The Very Place You, The Tourist, Want To Go--so When The Natives See You, The Tourist, They Envy You, They Envy Your Ability To Leave Your Own Banality And Boredom, They Enjoy Your Ability To Turn Their Own Banality And Boredom Into A Source Of Pleasure For Yourself.

I Understood That I Was Inventing Myself, And That I Was Doing This More In The Way Of A Painter Than In The Way Of A Scientist. I Could Not Count On Precision Or Calculation; I Could Only Count On Intuition.