Carmen in the Morning

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

[Introduction: On occasion, desert valley podcaster Carmen Delgado will host interviews with interesting writers and authors from the valley floor in Palm Springs. Carmen’s desire is to enrich the public square with knowledge, new perspective and insight. Just because Carmen and her neighbors live in the desert doesn’t mean they should exist in a desert of the mind. Breakfast with Carmen Delgado Carmen is intrigued by San Diego author W. F. Twyman, Jr. She sees behind his words and into something inquisitive, curious, tortured, sensitive, intense. And so this chilly morning in Palm Springs, Carmen finds herself on the stage of the Palm Springs High School alongside the southern writer Twyman. How can a writer who sees the Pacific Ocean every day be a southern writer? That’s the thing about Twyman, the questions never end.

There are about three hundred people in the audience, mostly retired professionals from Los Angeles and New York, frustrated grandmothers and former lawyers who never wrote their novel in their youth. They could have been Twyman up on stage this morning. Little do they know we all feel loss of the promise of youth, that Twyman himself mourns the history professor he never became, that he never found the courage to write when his hair was black and his hearing was pristine. The stage is set for as they say “choose your mood.” In what direction will the discussion take us this morning? We are about to find out.]

Carmen Delgado: There are a great many things in life we cannot control. We turn to great writers to help us understand ourselves better, the world we are born into and how we change the world as writers. It is healthy to reflect upon life and the human condition at times. The Human Condition If you are like me, you know life is an unfolding puzzle of purpose and meaning. We search for meaning throughout life, assuming we live examined lives. Some may not live examined lives and so they never experience existential angst. But for those of us here this morning, we are the truth seekers. We are the ones who live in curiosity as our North Star of life. It is important to our happiness, our sense of self.

Today, I am delighted to introduce author, writer and essayist W. F. Twyman, Jr. We know him as Twyman, the name of his southern people. The highest praise I can offer Twyman is he has never lived a shallow life. (Twyman smiles) Thrown into a world designed to test his mettle straightaway, Twyman drew his first breath in a segregated all-black hospital in the former Capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, in 1961. The society he lived in was not the Confederacy but a self-contained known world of family, a neighborhood Hickory Hill and a street Twyman Road. Pietas was his first cradle in life. Public school desegregation in the Fall of 1969 forced Twyman to examine his life, his consciousness. His consciousness saved Twyman in the third grade from racial self-hate. As Twyman has written, consciousness creates Blackness. Black Enterprise Magazine would create Blackness for Twyman.

There is this idea that one cannot be happy unless one subscribes to dogma and slogan words. All of his life, Twyman has lived in a different way of being. His seminal book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America, is a brilliant objection to the mantra Blackness is Oppression. Nothing Else Matters. His lonely essays on Substack are some of the best sketches of current American life sans dogma and slogan words that I read. I believe Twyman has published over 700 essays on a daily basis and he is still going strong. When historians in the year 2050 look back as anthropologists for light on our human condition today, Twyman’s essays will be collected at base camp. They are that true to life. Where does he find the courage to write every day? I do not know.

Welcome Twyman to Carmen in the Morning!

(applause from the audience)

Twyman: Thank you, Carmen. You’ve read my stuff which means a lot to me. I do the best I can with what I have, to paraphrase Thurgood Marshall.

Carmen: Let’s begin with my question — where do you find the courage to write every day?

Twyman: I am curious and I want to understand. I could go about my life and ignore life. I am not wired that way. Someone asks if she is my first Orthodox Jewish friend and that very question intrigues me. Why do you ask? Suppose the answer is yes as it was? Why does the question matter? More importantly, why does the answer matter to my friend? And to me? I want to know and express myself. Those compulsions fuel my courage to write on a daily basis. Am I anxious about writing? Absolutely! I have a 96% polygenic score for worry and anxiety. My co-author Jen well knows how I stress every little detail before a podcast starts. I am wired for anxiety but the compulsion of curiosity and creative expression trumps the anxiety on a daily basis.

Many writers are suffused with anxiety. Those who produce harness the anxiety as rocket fuel.

Carmen: Anxiety plus a compulsion to know and understand sounds like a powerful tonic for writing. I suspect the anxiety unravels what’s behind the curtain. Colors become brighter. Emotions become deeper. Joy becomes euphoria, Etc. Etc.

Twyman: I think that is right. I spend way too much time researching my personality. Mind you, I don’t research me but the depths of my personality fascinate me. What does it mean to be Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceptive (INFP) under the Briggs Meyers test? What does it suggest when one has a Highly Sensitive Personality (HSP)? How does a triple dose of genetic open-mindedness manifest itself in one’s life? Genetics and the Individual What are the blessings of emotional intensity? Are You An Emotionally Intense Person? What does it mean to be wired for optimism at the level of one’s DNA? Am I fated to everlasting alienation from Afro-Pessimism? I suspect so.

Note that I never research myself on the web. I think the last time I googled my full name on the internet was in the 1990s.

Carmen: Huh?

Twyman: Yeah, I am a private shy introvert. Researching my name is not my thing. I used to research my law review articles all the time in 1999 and 2000 but those desires faded away over time.

Carmen: You intrigue me Twyman. I want to better know you. Our audience wants to better know you.

Twyman: I’m game. It is always all good in Palm Springs/smile!

Carmen: They say to be aloof is to be alluring.

Twyman: I read that somewhere.

Carmen: Let’s see…let’s start with this paradox. How can a writer who sees the Pacific Ocean every day be a southern writer?

Twyman: In the beginning, there was consciousness. Where did our self-awareness take shape? At the age of eight, we all looked around and what did we see? I think those experiences at the age of eight imprint one for a lifetime as a writer. For me, all I knew was Hickory Hill and my Twyman family and my family church and being the only black student at a formerly all-white school and Star Trek/smile. Those circumstances of existence were all southern. The South made me a southern writer. Living in San Diego as an adult, while fuel for observing the human condition, did not mold and shape my neural pathways. Walking along a gravel road, Twyman Road, and kicking up gravel and seeing Uncle Robert Daniel’s red brick home up at the end of the road and the railroad tracks and Great Grandfather’s white two-story wood frame home beyond the railroad tracks — these experiences made me a southern writer of a certain age and time.

I am a southern writer, an American Native to Virginia.

Carmen: Kicking up gravel on Twyman Road — why do you chose that image to define yourself as a southern writer?

Twyman: It is hard to describe. As our consciousness forms at a young age, we see life and experience us, the moments. It is the opposite of feeling lonely in the world. It is feeling the world underneath one’s feet and knowing one belongs as one has never known belonging before. Everything is brighter than bright, more vibrant than vibrant. One feels connected to all one surmises up ahead. One becomes conscious for a lifetime, if that makes sense. I knew love on a southern road that bore my name.

Carmen: When did you first know love?

Twyman: Mom. Mom and Dad and Sister. The first time we were all together in Mom’s bedroom as a family. That would be my first experience of love. It was January 1964. It was a snowy day on Twyman Road.

Carmen: When did you first know heartbreak?

Twyman: I have written about this before. My first girlfriend broke up with me. I mourned her over the summer of 1984. I played sad Luther Vandross songs and brought myself to tears on country roads throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. I felt sorrow on the back ways of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I was not prepared for the full force of first love or the abject despair of lost love. I want to tell you, Baby, the changes I have been going through, missing you, missing you. Until you come back to me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Carmen: Do you hide in your writing?

Twyman: I want to answer your question fairly and fully. Because I detest dogma and slogan words, I do not hold back in my creative expression of the human condition. I do not hide from what I have lived and observed and felt and experienced and known and suffered through and lost sleep over and cried over and despaired over. I write so that readers will know life.

It is also true that I lack courage at the outer limits of experience. You see, my Mom blessed me with a cognitive script. All praise to Mom. That script limits me at times in my writing. And that is fair. I need not use every indiscretion in my family as rocket fuel for my writing. So, I choose sometimes to hide in my writing which means I write what I must and respect my Mom at other times.

Carmen: Can I push you a bit? What are the outer limits created by your Mom and her cognitive script?

Twyman: If a niece tells me sometime in confidence, I will not write about it, although I should. If a child indulged in an indiscretion, I will not write about it. I once wanted to write about the wearing of a Harvard Club of New York pullover by a family member. The moment was a wonderful window into generational Black Privilege. Another family member asked me to not write about it and I respected the request. If a family member submits the request, I will respect the request. I really don’t feel comfortable writing about the sexual orientation of others, although I have once in the compelling interest of truth. To Young Gay Cousins I don’t write if doing so sheds no material light on the human condition and the consequence is needless ill will.

Carmen: But do you hide in your writing? Did your Mom and her cognitive scripts cause you to hide in your writing?

Twyman: Does any prolific writer hide in their writing? It is an interesting question. First, we should define “cognitive scripts,” right? My Mom felt I had a duty to achieve because I had more opportunity than my Mom. This is pietas. A Call for Pietas My whole life has been run on this cognitive script. Does a duty to achieve cause one to hide from life? I will say, no. To the extent I am not a social animal, it is not due to a cognitive script. It is because I derive pleasure from solitude and creation. That is not hiding in my writing. That way of being is finding myself in my writing.

So, no, I do not hide in my writing. I do the exact opposite. I find myself in my writing.

Carmen: Are you a secret agent for Free Black Thought? I read your stuff and I come across so many likes and comments from the folks at Free Black Thought. Can you explain for a moment your relationship with Free Black Thought?

Twyman: Free Black Thought is a wonderful oasis for those scholars, writers and intellectuals who question dogma and slogan words. I happen to co-host a bi-weekly FBT podcast with Michael Bowen, one of the independent minds of our time in this space opposed to manipulation of consciousness. There is also the great Jake Mackey who rescued the mantle of human dignity, creative expression, and the individual during the darkest days of the George Floyd moral panic. And there is the young writer Connie Morgan who has pulled me back from the brink on more than one occasion. The courage to write can fail a writer. In those moments of hesitation, wisdom steps in and whispers authenticity. Connie has helped me understand that, while logic is the beginning of wisdom, the destiny of wisdom is an open mind.

Am I a secret free agent for Free Black Thought? (laughter and smile) No, truth be told. My heart and soul is aligned with Free Black Thought. Nothing secret about it.

(applause from the audience)

Carmen: What is your favorite music?

Twyman: I love music that reaches into my soul and moves me towards an immersive experience I must surrender to. Right now, I am thinking of Where Did We Go Wrong? by Jeffrey Osborne& LTD. If that song hits me the right way, I am transported away to another realm. Same goes for If Your Heart Isn’t In It by Atlantic Starr. There is so much for philosophy, for the meaning of life in those songs. If your heart isn’t in it, why keep hanging on to a career that doesn’t fulfill? To a lover or spouse who doesn’t enrich but drain? To a cognitive script that leaves one stranded on the desert island of an unexamined life?

I hear soulful voices and think of my search for meaning. Do you, Carmen, do you do the same?

Carmen: It depends. Sometimes, I am touched by a ballad but I don’t make the connection to deeper questions about existence.

Twyman: I do that all the time. Which is why the study of personality fascinates me. Maybe, writing is our tuning fork in life. The more we write, the closer we come to essence and wouldn’t it be something if that is the purpose of it all? To question reality and existence always? Just a question.

Carmen: Have you studied Zen? Tao?

Twyman: No, although my cousin Bob became a Buddhist. He thought about the meaning of it all which led him away from the family African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and to Buddhism. I remember talking with Bob at his Dad’s house and how Bob felt awash in revelation. My people are different and quirky and love them all, except for the Evil Cousin.

Carmen: Let’s talk about forgiveness for a moment. In your writings, I sense you feel it is time for letting go of American slavery. I agree but yet you are unable to forgive the Evil Cousin. Why are you able to find forgiveness in your heart for the slaveowner but not the Evil Cousin, as you refer to him?

Twyman: (clearing his throat) I never knew a slaveowner that hurt me. Let’s start there. No slaveowner looked me in the eye and lied to me. No slaveowner cost me money. I know, I know, I sound like some of my enterprising uncles and aunts. I have no beef with slaveowners as not one entered my personal space.

Now, what is the meaning of family? Family should be your safe harbor in life. Family should be the ones one can trust about certain assumptions of life. These assumptions are in no particular order (1) Do Not Lie, (2) Do Not Cheat, and (3) Do Not Steal. Those precepts for family are taken directly from the Honor Code at the University of Virginia. I could talk for an entire hour about the Evil Cousin. Let’s just say an Evil Cousin forged an uncle’s will and disinherited a blood cousin. The Evil Cousin lied to me about the circumstance. I trusted the Evil Cousin because I trusted family.

I bear no animus to a white slaveowner ancestor I never knew. The Civil War righted historic wrongs. I do bear harsh feelings to an Evil Cousin blessed to carry our family name who abused and betrayed family trust.

Carmen: You are manifesting emotional intensity, right now. Just an observation (general laughter)

Twyman (smiling): I don’t know, Carmen. I felt like Sam Seaborn in The West Wing when Sam learned that a woman’s grandfather operated as a Soviet spy during the Cold War. It is about the fidelity owed to family. The fidelity. Can you pull up the clip when Sam is overcome with emotion? That was me when I learned my blood cousin lied to me. My family is an idea.

Carmen: Many black American children today grow up in fatherless homes. The piercing writer Adam Coleman has written about his own fatherless experience in raw, honest prose. You remain on fire twenty years later about infidelity to family. What is your take on fatherless homes in black American families today? Are we witnessing massive and chronic infidelity to family today?

Twyman: I cannot wrap my mind around infidelity to family. I know someone who had two children by two different loser men. I use the label “loser” because these are serious matters and we should not sugar coat things. A family is an idea. Fidelity to family created my known world of Twyman Road. So, bringing children into the world without a family destroys fidelity of family dating back to the 1850s for me. And like Sam Seaborn, emotions come to the fore for me.

To answer your question, yes, we are witnessing massive and chronic infidelity to family today. And yes, we should rise up and feel the moral intensity of Sam. I also recognize that I am not logical and considered when I feel infidelity to family. I need distance and perspective.

I am not hiding in my writing. I have written a powerful essay about this issue before. Once upon a time, I had breakfast at a restaurant in Carytown, Richmond, Virginia with the unmarried father of a troublesome boy. My every emotion was whirling as I could not understand why this grown man did not marry the mother of his child and thus live in fidelity to family. My emotions and feelings rose up within me. Carmen, I was swimming in thoughts. Eventually, I asked the question. Why didn’t you marry —-? A child needs a father! As God is my witness, Carmen, this man looked at me like I was from outer space. I guess no one had ever asked him the direct question before. His eyes were uncomprehending.

From that point on, I decided some subcultures were lost. Fidelity to family meant nothing to the man sitting in front of me which was alien to me.

Carmen: Suppose the mother and father were not meant to be married? Suppose the father couldn’t support a family? Suppose evil white oppression?

Twyman: When a man and a woman bring a child into the world without a father, several consequences ensue. First, there is no fidelity to family. There is no natural sense of self which flows from two parents in the home. Remember how my consciousness came into being on Twyman Road? We were all related. 100% of the families were two-parent households. 100%. Family gave rise to an idea of family as a stable, secure place for sense of self. Second, fatherless children feel abandoned and rejected. How wrong to lay that sense of longing on an innocent child. Third, the unmarried father loses self-respect. He knows he is not living right. He has forfeited his moral obligation in life and now lives a lesser life. Fourth, the unmarried woman can project her difficulties upon the man and with good cause. Finally, the generational cycle begins to replicate itself. Cousins from broken homes have less in common with cousins from stable two-parent homes. The result is spiritual and psychological divisions within families. It is the decline of the American Family.

That is my thinking.

Carmen: Were you born to write?

Twyman: I was born to be curious.

Carmen: Do you feel like the Other as a southern writer in San Diego?

Twyman: I don’t need surfing dudes at Mission Beach or Grand Dames in La Jolla to feel complete as a southerner writer. I need my memories of childhood. I need to hear the Virginia accent of those back home. I need pietas to be a southern writer. I need faith in my Mom and Twyman Road to be a southern writer.

Carmen: Twyman, I have enjoyed this morning conversation. We have a few questions but we will save those for after the conclusion of our conversation. For those interested, Twyman will also sign a few books at the table up here. Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America Thank you for coming out to the desert this morning, removing the mask a little, and revealing why you are at the end of the day a southerner writer, an American Native to Virginia.

Writers let readers know the truth.

Twyman: Thank you Carmen. Always a pleasure to think about life while in Palm Springs.

(Audience applause)

Nancy Lets Sam Know The Truth