My dear friend,
I have just finished watching Red Art.
The project I'm engaged in has been the most difficult thing I've ever attempted. I so want to understand. You are one-quarter of mankind. It is important to me to understand that large a part of who we are.
I seek the soul here and because China is one-quarter of mankind I seek the soul of mankind here, and I seek my own soul. There is blackness in my soul, and in China's, and in man's and I have seen so much of it in the last several months that I have thought it should drive me mad. If there is that much blackness in China's soul, then there is too in man's and if so then man is worse than worthless, man is a net negative on the universe. This project has been one of the most excruciating times of my life.
It was painful for me to watch the first forty-nine minutes of Red Art last night. The Chinese children taught in song and verse to "Kill! Kill! Kill!" The hatred. It was painful to hear the hatred inculcated in children and adults alike. Hatred of most everyone but Mao Zedong it seemed like. But it was particularly painful for me to hear the hatred of America, for I love my country.
I was shaken today. I don't know shaken very well. I don't get shaken very often but I have been shaken a few times over China in these last several months and I was today. I called a Chinese friend living in America when I woke up because I needed to talk to somebody.
Tonight I finished watching Red Art. Do you know that I had never seen your face before? Do you remember the picture you once sent me, holding up People's Daily, covering your face. So that's my friend, I thought when I finally saw your face last night. That's my friend.
"We do possess the awareness to confess." I have watched that five times tonight while composing this brief note. Five times just tonight I have seen you turn your head slightly to the right and then up, away from Hu Jie's camera, in pain, just before you speak. And then, my brave friend, I have watched your face and heard your strong voice break as you say those words. My friend: you redeemed mankind's soul with that,for each of us is part of the soul of man. When one of us commits a black act we darken man's collective soul and when one of us ennobles it, we are all ennobled.
My friend, once long ago, you reached your hand out across cyberspace to the hand of this foreigner. We do understand each other in heart, as you wrote in your note.
