Shooting For The Record (or, When The Shot Is Not Enough)

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It seems that every time I watch a game these days

Someone is breaking a record

We like to feel like we are part of history

They make up stats we never considered

It use to be most points in a game

Now it’s most points by a father son duo

Use to be most yards

Now it’s most yards thrown by a left handed quarterback

It just keeps getting more specific

And it makes us feel like we’re part of something

We keep watching

So we can say we were at the game when Curry shot the most distant three pointer of any player in history of the game when the clock was exactly at 3:47

Remember that game?

I was there

I saw it

I lived through history

Somewhere along the lines

They realized that makes people keep watching

When all the shots have been taken

When the shooting is no longer exciting

When it’s just another season

Let’s make sure to mark some moments

Moments that might not mean anything had we not defined them

Were you alive the day

You know when those kids shot up Columbine?

There were other schools after but I don’t remember the rest

How bout Sandy hooks?

That had to be the youngest school

How bout when the man shot up the night club?

I forgot the name.

Of the man

And the club

But it was the largest mass shooting in US History

At the time

I remember that one

How bout the time the man shot all those people in Vegas?

Wasn’t that some new record

Maybe this year we’ll have the most mass shootings ever

That will be something to remember

That would keep me watching

If we were going for the record

If it might be something spectacular

Otherwise it’s just another shot

Another run

Another day

Nothing breaks

Nothing changes

No one cares

They’re just shooting

Maybe we can learn something from Sportscenter

Sometimes you gotta make up events

To excite the spectators

“The largest mass shooting against Jewish people ever”

“Against black people ever”

“Against police”

“Perpetrated by a US citizen”

“By a non us citizen”

“By a black man”

(Nah black people don’t do that shit…

Except for…okay…fuck it)

“By a Muslim terrorist”

“Islamic radical”

“By a white man”

It’s gonna be hard to break that record

They always setting the record

They always making the record

Maybe we can start letting some of these black folks shot by the police break records too you know?

“Black man shot by the police had the most golds in his mouth ever”

“Had the most amount of money in his pocket ever”

Or maybe just, “graduated college.”

Something to distinguish between

This one and the last one

I’m losing track

The records are blending together

They’re getting messy

They mean nothing

Unless we make them

Because too many shots have been taken

For me to be amazed by any one in particular

So keep shooting y’all

And we’ll worry about the labels

Because the shot itself

Is not enough

Tour Journal, Day 48: “One is the loneliest number…”

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My memory of Dubai is
hazy
I landed in a sandstorm half dayzed
As though I’d been flying east
For 24 hours trying to race the sun
One battle yet won
I lose and I lose

We imagined this city
Before I ever saw it
Like it’s creators
And again

I’ve fell behind
 
I’m late
 
I’m catching up
 
With work
With sleep
With time

This is how I would like a novel to begin
An unknown narrator
Lost in his mind
In a city
It is true
For I do not know myself
And I do not know my story but I pray we discover it together

Dubai is Vegas
With more culture
And less coke
 
No casinos
Someone dreamed this city
(I think his face is posted on every street)
So why not bet on yourself
He tells us
Or take a chance on allah

How is that I’m out here
Losing my religion
But never claiming one.

A’salum walakum.
Peace be unto you
But what if I desire
A piece beyond for me
A bigger piece
More pieces
I believe these pieces
May make me whole

There is something strange
About a city that grows from the desert
There’s something strange about all cities
But the desert ones have a particular menace
They are not backed by necessity
They are built on sand
As though they may disappear
Back into the mirage
From whence they came

I know you want a story
An minute to minute account
But that bores me
And as I trudged through this desert
I resolved to bare nothing
But my thoughts
And I think
It is bigger than
I
It is slanted
And it leans towards America

The American Dream
So far reaching
It has projected even I into existence

So everywhere I travel
America beams from my eyes
And the world is a white screen for the Dream
I see
The whole world becoming America

Or we are all becoming one
Where nothing is so sacred
It can’t be sold
The story has been told
But we only know how it ends
I tell you this is where it begins.

Here in
Dubai
 
i
B4
the
1

​

Tour Journal, Day 39: “Beautiful”

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Writing inspired by stills…

I know one day, I’ll look at these photos and think: I should have got my haircut.  Like I wasn’t ready for all the beauty around me.

All ignore all these smiles and moments of absurd joy.

And wish it were more picture perfect.

As perfect as it felt.

There is something to carrying your beauty on your sleeve.  To reflect your personality in your style.

It’s why these monuments get built.

The thought that beauty in all its forms makes this life better for all of us.

Pictures show a particular type of beauty.

Still beauty.

But this journey, through a country I had never even heard of before I was asked to go there…

Was not a still beauty.

Was not a beauty that will exist as is for centuries.

That needs no context.

It is a living beauty.

A changing beauty.

A breathing beauty.

A “you just had to be there” beauty.

This beauty has a story behind.

Has a rippling effect.

Will change as history continues.

Little by little.

Until the only thing that is the same, is the stillness this photo lets us look at.

Beautiful.

Changing.

If I would have taken that extra hour or two to get my haircut, it might have cut into the time I took

To capture all this life.

Into stillness.

So excuse me. I’m too distracted by all this beauty to match it.

Back on the Internet again…

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This happens all the time.  I promise myself that I will post on a blog or a social media platform consistently, no matter what.  And then.  I get tired.  I get depressed.  I think no one is reading or watching.  I go inside myself until I return and blame this cycle on the reason why I haven’t been able to build a bigger fan base for my work.

A part of me has come to the acceptance of this cycle.  I am an artist.  I am a performer but I am also a writer.  The performer in me wants and has to be “on” and “out there”.  But the writer in me wants and has to be alone, and introspective.  There seems to be no way around this.  I am just not the type to chart my process.  When it’s ready for the public, I share it with world.  Happily.  Necessarily.

The performer in me is gearing up for about a month of engagements starting next week: performance of my solo play Spiritrials in Dallas, development of my ensemble musical Try/Step/Trip in Dallas and Amherst, and then an international fellowship where I’ll be teaching hip-hop in Central Asia.  After that, I’m hoping to travel a bit through India and Kyrgysztan.  Sometimes it can be so lonely on the road, and it’s actually when I love to post.  I’m hoping to share all my adventures with you, whoever you are, wherever you are.   You’ll be seeing me soon.  I hope.  I mean, I’m really gonna try.  Don’t quote me.

 

Tour Journal, Day 5: “To Pimp A Butterfly…”

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This picture was taken by the local newspaper at one of my high school workshops and is a part of their feature story on me for my performance in Helena, Montana this weekend.  So many things on my mind.  I felt for this journal, bullets point might be useful:

  • Performing my work in Montana, literally the least Black state in the country, I realize I didn’t have Montana in mind when I wrote this piece.
  • When I’m telling my own story, or the story of some of the black characters in the play, I’m scared.  I’m scared that I might be one of the few unfiltered representations of Blackness that these folks, and especially these children, have.  My inclination to be “one of the good ones” grows even stronger.  It is challenging when I’m telling a story of a black male getting arrested for drugs.  Is it any different than what they may have expected…?
  • Lots of nice people in Montana.  But as we walked into Lewis and Clark Brewery on Trivia Night, the POC crew got some not-so-welcoming stares.
  • Sometimes I feel I’m pimping my butterfly.  I went through a process that made me beautiful in a way, and I have used it to excel in my career.  Now others use it for their purposes: to help the kids of their community, to confront state violence, to represent “diversity”.  I suspect that some of these people would not want to hear from me had I not been the caterpillar, and some would not want to hear me if I were only the butterfly.  Must I always be both?  Must I always show off one to be recognized as the other?  It’s a strange feeling.   To pimp a butterfly is to hold the tension of wanting to be useful but not wanting to be used.  “Are you really what they idolize….to pimp a butterfly…”
  • In reference to the quote in the article where I say “I didn’t think it was a problem…” after being caught with mushrooms, I’m not sure why she pulled that quote.  I spoke to her early in the morning so I’m not sure what I said but… I knew it was a problem.  Maybe not THAT much of a problem!
  • I had such an interesting experience performing this piece in front of employees of the justice system and then leading a dialogue.  It was the crowd I always had in mind when I thought of people who would have the least sympathy/empathy for my story.  Who would be most suspicious of my account.  I found myself choosing my words carefully trying not to attack that all-white audience of probation officers and mental health workers.  I found myself holding back when the conversation came up about what a “drug problem” is.  I didn’t want to undermine their work or their intentions.  I didn’t want to argue all the hypocrisy.  It was uncomfortable.  But I guess that’s the process of learning.
  • Yesterday, I learn that an unarmed Black man is shot in his own backyard by the police in my hometown less than 10 miles from where my parents live.  It doesn’t make it into the highlights of Apple News.  Is this not major news anymore?  Every time I start to feel like maybe I’m making a problem where there isn’t one…
  • There was one Black kid in my last workshop I did at this “alternative learning” high school.  I could tell he couldn’t believe I was saying some of the things I was saying.  He laughed super hard at the first joke in my performance, and all the other kids turned to look at him because they knew his laugh was something different than theirs.  He, like I, caught wind that everyone turned to look at him and he got nervous as kids continued to look at him as I said things that everyone can find funny, but Black folks really find funny.  There was this look in his eye, as though I held the weight of all Black representation in my being and in my words, and I felt the weight too.  I hope I did us justice, kid.

Check out the article in the Independent Record about me, this show, and our performance tomorrow.

Tour Journal, Day 6: “But this ain’t back in the day…things done changed”

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There is history, and then there is HISTORY.  It seems to be the theme of this trip.  This gang (above) is all connected by a shared history with the organization Youth Speaks.  It’s why Dion and I started touring together.  It’s what propelled Adriel and I to start touring as iLL-Literacy.  It’s how I’ve met Brittany, how I’ve seen Chinaka grow, how I’ve bonded with Shannon.  We bumped into Chinaka and Shannon that day after Adriel, with his wife, Lovely, got us into the National Museum of African American History and Culture through his job at the Smithsonian.  We came to reflect on history and that’s exactly what we got.  There’s a philosophy out there that urges you to let go of the past, to move forward and either be present or focus on the future.  But then there are those of us who believe opposite, some out of sentimentality, but some who are just careful, that suspect that history might show us the way forward.  Of course, I am the latter.  I just keep thinking about what got me here, and as I meditate deeply on where to go next, I use history as a guidepost on what not to do, what I’ve always cared about, and what keeps coming back.  Every time I look back I see something new because I keep becoming something new.  So even in the present, as I look at this photo, in a place of history, with people I have history with, I know how I see all of it will continue to change as I change and as the world changes.  Right now, I look at it with a smile, with gratitude, with the knowledge that we all have great work to do.  I’m marking the moment.  I’m making space for it.

Poet Rudy Francisco on Jimmy Fallon!

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I’m super proud of my homie Rudy Francisco for his appearance on Jimmy Fallon a couple days ago.  To be honest, poets are occupying spaces that I never thought were possible.  To be honest, it makes me wish I had more faith.  Rudy has been at it consistently for over decade and it’s really good to see great opportunities manifest for him.  It really gives me hope.

Sometimes you don’t need a way.  Sometimes you just gotta love something and trust that the universe will open up in ways that are beyond your imagination.  The future is not written yet.  Me and my community have an opportunity to contribute to the writing.  Let’s see where it take us.  Congrats Rudy!

NEW VIDEO: “Spiritrials (excerpt) – The Good One”

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Trying to post videos to my YouTube channel regularly.  Thinking about getting on a schedule of once every other Wednesday.  Should be pretty easy for now but a little concerned about the commitment once the backlog of shit I never posted gets depleted.  Oh well.  We’ll see how it goes.  I’m sick right now and I’m posting so that has to say something about my resolve.  Ttyl.

NEW VIDEO: “Callin’ Kaepernick” (Poem)

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My brother said he wasn’t watching the Superbowl this year.  Might be the only thing I’ve ever heard him talk about protesting.  I know if he was touched by the Kaepernick protests, the NFL’s response, and all the blow back that ensued, he probably wasn’t the only one.

I wrote this poem the week after Trump’s “sons of bitches” comment directed to NFL athletes who had knelt during the national anthem.  When I heard about the widespread response to it from the NFL – players and coaches kneeling or making an acknowledgement during the Sunday pre-game national anthem – I was moved.  I thought about the man who started this off and how he didn’t even have the opportunity to participate in what he may sparked off.

My brother told me that the NFL would be donating millions to “social justice ” causes as some form of repentance.  “How ’bout we start with giving Kaepernick his job back?” he said. “Let’s start there.”  Yeah, let’s start there.  Callin’ Kaepernick.