Artist at the Crossroads

Summer in Sanctuary!

2011-10-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Importance of Comic Books

2011-08-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

So I'm a big nerd. Here's my justification for it.

Reviving the Blog

2011-08-26T12:19:00.001-07:00

So it's been a minute since I've blogged on this site. I've missed it, so I'm back. A lot has been going on since my last post in 2010. SOTRU is doing well, on over 200 stations. The shows keep getting stronger. Summer in Sanctuary opened off-broadway in March of 2011 and will be returning to NYC in November as a part of the "All for One Festival". In February of 2012, we will open at the New Jersey Rep. I'm happy with the progress of the show. More updates later, but since I haven't added anything substancial to this site in a while I thought I'd post some new video blogs I've been working on.

We Count Too!

2010-03-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Rarely will I engage in the back and forth of politics on this blog. Actually, I’ve been so busy with my work on State of the Re:Union, that I haven’t had time to update this blog at all. Please forgive me, as the truth of the matter is that blog posts on this site will remain limited until September or so, when work lets up a little bit. I’m not going to whine and complain about the job because I asked for it and I love it. But it does have me working 12 hour days, six to seven days a week—not a lot of time to do any extra writing.
This post though, is somewhat a response to Tavis Smiley’s “We Count Summit.” For the record, I didn’t watch. I’ve watched Tavis’ State of the Black Union, and while I respect his idea, I didn’t get much more information or food for thought then I’d received when going to the barber shop to take my son to get a haircut, or at the hair studio where I get my dreds re-twisted. It’s good for black people to get together and talk about what’s ailing them and pose solutions. I get it. I engage it in. So while SOTBU is not for me, I understand its place in the conversation.
But my issue with SOTBU and “We Count” is simply this; do something. Period. While Tavis seems to be focused on making the government accountable, specifically the president, I haven’t heard an emphasis on black people and black communities making their own solutions. I agree that black people need to engage with the government to help facilitate change, but change isn’t something that starts from the top. In today’s highly politicized culture, how many of these proposals will actually gain fraction? We need to deal with reality.
In my opinion, forums like “We Count” or “State of the Black Union” should not be about creating an agenda for politicians, it should be about creating and agenda for black people. It should be about:
A) Examining the problems in the black community
B) Creating solutions
C) Creating strategies
D) Implementing those solutions
Respectfully, the other part of the problem with the “We count” forums are the participants: Cornel West, Valerie Jarrett, Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Barbara Lee, Tom Burrell, Marc Morial, Ben Jealous, Al Sharpton and others. An impressive panel filled with people I like and that should be a part of the discussion. But the thing missing from this group are the people who are making solutions to the everyday problems of Black America.
Who would I add? Glad you asked.
Will Allen of Growing Power. We tend to not think about food and dietary issues as a part of the issue for African Americans, but with so many of us living in the inner-city without access to good and healthy food, it’s no wonder our rates of diabetes and other ailments are through the roof. Will Allen has created a farm in the middle of Milwaukee, where there is a large low-income housing project just down the block. Not only is he providing jobs, but he’s giving people healthy food.
Kevin Gaye of Operation New Hope. The national recidivism rate is around 70% (the percentage of former prisoners who are rearrested.) Operation New Hope in Jacksonville Florida has taken the recidivism rate and reduced it to 5%, rather amazing results. In Florida in 2008, 93% of the inmates were African American. So recidivism is a huge issue in the black community.
Mrs. Codelia Taylor of Family House in Milwaukee. The Family House is a “residential long-term care facility and has served the community for over 20 years. It serves men and women 55 years and older or disabled in comfortable, clean, and cheerful conditions in a row of houses.” The residents of Family House pay if they can, but if not, FH will still take them in. Years ago, there was a lot of talk about the greatest generation. Well, here they are and they need our help. Mrs. Taylor does all this work with very little help from the government.
These three are just an example of the solutions to the problems that are facing African Americans. There are many more, if we don’t hear from them on a national level, if they aren’t a part of the solution, how will we ever know about them? Too much of our time is spent on pointing fingers and looking for the government to solve issues. If black people of earlier generations had waited on the government to solve issues, the civil rights movement would have never happened. It was the will of the people, the grassroots work that pushed the government to do the right thing.
I do not buy into the post-racial America. I am a black man, and will be treated as such in this country. My time on the road in various places, many times being the only black man for miles has proven that point to me clearly. I have no illusions about that, but to move people to create this “Black Agenda” Tavis is talking about, we have to include everyone. If you want movement in the political arena, you have to label it what it is: solutions for America. As Jack White said over at the ROOT.com “The problems blacks want to address are not different than those facing many other Americans. You can't fix our catastrophic jobless rate without reviving the entire economy or extending health care coverage to our uninsured without extending it to everybody.”
I’m not saying there is no value to forums like SOTBU or “We Count.” Clearly it brings the issues to the forefront. But we are missing the big picture when we focus on getting a black agenda into the White House. We need to bring people who are getting their hands dirty, who see the problems on a day-to-day basis, the unsung heroes who struggle everyday with making their communities a better place. Work the solutions, then watch the political tide catch on. Washington loves nothing more then to claim success for a good idea, after it’s been proven to work.

Valley of the Shadow

2009-12-07T11:39:00.001-08:00

“They say the goodness in life comes to people who believe…so I believe..”
- Mos Def

As always it’s been a minute since I had the time to update this blog. Thanks for sticking in there with me. It seems like every time I do write there have been some tectonic shifts in my life and career. Things are moving pretty fast, and at the same time pretty slow. That statement might not make a lot of sense so let me explain.

In July of this year I was told that my radio show, State of the Re:Union was going to be funded. Huge development. Problem is, the funding was coming from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB has been great and the people who work there have had so much faith in me and my vision, it’s been amazing. All that being said, CPB is a big ship, and big ships move slowly. From July to November we struggled to work of the details of a grant that would fund the show for a year, as well as set up the frame work for us to receive funding for two more years. The grant that CPB has given the show is substantial, and that’s great but there are a bunch of hoops that need to be jumped through in order to make it happen.

I sit here writing this now, a little shocked that it all worked out. There were months where I didn’t think it was going to happen, times when I had so much going on, juggling so many balls in the air, that I wonder what good was it all? Saying July to November makes it seems so insignificant, but it was huge because it wasn’t just those months. It was the culmination of the development year for the show. Prior to getting our current funding CPB gave us funding develop the show. This was tricky because it was a great opportunity, but I’ve never developed a public radio show before. To be honest, I learned a lot from the year I was in the contest which won me the opportunity to have a show in the first place, but that was like going to Elementary and suddenly being told that you were being promoted to college. My business partner Ian and I had to fight, learn, think, rethink, mold, burn, build, and start all over again to get us on the right footing. We have some great advisors, smart people who guided us into the right territories, but the work had to be done by the two of us. Of course we hired smart people to help, but at the end of the day, Ian and I were on the line.

It’s been a good experience and I wouldn’t change any of it, it all made me stronger but it was extremely tough. On top of all of that, in August I was performing my solo show at the Abingdon Theatre, and at the same time performing for the Lincoln Center with my boys Griot 3, (I mean literally at the same time, I had a show at the Abingdon, then left to perform at Lincoln center, then returned to the Abingdon for another performance). All this, and I was writing a new play “Crumbs” which debut in November and recording the final vocals for the Des Moines episode of State of the Re:Union. It was a nonstop grind. I’d stacked all these events together because that’s how you pay the bills as an artist. You line up as many gigs as you can in the hopes that one of them is going to be the one that pays the bills, or maybe little bits from all of them will pay it off. There were many nights when I laid in the bed after working 16 hour days (having no days off for three months straight) and wondered why I was putting myself through all of this. When stories broke down, when people didn’t live up to their expectations, when money ran out, when everything fell apart.

Two nights after “Crumbs” had opened in November, I could feel the weight of it all in my bones. I was working the play at night (every night) working the radio stuff during the day (every day) my bank account was negative 350.00 because I hadn’t had a paycheck since August. All my bills were behind, and if it weren’t for the kindness of some incredible friends I don’t know how me or my family would have eaten. I hadn’t seen my family in what seemed like months because I was working so many long hours. That night, it just all seemed too much and I just let go. Tears streaming down the sides of my face my body shook with the force of the emotion. I felt utterly lost, and alone. It seemed like everything I’d been working for was not working for me. I thought, God if you want to take me, now would be a good time. I went to sleep, praying I would wake up renewed. But when I woke up I felt like I was in a deep pit, and the only light I could see was above me, a mile away in the distance. That morning, I sat on the edge of my bed for a half hour, just wanting to curl up in a ball and quit. I thought back on this journey I’ve been on. The wins, the losses, the belief that so many people have in me. The sacrifices I’ve had to make financially and personally, all of it, and I stood up, and took a step, and kept moving from there.

If this was a Hollywood story, that day would be a turning point where everything got better. But it didn’t for two more weeks I had to struggle, feeling like I was falling apart every couple minutes, reassessing, regrouping and marching on until finally I’d climbed out of that pit and felt the sun on my face. I don’t proclaim to have done it myself. I have a great team & family; a support network that would prop me up when I wanted to quit, and every step of the way I felt the presence of God pushing me forward. It’s funny, when I hear people reference God speaking to them they tend to use bible verses, and sometimes when I feel like God is telling me something I do hear verses, (usually when I’m doing something wrong) but mostly when I need it, my God sends me something more accessible to me. He comes in the voice of movie scenes, hip-hop songs, but for this time in my life he sung to me in Bono’s voice “It’s not a hill it’s a mountain, as you start out the climb, do you believe me our you doubt it? But we’re going to make it all the way to the light”

Today, I’m in the light. Our show State of the Re:Union, has been funded, I’ve got a paycheck, my solo show Summer in Sanctuary is being considered for an off Broadway run by a really excellent theatre in NYC, Crumbs was a success, still much work to do on the script, but it’s a great start, things are lining up well. When I talk to people and they ask for advise about how to make it doing what you love I always wonder if they are ready for the heartbreak that happens on the way to your goal? I know I will face these valleys again, hell, it’s probably right around the corner. But the fact that I got through this one is going to help me get though the next.

The end of Summer, a new beginning for Radio, and theatrical Crumbs

2009-10-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

Usually after not posting in a couple months I start off with a promise to post more. Today I’m bucking the cycle. I’ll post when I can. I don’t want to write a blog full of useless information, and sometimes, I just don’t have the energy to pour it all out. Today is one of those days when I’m so tired but I can’t really sleep, or stop, so probably the best use of time is to write everything that’s going on. I know other people read this blog (four or five people who get bored) but this blog has always been a tool for me to write what’s in my head. An opportunity to write down the highs and lows of my career so I can look back, and understand where I’m going by knowing where I came from.

This has been an incredibly tough summer. How tough? Well I haven’t had a steady paycheck since July. So basically I’ve been living off my credit card since late August. Not having money, and having a family is extremely hard. Some days it feels impossible. I know there are a lot of families in America-in the world struggling like I am right now. But honestly, while it’s been hard I also feel blessed. I have the knowledge that in a couple weeks I’ll be financially fine. I just have to get to that point.

The radio show State of the Re:Union has been such a great unexpected endeavor. Three years ago, I never thought I would be here. An unexpected bi-product of the show is that it’s forced me to become a business man. I’ve always done the business of Al Letson, but honestly, that’s not that difficult. But the radio show- wow. I am a small business owner. Along with my business partner, in the up coming month’s I’ll be employing seven people. Pretty amazing. Also the reason why I’m so broke right now. We are in the midst of negotiating a contract with a funder, so we’ll be able to do the show. Things are working out, our funder is great but when they are giving a large check to a small company like mine it takes time. Apparently three months time. So after the last grant was over we have been in limbo waiting for the next grant to come along. Thus the hard nerve wracking summer. The good news is State of the Re:Union will be heard nationally and we'll be making full seasons whereas last year we were in development and only made three episodes. Time to do it big. I'm ready.

On the flip side, my work is never done. I’ve been on a hard press to write my new play Crumbs. It’s funny every time I sit down to write another play, I can never remember how to do it. I get nervous and wonder if the last play was a fluke. I try to rewrite the last play with a new name, then suddenly it comes. I don’t know how, but “It” comes. I calm down throw out most of what I’ve already written, and write the piece. Unfortunately for Crumbs my time frame was a little crunched. With all my activities in August, (see previous post) I couldn’t get started in earnest until late August. I didn’t finish writing until yesterday, and the show opens in two weeks. To be fair, I’ve had most of the play done for weeks. But still it’s unfair to the actors to give them final pages weeks before we open, but hey, that’s the way it is.

Summer in Sanctuary was my Spaulding Grey play. I was inspired by his work, and wanted to take what he did, i.e. telling stories about his life simply. Him, a glass of water, a desk and his words. Tough to entertain a crowd for 90 mins unless you got the skills. Spaulding had it in spades. I was inspired and wanted to do that myself. Thus, SIS. CRUMBS is my Lisa Kron play. I’ve been a big fan of Lisa’s work for years. She’s a monologist but she experiments with the form. I read her play Well and fell in love. It was essentially a solo show with help. Like Spaudling’s work it was a story from her past that could relate to everyone. After I read that piece I knew exactly how I wanted to tell Crumbs. I won’t go into it in this post but I plan to talk more about it as we pull the show together so stay tuned.

90 Days of Summer

2009-08-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

90 Days of Summer.

I realized with the last post I didn’t talk much about where I am and what I’m doing. So here we go……

In June State of the Re:Union hosted it’s first live event in Jacksonville Fl. It was a great little event. We got about 300 people to come out and check out the show. This was somewhat of a premier for the Jacksonville episode of SOTRU, we had three guest, and as we showed the multimedia clips we created, the audience was able to ask the guests questions about the show, the stories, and our process. Good stuff, and this event created a prototype of how we want to do live shows in the future.

In July SOTRU went to Des Moines for the next episode. Taki Telonidis, Zak Rosen, and I went to the heartland to work on the episode while our crew in Jacksonville provided logistical support. We came home with a ton of material and a lot of work to do to create an episode.

Coming up in late August Players by the Sea will be doing a reading of my new play Crumbs. The piece is in decent shape. But I’m still writing it. Tricky, cause I love the story, but the style is a little different then what I normally do. Which is what I want. I always want to challenge myself, and this piece fits that category. So all August I’ve been working this new play getting ready for the reading.

In early August I performed my solo show Summer in Sanctuary at the Abingdon Theatre. But to tell this story we need to rewind a bit. In April I applied for a grant from the Community Foundation. I applied to get money to fund a workshop performance of the play. The idea was to find a good director that could help me as an actor, writer, but also help push the play into theatres and production companies, someone with a track record and connections. I was fortunate that my friend StacyAnn Chin directed me to a director that she worked with on her solo show. The director Rob is incredible, everything I’ve been looking for. I’ve worked with a handful of great directors, and Rob is definitely in that category. The difference between him and the others is that he’s a director that lives and works in NYC, so he’s got the connections to the places I’d like to have my work performed.

When I got the grant Rob went into action and booked the theatre, and along with my friend/confidant/sorta-manager Bobby, and myself we put up the show for one night. Two performances free to the public. The goal was to get people out that could help move the play forward. Rob and I worked on the script for a couple weeks we did rewrites, rethinking, and blocking. It was a really great experience for me, because having someone from the outside look at the work, and help me clarify points of the story was invaluable. We were able to make tough cuts that moved the play forward faster, and in a solo show, that’s extremely important.

In the meantime, my group, Griot 3 was invited to perform as a part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors “La Casita Festival” a traveling festival that goes around NYC with artist who perform the spoken word and musicians. It was an honor, seriously, an honor to be invited by the Lincoln Center. Years ago my good friend Jimmy introduced me to Bill Bragin, who’s now at the Lincoln Center, and Bill introduced the curators to our work, and we got the gigs, four dates in one week.

Here’s where it gets tricky. I had La Casita, Summer in Sanctuary, writing Crumbs, plus finishing the vocals (an editing a story) for the next SOTRU installment, “Heart of the Heartland” all in the same week.

The last three weeks have been non-stop work. I would wake up start working on the radio stuff, then switch over to working on the Sanctuary script, then switch over to the Crumbs script, then go to rehearsal for SIS with Rob. I’d leave there, get something to eat then go back to working on radio, and scripts. Through all of this, I averaged about 5 hours of sleep a night. I was in NYC for two weeks before Larry and David joined me for the La Casita gig. Once they got there, I had to do the same stuff as before, but now I had to do gigs as well. On the day I performed SIS, @ the Abingdon, I also had a performance for La Casita. So on that day I performed 3 times. Crazy, but actually fun.

If I’m honest there where times when I wanted to quit. When I laid in bed and thought, “God if you want me, I’m cool, you can come get me tonight.” LOL, Like I have a choice in the matter or he needs my permission. I have a great support network, they all think I’m crazy for taking on so much, but they also help me through it. Without the good Lord looking over me and Ian, Stacie, Taki, Larry, and David I have no idea how I would have got through those weeks. But I did.

The results better then expected. SIS was a success at the Abingdon. I can’t talk specifics, but if things work out, the show might be off-broadway in the future. The La Casita, were great performances, we rocked every crowd we saw and I’m pretty sure the Lincoln Center was pleased. While I was in NYC I found out that SOTRU had passed a significant hurdle in it’s quest for future funding. Nothing in stone, but we are almost there. “Heart of the Heartland” will be the best episode of SOTRU yet. Hands down. I finished the vocals in my hotel room. Recording them under the comforter on the bed to get the best sound. Taki was able to take the audio and make it work. As I write this I’m tired, tired, tired. But I feel like this was all for something. It was all worth it and I’d do it again, and again, and again. In the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” Will Smith says to his son. “You want something? Go get it. Period.” I’m going to get it. Period.

After I came back from New York in Feb from the reading of JX. I felt like I’d failed. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Either way, it was good for me to feel that, cause for me, that emotion just pushes me hard. Makes me get up and work longer. Because there maybe people who are more talented, smarter, prettier, but no one is going to work harder then me. I’m never going to settle for a loss. I’ll take it, and learn from it and then watch out, cause I’m going to get it.

Letters to a young poet/writer/actor/artist/dancer/fill in the blanks….

2009-07-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog readers.

Forgive my absence. It’s been a minute since I had the opportunity to sit down and write another post. I don’t really have a lot of time these days to blog, but I got tired of looking at the old post “Failure”. That was a little too depressing. LOL. Today I’m feeling much more optimistic but at the same time, much more tired. So far this year I have nothing to complain about, I feel like I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, because opportunities have presented themselves, and I’ve tried to jump on every one. Lately a couple people have written me and asked for advice as far as their career is concerned. That seems a little odd to me because I have had the most unconventional career path, and I am very much still working hard to bring all of it in focus. Still, after receiving four such emails in the past two months, I figured maybe it’s worth blogging about. So I’m turning this into an occasional series,which I’m calling “Letters to a young poet/writer/actor/artist/dancer/fill in the blanks….” I’ll be posting on this topic from time to time.

RULE 1: NO PLAN B.

I always start with this rule because it’s the hardest to tell people. No Plan B. This goes against everything we are taught at school, from our parents, and society as a whole. They tell you to dream, but then always advise you to keep something in your backpocket, have a career you can rely on cause trying to make it as an artist is a crap shoot. And they are right. If you need that security, then go get it. Be a banker, a lawyer, a policeman, but don’t be an artist. If you want to create for a living then do it. No plan B nothing to fall back on. Because this life is hard, and uncertain. You will fail. You will be rejected. You will want to quit several times and if you have a plan B, you will do it. Save yourself the heartbreak make Plan B your path, and do art as a hobby. (Which is totally acceptable.)
People have told me how “brave” I am to go out there and keep doing what I do. “It takes a lot of courage” I couldn’t disagree more. It would be courageous if I had options. I do not. This is all I have. If I’m not making art, performing, writing, creating, then I have nothing. In the next 5 years I’ll be over forty, and all I’m really good at is my art. Because I have forged ahead with no Plan B, I fight for everything, I think my moves through, I work as hard as I can, because for me, it’s survival. I’ve worked several jobs, and been okay at them, and I can always find some side work to pay the bills. That is not a plan B however. That’s just filling in the blanks between gigs, it’s never an alternative career. I know a lot of writers and artist that teach, and I guess technically this is a plan B, but I think it depends on the individual. I think there are a lot of artist who teach to pay the bills. They enjoy teaching, but art is where their passion is. I think there are a lot of teachers who do art. They enjoy creating, but teaching is where their passion is. I believe it’s an individuals choice as to how to look at whether you are engaging in a plan B or just doing what you need to eat.

Disclaimer 1: If you sign up for the no plan B, chances are you will be broke, A LOT. Art is a whole is not a very financially rewarding endeavor. It can be, but most times not. Therefore if money is your goal, make a really good plan B.

Disclaimer 2: I am in no way sittiong in judgement of people who choose path B. Not at all. I think it’s an individual choice and making that choice does not mean that you have nothing to contribute. On the contrary, some of the most incredible art comes from people doing it part time. I am only stating what I have done, and why it works for me.

Failure

2009-05-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Failure

"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why... I succeed."

Michael Jordan

I wasn’t going to post these thoughts because I look at this blog as a place where I talk about what’s going on in the career of Al Letson. Generally, I like to keep it positive. I usually try not to talk about the struggles here, but in reflection, I think that without talking about the bad times, the celebration of the good times doesn’t have as much meaning.

That being said, I’m at the point of burn-out. On everything. I need to get away for awhile. Leave the computer on the desk and relax. But I don’t see where I’ll have time to do that until August (if then). All the projects I’m working on seems a little too big, or a little too hopeless. I’m still working to perfect the Jacksonville episode. I like what I have, but I feel like I could do better. I need to give people a better sense of the place. Right now I think I have good solid stories, but I need more parts to fill it out. If I was okay with being good, then I think it’d be fine. But I’m not okay with being good. I want to be brilliant. I will be brilliant. Period. The space between good and brilliant is a hard spot. In some ways I feel like I'm just not doing enough. Like the show needs to work better in some key areas, and I'm not sure how to do it. So, yeah, it feels like I'm failing. I don't know what else I can do. It's got to come from outside of me. I have a great team but I need a senior producer to really help find that missing part. Until then, I've got to push to make it work. Fortunately, in circumstances like this, I am always at my best.

The theatre side of my career is where most of my frustration comes from. My best friend Jamel told me the other night, “How come every time I talk to you, it’s like you are waiting on someone else to give you the green light?” He's right and for a person like me, who likes being in control that’s the part of being an artist that kills. I’ve got all of these great ideas, scripts, and stories, and yet I always feel like I’m on the outside begging to get in. Today Julius X will be read for a second time by the Classical Theatre of Harlem @ the cell theater. I am extremely excited for this to happen. But on the flip side, I’m a little disappointed because I feel like this will probably be the end for the play. I could be completely wrong, but I can help but feel like what I was hoping for (someone who could help produce the play) would see the work, and want to help find a way to make it work. I’m confident, that if the right person is in the room, the play will get what it needs to be given a full run in NYC. The actors are amazing, the director is excellent, and the story and writing are on point. And yet, I don’t have much working as far as getting people out. It’s the never-ending problem for me. I create good work, but have no advocate to get that work out there. It’s beyond frustrating.

My play Summer in Sanctuary is in neutral. After having great success in at home and in Baltimore, the piece has been rejected by every juried festival I’ve sent it to. I believe in the play again I know it’s strong. I’ve seen solo shows in NYC and I’m always disappointed. I know my plays are stronger then what I’m seeing, but I can’t get anyone to really take me seriously. I’m working on a new play and I’m getting the feeling of “Why?” Why create anymore because it will be like all the other pieces. Good work that will collect dust. That feeling never last for long because the answer to the question “WHY?” is simple, because I could not, not do it. I can’t stop writing. I can’t stop performing. It’s who I am. On a dark day in Boston eleven years ago, I learned what the consequences were of not following the art. I’d tried to stop writing to make other people happy to fit into someone else box, and one day it all came crashing down. I thought about just ending it all because I was so lost. It was a terrible day that I had to go through to learn who I really am. An artist. A writer. A doer. A dreamer. And no matter how bad I feel right now, it’s nothing in comparison to sense of utter loss I felt when I tried to stop being me.

My mantra has always been “Do the work” and everything else will work out and I’m going to keep that mantra going, but some days when you do all the work and nothing works out it can be demoralizing.

Julius X comes home.

2009-02-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

“I’m going to remember this night, for the rest of my life.” That’s what I was thinking when my cousin walked into Schomburg Center in New York City. I have a strange relationship with New York. I love her. Seriously. I have such great memories of NY. Syretta, Bassey, Sabrina and I walking through Brooklyn in the summer. Stacie, Rich and I stumbling from bar to bar in the West Village. Seeing Passing Strange on Broadway, wanting to throw my concessions at a solo performer while Lucy and Jason practically snored next to me. I could go on and on.

Then there are the tough times; As a kid I was a leader in a hip hop group, Jamel, Squiggy, LJ, we drove up to NY looking to break in. I remember leaving to get on the subway, and I told everyone, “Grab a tape, we’re in NY anything can happen.” Nothing happened except we spent a ton of money with nothing in return. Dan and I went to NYC to do my solo show Essential Personnel, I later returned with Barbara, Mark and a band to put the show up again. Sometimes I’d perform for forty people most of the time I performed for three. I thought the experience of performing for such a small crowd was the worst thing that happened to me. Now I know it was one of the best. Traveling that for to perform for three people seemed like such a waste. But really it prepared me in ways I couldn’t imagine at the time. Professionally, every time I left New York, I’d think, she got me again. While staying in the city rehearsing with a new director for Essential Personnel, Ron, I woke up in Bassey and Maro’s apartment in Brooklyn to find out the sky had fallen. I remember clearly walking through the streets going to get something to eat, and the ash from the Towers floating in the air. Seed and I “escaped” New York three days later. When we drove out from the city, I looked out of the rear window and watched as the smoke crept from the mounds of debris and stretched itself into the night sky. I mourned for the city, the people, and the idea of New York. The idea that all these people of all different backgrounds could be in the same place, work together, live together, love/hate and struggle together it seemed that 9/11 had destroyed that.

Thankfully New York and her people are stronger then that.

I wrote Julius X, about a mythical time and place in America, Harlem more specifically. The play is set in an alternative universe, but it is about honoring a man, Malcolm X, a place, and a time. I did a ton of research, talked to Jimmy, Dr. Felicia and her mother to help me fill out the vision of what Harlem was, what it meant to the people who lived there. It’s a complicated piece with a lot of layers. I’ve had two really excellent directors do the play and I’m happy with both of their visions. Gary’s (Plowshares in Detroit) version was tight and well staged, Barbara’s (Players by the Sea in Jacksonville) was big, and smart. Both got the poetry right for the most part. The actors in both were good. Except, Julius. The Detroit Julius was good, but not what I was looking for, I enjoyed him as an actor, just not sure I dug him in that role. The less I say about the Jacksonville Julius probably the better.

There have been other productions, one in Cleveland that I didn’t get to see. I was curious how that production was because I was not able to work with the actors on the poetry, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out. The reviews were mixed, I didn’t expect to get much out of it. But oddly enough that production is how the Classical Theatre of Harlem found out about the play. While on tour they’d heard from someone that they needed to check out the play, they asked for a script, I sent it in and didn’t hear anything for a while, and then they schedule the reading. Between radio, Summer in Sanctuary, and my new piece Crumbs, I hadn’t thought much about it.

I came to New York for rehearsal a little unsure. The director Tracy, was young and hadn’t directed a lot. She was nice though, and I thought she got the material… but still. All of that was erased the minute we started rehearsal. The cast was phenomenal, and Tracy’s command of the rhythm was impressive. In a week’s time we bonded and created something that was better then I’d even imagined it in my head. Each actor did amazing work, but I’d seen great actors in various roles, so while I was impressed I wasn’t surprised. It was the smaller roles that blew me away; usually in a production the weaker actors get the smaller roles. In this reading, we got some excellent talent to read these small parts and really bring it to life. And then there was Julius. Ty Jones is an incredible actor, I’ve seen him, do his thing a couple times, and I enjoyed watching him. When CTH said they wanted to read the play I asked if Ty could be Julius because I knew he could kill the part. Thankfully Ty is on the board of CTH, and agreed to do it. He was magnificent. He gave the reading exactly what the role needs. Fire, smarts, and a magnetism that makes you as an audience member want to follow him. Without that fire, the play loses much of it’s punch. The actors, the drummer/violinist, Tracy and I were able to collaborate on the material and elevate it beyond what I have been hearing in my head into something beautiful.

The night of the reading, I got all screwed up on subway, and had to jump in a cab to get to the Schomburg Center. When I read the address to the cabbie, is when it hit me. The Schomburg is in Harlem. 135 and Malcolm X Blvd. Performing the piece in Harlem was something I wanted to do since started writing the play, but honestly I never thought it would happen. It struck me watching the actors, give the play it’s due, in some ways I’ve accomplished a goal, a dream that I held on to so long, I just didn’t even think about it anymore.

I’m not one for looking back when it comes to my career. When good things happen, I take it, enjoy it for a day or two then let it go. I learned long ago that the business is a series of ups and downs and the way you survive is not to get too high or too low. But this week, I know I will feel similar to the way I did when my children were born. A continual floating high, that’s not so easy to let go.

God is good, and the universe makes space when you dream.

Today is the Future.

2009-01-02T06:36:00.001-08:00

Today is the Future.

Happy 2009. Now time to get to work. I’ve been working on the next installment of my radio show State of the Re:UNION Jacksonville Bold New City of the South for a couple weeks now. The process of creating a show is a weird mixture of excitement, fear, and logistics. I’m embracing it, but just like every show Jacksonville presents a challenge. Here, I’d say the biggest challenge comes in three areas.

1. I was on my way to report a story, ran into on of my favorite spots the Burrito Gallery, to grab something to eat came out to my car 10 minutes later to find that my car had been broken into and all of my audio equipment was stole. The thieves must have been watching me when I parked because I made sure all my doors were locked and put my bag under the seat with a jacket on top of it. They went right for the bag, leaving everything else in tact. At first I was pissed. But a week later I can look back on it and be glad. I’m happy because right now, I’m sad to say the city I love so much is in the throws of violence. It’s everywhere. People are being killed for less then nothing. If I’d left the Burrito Gallery five minutes earlier, I might have caught the thieves, and they might have caught me with some bullets. Eight hundred dollars worth of equipment is not worth mine or anyone else’s life.
2. This is my home city. You’d think it would be easier to do a show on your home territory but in some ways that familiarity is the enemy. It makes objectivity hard. The staff of SOTRU and I have spent weeks thinking about the stories we would tell, how could we sum up a city we know so well, we almost have too many ideas.
3. I love SOTRU: Motor City Rebound. But there are things in the show that I want to do better. This is our development process, so we are allowing ourselves to experiment with form and content. With Detroit, I feel like we didn’t get the grit of the city, we got so many stories of optimism, which was great, but I think it would have been better to have a little more balance.

These three challenges are going to make this show special. I’ve decided that this episode needs to be extremely personal. Like I must take ownership of this city, the good and bad. I have a personal history with this place, some days I love it, other days I want to run as fast and far as I can to get away from it. So my goal is to take that contradiction and give it life.

End of the Year Round up.

2008-12-31T18:54:00.001-08:00

EndEnd of the Year Round up.

A bunch is going on with me at the close of the year so I thought I’d wrap it up here.

Everyone has been asking me about the cuts at NPR, and wondering if it affects me. Yes and no. I know a lot of good people who got hurt by the cuts at NPR, my “Obi Wan” Doug Mitchell, the staff of New and Notes and a couple other people who have really helped me in this journey through radio have felt the pinch. They are so brilliant at what they do, it sadness me that NPR couldn’t find a way to keep their shows and programs running. Knowing all of these people, I can comfortably say, this will not stop them. It might actually be a blessing. Freeing them to do bigger and bolder projects.

As for me, I’m not affiliated with NPR. My show is funded by CPB, which is the big boss for all Public Broadcasting. What it might affect is my ability in the future to make shows. My development deal runs through 09’, if I am funded in the future by CPB it will depend on a few things, the national economy being one of them. I’m not worried. I’m going to make the best damn show possible and make what I bring to the table essential to the future of public broadcasting. And if they don’t pick up the show, someone else will. The future is bright because the big guy upstairs told me to do the work and let him handle the rest. I can do that.

I have been missing the stage like crazy. With all of the other stuff that’s going on; projects I can talk about (radio) and projects I can’t (shshshsh), I been working my butt off. But no theatre time. It’s driving me a little nutty. I need to get on stage, I need to write for the stage; the feeling I get from both of them is unparalleled. I don’t feel like my theatre career has stalled, but I also don’t think it’s moving at the pace I’d like. But I guess the more important thing is that I can’t control that, what I can control is the work. That sounds clinical when the truth is for me it’s not about making work to advance a career path. It’s about making work because I have a story to tell, something to say. It’s about being in love with the stage, the hot lights, the conversation between me and the audience. I can’t live without it. And so I’m in the midst of working on a new theatre piece. Crumbs.

I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the play here, but in this post I won’t talk about the story itself. This will be the first piece that I’m working with a composer on. It’s a poetical that will use music in a way I haven’t in the past. I’m excited to have a collaborator and though we have not officially decided to work together we are moving in that direction. Very exciting for me, to have someone that can score behind my words because I hear it in my head musically, but mostly I have had to settle for it without music. Irritating. I can’t wait to see and hear how the piece shakes out.

I'm applying for a bunch of fellowships and residencies across the country. I'm excited about the prospects. These things though come and go. You put together a package and then you forget about it. Pray that someone reads it, and gets the work you are looking to do. So we'll see, deep down, I feel like a few of these fellowships are mine. I don't know why but on some of the stuff i submit for, I know before I send off the package that I'm going to get it. Two of them specifically I can feel it. Let's hope that feeling is true.

2008 has been a very good year for me. So personally I feel like things are moving in the right direction. Still it’s hard to be too happy when the economy is falling apart and people all over the country are struggling to pay bills and feed families. The world on a whole is in a tough-tough spot. In the New Year, I of course would like to professionally move forward, but more importantly with all the stuff going on, I want to be apart of the solution. It may be a corny sentiment, but we’ve tried all the other stuff and nothing seems to be working. Personally, I’m going to try and bring what little light I have, I want to be the open palm instead of the closed fist. I’m so tired of the closed fist. So is the rest of the world. May we all wake in a better world tomorrow.

Back in the Saddle

2008-12-17T12:44:00.001-08:00

It’s been a few months since I’ve updated this blog. I promise for the five people who read this it that I will not disappear that long again in the future. So what’s been up with me? A ton. In the last couple months I’ve been to NY, Detroit, Chicago, LA, Ashland, Oregon and Atlanta. Mostly for the radio show but also for some theater stuff.

I’ve been working on the newest episode of State of the Re:UNION: Motor City Rebound. It’s been a while since I put together an episode, actually close to a year ago, so I’d forgotten how intense of a process it can be. Fortunately I have an excellent team. My advisors helped me find the producer of the show Zak Rosen, and I got my old producer Taki Telonidis to be the senior advisor of the show for this episode and hopefully for the entire development process. I think it’s important that Taki stay involved with the program since we made the pilot together. He took all my ideas and gave them shape. I think the concept could stand on it’s own without either Taki or I, I believe together we can put our personal stamp on the program and create something really special. Along with Zak, Willie Evans Jr (the incredible beatmaker)and my business partner, Ian, I think we have a good team.

That however does not mean that everything is easy. Creating an episode is like giving birth. It is giving birth, not the physical pain of course, but the mental strain, the sleepless nights, the joy of seeing the baby for the first time, all of it is the same. Zak and I started working on story ideas in August. Zak had an idea of the story he wanted to tell, I had a different take. We went back and forth for a while, but once I got on the ground in Detroit, I could see the story, and it was much closer to Zak’s vision then mine. Taki listened to our ideas gave us some insight, Ian was excellent logistical support. We did all the field recording in Detroit for about three weeks total. For the two weeks we edited the interviews did a lot of writing, and a lot of polish, and I can finally say it’s done.

Prior to going to Detroit, I was really nervous about what kind of show I’d be creating. I wanted to create something that uplifted people but all I heard about Detroit was negative. I’m writing this two weeks since completing the episode, and still the only things I hear in the news or online are negatives. What’s striking to me is that when I went to Detroit, I found a lot of positives. In the vast space between what you’d normally expect in a city and what they actually have in Detroit, I found that the people are making it happen on their own. They aren’t waiting for the government or outsiders to handle it and save them. Instead they’ve started finding ways to get around the road blocks and create a new model for how a city can work. It’s not perfect. People are hurting, the economy is in shambles, the political structure is struggling and yet when I left the “D” I felt hopeful.

Right before our eyes the world is changing. America as a whole is being challenged in a way it hasn’t in decades. What Detroit taught me, was that beyond all of that are the people. The foundation of this republic and that foundation, while battered and bruised is what will see us through.

If you get a chance check out the episode here:
http://www.stateofthereunion.com/podcasts/motorcityrebound.mp3

Pro-Life

2008-09-10T07:43:00.001-07:00

Dear Blog readers. First forgive me for taking so long to update this blog. In the near future you will be sick of reading all the post I’ll be putting up. Big things happening, and I’ve got a ton to talk about. But today it doesn’t feel appropriate. I, like most of the nation have spent the last couple weeks engrossed with politics, the conventions, the protest, the speeches, the candidates… After a while it all becomes white noise blaring in the background of life. Today that white noise seemed to roar a little louder in my ear then normal.

I’m working on an hour long radio documentary about violence in my home town Jacksonville Florida. My goal is to work from the bottom up. To talk to the people who experience the violence first hand, and try and understand where it comes from. Most of Jacksonville is a pretty peaceful place. But one area of town the Eastside/Springfield and parts of the Northside are plagued with violence. These parts of town are economically depressed and primarily African-American. As the rest of the city marches to the beat of the Florida sun, young people are dieing and killing each other.

If you read this blog at all, or know my work then you know I’ve got some roots in this community from my work at the Sanctuary on 8th street. I’ve been volunteering/working there for three years now, and I have a real connection with the kids there. As apart of the series I’m working on, I went back to the Sanctuary to interview one of the boys, Biko. Biko is one of the brightest kids I know. He’s got this big open smile, and always willing to help out. At 16, Biko has been shot at more then four times and hit twice. When we sat down to talk, Biko’s leg was bandaged from a gun shot wound to his knee. He was much skinnier then I’d last seen and it was obvious that the whole incident weighed heavy on him. But he still had a big smile and hug for me.

When Biko got shot this time, he was at a store talking to a friend, a car rolled by and shot him in the leg. He didn’t know who the shooter was, and no one knows for sure why he was shot. Most assume it was mistaken identity. Image that, you are minding your business, getting a soda from the store, and someone shoots you in the leg. What’s ironic about Biko’s existence is that he’s an immigrant from Africa. He moved with his family from the Congo to America to escape the wars. With the sound of gun shots breaking the silence of the night, I can’t help but wonder what the differences there are between the war he is currently fighting, and the wars his parents tried to protect him from. This is Biko’s reality. It’s not a movie. It’s not made up, it’s life and death every day in a way most of us can’t image.

Through the interview Biko keeps smiling. When I ask him where he will be in five years he says, without a smile, lowering his voice, “Probably dead… or in jail” There is such certainty in his words, the type of certainty that a grown man has from the hard experiences of life. We talked about life on the street, police harassment, having no opportunities, no hope. When we were done with the interview I struggled to not weep. I know that must sound melodramatic, but the truth is at 16 and two bullet wounds already, what kind of life is waiting for him outside that door? Most of you will never know Biko, so you will have to take it from me. He’s the type of kid that lights up any room he’s in. He could be a computer technician, a programmer, a mathematician, a physicist, but most likely he won’t. And yes there are people who can rise up from their bootstraps, but I’d argue that most people who do have much more support then he does.

I watched Biko limp away on crutches, acting like it’s all going to be okay, like what he just said was about someone else and not him. But it’s not. With five siblings, a dead father, an unemployed mother, and a neighborhood in the on the verge of death, where can he go?

It was on my drive home when that the white noise started roaring in my ears. Someone on the radio was talking about the Christian Right, and their Pro-life stand, and it infuriated me. It infuriates me because these same people who scream pro-life will do nothing about the lives being lost in ghettos of America. They stand in their Ivory Churches and protest the loss of life when it’s in the form of an abortion, but turn a blind eye to children like Biko. Is he not sufficient for God’s grace? Does the fact that he is in the ghetto disqualify him from receiving help with the same vigor with which they protest abortion? Of course not all on the Christian Right fall into this category. There are people who come into the ghetto’s everyday and give their heart, but for change to happen Pastors like Rick Warren, James Dobson, TD Jakes, and John Hagee need to mobilize their congregations for the cause of children like Biko, the same way they mobilize them for other causes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way taking sides on the issue of Abortion, I’m just asking why the need to defend life doesn’t extend to the life already here. Why it is acceptable to have a rash of violence where young people are the victims? What have they done that makes it okay for them to die? I think people tend to think that people living in poverty are there because they deserve it. I do not agree with that concept but I won’t argue the point, what I will argue is if that is true, do their kids deserve it?

Please don’t point to the government programs. They obviously don’t work, or there would be no need to write this post. I think the Christian Right needs to ask themselves What would Jesus do? I don’t identify myself with that group. I’m only asking them the same questions I’ve asked myself. I am not perfect, I don’t profess to have a direct line with God, or that I am his messenger and know his will. But when I ask myself the question that the Christian Right has begged us to ask, the answer I come up with is this: He’d help the poor. He’d help the children. He’d try to save people without judgment in his heart, because it’s the right thing to do.

Repackaging Racism

2008-07-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

Jesse Helms died recently, and the press and politicians have been clamoring to pat him on the back. I’ve heard things like he, “He stood for something” and that he was a hard charging politician that stood for something.

What they don’t say is that he stood for racism. He stood for me not being equal to other folks. He blocked every civil rights bill that came before him, and had nothing but disgust for the people fighting for the right to be equal.

The flags are flying at half mass in his home state. I can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be if say, Louis Farrakhan had died and black politicians made similar comments about him?

Sometimes America makes me sad. I’m sad that politicians praise an outwardly racist man, and can’t deal with the truth. I’m sad for all the black people in his state that was supposedly represented by this man in the Senate. I’m sad for Jesse Helms, sad that his entire life, he had an evil cancer of hate in his heart. I’m sad that another human being, no matter how much he may have disliked me has passed.

I will not dance on his grave, but I will also not pretend he was something other then what he was; a small man of huge limitations, that allowed his hate to run his life. May God have mercy on his soul and may he have mercy on mine as well.

State of the Re:UNION Coming to a Public Radio Station near you!

2008-06-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

So this is it. For those of you who never heard of the Public Radio Talent Quest, State of the Re:UNION, or of Al Letson, here’s a quick primer. My name is Al Letson, I’m a playwright, performance poet, actor, director, and a few other titles, I won’t bore you with. I’ve been working as an artist professionally for about 10 years, doing any gig that can pay the bills. I started as a Slam Poet, and still very much consider myself one, even though I don’t actually slam anymore. A year ago (April 07), I was looking up the results of American Idol, which I don’t even watch, but I was curious for some strange reason. When I googled American Idol something entitled Public Radio’s American Idol popped up. I click on the link and found out that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was looking for new host, and new ideas. I love Public Radio, and figured what the hell.

I entered the contest with 1400 other folks, and with nine other contestants was chosen as a semi finalist. The ten of us, had to go through some pretty strenuous tasks to get to the finish line, along the way, the contestants got pared down to three, and the top three of us, where given funding to make a pilot. Here is where the plot thickens. CPB created two contests to find host: Public Radio Talent Quest run but The Public Radio Xchange (PRX), and Launch productions. I don’t know much about LAUNCH. The way it was described to me is that PRX took the grassroots approach, whereas LAUNCH took the top down model and contacted people who were in Media/celebrities of a sort to have their own shows. Each contest was given funding to create three pilots, and those pilots would vie for their own show. Out of the six, the conventional wisdom was that CPB would pick two.

After a year of competing and a whole lot of waiting, CPB informed me that my show State of the Re:UNION, was chosen as one of the winners. They’d decided to award three shows total. Two from PRX, mine and Glynn Washington’s Snap Judgment, and one from LAUNCH, The Promise Land with host Majora Carter (whom I have not met, but have been a huge fan of for years).

What does all this mean? In the history of Public Broadcasting State of the Re:Union will be one of the first shows ever given this opportunity. For the next year CPB will allow me to develop the program, find out what works, get my footing as a host, and make some killer shows. At the end of that process, you’ll be hearing the show on your public radio station next to Public Radio giants like Ira Glass and Garrison Keillor. I’m honored to have this opportunity. I’d like to give thank you’s in this blog, but there are too many to name. Rest assured if you’ve helped on this journey, you will be personally hearing from me. The staff of SOTRU, and myself will be posting on this blog to from time to time to give you an inside scoop on the progress of the show. It should be a wild and fun ride, so fasten your seatbelt, adjust your seatbacks to full upright position and prepare for take off.

A match made in Heaven

2008-06-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

Usually I don’t post silly things on my blog. My brother Jamel tells me I’m a bore and corny-as-hell cause I’m not that serious in real life. He might be right. I’ll be posting some other news here, FINALLY today or tomorrow or so, BUT today I was trolling around the internet, and I found a video of my girlfriend on line professing her love for me…… Okay maybe she’s not my girlfriend….. And maybe she’s not professing her love for me specifically… BUT it’s a coded message. You just gotta know how to read it!

See! She loves me. Don't hate congratulate.

A love song for my mother

2008-05-28T11:18:00.001-07:00

A love song for my mother.

My mom will tell you I never write about her and I guess I don’t. We’ve had difficulties in our relationship. Mostly because we are too much a like, stubborn, opinionated, fire-in-belly, and not shy to show it. Two people like that always seem to bump heads. I love my mother. Deeply. She loves me deeply. But we always find away to not connect the dots between us. There is no big reveal here. She was, is, and always will be, a great parent. I have friends with mothers who are the exact opposite, and I thank God for my mother.

Lately I’ve found a way to keep us centered. I don’t argue with her about things that she says that I disagree with. I want to, but sometimes the best thing you can do is to shut up. I guess that was the problem when I was younger. I always wanted to be heard, always need to have the last word. The older I get the more interested I become in listening.

I don’t think I ever thought about our relationship much in the last couple years. Just kind of maintained. Not to say we didn’t have our ups and downs in that period, but I haven’t fully examined it. And then a couple months ago I saw Passing Strange on Broadway, and it all came back to me. All the anger, self-righteousness, the resentment. I look back on all those petty feelings and realize that my whole relationship with my mother has been framed by the mind of a teenaged kid. That many of the decisions I made in my life that my mother vocally disagreed with were decisions of child that have impacted me as an adult, and she knew it. Of course she did, cause she’s dealing with her own. I don’t know what hers are, but I know we all face them.

After I saw Passing Strange, I realized that the tough spots in our relationship came because she loves me, cause she wants the best for me. It’s such a Hallmark sentiment, something that I the introspective poet should have picked up on a long time ago. But we all got our own blind spots, and I guess this was one of mine. I think it’s gotta be hard for a parent to have a child like me. Especially from my mother’s generation. In her mind the man went to work got a good job, pension, and raised his family. He didn’t go off and decide to travel the country to recite poems. She grew up with 3 brothers two of which became alcoholics, and never lived up to their potential. I think my chosen lifestyle must have scared the hell out of her, probably still does.

Through my childhood she could be tough on me. When I got older, she was even tougher. No coddling, nothing. I always felt because I couldn’t live up to my father’s example, she just didn’t love me. I was never going to be a Baptist preacher. I was never going to be able to live in the 9 to 5 world. All I could do is me. Because of all that heavy stuff I use to think she didn’t support me. For years I held this idea in my heart that one day, I would show her. Show her that I am somebody. That my art has value. That I have something to say. That in some ways I am like my dad, we just are talking to different congregations. For years I wanted to tell her, I’m not the person she thinks I am. That I’m not some selfish artist that doesn’t care about anyone else. ‘Cause I’m not. For years I wanted her to see the real me. That was one of the motivations that pushed me on to prove to her.
One day I was so mad at her, I needed vent, so I stopped by my friend, Keith house. Keith is close to twenty years older then me and for the last five years has become somewhat of an Uncle to me. We were sitting on his porch and he patiently listened to me. He looked down at the floor and said, “Sounds like your right on this one”. Before I could pat myself on the back he said “But she’s the only mother you got. You know what I’d give to talk to my mother?” It struck me then. You only get one shot with most of the people in your life. When they are gone they are gone.

The lead in Passing Strange takes a similar journey. I’m listening to the soundtrack now and it’s all coming back to me. This week I stand on the verge of some really excellent professional possibilities on several different fronts, somewhat of a milestone year. I can’t wait till the ink is dry on all of these deals to tell the world. I thought at this point I would feel some sort of vindication. Like I could finally tell my mother, see I was right! I thought I would feel validation, that I’d see her and gloat over it. I realize how foolish I was. What I feel now, is this overwhelming desire to ask her forgiveness. For all those stupid things I thought, the dumb things I’ve said, the heartbreak I put her through. I want to thank her, because she was the one that prepared me for all the obstacles I have to face. She never did it in spite she did it because that’s what a parent does for a child. All the times I thought she wasn’t supporting me, she was making me strong so I could support myself.

My mother will tell you I never write about her. But that’s not true, she’s behind every word, she just never took the credit.

I love you mommy

Perspective

2008-05-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

The worse thing about performing is when its over. For me, it leaves a big hole. When I’m on stage I feel a certain magic, very specific to that place. I never want to let go of it. And then the show is over and I’m in this funk from missing it. So here I am in Funk City.

We put Summer in Sanctuary up at Theater Jacksonville this weekend. We got decent turn out, and people told me they really enjoyed the show. I’ve said this in previous blogs, but people have responded to this piece more then anything else I’ve done. I’m honored, and now feeling a little empty because I’m missing the stage, and worried about the future of the play.

I love my home city because I get to work on material here, and it’s a great place to raise kids, but for my career, it’s a tough sell. I don’t get to network, and people that could help me don’t get to see my work. So I sit here at the end of a very short run, and I don’t know what to do. I go through this stage after every show. The question of what’s next? The answer is I have no idea. I know the show will be in Detroit in October, I’m excited by that, but October seems so far away. I wanna do it tomorrow. One of my personal goals in life is to win an Obie. The Obie is the equivalent of an off Broadway Oscar. The key for me getting an Obie would be to perform off Broadway, in NYC. With the current status of the play, I don’t see that happening. I’m not saying it won’t just saying that getting an off Broadway run for a relative unknown, is not an easy sell.

Today in the midst of stewing over all of this, and feeling somewhat melancholy, I found out I had to pay a bill that I shouldn’t have had to pay. That sentences is intentionally vague. Anyway, when I went to pay the bill, I ran into a young lady broke down in the parking lot. I helped her jump her vehicle, and no dice the truck wasn’t moving. I was going to leave her there after that, but she started crying and said her 80 year old Grandmother was with her (she was standing outside the building, in the hot Florida sun). I felt bad for her and gave them both a ride across town. As we drove the more the young lady talked the more I could tell the car breaking down was just another mishap pushing her over the edge. She’s had a hard life, some by the choices she’s made some just by circumstance. She was scared I was going to judge her, but I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, I have no right to judge anyone. I told her that and she seemed to become a little more comfortable. Her grandmother sat in the back of the car having an in depth conversation with my youngest Aiden, about dogs and other important things 3 year olds like to talk about.

We got to their house and the Grandmother was so sweet instructing me to come back and not be a stranger, but when the young lady got out the car she was crying, feeling like her life was falling apart. I grabbed her hand and told her, “This to shall pass. You go through rough times, to get to the good” She smiled at me briefly, then walked into her house.

I drove away and thought a lot about her, and her life and the troubles she might not ever escape. I thought about my own problems and while my feelings of emptiness was still there, but it was easier to look at it for what it is. I don’t have half the money I need, it’s hard making a living as an artist, but my struggle is nothing compared to many. Doesn’t change the fact that I want an Obie, doesn’t invalidate that desire, just puts it in perspective.

2008-05-01T18:38:00.000-07:00

Overwhelming

2008-04-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Monday. April 21st 2008.

Wow. I woke up this morning completely overwhelmed. The response for Summer in Sanctuary was absolutely incredible and unparalleled in the history of my career. I’ve done a ton of work, and people have been kind, generous, and encouraging. But this is something different.

When we (Willie Evans Jr. and director Gary Anderson) did the show in Baltimore, we had so many technical issues and we were working out all the kinks in the script, we didn’t get a chance to really revel in the experience. Good reviews. People were moved. Vicky and the kids from the Sanctuary came up and that was very special. It was a good thing. But doing the play here in Jacksonville has got to be a highlight in my career.

We booked the show at Players by the Sea, my theatrical home in Jacksonville, and didn’t really give Joe (a patron saint in the career of Al Letson) much time to promote. We got the word out, Bob White (another patron saint) plugged the show at the Jacksonville Arts Awards luncheon, and then Friday came and we had a really good crowd. People were enthusiastic, and giving to the show, and we put on a good performance. If felt very different performing the piece in Jacksonville. Like this is where it needed to be done, finally the piece is home. The second night the theatre was full, and the love the audience gave Willie and I was tremendous. Vicky came the first night, and she returned the second night with a big smile and Biko. Biko left the Sanctuary, and has been on the streets living his life the best way he knows how. He never came to Baltimore to see the show, so this would be his first experience watching himself on stage.

I haven’t seen Biko in awhile, frankly I was surprised he was there. I hope he saw a reflection of who he really is, and not what the street tells him. In doing the play every night I’m moved because I love him, and all the kids at the Sanctuary, but it’s hard to tell them that in a way that they understand. People can tell you they love you, but when you live in their conditions words seem pretty empty. More then anything I’ve ever written, this play is a love song to them, to the kids, to Vicky, to the city. I hope that Biko got that. That someone loves him unconditionally. When he walked down the stair to give me a hug, I wrapped my arms around him and was right back in that Summer in 06’ where I didn’t want to let him go.

After having a successful run, my only worry is that people got the wrong idea. I don’t want people looking at the piece and going “Oh, that’s a nice story and he’s a good performer”, and give me all the props. It’s nice and I appreciate it. But at the end of the day, what I want is change. I want people to get up and do something. I want them to feel like if this nerd can do something small, so can I. Government can’t change the story of Springfield, of poverty, of lost children. Only people can. God may work through governments at times, although evidence of that in recent times is slim to none, but I think it’s in the heart of man, where he whispers his providence. I hope this piece will soften some hearts so they can hear that whisper and do something.

2008-04-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Waiting on Godot : Or, what’s up with the NPR contest?

2008-04-07T09:20:00.001-07:00

Waiting on Godot : Or, what’s up with the NPR contest?

Actually the question should be what’s up with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Public Radio Xchange? But most people don’t know that, neither did I till a year ago. Everyone and their momma has been asking me what’s up with my radio show. So I figured I’d write a post to catch everyone up to speed. The stuff you hear on your local public radio station is usually a conglomeration of a few different organizations, the best known of these is NPR, but there is also American Public Media and a few others. All of these organizations get funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

PRX is an organization that primarily distributes content, a couple years ago they came up with an idea to find new hosts and shows. They got the CPB involved, and two contests were created, LAUNCH, and the Public Radio Talent Quest. Out of these two contests winners would be picked and the funding would be given from CPB to support the chosen shows. CPB could pick as many shows as they wanted, or they could chose to not pick any (unlikely). After talking to the President of CPB a couple months ago, I got the impression that they would do more then one, probably 2-3. But who knows.

LAUNCH’s approach was to take three well known and respected Producers of Public Radio and start a search for celebrities to make their shows. Maybe celebrity is a little too big of a word… people from other mediums that the public might already be familiar with? I don’t know. I’ve heard this described as a top down approach. The three that were chosen are food writer Mark Bittman, activist and speaker Majora Carter, and actress/comedian Julia Sweeney. Very interesting group of people, and I dig all of their work. How will what they do translate into radio? Who knows?

PRX was tasked with the Public Radio Quest which was as grassroots as it can get. They created a website and asked for submissions. 1400 people applied out of that 1400, I was chosen after a long series of tasks to be one of the three winners. It was a grueling process that started in April of 07 and didn’t finish until December 07’. I’ve blogged about the experience before so I won’t bore you with the details of all the work. I’ll just say I was glad when it was over.

The three finalist received funding to create a pilot which in turn would be what CPB used to determine who was going to get the funding. The show I created is entitled State of the Re:UNION. At it’s essence, SOTRU is about bringing people together. The method the show uses to accomplish that goal is by traveling to a different city every week and asking the questions, what makes community? Who are the people that help define it? What brings people together, and what pulls them apart? The hope is by focusing on different cities, this big country of ours doesn’t seem so big anymore, that people in Walla Walla Washington hear the show and recognize that people in Charlotte NC have the same struggles, the same hopes and dreams. All things that separate us are so much smaller than the things that bring us together. There is one America, if we will it to be so. Lofty goals for a radio show, but if you read the blog a lot you know lofty goals are my thing.

So back the original question, what’s going on now? The answer is nothing and everything. We’ve done all the work, turned in the pilot in December, and now must wait on CPB. The LAUNCH crew didn’t have to have their pilot in until February so CPB didn’t start listening to them until March. They formed a committee of industry professionals to judge the programs, make recommendations, and then they would decided on who gets the funding. At this time the panel has convened, and CPB has informed us that they will be looking at those recommendations for the rest of the month. At the end of the month they will decide who gets the funding. I’ve set a date in my mind of May 15th as to when I’ll know. I needed a date. So I figured I’d give them an additional two weeks.

Honestly, they whole process is driving me nuts. I’d be nice to know what the future holds as far as radio is concerned, but like everything it all takes time, and patience, (something that I am not the best at) is a virtue.

Thank You

2008-03-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

Thank You.

Today was it. The last day of A Summer in Sanctuary at the Baltimore Theatre Project. What a journey. All day long I felt like I was living in a movie. Walking down the streets of Mt. Vernon in Baltimore, with my iPod blaring some melancholy music; passing the row houses on my last trip to the Theatre Project somehow it didn’t feel real.

I get this way at the end of a project. Nostalgic. Happy. Sad. Motivated. Tired. Today feels special though because I feel like I can finally look back and take the journey in. I’m not one for looking back too much. I think the important thing is too keep looking to the future and putting one foot in front of the other. But this feels like a good point to take a break and thank God for the blessings.

April of 07’ I entered this contest to be a radio host on NPR, I never thought much about it after I entered, until they called me and told me that I was one of the ten finalist. What a rush the entire contest was. A rush, but hard work. I killed myself, and everyone around me for 9 months until I was selected as one of three winners. One of three out of 1,400.

Thank you.

Radio was a happy happenchance, but also somewhat of a distraction to the work I needed to do on the theatre piece that was opening at the Theatre Project in February. The first solo show, I’d done in years. I was scared to death of the subject because of the first time I am truly reveling myself. Summer in Sanctuary is the story of one of the big challenges in my life. In writing it I knew I was exposing myself for the world to see, but it seemed more important to tell the story, then it did to protect myself. If I’m going to be honest here I have to admit that I was also scared to do a solo show. For the last three years, I’d been working with an incredible group of people, Larry Knight, David Girard and Barbara Colaciello. They are my family and I love every one of them, but the story I needed to tell was about me, and my journey. I had to tell it alone. Working with the four of them is such a welcome fit I was petrified to move away from that comfort zone.
Art though is not meant to be safe so I got a date for a premiere, strapped on my seatbelt and started my engine.

Thank you.

Here’s the hook. When I set the deadline I didn’t have NPR, and CPB telling me I needed to get a pilot for a radio show done. The Radio deadline was first, so I had to do it, with the help of Taki Telodonis, The Poemcees, Willie Evans Jr., Doug Mitchell, and a few other special people I was able to get the pilot done on time. When it was done I was drained. Emotionally spent. Ready to recharge. Oh… wait…. I have a play that’s due in three weeks. I didn’t think I could do it. My emotional instrument was empty. I put so much heart and soul into the radio show, I just didn’t think there was any left for “Sanctuary”.

For a full week I tried to write; pushing myself as much as I could and everything I came out with was hollow. Nothing rang true. I was scared. But too many people were depending on me. Summer in Sanctuary is the story of my time working at the Sanctuary on 8th Street a community center of sorts for underprivileged children. This is the hardest job I’ve ever had, and at the end of it I was a changed man. I had to tell the story for me, but more importantly I had to tell the story for the kids at the Sanctuary. So when I’m working on the show and nothing was coming I got scared cause I wanted to be able to give something back to them. I went to the Sanctuary to pick up a DVD from the executive director and my friend Vickie Watkins. I had an idea to put the movies from the DVD in the play but wasn’t sure how. When I watched that DVD, it just washed over me. The entire summer that at one point I tried hard to forget it was coming back full throttle. The next morning I got up and wrote all day long.

Thank you.

I was fortunate enough to find another team to work with DJ/Emcee/Producer Willie Evans Jr., and director Gary Anderson who’d directed Julius X in Detroit. In all my work, I’ve learned the key to success is a good team. It’s a little embarrassing when you are working on something, and there are so many people who should get credit, but because you are the face, they tend to be in the background and not get their props. Gary and Willie Evans made it happen. We had a great time in Baltimore, and I can’t wait for the three of us to hang again and do some good work.

Thank you.

I plan to write a blog post about Baltimore, much to talk about. But right now, I’m just reveling in the fact that I did it. I’m nostalgic. Happy. Sad. Motivated. Tired. But most of all thankful.

Ashé

The Writer

2008-01-18T05:30:00.001-08:00

There are days when I feel like a writer, and days when I totally don’t. This week is a writers week. When I can feel the stories that need to be told ready to burst. The times when I don’t feel like a writer are just as useful, because I know the seed is growing in the soil. But I get impatient. All the doubts that every artist I know has begin the creep up. The thought that all the art you have done in the past is luck. That you don’t really have talent, you just stumbled into something, and maybe it’s true. I don’t know… I feel like the art I do, I don’t really choose. It chooses me, I’m just following something that I never really have control of. For a long time, I wanted to control it. Those are the times, when nothing happens. When I stare at a blank page and nothing comes for days. When I remember that I can’t control it, I just need to trust it, then the work seems to flow.

Deadlines have been kicking my rump for the last three months. The biggest one as the Public Radio Quest. I won a spot in the top three where I was given $10,000 to create a pilot for Public Radio. Sometime in the near future, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will vote on my program, and decide if it’s something they want to fund. This whole process was huge. A ton of work without my advisor, Taki Telondis and Doug Mitchell of NPR, I would not have gotten through it. In the end Taki and I were working 18 hours a day trying to finish before the deadline. All sorts of calamity befalling us, from death in the family (an uncle and aunt dieing within weeks or each other). My computer crashed, lost everything. Traveling to DC and trying to make the interviews work, and coming home and editing. To just paying the bills while working to put all it together. This was a monumental task, and with a lot of help, we did it.

I never expected to win the Talent Quest contest. I figured I’d do ok, but never dreamed I’d win. When I entered in April, the end of the contest in December seemed so far away. There was no way I could foresee the future. So without thinking about it, I scheduled a gig in Feb. at the Theater Project. A solo show entitled, A Summer in Sanctuary. Here’s the problem. In winning the contest, I really screwed the writing process for the solo show. There was no way I could move the show back, and the contest was in full swing so I did what I could; wrote when I could, planned as much as possible, talked to the director of the piece, all the while knowing that as soon as the contest was over I’d have to kick it into full drive if I was going to be ready for Feb.

So here we are in the middle of full drive. It took me a week or two to get into the groove but finally, I have it. The stories and writing is coming at a good pace. Now it’s all the logistics. Learning a 90 page script in a month, rehearsing with a director 2000 miles away, pulling together the multimedia portion of the show and a bunch of other small details that need to be worked out.

But I’m not worried about any of that today. I’m just glad to be feeling like I’m a writer again.

Summer in Sanctuary--First Reading

2007-10-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is the first reading of a small excerpt of my new solo show, Summer in Sanctuary. Please be warned there is language that might not be suitable young audiences.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Next Level

2007-10-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been so busy as of late, I have yet to update my blog. I know I’m a bad blogger, forgive me for I have sinned. I just take for granted that everyone has been able to get over to the Public Radio Talent Quest site, and see that I won the contest. And honestly, I always feel like this blog is just a writing exercise, it’s hard to believe that anyone is reading it out there on the “internets”.

I’m extremely happy, excited, and scared all in the same time. To back track some, I found out that I’d been chosen, and was flown by PRX to Minneapolis, for the announcement it was a great trip and I got to meet two of the other contestants. They were excellent people. I was a little sad that I didn’t get to meet all of the contestants, we all created a bond it would have been nice to party with all ten. The people who ran the contest were a blast. I had so much fun, and I got to meet some of the people in public radio that I love. Diane Rhem was first and foremost. The only way I can describe her is majestic. It felt like I was hanging out with the queen of Public Radio. She was so warm and gracious.

I came back the next day to J-ville, and the news got out everywhere. It’s weird to be a celebrity, in your home city, when you know that you still the broke artist you were before the notoriety, and probably will be afterwards.. I’m not knocking it. It was nice for people to congratulate me. I don’t feel big headed about it, although, the quotes the newpaper used from me, seemed like my head had swollen. I need to not be so open in interviews and watch what I say, because the way I say it, and the way it looks on page, are two totally different things. Lesson learned (again) move forward.

When I told some of my closest friends that I’d won, some of them cried. I can’t tell you how much this moved me. I’ve always known this, but I’m on a journey and I’ve been blessed to have such wonderful people be apart of that team. If I named them all here, the list would be too long. But I couldn’t have done half the stuff that I’ve done without them in my corner. So winning this, yeah I did a lot of hard work, but the people around me also sacrificed and struggled and helped me in ways that I can’t even begin to thank them for.

Now the hard part. Juggling three important projects at the same time.

1) The Pilot for the radio show, “State of the Re:Union” will be done in Washington DC, (I’ll post something on what the show is shortly.) The deadline on that is December 14th. I’m excited about how the show is working out thus far, I’ll be in DC from the 8th-14th of Nov. to compile interviews and put all the pieces together.

2) New movie short: The Shadow of Death. Sometime in the near future we’ll be filming my 2nd short. I’m excited working with two great actors, and the more I work on the script the more I love it. I’ve been tinkering with the script now for months. You’d think that a 18 page script would be easy, but this script has a lot of layers to it, and I want to write it right. My film partner Zach is itchin’ to go, he’s got a ton of cool ideas. I feel bad because of the contest, I haven’t really had the time to devote to the film now that that’s over we’re on to the next step.

3) A Summer in Sanctuary. The solo show. I’ve finally got into gear with the writing of the show. I’m going to post a video of a reading today. I’m really happy with the progress of the piece, and an audience got to hear it, and they seemed to really dig it. This show is so personal to me, because it’s autobiographical. I want to always be true with my work, but I find that at every turn, the piece is challenging me to tell the truth. To be honest even when it hurts, and doesn’t show me in the most favorable of lights.

And that’s where it is folks. If you voted for me or even listened to my entries, thank you so much.

The marathon.

2007-08-25T12:53:00.000-07:00

Today I looked back on the my first step in the journey that is the Public Radio Talent Quest. I can feel the weariness of this contest setting in. We started in April, and it doesn’t end until mid-September. It feels so far away. I just want to wake up tomorrow and know how it all shakes out. But I know I need to be patient. Let it do what it do…
18 weeks ago seems like a small forever-ago. At the time I was in the midst of trying out for Fox’s On the Lot. After asking friends to vote for me on that site, I was a little shy in asking anyone to vote for me in this contest. And then everything changed. On the Lot dropped me, and Public Radio showed me some love. After going through three cuts, making three different entries, and holding my breath and dreaming, I’m one step away from winning. That one step is a dozzy.

The other contestants are strong. Honestly, I wish all ten of the semi finalist got an opportunity to make a show, because they brought something unique to the table. For better or for worse the top five, are going to play this round hard. Our task is to create a five minute show, a representative of the type of show we’d like to see on the air. I know what my show is. I won’t revel it as of yet, but I know it. I know how it sounds, how I want it will make people feel, but how do I do that in 5 mins?

I know the other contestants, Glynn, Rebecca, Chris, and April, are going to rock it. Glynn is a great storyteller, Rebecca already does a podcast, and has her niche’ tight, Chris is crazy smart, and April has been working for public radio for years, she could do this in her sleep. So this is going to be a real challenge. If I had to be honest though, I’d say this challenge plays to my strengths. I’m use to bringing different elements together, weaving in and out of stories, and I have a strong team of people around me to help (which is allowed in this round). I can do this. I can feel it. So much so I can’t sleep.

On some level, I feel like everything has led me to this point, this meandering, unconventional career I’ve carved out for myself. I can’t wait to see what’s next. For good or for bad, I’ve found a new love. I’ve been able to do things through this contest, I’ve always wanted to do. If I don’t get it, I’ll be upset, to have come this far, but on the flip side, the journey has been great, and I’ve learned a lot. That sounds PAT, but it’s true. But the slam poet in me wants to win. And win big. Screw it; I will win, and win big. Watch out world.

Passing

2007-07-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

I met Sekou Sundiata five years after he saved my life. He was taller then I thought, and resonated an aura of cool that seemed indicative of an older generation of artist; jazz cats, old school poets, the people I wanted to be. So when I met him, I couldn’t help but act like a love struck fan. I tried to keep my cool, and for the most part I did, but it was a struggle.

Calling Sekou a poet, is like calling Michael Jordan a basketball player. It’s too mundane, too pedestrian. His craftsmanship of words, the way he cultivated the field of dreams, is something I will struggle to achieve for the rest of my life. I consider it a gift that he passed it down to me and an entire generation of spoken word poets. A lot of us don’t even know he’s our poetical father, or at the very least, a direct relative. That is the legacy of the word. When it’s passed for mouth to ear, sometimes the details get lost. Many poetry lovers will never have heard his name, or know of his work primarily because he didn’t publish. He was a writer, a teacher, a performer, who was much more interested building worlds on stage then on paper. He was a Griot, in every sense of the word. If he was fazed by this lack of appreciation, he never showed it, he just did the work.

Sekou made 2 cd’s. One of his students, Ani Defranco helped out when his 1st label closed. Righteous Babe went on to produced and market his 2nd CD the incredible "Long Story Short". We talked in depth about the experience, and where spoken word, and poetry was going. He graciously listened to all my thoughts, dreams, and concepts of my future work. When I told him about a poem I’d been laboring on for a year. I wanted to be done with it, to let it breath, how could I finish it, what should I do? He looks at me and smiled, and said “A year? Is that it? Brother, I have yet to write a poem that is finished.”

The conversation turned to politics, and he laid out what has become my principal philosophy for the world, and how we need to fix it. “Somehow, time has been broken, we live in the right now, and don’t look back. As long as we are living in the right now, we aren’t seeing the whole picture. So it’s the job of the poet to remind people to make them look at the past with an unflinching eye so we can better navigate the future” (That’s me paraphrasing).

Sekou passed away Wednesday after his long battle with some serious health issues. When I heard the news from a mutual friend, I couldn’t help but have this overwhelming sense of guilt, like I didn’t save him like he saved me. There was a time in my life when I lost, alone in a foreign city, no family, no money, no hope, the depression I was in was so thick I couldn’t think about anything but letting it all go. On a whim, I listened to a PBS special by Bill Moyers on Poetry, and heard Sekou. It was hearing his words, not just the poems but the interview that helped me find my way to the person I wanted to be. He told me there was power in my words, that I had something to say, and I should say it. And that changed my life.

I realize that guilt isn’t the proper emotion; sadness for his family and close friends, dispair and for the rest of the world who never got to see him in action, and the understanding that the sacred gift he gave was something meant to be passed.

Rest well brother. Ashe’
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4561097

http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/sundiata/

A question of Decency

2007-06-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

By nature, I’m very involved in politics. Not necessarily going to rallies, or sending money to candidates, but I listen. Maybe because I use language to make my living, I like to listen to the people in power, and see how they are using language to manipulate or govern this country. When I was young my father always told me, there were three things you don’t talk about in public, religion, race, and politics. As my father will tell you, I’m hard headed, and feel like I have to open my mouth.

One of my good friends Brenton, would say I’m a big fat liberal, and he’d be wrong. I vote for my interest, and what I think is right. Sometimes it’s a Republican, sometimes it’s a Democrat, but I never follow an ideology when I’m in the voting booth. Ideologies never have any heart, or blood in them, they don’t deal well with the shades of grey that color our collective lives. They are just ideas that never live up to their intention. I love debating the issues with people. With the exception of my mother, I can always debate with someone on the opposite side, and then go have a beer and laugh with them about it. (Brenton as my witness.)

I was going to follow my father’s advice from years ago on this site, but right now, I’m bursting at the seems, and can’t be silent. There is so much I could say, about the war, health care, the state of poverty in our inner cities, New Orleans (which the news media has forgotten), so many things that need to be addressed. Today, reading the news and checking in on some blogs I ran across Ann Coulter, and she was straw that broke the camel’s back.

Normally, I just don’t pay attention to her, but I wonder who the people are who support her, who come out to see her. She lays claim to the fact that she is the Christian and the goodness of the “Right”. In her book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, she claims the left denies God and mocks people of faith. Yet she runs around the country using hateful speech to discredit her opponents. She’s called people viscous names that I won’t repeat continually, and while I support her right to say whatever she wants, I don’t understand why big media continually give her a platform. Why Don Imus got fired, and Isaiah Washington paid the price for their bad language (as they should) why is Ann able to call be people the same type of hateful words, and still be on TV continually? When do we say enough? If you want to debate the issues fine, but the personal attacks are wrong and have no place in our political discourse.

When I look up in Webster’s dictionary the definition of Christian it says “1 a : one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ” As the son of a Baptist preacher, I can say with some certainty, nowhere in the bible does Jesus treat anyone with the viciousness that she displays on a daily basis. In fact, Jesus hung out with prostitutes, loan sharks, and fishermen (ie common men), he didn’t condemn them, he had mercy on them and told us all to forgive, and love each other. Stunningly enough, one of the few times Jesus is heated, is at big business using the temple/church to sell their wares and not respect the sanctity of the church.

I don’t understand how her hateful speech can be taken seriously, or how Christian people can stand by her. Ultimately it’s up to us. We the people. When we decide we are tired of the sideshow carnival act of hate, when we let the networks know that we support free speech, but give us something that is better then her hateful words, that she is unacceptable as Don Imus was, then we can expect change. Until then she will call people nasty names, claim that John Edwards campaigns on his dead son, and cast anyone who doesn’t agree with her as a terrorist. Christianity is better then that, you and I are better then that, I would say that Ann Coulter is better then that she’s just too lost in her own ideology to see it.

A New Challenge

2007-06-09T13:32:00.001-07:00

A couple months ago, December to be exact, I entered a reality show. Very atypical of me cause I know that reality shows are not real. They are made up exercises to engage lazy audiences and create ad revenue for TV networks. Not my cup of tea. But this one was going to be different. It’s FOX’s ON THE LOT. A challenge show for filmmakers. A group of filmmakers come to LA and compete for the chance to work for Spielberg. I’ve been wanting to do film for a while so the show was a perfect catalyst. It forced me to start looking outside the lines, and make something happen.

I started working with a brilliant collaborator, Zach Flugum, and we made our first little movie on the budget of 35.00. I love the movie. A great cast, and good times. We uploaded the video on the site, and boom, like wild fire the video went through the roof. In less then a week the video had over 8,000 views and a very high rating. Now because I’m under a gag order, I can’t say much about the casting process, but I think I can say that our little movie-that-could got me pretty far in the casting. (One step away from the show). But the whole process sucked. Why? Because everything was so secret, they wouldn’t tell you anything at all. I think this was the first place where the show went wrong. I think they created a backlash from that. They were use to keeping things secret because of the other shows they’d cast. What they didn’t take into account is the internet. On the internet the show was blowing up, and it engaged people big time. If people where meant to feel like they were apart of the process, then they would have become ambassadors for the show. But being left out, and not told anything just disenfranchised folks.

So the show airs, and it’s ok, but it doesn’t live up to the promise. They don’t follow any of the contestants enough. You don’t get attached to anyone, you don’t love anyone, you don’t hate anyone. The judges, and excellent at what they do as directors, but no one is there, to throw a dash of reality into the mix. In essences, they learned nothing from American Idol. Idol follows are group of people, some make it some don’t but by the time you get into the top 10 you feel like you know these people. You care about were their story arch is going. With On the Lot, 5 contestants disappeared from one week to the next, and I have no idea what happened with them. The sad thing is I got to know that 5’s work, and some of them were extremely solid, where’d they go? Why’d they go? Who knows….

The ratings for the show are in the toilet. I’d be surprised it the show makes it through a whole season. For this, I thank God that I didn’t get on the show. I would have had to leave my job at a crucial time, go to LA, and then come home and be pissed that the way they do the show, no one get’s featured. America doesn’t get to see you, unlike American Idol where people get picked up even if they don’t win, I have a hard time believing these directors will get anything, but a pat on the back. That is not their fault. On a whole they are capable directors, but FOX and Mark Burnnett Productions, has handicapped their ability to be seen. I remember thinking that this show was going to change my life. And it did. I realize now, or at least I remember the lesson I’ve learned from other ventures, that these things very rarely do what you want them to do. I thought my CBS gig would change my life. I thought Def Poetry would change my life, Excellent reviews in NYC…..

Ultimately, they do change my life, just not in the fashion I imagine. There is something beautiful in that. I’m glad I’m finally old enough to see it.

So when NPR (National Public Radio) announced their new program to find the next generation of shows, and hosts, I was pretty skeptical that this sort of contest was worth entering. But I love NPR. Love it. Listen to it non-stop, but my problem with it, is it’s too stiff. Doesn’t have any soul to it, except maybe News and Notes. So despite being in the midst of trying to be “On the Lot” I entered Public Radio Talent Quest for the hell of it. And then boom Tuesday, they called me to tell me out of 1400 folks I’d made it into the top ten. Very very cool.

Some people on the site are upset about the way the contest is run, but after my On the Lot experience, I feel like this contest had been run extremely well. But then I wasn’t as emotionally enveloped in this one as I was with the previous contest. Honestly I never expected to be in the top ten, so if I had not made it, then I wouldn’t have been effected too much. Now that I’m in the ten, I want it. Badly. The other contestants are excellent most of them have some experience in radio or podcasting, of which I have none. What I do have, is me, what I do, that is unique to what anyone else brings to the table. I think that’s the key. If they wanted someone who sounded and acted like everyone one else on NPR, they would not have chosen this diverse group of people. So that’s the new journey. I hope you’ll take the time to go by the site www.publicradioquest.com, and cast a vote for your favorite poet/playwright/actor (that would be me)

Rejuvenation

2007-04-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

It’s been forever since I wrote on this blog. Why? I’ve been crazy busy. Working at the Foundation has been a huge blessing, but at the same time, it’s taken all of my time.

So what’s been going on since I last wrote. I started making movies. In December I wrote and directed a short “Sign Language”. I primarily created the short to compete in a reality show premiering on FOX. Sign Language did really well in the competition but I did not advance to the final round. I’d love to write more about the experience, but I’m under a gag order and can’t talk about it. My site is being revamped but in the near future, you will be able to see the movie on my site.

This summer I’ll be doing some more movie stuff with my partner Zach Flugum. We’ve formed our own company called 99 Pictures. We’ve got a bunch of stuff on the table that we are looking at working on this summer. I can’t really talk about those until we are further along in the process. Hopefully, I’ll be blogging about those experiences.

Julius X. Julius X opened at Plowshares Theatre Company this Saturday (April 21, 2007) WOW. What an experience. In the past, I’ve been politically correct about the two previous incarnations of the piece. The initial workshop at the Baltimore Theatre Project got good reviews, but on a whole I thought it was terrible. Loved the actors, but the director and I saw the piece very differently. That’s not to say the director isn’t a good one, just that this project didn’t synch with the two of us. I saw it the right way, he didn’t. Cleveland was… interesting… I really loved the performance of several of the actors, and really liked the director. But the piece was being done as a part of Festival and the piece ran for two nights. I didn’t get to work with the director, and I don’t think he was familiar with performance poetry, so it was an okay production, but definitely didn’t do what I was looking for from the piece.

Last year, I was blessed to meet Gary Anderson, the most unlikely of ways. I submitted a script to him. What is unlikely about this is that I’ve been submitting scripts for years now, to different theatres. The plays get put in a slush pile and never read, I get sent a form letter saying they are going to look at it, and then politely never hear from the theatre again. This is typical. I don’t have the connections necessary to “get in” I don’t know enough people, so my work continually gets pushed into the “who cares pile”. Not at Plowshares, Gary does something revolutionary, he reads scripts! I queried him about Julius X and he asked to read it. Days later, he called and we started working on putting the piece up.

There are times in my life and career when I meet someone and I know, this is what I was looking for. It happened that way with Barbara, Larry and David, and for sure I felt that way with Gary. For the last year or so, he’s been schooling me on the business, and the art of playwriting. I’m really happy with the current draft of Julius X, and a lot of that has to do with Gary’s guidance. So when I traveled to Detroit this weekend, I wasn’t really worried about the play. I was anxious to see it. Gary had been pretty silent about the progress of the play since he started rehearsals. Mostly because he was busy as hell, but secondly, he wanted me to form my own opinion about the piece. So I went into the Theatre without really knowing what I was going to see. (Keep in mind I’ve seen two productions of the piece that I absolutely hated).

From the start of the play a smile settled on my face that has yet to be removed. My baby is finally born, and he’s beautiful. The actors where cast perfectly, each one of them brought something to the stage that breathed life into the characters I’ve been living with in my head for the last two years. That was the easy part though, I’ve seen the other cast with great actors, but what this cast got through Gary’s direction was the poetry. Shakespeare’s work is filled with poetry. Julius X is not only filled with poetry, it’s essential to the style of the piece. Previous productions completely lost the poetry. This one is spot on. Due to budgetary concerns we could not put up the play like I see it in my head, (that involves dancers, African drummers, and a small orchestra) But, what is on stage in Detroit is so faithful to what I’ve been dreaming of, I didn’t even care the other parts weren’t there. Next time. Gary and I will be looking to do this piece with a bigger budget, in other venues. I feel indebt to Gary and the cast. Such a great gift to see something you worked on for so long to be seen on stage, and know that everyone is on the same page.

In saying all of that, I should explain a little more about where my head has been lately. I love Julius X. I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder on anything in my life. I stretched so much artistically, I knew it would be a stretch when I started. But that’s what made me want to do it. I don’t want to keep doing the safe work. I want to challenge myself, and the audience. If it’s not a challenge, something I have to really work for, then why do it? If that’s the case I should have continued being a slam poet. No disrespect to anyone in the slam at all, none of us can walk the same path, but for me, the slam was a step towards something bigger, if I’d stayed there, I would not have been challenged. That being said, in watching the earlier incarnations of the play I was extremely discouraged. I’d pretty much decided to give up playwriting. I love it, but it hurts to watch something you’ve worked on so long turn out so wrong. I finished the first draft of Julius in January of 06’. I haven’t written another play since then. I’ve played with some ideas, scribbled some things down, but on a whole, I’ve been scared of it.

On a whole artistically I think I’ve been a little lost. I’ve applied for some huge grants that I didn’t get. I’ve been working my butt off on all of the other shows I’ve written, and still don’t feel like I’ve gone as far as I’d like to go. I was not at the point of giving up, I can’t don’t know how, but I have been rethinking what I want to and where I want to go. Last night watching my play on stage being performed by excellent actors and a brilliant director, I feel in love with theatre again. The same way I did in 10th grade close to 20 years ago, when we read Julius Caesar in English class. I’ve had a piece I wanted to write for the last year, and I’m finally getting ready to dive into it this summer. I need to do it. I’m going to look back on all those ideas and start breathing life to them. In my most productive period, the pieces were working the way they were suppose to, that propelled me to the next project. With the success of this production I remember why I write for the theatre, because I love it.

2006-11-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

Next.

This blog will go through somewhat of a transformation for the next couple months. Lately I’ve been extremely slow in posting updates. Mainly because a lot of what’s going on with me professionally, are issues, good and bad, that I’d rather not air publicly. What I need to be writing about here, is the work. Not the politics, or me whining about not having the accessibility into the places I think my work should go. With a full slate of work to do in the next couple months I thought it would be helpful to myself, and other creative types who may or may not read this blog, if I chronicled my process. With that in mind here we go.

So I have three major projects, all popping off at the same time. What a blessing. And a curse.

Project 1
JULIUS X
1st of all, Julius X opens in Detroit at Plowshares Theatre in May. This is a huge break for me. I love the director of the piece Gary Anderson, he’s a smart man with a lot of heart, and vision. In the past, the play has been performed, but due to budgetary concerns, and lack of unified vision, the play has not been performed the way I envisioned it. I think I can be honest and say the opening production of the play was a disappointment to me. The director, totally ignored what I as a playwright was looking for. He didn’t understand my work, and therefore, went completely opposite of what I wanted to see. In the past, I’ve been nice about the work he did, but lately, I’ve been feeling like if I can’t be honest about it, then I shouldn’t talk about it at all. I need to talk about it, so I need to tell the truth. While there were some good performances, and fine actors on a whole I felt like the text was not explored and left wanting.

The second performance of Julius was in Cleveland. Technically, I was impressed. It was apart of the Technology and Arts festival, and the set was incredible. There were some really good actors, and I really liked the director of the piece, but they didn’t really get the poetry. I don’t blame them, I think this play is a new form of theatre that most actors and directors are not familiar with. So it makes doing the piece difficult if you haven’t seen that type of poetry. I believe they will actually include the piece in the season next year, and I’ll be brought in to help with the production. I think with all the talent they have in Cleveland, we’ll be able to make something special of the production.

With this new production in Detriot, in order to truly see the vision on the piece, I will be necessary for me to work on the music of the play. This has been an enigma. Primarily because the musicians, I want to work with have been extremely busy. They are a talented bunch, but this talent makes them in heavy demand. I’ve got a couple months to get it together, or else I believe I will have squandered an opportunity to see the play on stage, the way I have envisioned it my head.

Project 2

The 761st Men of War.
This piece is about the 761st armored division in WWII. They were the black tank battalion labeled “Patton’s Panthers” despite racism, and lack of respect, these soldiers fought hard during the Allied campaign in the European Theater of Operations. They didn’t receive their props until the 70’s. With America’s nostalgia for the Greatest Generation, and WWII, it seems to me, that people have forget about these soldiers and the battles they fought for their country and the battles they fought in their country. I want to remember them. I want to honor them. This play, stylistically, is different then anything I’ve done before. I want to fuse Drama, Poetry, and Hip-hop in a way I haven’t seen it done before. I’m planning on working with Poemcees out of Washington DC, they will be handling the Hip-Hop, and Griot 3 will handle the poetry and text. This play opens June 30th. Right now, I’m in the research aspect. Which is all encompassing. There is so much information out there, I’m finding my biggest challenge is narrowing it all down and keep the piece dramatic. There is so much there, it would be easy to get distracted from the bigger picture. A friend recently told me, when you are writing about WWII, you are not really writing about WWII, you writing about something else, don’t find what it is you are writing about, and make that the focus. He’s right.

So right now, all I’ve got is a really basic outline. I’ll have a treatment done by the end of next week along with character sketches.

Project 3

New American Gods

This is my last big project of the year. If you read this blog you’ll know I’m teaching at a small school in Jacksonville. Every year the school does a musical and as the drama teacher it’s my job to make it happen. This year, I decided that I would do an orginal piece. NAG is about, how we in America idolize, celebrity, and how it affects our opinions about people and ourselves. I love to work on relevant topics for kids, so the piece is also wrapped around things that are happening in the schools as far as violence, and standardized testing. It’s a big piece, and different then anything I’ve done yet, this is a full scale musical. The due date for the script is in April.

Am I crazy? Yes. Working on 3 pieces at the same time is nuts. I’ve done it before though, and I’m confident I can do it again. It’s a matter of discipline, and planning. I actually think I get more done when I’m working on more then one piece, because they writing in each tends to inspire the writing in the opposite. Plus, the Julius X piece is pretty much done, it’s more me just supervising. I have plenty of time to write, I just need to get in the discipline of writing at times that are different then what I’m use to. Over the years, I’ve been able to sit myself down and work, I’ve created a time and space in which to do it. Because I have a 9 to 5 now, that has to change. I have to find a new time, and I need to learn to use the time I have more efficiently. At the same time, I have to balance all this work, along with a family.

Writing is always a process of discovery for me. I’m always sitting down, going, how in the hell do I do that? It’s never the same every time it happens differently. The one thing that is similar is the beginning. I research, and create an outline that I will ignore later, and then I get to work. I’m in the process of doing that now. It’s an exciting and scary time for me professionally. I get to this point and think, I don’t know if I can do this. But the only way I get over all of that, is by attacking it. If I just run from it, then I’ve been beaten. I’m too competitive to even contemplate losing.

I plan to write about the process of the writing, as well as the ups and downs on the business side.

So, buckle up. Cause here we go.

Trust

2006-10-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it’s been a long long time, since I sat down to work on this blog. For those of you who read it (all two of you) I’d like to apologize for the long silence. I’ve been in the midst of a ton of stuff, personal, professional, and otherwise. When I get to that place, I’m pretty bad about blogging. I just need to live a little to get to the point where I can write a little. Some big transitions coming up, so I figured I need to get back in the habit of blogging.

So what’s happened since my last writing? Mostly good stuff Griot went to NY and got great reviews. To see that go to www.griot3.com. I have a lot I could write on the whole situation, but honestly, it’s too much to write. Suffice to say, I had a great time, the shows went well, and I think I have the opportunity to build off the success of the show. Griot, itself may not benefit from that springboard, but certainly future work will.

I’ve been come pretty unsentimental about my own work. I want to put it out there, and move on. I’m really scared of being trapped in a piece, and not creating new work. That’s not where I want to be. I think each piece needs to live it’s life and I need to not try and control it, but in the words of Ray Charles, “Let it do, what it do.” On the flip side, I also don’t want to give up on something before it’s had time to mature. I love Griot. But there are some issues that make me ready to move to the next piece. Pretty soon, I’ll be announcing here the title of my new play that will open in Baltimore in the Summer. Pretty excited about it. I’m still in the research aspect of it, and I’m not quiet sure where the concept will lead me, but it should be an interesting journey.

I look back on my career, I’ve learn that I just need to trust. Trust that the Lord hasn’t given me a gift to let it waste. Let it find it’s own way. So that’s where I am with my work.

Other news: I’m teaching fulltime now. Pretty excited about it. I’m the creative arts director at the Foundation Academy in Jacksonville Beach. A very cool school with very cool kids. I’m happy to be there. I’m really looking to do more young adult work like Chalk, so being at this school will help make that a reality.

I’ve got another large project I’m working on, but mums the word for now. If it works out, it could be pretty big for me. If not, I’m still pushin’ on. See ya soon.

TSI Flyer

2006-07-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

TSI Flyer
Originally uploaded by Al Letson.

Griot @ Players by the Sea

2006-07-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Griot @ Players by the Sea
Originally uploaded by Al Letson.

The Griot weekend in Jacksonville

Biko and the Gun.

2006-07-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

I never heard the gunshot, but when Vicky told me what happened I could hear the echo of the bullet in her voice. Biko. An extraordinary kid. So many of these kids are. They all are. But, Biko was the first of all the boys at the Sanctuary that I made a bond with. We met two years ago, when he was much smaller, but still very much a man in the making. His father had passed away recently, and the burden of being the man in the house was heavy on his shoulders. With 6 brothers and sisters, Biko had lost a part of his adolescence when his father took his last breath.

Biko’s family had immigrated from Africa two years before his father’s death. When I met Biko I asked him if he spoke any other languages. Away from the other kids he told me he spoke three languages, English, French, and his native African tongue. It excited me, that one of these kids in the middle of the hood with trilingual, but Biko would have none of it. He didn’t want to talk about it, and definitely was not going to speak in a different language around the other kids. Assimilate, fit in, don’t make waves. I’ve often wondered about his parents. Who are they? What did they think when they landed here and America, the land of milk and honey, to find themselves in the ghetto? What had they left behind? Was it worth it? Maybe it was.

Listening to the rhetoric on the TV and radio stations although out America in regards to the question of immigrants, you would think these people land in America and right away begin living the lives of the rich and famous. Magically they appear in work places, through up a sign that says “IMMIGRANT” and the employers start lining Americans up, and kick them out. When I think of immigrants, I think of people like Biko’s parents, people with nothing, struggling to get something. Why do we criminalize the poor in the country? Why does the religious right seem to be on the wrong side of every question? What would Jesus do? Would he persecute the poor, or would he kick the money changers out of the church? I know the question of immigration is more complex then that, but somewhere in the discourse about it all, there should be room for compassion.

Back to Biko. Though he tries his best to hide it, Biko is one of the brightest kids I know. The older he gets though, I can feel the hood, wrapping it’s tentacles around his soul. How could it not? In places like the Eastside of Jacksonville, where the murder-rate is ridiculously high, AIDS is rampid, and drugs are the cash-crop that fuels the economy, only the strong survive, and survival demands payment. This year Biko was a little more detached. Even less interested in living up to his potential. I could see it, the black octopus-like digit wrapping itself around him. The land based-kracken of the hood had it’s many arms wrapped around most of the kids at the Sanctuary. Sooner or later the monster would flex his muscles, and no matter how hard the child, the tentacle, would pull him in to the maw of monster.

America always eats it’s young.

I wanted to help him. But there is only so much I can say or do without putting myself in the category of adults he just didn’t have time for. So I watched. Talked, and tried to be a positive example. It was no surprise when Vicky told me about the incident of the gun.

Walking down the street Biko and a friend ran into some guys ruthlessly beating another kid. Trying to do the right thing, Biko and his friend tried to break up the fight. The kids that were fighting went inside and got some other people. The men that walked out of the house where around the same age as Biko’s father, strong angry men pushed down so much by life, they saw no other choice but to push other people down. They walked out of the house with a gun in hand. Biko could have run. But that would have been punking out. I can imagine him, seeing the men walk up to him gun in hand, fear pattering in his heart but refusing to give in. An argument began, and one of the men shot at his feet. Biko and his friend were both smart enough to walk away, but the sting of it all was still with him the next morning. It didn’t take long for Biko’s hothead brother Patient to find out about the incident.

Patient has always been extremely quiet around me, the kind of quiet that makes me nervous. Like he’s thinking of something, and the outcome may not be positive. This summer in the time I spent with him we’d begun to build a relationship that was founded on mutual respect. I know Patient is a child of the streets the way his brother will never be. Patient knows, that I’m not judging him. With that understanding we respect each other and mover forward. The worse thing that could happen is Patient finding out about Biko being shot at. When they are together at the Sanctuary, they don’t seem especially tight, but they are brothers, and Patient is lives by hard rules. Someone disrespecting his brother is grounds for immediate retaliation. Before they kids arrived at the Sanctuary everyone knew what had happened and several of the kids there were ready to strike back.

Biko is fourteen. Patient is sixteen. The man who shot at him was in his 30’s.

Vicky was sick with worry. She loves these children deep. Four years ago, she attended the funeral of a kid that she was extremely tight with. The day he died he had just turned 21 years old. The bullets that riddled his body where sent in retaliation to something that had happened in his hood weeks early. It’s the old testament cycle of justice. Injuring someone because they have injured you or someone you love. The problem with that rational is that it never stops. Someone kills you, you’re boys kill them. Their boys, come kill one of your boys, one of your other boys kills another one of theirs, and before you know it a whole generation of black men have died in the streets of America. Or end up in jail, or wheelchairs, or someone elses child gets killed in the crossfire. It never stops.

If this was a Spike Lee flick, I’d run up to Biko and hug him tightly and scream in the middle of the hood “WAKE UP!!!!!!” The credits would role, and you the audience could go back home. But there are no credits. There is no quick out. There is only this: fourteen year olds contemplating killing someone who shot at them.

Vicky told me all of this on Thursday. The next day, I was going to Baltimore for a gig at the Creative Alliance. This was a gig that I had thought about canceling. I was writing a piece for the gig, but then got caught up and never had a chance to finish. I kept the gig, only because I felt obligated, even though I was not going to do the show I was originally asked to do, I’d put something together with the incredible Poemcees out of DC. This gig was going to be a wash. I knew they would not get tons of people out to the show, and I had to pay for my own way there, which meant I was going to take a loss. But, I gave my word. So I was going.

When Vicky was done talking about the incident, I reminded her I was going to be out of town the next day, and a light bulb went off in her head. She asked, “What do you think about taking some of the boys with you?”

The next day, Vicky, seven boys, and myself started driving down I-95 destination Baltimore.

Who will cry for Angela

2006-07-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

“Soft-hearted people can’t work with kids like that.” She’s right. A dear friend of mine said that to me today when I told her this story.

On the first day of summer camp at the Community Center which I work/volunteer at, Angie was having problems. She is 8 and in a large group of girls her age. Angie’s new at the community center. Many of the kids from the center, go there during the school year, others are returnees from last years camp. These kids have formed a bond, so from the start Angie was on the outside. She is a fighter. Doesn’t like the view from the other side of the glass wall. She wants in and will do what’s necessary to get in. By the end of the first day, she fought, argued and pushed anyone that did the same to her. Sometimes she started, sometimes she was the recipient, but it was obvious to the staff that she would need some extra attention.

Fast forward two days. Angie’s had problems but nothing major. I personally felt like she wasn’t very nice because every time I tried to talk to her, she would treat me badly. The camp counselor who worked with her though thought she was good. Towards the end of the day, I had to organize my group. In doing a sweep of the building, I walked in on another counselor having a hard time with Angie. He was yelling at her, trying to get her to obey, which only put her in a “I don’t care” mode. I told the counselor to get the head of the camp Ms. Vickie. He agreed. The young counselor is a good guy. Does well with the kids, I like him a lot, but the situation had gotten out of control. As he left to get Ms. Vicki, I struggled with the young girl to get her to sit down and listen. She was having none of it. She pushed, hollered, and screamed at me. I made her sit down, being careful not to hurt her. When Ms. Vickie came in, I decided it was best to let her handle it. I went to check on my group, who where fine with another counselor, so I then returned to Ms. Vicki, I was a little shocked at what I saw.

When I walked in the door, Angela was on the floor, and a Jr. Counselor ‘Zo was holding her down. ‘Zo is a big kid, but a Teddy-bear on the inside. Angela was struggling like a mad woman, screaming and hollering at the top of her lungs. Her movements brought to mind a scene from the Exorcist where the little girl is being tortured by the demon inside her. Ms. Vickie, was leaning down talking to her, calmly trying bring her back to reality, but the little girl was having none of it. I decided to get on the floor and help out. I spoke quietly, and gently as if talking to a wild animal, trying to calm her, she refused to hear me. This little 8 year old girl, gathered so much strength, she was actually moving ‘Zo. Through the strength of her will, she was able to readjust herself, and sit flatly on her behind, legs out, with ‘Zo holding her arms behind her back. To stop her from kicking, I moved to grab her legs, which put us face to face. I told her to calm down. She looked at me with such anger in between her quick movements, struggling to bite ‘Zo and get free.

In the middle of it all, she screamed, “I want to die!” My daughter is the same age as Angela. They are the same height, complexion, with similar hair style. I could never imagine my daughter saying something like that at her age. Watching Angela, I couldn’t help but think of my daughter. Couldn’t help but wonder what pain she hid beneath her tough exterior. It hurt my heart to hear these words. Hurt in a way I can’t really put to words. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and cry. I wanted to cry for her, her parents, the world at large, hurting children in every corner of the globe that felt like she did. But there was no way in her state I could hug her. So instead I said, “No baby, don’t say that. You don’t want to die.”
“Yes I do!”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do! I’m ugly! I’m stupid! I want to die.” Every word out of her mouth was like a rock shattering the fragile little concept I had of children at the Sanctuary. I knew the kids here had problems. I knew poverty created all sorts of issues for children, but my ignorance, did not really allow me to truly understand how deep their pain runs. Not that kids out of poverty don’t face similar struggles, they do, they just have greater resources. Who will Angela be if no one tells her, her worth? Where will we be when an entire population of bruised and battered children become adults? Are we there now?

All I could think to say to her was that she was a child of God, and that she was beautiful because God made her.
She screamed, “No! I’m not, I’m ugly!”
“No, you are not, you are beautiful. God loves you and I love you.”

She paused at this. I thought I’d reached her. Something broke the shell, but then she reared her head back, and spit in my face. She spit like she was scared of what the consequences would be for her actions. Sprayed. It didn’t feel good, but I thought to myself, well this could have been worse. I couldn’t wipe my face because my hands were firmly grasping her legs. Ms. Vickie stood besides me, and rubbed my back for encouragement, ‘Zo looked stunned. I couldn’t stop though.

“God loves you Angela, and so do I” She spit again. Sprayed.
“I don’t care, you can spit all day and it doesn’t change that God loves you, and I love you too. Because you are a child of God.” I could see a change in her eyes this time. She knew I wouldn’t react negatively to her behavior. She then started gathering spit in her mouth, and she spit in my face. This time it was no spray. I could feel it running down my cheek. I am not saint. I was mad. I wanted to scream at her, leave her there and wipe my face. But I couldn’t. Ms. Vickie continued to rub my back and the whole time, I felt like God was in my ear whispering “hold on, hold on”. When God tells you hold on, what else can you do?

Again I told her I loved her God loved her. Repeat, spit on the other cheek. Again, repeat. Somewhere in the cycle, someone got a towel and wiped my face. Angela screamed at me. She cried, I told her I loved her over and over. She said, she was worthless, I said she was valuable beyond belief. She spit. And then at the crescendo when there was nowhere else for either of us to go, she broke down and sobbed. I knew that type of pain. But I never knew it could come from a child. She wept and wept, and mumbled, “I wanna die like my cousin…” I let her legs go and move to hold her, telling her, “No baby, no, you don’t want to die.” I held her for what seemed like an eternity. She surrender to me for bit, and then, began to push away. Ms. Vickie asked her, if she wanted her to hold her, Angela said yes, and then crawled in Vickie’s arms. It was 3:30 when Vickie carried the sobbing child away.

I wanted to go home. Vickie would have let me go home. I sat in the empty room unsure of what just happened. I looked at the clock and thought, I should just go, I felt like I had nothing left. Everything had left my body. But I couldn’t leave. I knew, word of this incident would spread through the kids. Everyone would know, Angela flipped out, and spit on me at least 4 times, and I did nothing about it. The mentality with these children is “only the strong survive.” So me not responding, was a sign of weakness. Especially if I left early. I sat in the room alone for about 15 minutes, and then walked out. I was determined to redefine strength, for them, and honestly, I was a little bit of pride on my behalf. I wasn’t going to let the heartbreak, beat me. Not now. I stayed until 4:40, watching the clock the entire time. The whispers were getting out about what happened but no one said anything to me.

After calming down and hanging with Vickie for a while Angela come out in the common room acting like a normal kid. She walked up to me and apologized for spitting on me. She wrapped her arms around me, and it was all I could do not to cry. Her foster mother came to pick her up at 4:30, and Vickie told her, Angela could not come back. She gave her a hug goodbye and I watched as she walked out of the building. Vickie came to me, and told me, she wanted to keep her, but we don’t have the staff trained to deal with a child with problems like Angela. It was somewhat a liability issue, but also the truth of the matter is we as much as we wanted to, could not help her. I know Vickie is right. I know it. But it hurts.

I left the Sanctuary feeling like acid was eating my heart away. I called my mother, to tell her something completely unrelated, and started crying. She talked to me the whole way home. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop crying. I just ached for Angela. I prayed so hard that night hoping that God would watch over her, that God would watch over all the children I see in pain everyday. I’ve told this story a couple times, and each time people focus on her spitting on me, and what I went through. But that is not the point. At all. Angela is the point. That she had no other place to put her pain, then direct at me in such a harsh way. That she has no one, nothing, and despite our incident, she’s still in pain.

“Soft-hearted people can’t work with kids like that.” She said after I talked to her about the whole incident, and she’s right. But if people like me don’t work with Angela, who will? If we don’t cry for her who will? If I just walk away from it all, and only write plays and poems about people’s struggle but don’t get my hands dirty, who am I, and what is my work about? Father Greg Boyle said, “God doesn’t want us to endlessly praise God for being compassionate God is hoping that we will spend our time being compassionate. So, I kinda want to live like the truth is true, and go where love has not yet arrived.”

Amen.
Amen.

Fear itself

2006-05-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, "Dune"

Fear. Fear is what stops people, shows, performances, and art from greatness. I learned this pretty early in my life as a performer. I could tell when I’d let the fear of something get the best of me. My work on stage always suffered. So early on, I decided not to let it in. To take that fear and push up against it, in essence, use the friction from fear and faith to create.

Professionally, I’ve been feeling some apprehension over where I’m going as an artist. Which road to take, how to see through the foggy lens of the future. Balancing being the artist I know I can be against the human being I need to be. Without a doubt being a good father, friend, and person weights out everything. You can be a true artist if you let your art get in the way of loving someone. At the same time, I got work to do that is bigger then me. The responsibility of it pushes me forward. It’s not just this “lofty” goal of giving something back to the world. It’s also because I love what I do. Love it. I’m thankful for it. The people who have employed me, the audiences that have enjoyed my work… I’m humbled by it. I can’t thank God enough for the blessings I’ve received.

What I really wanted to write about has to do with working on “Griot”. As I write this, I realize this play, and reworking it, has become a metaphor for what I’m trying to do in my career and life.

So the good news Griot: He Who Speaks the Sweet Word will be taking part in the New York City Fringe Festival. Brilliant! I’m overjoyed. What’s the significance? Being in NY and having the opportunity to get agents, producers, and theaters to come see the show can really help us move the piece forward. Honestly, I was a little at an impasse as far as where to take the show next. We’d wanted to take it to Edinburgh, but decided against it. The cost outweighed the benefits, so it made sense for us to stay stateside and try to get into Festivals here. We’d missed the cut off for a lot of the festivals, but NYC Fringe was where I wanted to be anyway. So here we are.

Here’s the part where the fear plays a part. I have always wanted to rework different spots in the play. For the most part I think the play is solid. But there are parts in the play that stick out like a sore thumb. The biggest is the Motown section. There has been a disagreement within the production itself about this section of the play. There are those who think it’s fine, but I hate it. I hate it mostly because we are lip-synching the Motown songs. It feels empty, and not quite professional. I’ve never seen a Broadway show where the characters lip-synched a song. Either you sing it or you don’t. Secondly, I feel like the play on a whole does not give it’s due to the civil rights struggle. It was important to me, when first writing the piece that we created a play that would welcome all people to enjoy. I want the play to touch African-Americans, but I didn’t want to alienate other people. I still feel that way, but without truly dealing with the dark passages of history in this country, we will never be able to have an honest discussion about race. The exclusion of the civil rights struggle was not intentional at all. We were just focused on dealing with the modern equivalent of Griots. King, Malcolm, John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Andrew Young were great leaders, but not Griots.

Recently, when I was looking over the play, I read a line from the Miles monologue I wrote, (using Mile’s Autobiography as reference) Miles said “we were the soundtrack of the struggle, musicians give the marchers their beat” it struck me this is how the civil rights and the Griot fit. During the Motown era the movement was in full swing. I don’t think most people think of the music of the time when they think about the struggle, or vice versa. This is what Motown should reflect in the play. The full picture of history. What the art was doing. How the struggle formed the art, and how the art formed the struggle.

It’s tough when you’ve written something and the general public likes it, but you know this isn’t what you want. You don’t want to break something that works. On top of that there are those in the production who have valid points for not wanting to change. But it doesn’t feel right to me. In my bones, I know I have to make this change. I know I can’t be scared of failure. I must reach up and embrace it.

Transitions.

2006-04-24T17:47:00.000-07:00

Transitions.

I’ve been writing blog entries and haven’t posted any of them, as I’ve been trying to sift through it all. Welcome to the penumbra. The place I spend time in when I’m between projects, trying to figure out what the next move is. I’ve been pecking away at a couple projects. But nothing substantial. I’ve got ideas for three new pieces, all of which scare me to death. This is a good sign. Pieces that scared me, are the ones that I have to write. I have to steer towards going to the next big thing, challenging myself or the work will bore me and never get finished.

Last night we wrapped up our short run of GRIOT at FCCJ. The two nights we ran the show went really well. There are parts of the show that drive me crazy. Little things, that I know can be done better, I just have to spend the time making it right. Where the time will come for that, I have no idea. But I’m hoping I’ll etch out sometime in the near future and start making it happen. I love the show. I love how Larry, David, and I are magic when we are on stage together. But still there is plenty to work on. Right now we are waiting for word on whether we got into the NYC Fringe Festival. We should know about that in a couple of weeks. If that happens then I’ll begin re-working the parts of the play that don’t quite work for me.

I imagine, in the next month or so, I’ll have a lock on what project I’m working on. Right now, I’m just feeling the concepts out, see which one will get born first. I’ve got some good news on the Julius X tip but for right now, until it’s completely confirmed, I won’t announce it, but it’s pretty big news. So that’s what’s up with me. Short entry. Next time much more to say. Promise.

Postcard Back 2006

2006-03-31T10:41:00.000-08:00

Postcard Back 2006
Originally uploaded by Al Letson.

Griot at FCCJ April 21st and the 22nd

“The past is so hard to get from under”

2006-03-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

“The past is so hard to get from under”

March 28th is a day of loss for me. My daughter passed away on this date. Her name is Laurynn LeShonda Letson. Usually, I don’t talk about people in my family. Many people know I have a daughter because of my “Venus” poem, and that daughter’s name is Brooklynn. Laurynn is her little sister, who would be six today. I never got to play with her, or do things I do with my other children because she was gone almost as quickly as she was here. What I did get to do was to hold her. Once. I felt her warm little body pressed against mine. She was already gone, but I still got the chance to touch her. I whispered a poem in her ear. It was more of a prayer that she would find some peace some place better then where she’d be born into. I don’t remember letting go. I wanted to follow the nurse to whatever room they were taking her, and beg them to take me. Let her stay, I’d go in her place. But I knew when I watched them wheel her away that I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t pure or perfect. I’d done to much and seen too much to just walk into the light like her.
I use to feel so guilty about it all. Like a bricks had been laid against my chest each one with her name inscribed on them. I used those bricks to build walls around my heart, and soul. The thing about being a writer, or any kind of artist for that matter means that you can not operate within walls. Walls are exactly what an artist strives against. Slowly but surely, you have to chip away at those walls, so you can be human. So you can help other people escape their own walls. I thought about writing the entry and never mention Laurynn just talk about the loss of someone close to me, but that’s just living behind the wall. It’s not living in the real world, with real pain, or real happiness. I want more for me. And more for her. I don’t want her memory to be the pain that defines me. And yet, I know sometimes it is.
I these days, I don’t look to place blame on myself, of anyone else, I just understand that sometimes life works in it’s own ways. But I miss her. In ways I don’t even know how to write about. In times that seem to be a random as hell, but somehow make sense. That’s where she lies. I don’t know how heaven works. I don’t know if what people say will happen, happens. It would be nice to see her, to tell her I love her. But I think if I don’t ever see her again, this is as good as a place as any.
“Laurynn, I prayed for you the last time I held you, and I said it to you but you were already gone, but I love you baby. As much as I do all my little ones, from now till forever”
The Universe makes space. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Life after February

2006-03-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

Life after February

Dear Blog forgive me it’s been about a month since my last confessional. With tons of writing to do, and new projects needing to be written, I find myself in a state of inertia. I don’t want to do anything. I just want to live a little. This is not a bad thing, what it is, is a testament to the work, I put in on Julius X. It was a long and good process, but it’s left me feeling somewhat drained. I’m working hard to get the play produced in other places, so we’ll see how that goes. Additionally, I’ve been working with the composer, Mr. Bruce Mack. I am very, very, excited about where the piece can go. The biggest draw back with X is the size of the cast. There are not many African American Theatre companies across the nation that could do a version of this piece. That fact is part of the reason I try not to write big pieces. The story for Julius X was so big, and it was something I had to do, I have to accept that there are some downsides to the work.

What I’ve been up to: Last week I went to NYC it was suppose to be a time of fun, and some good work. I got hired by Sony to film a tradeshow commercial for their new HiDef products. They wanted their own, HiDef Poets. In addition I was going to work with the composer for Julius X, and have a few meetings with some key people to hopefully get the show on the right path for an NYC production. I have a gang of friends in the NY area I do not see enough, so I thought this would be a great time to do a bunch work and socializing, but the best laid plans, always have plans of their own.

The Sony shoot went well. I’ve done a couple TV gigs from Def Poetry to the Final Four for CBS in 2004, to some PBS stuff, I have to say Sony was really a class act. The CBS shoot had a level of uncertainty. They weren’t sure whether the spot was going to air or not. So it was shot as fast as possible, without really giving me a chance to prepare. We auditioned, they choose me, I was given a script, and boom, time to shoot. Def Poetry of course is a whole different ball of wax. You come in do your thing, see a lot of folks have a great time, and make a little change. PBS stuff was mostly promotional, so you talk about what you’re doing, and perform and then out the door. Sony fully catered the shoot. They gave all 4 poets participating an opportunity to write their own short segments, and then drove us out of a soundstage in New Jersey where we performed the piece. The other poets on the shoot were Kelly Tsia www.yellowgurl.com, Bob Holman www.Bowerypoetryclub.com, & Bassey Ikpi www.basseyworld.com , Also an actor named Anthony Veneziale who is a part of www.backhouseproductions.org. We had a good time, and I can’t wait to see the actual commercial.

The next day my health crashed. Stuck in NY a thousand miles away from my inhaler, I had a major asthma attack and my allergies were out of control. For the most part I stayed in the bed for 4 days. I had some pretty important meetings I was able to make, but as soon as they were over I ran back to my hotel and crashed. Later in the week, I stayed with Bruce Mack and his lovely wife Vons, out in Jersey. We worked some on the music, both of us feeling the direction of the other. I came home a little early. I needed to recuperate from the trip and here I sit, not feeling 100%. The sad part about the trip is that I didn’t get to see a lot of people I wanted to hang out with. Nor, did I get to see any of the theatre I was hoping to check out. But on a whole the entire trip was productive. Life moves on…..

Julius X

2006-02-14T21:22:00.000-08:00

Alright kiddies, if you want to read about JULIUS X you can check it out at http://web.mac.com/al_letson/iWeb. Additionally the first review for the show is out at http://www.citypaper.com/arts/story.asp?id=11460 More to come.

Don’t call it a come back

2006-02-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

Don’t call it a come back

It’s been a minute since I sat down to scribble some thoughts. Mostly because I’ve been maddddd busy. Secondly cause I get lazy when it comes to “blogging”, although this little journal has helped in my personal growth so much. It’s easy to look back and know exactly where I was, like creating a trail from the place you started. Sometimes I look back and go WOW. Other times, it’s too painful to read. Either way the future waits for no one. This is where I’m at now.

Julius X premiers at the Baltimore Theatre Project 45 West Preston St. Feb. 9th-19th. Can’t wait to see it. I’ve had a lot of heartburn over this one. For a couple reasons I’d rather not air publicly. To sum it up, I am totally not use to being “just” a playwright. Writing something and giving it to someone who may or may not get your vision of the play is something I struggle with. Usually I’m use to working on my stuff intimately with people I know intimately. This has a different feel altogether. I think the director is going to do a great job with the play. My apprehension has nothing to do with him. I think it’s primarily because I’m 12 hours away (car) and can’t really be apart of the process. I can’t watch the scenes, and change things that don’t work. It’s relying solely on the work that I’ve done on the script, instead of having the chance, to see what works and what doesn’t. That is what the performance will be an opportunity for me to see what works and what doesn’t the problem with that is the show is going to be reviewed. Reviews. I’ve heard playwrights talk about it with dread but never thought much of it, until I started getting reviewed. I remember the feeling of walking to the store to get the newspaper when my first review came in. It was nerve wracking, thank God it was a good review. I haven’t gotten a bad one yet, so I’m not sure how that feels. Honestly, on the level I’m working, I never want to get a bad one. When my work is on Broadway, then that’s something else. Right now though, I’d like to stay in the positives. Reviews are important because they set you up to do other things with the play. I want Julius X to run in NY. To do big things, and this review could be the beginning of it. At this point, all you can do is have faith.

More to come. Stay tuned.

Temporary Arrangements

2006-01-16T05:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working on a post to the website, a really good post full of what I’ve been doing for the last month or two. And today when I sat down to post it, I just didn’t feel it anymore. I’ve been depressed for a couple days, over work stuff, and just don’t have the heart to post all my dreams today. Sometime in the near future I guess I will, but today, no dice. With that being said, this song always picks me up. I found it when I was going though a really hard time a couple years ago. I felt like she was talking directly to me. I think everyone at some point feels like a stranger in a strange land. That's exactly where I'm at. Like I'm speaking in a language the people around me can't understand. The world has turned up it’s gravity field, and is trying to keep me on the ground. It won’t hold me, I was made to fly, but sometimes the struggle to get airborne is a tough one.

No Pressure over Cappucino
By Alanis Morissette

And you're like a 90's Jesus
And you revel in your psychosis
How dare you?

You sample concepts like hors d'oeurves
And you eat their questions for dessert
And is it just me or is it hot in here?

And you're like a 90's Kennedy
And you're only a million years old

They can't fool you

They'll throw opinions like rocks in riots
And they'll stumble around like hypocrites
And is it just me or is it dark in here?

You may never be or have a husband
You may never have or hold a child
You will learn to loose everything
We are temporary arrangements

And you're like a 90's Noah
And they laughed at you when you packed all of your things

And they wonder why you're frustrated
And they wonder why you're so angry
Is it just me or are you fed up

And god bless you in you're travels
in your conquests and queries...

Story of the Locks

2005-11-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

Story of the Locks

Milwaukee is cold this time of year. Duh. But I got a gig, and the gig is for a good cause, so here I am. I hate the cold. Hate it. You’d think I was born in the south for my aversion for the cold. I consider myself a southerner, for good or bad, but it wasn’t always so. I’m a boy from New Jersey, and love the Tri-State area, but feel no connection to it during the winter.
The flight to Milwaukee brought up a lot of old feelings, and I have no idea why. I’ve been on several planes in the last 4 years, but none of them have made me miss the life I left behind. Maybe the word “life” is too melodramatic, the flight made me miss the job I use to have.
Four years ago I was a flight attendant for American Eagle Airlines. I started flying when I was 22 and stopped when I was 29. I loved the job. It was an escape from problems I was having at home, but also I taught me a lot about who I was, and who I wanted to be. I usually never miss flying. Towards the end I was sick of it. On 9/11 I was in New York worried sick about my friends that I knew flew those routes. On the flip side, everyone I cared about was worried about me, all in all it was a surreal and terrifying experience. Slowly, it started to take the enjoyment of the job away. As traumatic as that was, it would be more then a year later before I left American Eagle.
One day in 2002 I woke up in Oakland California and looked in the mirror, and realized that I was beginning a transition. I remember looking at my face and thinking, it wasn’t the same one I’d washed before I went to bed. Months prior to that day, my life was falling apart. I’d lost everything and was sleeping in my car. All the things that everyone that loved me saw for me no longer held the same appeal. I didn’t want the things that I’d seen people around me have. Something was tugging at me, had been my whole life, but I never knew what it was, or how to name it. A longing for something that you can’t really put into words, but it’s always there in the corner of every major life decision. I’d gotten to the point where I had nothing left to loose and that voice, whispering in my ear was becoming more persistent. Ultimately I wanted to figure out who I was, and who I was going to be. Somewhere deep, I knew that was not being a flight attendant.
Poetry was a hobby. A good one. As a flight attendant, I’d been able to make a name for myself by going to all the little poetry slam venues, won a couple slams, had a couple laughs, made a couple friends. In the midst of it all, that pulling came back in full force and whisper, this is what I wanted to do, what I was meant to do. Perform, write, live life on my own terms. As a child I’d always been an artist. I was an exceptional little artist/painter, if 4th grade I wrote my own play, sung (lost that skill), and acted in several plays. In Jr. High, I got heavily involved with Hip-hop and became somewhat of a local “Puffy-Daddy”. Funny to think about it, but when I see people from High School some of them ask me if I’m still rapping. When I got older, I let all that go, along with the nickname Alfie, and forged this new person, Al that was an adult. Adults do things that are responsible. Like get married have 2.5 kids, buy a house with a white picket fence, work 9-5, retire and get an RV. Poetry changed all of that. I could no longer think on those terms. The world seemed like such a bigger place then that dream. It hit me like a ton of bricks, the thought that I would not follow in my parent’s footsteps. For some people this realization might be trite, or easy to come to, but for me, son of a Baptist preacher, who had always been given a “Cosby-esque” view of the world, being a full-time artist was scary. For months it dogged me. I wanted to do so much more then just write a three minute poem, or sling peanuts on a plane.
That day in Oakland was important because staring at the mirror, I decided to grow my hair. The a couple nights before the beautiful woman I was dating said she thought I would look good with long hair. It got me thinking that all my life I’d worn the same hair cut. Low-fade. Not once did I ever consider growing my hair out. Never. My haircut was controlled and tight exactly what everyone around me expected. I’d heard that growing dreds was supposed to be a religious experience. Before I started letting my hair grow, I thought it was corny mysticism, but that day in Oakland was a conversion of sorts. I knew I could no longer live my life the way people wanted me to. Or even in a way that was comfortable. More then anything, I wanted to be an artist. I always wanted to be an artist, I just never knew what my art was, now I’d found it.
I remember feeling like I was at the edge of a cliff, and I couldn’t see below, the road I’d walked to get there had been erased by a sandstorm, and all I could do was stay put or go forward. Some people have told me over the years that doing what I do as a living is brave. I think back to that cliff and know it wasn’t. Either I stayed put for the rest of my life, or I jump. There was no real choice. You jump. You jump and you pray the Lord will find a way to set you down easily, or give you wings to fly. I could end this post with something really corny, like “Thank God, he gave me wings!” But instead, I’ll just end by saying, I’m living the life I’ve always wanted. I’m doing the work that is important to me. On a whole things have worked out just the way they were meant to. Everything is not rosey. There have been plenty of hard times, and bad breaks. I’m not rich, probably never will be, I’m not comfortable, comfortable would have been staying at a 9 to 5, getting the steady check, but I don’t want that. I’m living, creating, working, and giving something back to the world. My gift is small, but it’s what I got to give. Thank God he gave me wings…LOL.

Beginnings and Endings

2005-10-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

I started to write a really long post about August Wilson and what he means to me as a writer, and as an African-American. But I’ve read so many other accounts that I decided, I had nothing new to add to the conversation. Except to say that he changed my life when I discovered his work. I don’t feel bad that he’s gone. Death is something that will come to all of us. I’m happy for him. He set an ambitious goal, and he saw it through. 10 plays. An unheard of cycle. Some of the plays are better then others, but on a whole brilliant work. I hope when inevitability catches up with me, it will find me as accomplished and have contributed to the whole of humanity the way August did. Rest in peace.

All of that ties into this. I have finished the first draft of Julius X. Yay! For the next month, I’ll be doing some intense rewrites, readings, and more research to make the piece work better. But for a first draft, I’m really happy. David Mamet said something along the lines, that all acting really was, is being brave. Going out there, and just doing it. I don’t know how much I agree with that, but I do think it has a lot to do with it. So it is with writing. A lot of it is just having the courage to dream and put it on paper. A POETICAL is much harder to write then a straight play. So there are plenty of opportunities to wimp out. I feel like in the first draft of CHALK I wimped out a couple times. I was tired of trying to write engaging poems. So instead, I just did the easy thing and let drama carry it. Which for what I was trying to do is cheating.

With Julius however I kept my nose to the grind. I got it done a week past the deadline, but a week isn’t that far off. I think the piece is strong. But you know when your doing something new sometimes it’s hard to gage how people will take it.

There is a deep sense of satisfaction from finishing something I’d dreamed up a year ago spent months researching, and several months writing. This isn’t the end of the work. This is just the birth-day.

I never write the title page until I finish the first draft. It was an honor to add an additional page in between the title page and first page of the script. The page is mostly blank with two words, “For August”.

BALTIMORE, USA

2005-09-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Baltimore, Baltimore

I’m home. Been a bit since I’ve been to Baltimore, but once I get here it doesn’t take long for me to remember why this is my second home. I came here for a bunch of reasons. The place I stay at in Baltimore is the Governement House which is a bed and breakfast in the Mt. Vernon section of B-more. The place is magical. I've loved the building and the propietor since the first time I walked through the door. Jeanie, always takes good care of a poor poet trying to live his dream. I am blessed.

Confession time: I am a nerd. Always have been always will be. So it should be no surprise that I am a huge comic book fan, and for the last year or so, I’ve been pretty serious about trying to write comic books. So when I was planning this trip to read Julius X, it seemed to be fate that brought me Baltimore the same time as the Baltimore Comic Book Convention. In addition to the Convention, another business contact was going to be in town during the same time. I knew this was going to be a busy trip.

The Baltimore Convention.
Everything I’ve read about breaking into comics says you need to go to conventions and get to know people. So that’s why I went. I had a great time as a nerd. As a writer, it was the big goose egg. The conventions are made for Artist to connect publishers, but for a writer without an artist, not much going on. I talked to a few people, tried to make some connections, we’ll see if anything happens.

On the big ole phat nerd tip. I met some of the creators that I love. Like Amanda Conner. I spoke to her like I was a little kid. I’ve just been digging her Art work forever. Check out her stuff: www.amandaconner.com. (she’s my celebrity crush) LOL. I met the king John Romita Sr. This man is a legend. I shook his hand, and could barely speak. Jimmy Palmiotti was there, he’s a great talent unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I met a new writer named Raven, he’s pretty good too. So on a whole it was fun. Ultimately, I need to figure out how to break in cause it seems like the convention route isn’t going to get me far.

JULIUS X
Monday was the reading of Julius at the Eubie Blake Community Center. I had a good meeting with the director Troy Burton the day before the reading. He listened intently as I explained my vision for the piece. I could see the light bulb go on as I explained it all. He helped me think somethings through, and I think the piece is really strong. The reading made me even more confident of where it's going. Which I needed because writing a “Poetical” isn’t something that comes with an instruction book. This time I’m a little more free with the poetry, and the blending of it with dialogue. The play will be finished in a couple weeks. (We read the first half of the piece) and once that’s done, then it’s out of my hands. I’ll be in Baltimore again in November to do a reading open to the public, which will be much more intense. Anne @ the Theatre Project is happy with what she heard. I felt a little pressure to make her happy. She supports me fully, and I want her to know I appreciate it. At the same time I want to prove that the work is worthy of being supported. Big ambitions, but you gotta dream big right? I’m excited to see where this will end up.

On a separate note, a new business oppertunity opened up. I met some wonderful people while I was in B-more, and we may do some work together. Don't want to talk much about it now, until we get the details hammered out. But if it all works out which I think it will, the project could be pretty big. It's all pretty exciting. This was facilited by Jeanie Clark (the Inn Keep), as always she's looking out for me. I hope I can "pay-it-forward" in the near future.

The silence of good people.

2005-09-04T05:38:00.000-07:00

I usually do not write in this blog with politics in mind. Why because I feel like there are better writers who do that sort of thing. Instead I look at my blog as a place where I can write about my own work and challenges, and hopefully people can relate with that. But today, I feel like I have to say something about the madness sprouting up around us.

Like everyone in this world watching the drama unfold on TV in New Orleans my heart is so heavy. I wish there was some way I could go there and save the people who have been forgotten by the government. Sure today they are starting to get some relief but for 4 to 5 days after the Hurricane hit, no one had done nothing.

The head of FEMA is an idiot, or a liar. I’m not sure what’s worse. Earlier in the week he said the victims where to blame for no evacuating. Basically blaming them for being poor. Today I read Homeland Security Secretary (Micheal Chertoff ) saying there was “no plan for this,…. (the storm was) breathtaking in its surprise." He is one of the few surprised. I’m not in the business of managing disaster relief and I knew this was inevitable. The folks in the know in New Orleans have been predicting it for years. Every indication is that the government should have known this was possible. I do not fault any one administration with not having taken this seriously. The work on the levies should have been done decades ago. What I fault them for is not having a viable evacuation plan, for not being prepared to help those left behind, for treating it like it was no big deal.

Why did it take so long to get help to the area? Because we have the National Guard dieing in Iraq, instead of being in place to help the survivors. These destitute people don’t matter though. There are poor, and mostly black, so therefore undeserving of our help or sympathy. Meanwhile President Bush has Airforce One do a fly by so he can look down at the devastation. It takes him 3 days to get there, after being shamed into action by the Mayor of New Orleans. But this is what America asked for when they reelected this failed oil-man back into the presidency. If his past record is any indication, the president will give the director of FEMA a promotion. Because that’s what this President does. There is no accountability. The buck stops nowhere, and Americans are okay with it, as long as they get their dose of electronic Novocain in the form of Brittany Spears, Jessica Simpson, or Jen and Brad’s divorce.

Debating in 2000, Bush said his favorite political adviser was Jesus. If that is so, then the Jesus I know and believe in is weeping. Jesus was one of the all time great advocates for the poor. When do the policies of this administration benefit the poor? Where is the concept of “turning the other cheek”? Does “Bring’em on” sound like turning the other cheek? It sounds more like the click of a clip being forced in an automatic weapon. African American clergy, helped get Bush reelected based primarily on his staunch objection to peoples sexual behavior. But now we see what he truly thinks of them by his inaction.

In this bizarro world, people fighting for survival are looters. With no help from the government, and lawlessness taking grip, people did what they had to, to survive. I got an e-mail from a friend (a very cool individual,) but a quote from the article he sent me said: "Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is.” That is an affront to Black people, and is exactly what many people feel in their hearts, that we are animals. The economic, social, and cultural aspects of Asia are very different from New Orleans. They have their own issues there, very different of those in the inner-cities in America. Our streets are flooded with drugs, guns, and hopelessness. Why because someone is making money off it, and it’s not the people in these neighborhoods. One would be naïve to think there isn’t someone somewhere in power, benefiting off of these people’s pain. It’s capitalism at it’s ugliest. These are the ingredients for the perfect storm. Not Katrina’s level four, but the decay of our culture into this gun obsessed, drug saturated, loveless mess. In every bad situation there are a few who are going to cause problems. Human nature unavoidable, but on a whole the people are struggling to survive, wouldn’t you?

These people have been left to die because no one thought they were worthy of being evacuated before the storm hit. Most of the people that stayed behind, stayed because they had no other choice. They couldn’t rent a car, they didn’t have a car themselves. No money for plane, train, or bus tickets. Nothing. So they stay and watch their lives be washed away. Meanwhile the rest of the world sits in judgment of them. Next week, or next month, or sometime in the future, President Bush will praise the relief efforts, FEMA, and anyone else he owes for their “tireless efforts” and America will forget all about this tragedy. We will move on to mourn the death of William Renquist, but who will mourn the hundreds of little babies, old people, and “worthless looters” who lost their lives not to Katrina’s deadly winds and waters, but to government inaction. Adlai Stevenson once said, “You always get the government you deserve.” But today in the flooded ruins of New Orleans, as poor people struggle to make it to the next day it is apparent they deserved better then this.

Julius X

2005-08-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

Artistically I’m in the biggest fight I’ve taken on yet. I find myself always drawn to something bigger then what I may be prepared for. The benefit is that when I conquor it I move up a level. There is no downside, except the deep feeling of being overwhelmed, but even that in the end is good cause it keeps me from being lazy.

I have been working for the last two months on my biggest play project to date, Julius X. “Julie” as I sometimes call it is a “Poetical” that is a re-envisioning of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The play takes place in the 1960 within the power struggle in the Black Muslim Organizations. So Julius is basically a Malcolm X like figure. What makes this so difficult? Everything about it. In theory it’s an intriguing concept, in practice, it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. For those of you just tuning in (where you been?) a POETICAL is a new genre of theater I have created (I use the word created loosely) a poetical basically works like a musical but instead of the actors breaking out into song, the dialogue leads to performance poetry. The type of poetry heard in a poetry slam. So that’s the first difficulty. Writing 9 poems, each with their own rhythms and each poem must push the story forward. Secondly the concept of “re-envisioning” Shakespeare. So many people love his work, myself included, all eyes will be on me, and how I handle reworking something that most people feel is genius. Who am I to re-envision any one? Third, Malcolm, the Nation, the 60’s all of these hold special places in people’s hearts especially black people. I want to do something that moves people, that gives us a different perspective on the world around us, and the history behind us. That’s what has drawn me to this subject.

The writing has been extremely slow. Mostly because I’m trying to balance Shakespeares language with the contemporary venacular of the 60’s. The poems are coming even slower, but I knew that would happen.

I see this piece actually branching out and being bigger then just a poetical. I’d really like to work with a Jazz Musician who understands Hip-hop to create something that has never been seen before. A Poetical-Jazz-Opera. Man it could be hot. I’m seeing it as I write this.

The novel is coming along. With Julius premiering in Feb. I needed put Julie first so, the novel is standing still, it’s a slow process but I’m happy with what I’ve gotten so far. If it takes 10 years, that’s cool, as long as I finish.

The True Culture War

2005-07-06T05:48:00.000-07:00

This summer I’ve been working at a community center in the hood. The woman who runs the place is a hard working beautiful individual. She is an activist in every sense of the word. She’s put her life on the line to be there for these kids. It is a beautiful selfless thing she does. I hate when poets call themselves activist, when all they do is poetry. I think it’s worthy to be a poet, that it is a form of activism, but nothing in comparison to true activist that put it on the line, everyday. There are a few poets I can think of that fall into both categories, like my sisters Wahlida Imishara, Turiya Autrey, and Malikha Hameen. They do the real work. But it’s too easy for a poet who goes around getting paid to say some verses about an issue return to their relatively comfortable life, and claim that they are revolutionary. I’m not judging other poets. This is my measuring stick. I won’t call myself an activist. If someone else thinks they fall into that category that’s their thing. I just know the principals that guide me. I have it easy.

Back to the community center. This is the type of work an activist does. I go throughout the country performing, teaching, lecturing to kids of all ages, and for the most part I really dig it. It’s all the benefits of teaching without the drawbacks. This community center is a much harder thing. The children there range from the age of 5 to 17 and many of them come from broken homes. Broken sounds pedestrian. A typical broken home means divorce. Some of these children come from homes that have exploded. Deceased parents, drug addicted parents, no parents, poverty. Despite all of this, these children everyone of them are beautiful. But with pasts so filled with pain and uncertainty, which acts out in their behavior. I thought when I got this job, that I would walk in and boom, they’d love me, because, despite what my son would say, I’m a pretty cool adult.

It doesn’t work like that with these kids.

Everyday is a struggle to reestablish yourself as a person worth respecting. Some of the kids there, I will never break through to. I try but they don’t want anything to do with me. Teaching them writing is near impossible. I could give them paper and say “Write a poem.” But that’s not teaching. That’s more of the same what they get at school. I want them to walk away from this experience with something they will carry with them the rest of their lives. Maybe those goals are too lofty, but they deserve to have lofty aspirations.

This is ground zero for what should be defined as the culture wars. Not what politicians mean when they say “culture wars”. That is classified as a struggle between the right and left over moral issues. Which is fine from a philosophical level, but here where the pavement is hot, and hope is in limited supply, the tug of right and left hold no value. The true culture war is between what our true culture is and what powerful corporations have decided it will be.

All you hear on the radio is songs about Sex. (on black radio) “bend over to the front…”, R. Kelly, and a bunch of other idiots and that’s it. Now that isn’t my type of music, never has been, but there is a noticeable shift in the last 10 years. I don’t like that music, but I can tolerate it, if there is a balance. If there where songs of substance on the radio, then it wouldn’t be so bad. These songs are popular because that’s the only option these kids have. That’s it. Because one corporation owns most of the radio stations across America, they decided what’s going to be hot, and what isn’t. So the perception that the market is making the decisions when it comes to radio is off base because the market never gets a chance to try a new product. All of this ties into the kids at the community center. All these kids hear on the radio, and in the videos are songs about sex. They see young women not much older then themselves, running around half naked, young men chasing after them, and everyone chasing after the mighty dollar, or diamonds, or gold. That’s all they see and without a guiding force in their lives, what they see and hear becomes their reality.

I don’t know how to combat that. But some fights, you just fight. Period. You don’t ask questions, you don’t make excuses, you just roll up your sleeves and dive in because the cause is worthy. These children are worthy. This is not an act of activism. This is an act of the heart. I am no better then anyone else out there. So if anyone is reading my ramblings, and you feel the same as I do, please, please, join the fight.

heartbroken

2005-07-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days that stick with you for a while. Before I talk about the hard stuff maybe I should talk about the good stuff. I was real happy with the def poetry stuff. I thought it looked good, and you know that’s all you can ask for. Thank you to everyone that supported me and sent me congratulations. It meant the world to me. What a great week, I put up a show at 9th and Main to coincide with the show. It went over well, and the party was the hot. Also some friends of mine came and really rocked the mic during the down time. So that was a huge blessing…. I’ve been meaning to write all of this down, but my heart is so heavy tonight, that I feel like I can’t do the last week justice.
This week has been hard. Money is a constant struggle. Especically during the summer. See most of the gigs I do are with Schools. No schools in Summer, not much money either. I’ve been working at a community center, and that has been hard, beautiful, and sad all at the same time, and for the time I’m there they pay me well, but it’s nowhere near what I normally make. So with the tough money situations, everything seems harder especially when you have children. Then I found out one of my closest friend’s little nephew got shot and is in intensive care. Then today, a good friend of mine was killed by a drunk driver. I’m heartbroken.
Deliah and Alex have been my friends since I was 20. Alex was my barber and Deliah is his wife. I met them not long after they had got together. They both worked hard to start their own business, and they succeeded. They own a barber shop/beauty salon in Jacksonville called Low Profile. I love that shop. Before I started growing dreds, I’d go there just to hang out. When they found out about my work as an artist they refused to take money from me. Every cut was on the house. I hadn’t seen Alex in about a year. I would drive by his shop and think, damn I need to stop in, but never did. I saw Deliah at Wal-mart in February. We talked and laughed. I asked about her kids (4) she asked about mine. We thought about old times, and promised to catch up. Today I get the call that she was killed in a car accident. Hit and run, and drunk driver hit her and kept going….. I don’t’ have anything poetic to say. This post is probably rambling and stupid, but I’m broken. I’m broken by this stupid war, and all the people dieing in it. I’m broken by the young black men shooting each other. I’m broken, because I love these people, Alex and Deliha, and I never told her, or him for that matter. That I love them, and thank them for believing in me. There were times when their belief, the refusal to take 10 buck from me for a haircut was the only validation I had. I wish it would stop raining, but somehow it fits.

Long time gone

2005-06-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Blog.

Forgive me. I have been a bad blogger. Several times, I’ve sat down to write out what’s in my head, and will get a good bit of the blog finished, and then get distracted. Then when I try and return to what I was writing, it seems to have passed me by and I can no longer continue in the stream of consciousness that I was originally in when I started writing. So it’s been several months. Where to start?

How about follow up to earlier entries.

GRANT SEASON: I have received two grants out of the five that I applied for, haven’t heard on two of them but even if I do not get those grants, 2 out of five is pretty good.

CATCHING UP: My episode of Def Poetry airs June 17th at 11:30 pm. From what I’ve been told I am the first poet of the episode. I’m extremely excited to see it. There is some trepidation that goes with it. I have this really great image in my head of how the performance and taping went. I think I performed the poem better then I ever had. But what you remember and what the camera catches can be two different things. I think it will look good, still, I’m anxious to see how it all turns out.

NOTES FROM THE BOTTLETREE: So we are doing a full production of the play in early fall. As an actor I am salivating to do it. We have a good cast, my close friend and excellent actress Terry Thomas will be in the lead role. Terry and I have good chemisty in every day life, so playing it out on stage should be fun.

TIPPING POINT/ CHALK: Things have gone well with Chalk. We (Barbara and I) did a production of it Jacksonville, and it was successful. The best thing about it, is that I got really good video. For marketing purposes this is essential. With the little time left in the school year around the nation, I will start sending out packages with the promotional DVD, hopefully this will generate some excitement and schools to put the play up. We have cut a deal with one of the most beautiful venues I have ever seen, the Lazar Theatre in the UNF Fine Arts Building to present CHALK in October. This is will be the biggest venue the play has been in. I’m very curious as to how the play will work in a theatre this large with all the lighting capabilities, and technical bonuses that the piece has not had in any other venue.

NY JITTERS/GRIOT: The big news with Griot is it will be taking part of a festival of celebrating the life and work of Langston Hughes. This is happening at the UNF Fine Arts Center, in Jacksonville during the month of April. This huge for us, as it will accomplish two goals, we have a huge financial goal this year, as we are planning to take the show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The cost of going to this festival is pretty steep. So we need as many gigs as we can possibly get. Secondly, I’ve never felt that the play has had the opportunity to really work in the Jacksonville community. We’ve either done it out by the Beach (which is a great theatre, but the beaches community and the Jacksonville community are two separate groups altogether, or we’ve done it at small venues with little promotion. So the opportunity to do it at the Lazar Theatre is a true blessing.
The NOVEL: The writing is going good but slow when it comes to the novel. I’d like to get to a more steady pace in the future, but other projects will be taking priority in the up coming months, more on those later.

THE MOVIE: So we (my film partners) have settled on a concept and now I need to sit down and start making it come together. We don’t plan to shoot until some time next year which will give us plenty of time to get it rolling.

NEW THINGS IN THE WORKS: So my new play opens in October @ the Theatre Project. The title of the piece is Julius X. In the near future I’ll post more on this play and what it’s about but right now since I am not totally finished in the planning and writing of the piece, I want to keep the concept close to my heart.

On a whole things are looking very positive for the future. I’ve moved in my new work space, which I hope will up the productivity of my work. For the last couple weeks I’ve been working out of a small closet in my room, and really had no room to move around and work. I love to have pile of paper, books, and other resources near me when I’m working so I can pull something quickly, working in a closet is not conducive to this type of work flow. The new work space is huge in comparision with a nice L shaped desk allowing me to work the way I like to work. No excuses.

Personal Statement

2005-04-01T05:13:00.000-08:00

It's been almost a month since I've had the chance to post anything. Some good things in the works, but for right now, I'll keep them under wraps I applied for a new grant which I have snowball's chance in hell getting, but hey you have to put yourself in it, to win it. Ultimately, I don't mind writing grants, it makes me reflect on my work, which I think for an artist is always important. The latest reflection: In the grant application I was asked to write a personal statement as to what I thought my role as an artist is today and in the future. This was my response....

PERSONAL STATEMENT

My role as a theatre artist today and in the future, is rooted in the past. It was carried in the form of a song across the middle passage, hidden under the tongue of an African captive. A song that sung of sorrow, but knew hymns of joy. Rhythms that leap from the slave’s fingertips while plucking King Cotton from his womb, a song that saved him, even with chains on his feet. Three hundred years later, I know I was meant to sing that song for him before the world has forgotten the words.
To remember

More recently I was reminded in a workshop I was teaching why I do this, when a student asked “What was the job of the poet”. I knew the answer was on a wadded piece of paper in my pocket. A slightly over-weight girl had given to me when no one else was looking. She was sixteen, and just lost her premature baby because her body wasn’t ready to carry to full term. The first time she talked about it, was in a poem lying dormant in my pocket.
To heal

As an artist, I find my work gravitating to the stories of people like, Crosley Alex Green who sits in a cell on Florida’s Death Row for a crime he could not have committed. The poor, the disenfranchised, the weak, those just out of reach of the light, who have no way of letting their voice be heard, is where my role screams it’s providence in my ears.
To Fight

The first play I wrote was a reaction to meeting a homeless man on a subway late one night. I found myself feeling disgusted by the man, who had done no harm to me, all he wanted was someone to listen to him, to hear his story, but I was too wrapped up in my own life, and had no time for his. Later that night, I was embarrassed by my reaction, and realized my behavior was indicative of today’s society. Slowly bits of our humanity have been stripped away and sacrificed on the altar of everyday life. It’s too easy to become wrapped up in our own lives and never see the beauty, the pain, and the brilliance of the person standing next to us on the train. That night in an effort to make amends to a man I knew I would never see again, I wrote his story, the first monologue in my play Essential Personnel.
To Reconnect

As a theatre artist, this is my calling to remember those who have come before me, and pass that knowledge on to those who will be here after me. To find our collective pain, and heal those wounds. To fight for those who don’t have the strength or voice to be heard. To reconnect myself and the audience to what it means to be human. To make the world a better place. One play at a time.

Catch up

2005-03-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

So I wrote a long journal entry on the whole Def Poetry Experience, and then subsequently lost it. Nowhere to be found on the harddrive. Quite honestly, I don’t have the heart of time to rewrite, or try to recreate what I’ve lost. So just a few short paragraphs to sum up the experience.

Breath-taking. Larry and David were great support. I performed two older pieces, because they were the easiest to mold into the two minute time frame. The audience loved it. I felt like the work I did lived up to what I’m about as an artist so I was happy with what I did. I got to see some really great poets work, and play catch up with some great people that I had not seen in years. No one recognized me with the long hair, but once they did, we picked up right were we left off. The slam community is such a welcoming and open group of people, it was good to see so many of us there.

The Staff of Def Poetry were incredible. They handled business and were extremely gracious. Walter Mudu, who acted as my agent was on it, as always. Hopefully he and I will be able to do more business together in the near future. Next year I need to get on the map are start doing college gigs more. There is a ton of money in that type of work, and honestly, I could use the money to help fund other things.

The Baltimore run of “Griot” went well. We had very small crowds, but it was good to keep the show running and feel it out. I know what things I want to change and how I want to change them. The vision for the future of the piece is solidly in my head now, I’m going to take some time away from it, but then return to build it the way I envision it in my head. Baltimore has become a home away from home for me. The Theatre Project is a great place to work, and staff are not just good at what they do, but they are family now. Tucker Fuliwiler, the PR King of the Theatre Project was sick while we were their. It was a bummer to see him in the hospital. Tuck’s a great guy and will pull through fine, still, looking at him in the hospital bed made me sad. I wanted to do something more then just visit and laugh at his jokes….

Financially the trip caused different problems to evolve. I worked so hard to get ready for NY and B-more, and barely made any money. If I had another job, it would be a big deal, but since this is what I live off, three months worth of work, two weeks away from home, and to return with the small money that I got is a little depressing. I’ve got a few gigs in the near future that pay well, but right now, things are tight. No complains though, I’m doing what I love and if that’s the exchange, then so be it.

Def Poetry Jam

2005-02-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

DEF POETRY JAM

So the phone call comes today that I have been accepted to take part in Russle Simmon’s Def Poetry Jam. DPJ films at the Supper Club in NYC and airs on HBO. When I got the phone call it was filled with joy and some hesitation. First my history with Def Poetry.
1) I was picked to film Def Poetry during the second season. About two years ago. It was an incredible experience. I was treated with the utmost respect, and I had a wonderful time in New York. After performing for a packed audience and feeling like I rocked it. I went home feeling really good about the whole experience. I didn’t tell anyone because I wasn’t sure if the spot would air or not. See, you film with them but there is no guarantee that they will air your spot. Weeks later I got the call that I had made the taping. There were pictures on the internet of my performance. BET was running clips of me, I began to tell all my friends everything was going good. And then my air date came and went and there was no sign of Al Letson. Somehow despite the assurances that I made the cut, my footage found it’s way to the cutting room floor, and I never aired.
This was my first lesson in TV. It hurt like hell, I wanted to be on the show so bad, then not making it made me want to weep. I was so mad at the people of DPJ. It took me a while to except the experience for what it was. I had such a great time. I got to meet several of my favorite artist, and most importantly, I got paid. The staff of the show are great people. I have a lot of respect for all of them, and now with some distance between that pain, and the present, I know my getting cut was not an intentional malicious thing. It’s TV, it’s showbiz, and if you take that kind of stuff personal it will kill you. On a whole it was a great thing career-wise for me, I’ve been hesitant to talk about it, or even put in on my resume, In my bio it says I took part in DPJ, which is true. But not airing has always been somewhat of a sore spot.
2) My problems with DPJ. I think the show is okay. I’m watching my artform being used in ways that I’m not all that comfortable with ie: McDonald’s commercials, and other aspects of “using” poetry to sell products. I’m just as guilty. So this whole argument is very duplicitous. I don’t like the commercialization of the artform, but at the same time, I take part in that commercialization, because I am a working artist with a family and when the offers come, at times I don’t have the luxury to say no. DPJ has without a doubt made spoken word more popular and that’s for the favor and determent of the art. I know it’s TV so I understand they have certain demographs they are trying to hit, but sometimes, I don’t get the poets they choose. At this point I must admit I am an elitist. I know what kind of poetry I like. Well thought out, complex pieces, that speak to a universal truth. I don’t like performance poems that cater to the lowest common denominator in the human existence. I don’t like poems with a lot of rhyme scheme. I don’t like pieces that should be rap instead of performance poetry. I don’t like pieces that are all performance and no writing. I see all of this on DPJ a lot, and it bothers me. On the other side, I’ve seen several great performances. Watched poets own the stage, the audience, and reached out and grabbed the Television viewer and made them apart of the poem.
3) I want this. I want this for the validation that I shouldn’t need. I know I’ve done things that most of my contemporaries, haven’t even thought of. I’m creating, moving out of the box. I’ve been on International TV, I’ve got three plays in production in any given year, and yet, until I air a two minute HBO spot, I will feel like there is something left undone. I’ve had counseling sessions with myself on it, and no matter what I still come back to the same thing. With that in mind, I sent off a package a couple weeks ago, and the result is the opportunity to come back to DPJ and finish what I started two years ago.
New Rules this time out. I’m not hiding the fact I taped. I don’t care. If I get cut again, then so be it, but I’m going to have a good time, and let people know what I’m doing. I’m not going to get crazy about it. If it airs cool, if not cool. Many poets who film DPJ for the first time, have a hard time understanding that this 15 minutes of fame will not change your life. It’s a great thing, and good for exposure, plus they pay you, but ultimately, your life will not change from airing on HBO. So it’s important to keep it in perspective. I will remember it TV which means it’s not real. My family is real. My faith is real. My words are real. But this venue is not. It’s a good thing, and I thank God for the opportunity, but it is not the only thing.

Bright Lights Big City

2005-02-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

So we rolled into NY on a cold Sunday morning and set up in our matchbox of a hotel room with dreams of having a successful NY run of Griot. As I sit in my hotel in Baltimore I realize that we did everything we set out to do. What good it will do us, as far as getting the show into other venues in NYC is anyone’s guess, but right now, I’m just happy to have put together a great show. The staff at the BPAC were incredible. They took care of everything in a professional manner, but that makes their treatment of us sound very steril. They were full of love and encouragement and did everything in their power to make the show a success.
One of the aspects of a show like “Griot” is the heavy educational aspect of the piece, we knew this was an asset when coming to the college so we set it up with several professors at the school, and I went to several classes and discussed the play. It’s so ironic to me, that I have never taken a college course, but I seem to find myself teaching college classes often. Most of the professors who assigned the play came to see it themselves, and they loved the work. We were able to have real discussions in the class on the play. It made me realize all the work I’ve done researching the historical information that made up the play. When I was in the middle of doing all the work, I didn’t really have the opportunity to reflect. I just read everything I could get my hands on, and continued to push the concept of the piece along.
Now that most of the work (as far as the writing is concerned) is done, I can look back and be somewhat proud that things have worked out the way they have. I’ve been blessed. I feel like the play is a ministry in a sense. I also think it’s a little vein to talk like that. I’m uncomfortable with the concept that God has personally said to me, “This is my will.” Weird coming from the son of a Baptist preacher, but I’m just not comfortable speaking in those terms. Still, if the play reaches people, and moves them into a realization, or grounds them in the past with an eye towards the future, I think God’s okay with that. I know I could not have written it without some divine intervention.
Several of my New York peoples came to the show, Bassey, Sabrina, Syreeta, Alexa, Katie, Paul Devlin, Evert Eden, Will Cantler. It meant a lot for me to look out and see there faces. New York is one of those places that forget you, if your not there every second. The fact that these and many more people came out, made me feel like I was loved.
This is just the beginning. We have so much farther to go with this piece I’m anxious to see what road it puts us on.

Honoring Ozzie

2005-02-05T13:56:00.001-08:00

February 4, 2005
By Deardra Shuler
http://www.afrocentricnews.com/html/ossie_davis.html

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death
what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil… (Hamlet)

The final curtain fell on one of the great legends of our time, Friday,
February 4th. Ossie Davis retired from life ironically while in the process of
filming a movie entitled “Retirement.” He succumbed to death at age 87, still
working at the craft he loved so well. Davis was a giant in the entertainment
business having devoted five decades as an actor, director, producer and writer.
There was no entertainment genre that he did not master. His talents were
featured in print, on stage, screen and radio. Many remember him from his role in
the 1978 television series "Roots: The Next Generation." He is also remembered
for his appearances in several Spike Lee films: “School Daze,” “Do The Right
Thing,” and “Jungle Fever.” His best known film was “A Raisin In The Sun.”
More recently, Davis appeared in “Dr. Dolittle” and “Get on the Bus.”

Born in Cogdell, Georgia, in 1917, Davis developed a love for theatre at an
early age. He pursued his interest at Howard University after winning a
National Youth Administration scholarship in 1935. In 1946, Davis made his Broadway
debut in Jeb. He later performed in the Broadway productions of “A Raisin in
the Sun,” “I’m Not Rappaport,” “Purlie Victorious,” a play Davis both starred
in and wrote. He also appeared in “Anna Lucasta” “Green Pastures,” “No Time
for Sergeants” and “The Zulu and the Zayda” to name a few of his Broadway
performances. As a result of his large volume of work on Broadway, Davis was
inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1994.

Married to his wife, Ruby Dee, for close to 56 years, the couple met in 1946
and married in 1948, thus beginning a lengthy acting partnership that lasted
until Ossie’s death. The two came to epitomize theatre royalty as its
distinguished couple. The pair first appeared together in the plays "Jeb," in 1946, and "Anna Lucasta," in 1946-47. Davis' first film, "No Way Out" in 1950, was
Dee's fifth. They also appeared together in "Roots: The Next Generation” in 1978;
"Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum" in1986; "The Stand" in 1994; "Do
the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever."

Ruby Dee once said she would marry Davis if he kept her working and work they
did. The two have produced an impressive cache of work between them, both
separately and as a couple. They also produced the book “With Ossie and Ruby: In
This Life Together,” which featured their dual autobiography. Although, I am
sure, the couples would say their greatest accomplishment are their three
children, Nora, Guy and Hasna as well as their many grandchildren.

Once asked how the dynamic team managed to work and live together in harmony.
Dee remarked: “Couples must remember that they are two separate individuals
who may see things quite differently. We have to respect those differences in
each other.”

Davis received Emmy nominations for Teacher, Teacher, King and Miss Evers'
Boys. He was highly respected by audiences and peers alike thus won numerous
kudos and honors including the Hall of Fame Award for Outstanding Artistic
Achievement; the Screen Actor's Guild Lifetime Achievement Award; the U.S. National
Medal for the Arts; NAACP Image Award and the New York Urban League Frederick
Douglass Award. Recently Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee were among the artists who
received the Kennedy Center Honors.

Davis was a leading activist in the civil rights era of the 1960s. He joined
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the crusade for jobs and freedom and helped to
raise money for the Freedom Riders. He eulogized both King and Malcolm X at
their funerals. Famous theatrical producer Woodie King (and friend to Ossie),
once credited Davis with opening doors for many artists who followed in Davis’
stead; performers, who received work as the direct result of Ossie Davis’
having looked out for his fellow thespians.

Davis was found dead in his hotel room in Miami Beach, Fla. Police spokesman,
Bobby Hernandez, said Davis' grandson called the police shortly before 7
a.m., after having become concerned that his grandfather did not respond to
efforts to access his room at the Shore Club Hotel.

Davis’s death leaves a huge hole in the artistic community and his presence
will be surely missed.

Alas, the curtain has come down and the theatre is dark. In the great play of
life, each plays out their season in their moment in time. We who continue
the play have much to thank Ossie Davis for. For in his parting, he left for us
a grand season and many treasured moments that will surpass all time.

All rights reserved.

-back to top-
..Theodore Myles Publishing
Copyright 1997 - 2004 Afrocentricnews

Notes from the Bottletree

2005-02-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

Last night I was invited to take part in a table-reading of Addae Moon's “Notes from the Bottletree”. About a year ago a good friend of mine, Ayodele, told me one of his friends had written this new piece that was premeiring at the Horizon Theatre in Atlanta, and that he loved it. That play was “Notes…” The author, Addae, and I had met via internet (we're on the same listserv) spoken on several occasions about different things, but we'd never really talked about his play, so last night was the first time I had the opportunity to read it. It was a beautiful piece of work. The play deals with the struggles of being an artist, familial history, and how some parts of your past you can't escape, it's mixed in with the genetic material in your blood. All of these issues come to surface in a play with language that has a heightened scene of poetics and at the same time is authentic in it's voice, steeped in dirty-south phonetics.

Ian Mairs a playwright that lives in Jacksonville put together the read, with an eye to do a staged reading. Ian is just what this community needs. I hoping he and I could forge an alliance to help bring theatre to Jacksonville, and he has been very open to it. Ian and I are as opposite in some ways, he went to school for playwriting, he teaches it, he's had several plays produced and published, and is very much connected in the local theatre scene. Where as I am somewhat an outsider. Most of the local theatre people have no idea who I am, which is cool with me. From the beginning I wanted my art to be about reach out to those who have not seen a lot of theatrical work. But that idea has matured into wanting everyone, theatre people and non traditional audiences to be drawn back to the theater. In that I think Ian and I have the same vision, so for him to ask me to read it was an honor. It's like the other side of the theater aisle is reaching out.

Initally I was scared to death to do the table read. Primarily because I am dyslexic. If you've been reading this blog, you probably already noticed. I hate reading in public. But Addae's work was so fluid, and the words felt like they were the same I would use in the given situation, after the first five pages, I was able to relax, and try to work. The other actors and I had great chemistry, and the director is someone I've known about but never had the chance to work with, and then there's Valerie the stage manager. Val's great and probably the only reason I got through MacBeth two years ago, it's a pleasure to work with her. So if you can, look up Addae Moon's “Notes from the Bottletree” this is a playwright to keep your eye on.

New York, New York

2005-02-01T14:32:00.000-08:00

It's 4 in the morning and Griot won't let me sleep. We'll be in NY in a couple of weeks and I still have some script stuff I need to work out. I'm not nervous about New York, but I want to put my best foot forward. I feel like we have the opportunity to have decent audiences if the weather agrees. If the show can move folks in NY, then it can move people anywhere.
The piece of the show that I have never had peace with is the music era of the 50's and 60's. In the show's first incarnation it was a little too pedestrian. We didn't move with the music the way the music moved people in that era, but I think we've solved the problem, just a little later then I would have liked. We are on the rehearse everyday schedule, and I hate it. I love the show, love working on it, but hate, rehearsing everyday. I just want to do it. Foolish but true.
The other aspect of trying to work a date like the NY gig is packages. I hate this part to, because you spend so much time putting together something you hope people will look at, but for the most part, people tend to throw packages on the slush pile. A lot of work goes into it, The DVD, the press clippings, letters blah blah blah. But that's a part of the game. I'm feeling really good about it all, I wish we were in NY now, doing it. The stage at the Baruch Performing Arts Center is beautiful. When I saw it for the first time last year, I felt like the stage was singing to me, begging me to touch it.
There were a few obstacles in getting BPAC, but the staff, guided us through those waters effortlessly. As an artist, I seem to be blessed in working with incredible people in the theatres I work in. The Theatre Project has been my home for the last three years, and many of the other venues I've been at have treated me well. I'm whining about packages and rehearsals, but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way.

Chapter One

2005-01-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

Against my better judgement, I've decided to post the begining of the first Chapter of my book. Please read it, drop me a line, and let me know what you think.

1

There are no cold winters in the South, only a Southerners longing for summers past. When you live in the sun most of the year she gets in your blood, becomes your kin. When she leaves you, even for those fleeting months, you feel it somewhere deep naggin’ atcha, whisperin’ in your ear beggin’ you to find her and bring her home. Jason Calhoun hadn’t seen her so long, he’d forgot what it felt like when she rubbed against your skin on a clear day. In New York City, it was easy to forget how it was when he was young, the way she looked in the morning peeping through the blinds, begging him to join her. He’d get up do his chores as fast as possible and run out to the woods behind his house where she waited with open arms. Honestly, he didn’t want to remember her. Long ago he’d decided to participate in a form of voluntary amnesia. The Southern Sun had been his father’s lover first and after the death of his mother, Jason had very little to do with anything that related to his father.
Northerners have very different relationship with the sun. They see her between the towers of Babel that make up their sprawling cities, watch her as she moves to her sister, the moon, but never quite celebrate her presence. Jason sometimes would catch her watching him when he was thousands of feet off the ground in a man-made finger stretching to touch God’s face. He could feel her eyes burrowing into his soul calling out with a familiar, if distant voice. Occasionally, when the air conditioning in the building in which he worked became too much, he’d look for her, near the tinted large windows that faced the east, just to get a taste of her warmth. She’d always be there waiting for him at the window, calling his name, but the loud monotone drone of the office drown out her voice. Without looking back he’d return to the fluorescent, unnatural light of his cubical.
Knowing all of this, it was still a surprise, when Jason felt his face getting sunburned in late February at his father’s funeral. The drive home took years longer then he expected, but somehow he always knew this is where he would end up, back in Florida, picking up behind his daddy. Ezra Calhoun’s funeral took place at noon at the Blood of the Redeemer Baptist Church. Jason arrived at the graveyard at nine a.m. to kneel near the tombstone of his mother, and whisper his personal history of the past four years. His words, tears, and salvia where absorbed by the granite marker like a sponge. If the grounds keeper had picked it up and rung it out after Jason left, the young man’s whole life would have fallen on the ground in between the sharp blades of St. Augustine grass, secrets lying naked for the world to see. But Hank Bottlemen had worked at the cemetery for more years then Jason had lived, and knew the trouble with learning other folks business. Gracefully, he turned away when he saw Jason spilling his heart, he only wished the boy would hurry so he could continue preparing the grave for the burial today.
The church was filled with sights, sounds, and smells that defined Jason’s childhood in North East Florida. He wanted to quietly disappear, and make his way into the woods behind the church. He knew pass the pine trees, sticker-bushes, and wild grass he would find the boy of his youth sitting near the edge of Black’s Creek. Like a water moccasin leaving his skin on the riverbank, he could scrape, edge, and peel his way out of the husk that chained him to responsibility, and magically revert back into that child. In his youth he’d never swam in Black’s Creek, the water was too murky. At night he’d dream of monsters awaking, and claw their way out of the depths of the water looking for little boys to devour. The thought of a fish-eyed killer walking the streets of Live Oak was enough to keep him out of the water during the day, and in the safety of his own home at night. At twenty-five years of age Jason had few regrets, baptizing himself in the waters of Black’s Creek was one of them, the four-year estrangement from his father was not.
Jason couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, when he looked down at his father in the casket. He knew the wool grey of the Confederate Uniform was itchy against the skin; it always seemed to find the sensitive areas of the body to rub up against. His father would have never worn a uniform like this in life. It was too nice, museum-like in it’s perfection. Where his left arm should have been, the uniform sleeve was folded back at his elbow-stump, and pinned by his armpit. Jason wondered in death if his father had received his long departed extremity when he reached his final destination. Ezra never spoke about losing a limb too much, maybe a joke or two about how his right arm was jealous of the attention his missing arm received, but never anything serious. Today his phantom limb would be the jealous one, the gold embroidery on his right sleeve belonged on the cuff of an English king instead of the tattered edges of a Confederate soldier’s sleeve. If Ezra was alive, he’d unstitch every gold thread off the jacket and wear it plain. There was no room for pageantry on the battlefield, uniforms weren’t perfect, you wore what you had handy, as there might not be an official uniform available. So it was for the troops during the Civil War, so it would be for Ezra Calhoun one hundred and forty years later.
In the future, the mental picture of his father, charter member of the Fraternal Order of the Sacred Sons of the South, lying in this casket decked out like a peacock, was a soothing base, when the heartburn of his father’s abandonment began to rise up from his stomach and find it’s way into his throat. Today though, just looking at Ezra made Jason hot. It was the heat born from the friction of his father’s dead skin and the inescapable humidity of the church. In a last effort of mercy, Jason wanted to lift his father from the casket, take off the clothing that symbolized the gulf between them, and carry his body into the St. John’s River. He could picture himself, walking with his naked, dead, father draped over his arms, until the water reached up to his ankles, then his waist, then slowly up to his outstretched arms, enveloping his father’s lifeless husk.
Desperately he wanted to free his father in that river, to simply let go, and pray the body would make it out to the ocean. But even in his daydream Jason knew there was something inescapable in their relationship. He looked down at his father lying in the casket for the last time and envisioned Ezra in his arms under the waters of the St. John. The tide, playing the age-old game of tug-o-war with the undercurrent beneath it, threatening to take them both. But he couldn’t let him go. Jason could see himself holding on, till the waves swallowed father and son, sacrificing himself with a prayer that somehow in heaven they’d work it all out. But in the right-now, there was no working it out for Ezra Calhoun, only goodbyes, tears, and pallbearers dressed in Confederate regalia.

The novel.

2004-12-03T05:34:00.000-08:00

So the second big project for 2005 is the novel. I figure this is my year to take on the big stuff that I’ve stayed away from. With the novel I plan on taking my time. I’ve got other projects on the burner, and the novel is in the back, but right now, it feels good to finally start getting this story out. Maybe I’ll put some of it up here. Who knows.

I've had the concept for this book for the last two years. But the thought of actually sitting down and trying to write it has been too big for me to even think of. But then, someone pissed me off. This novelist I met was aloof, when we were talking I said "Three novels! Impressive. I don't know if I could write one."
"Well, we all have our talents..." He said it in the most, I am-better-then-you tone. What?!? Please, I was just trying to be nice and break the ice. He read some of his work for the High School students at the event we were at, and I swear I caught several of them dozing off. Then I got up and gave a solid performance. No, this guy is just the fuel i need. internalizing it this way makes writing the book like a slam. And when I comes to the slam, I win, cause that's what I do.

At least that's how I felt before I started working on the first chapter. I thought, hey, I'll kick this books ass! But I'm half-way through the first chapter thinking, "What the hell was I thinking." This is my third novel attempt. The first one I wrote thirty-nine bad chapters. I started working on it in 1996. Good concepts, horrible execution. The second novel I stated work on was in 1999, again good concepts, and less horrible writing, but still bad. Since then I worked primarily on short stories when I came to prose writing. I've got a mini collection. All of which I like some more then others. I felt like i needed to really work the whole short form to understand the long form better. Not sure if I understand either one, but I feel good about where I'm at. So I'm working on the new novel and unlike anything else I've ever written it's coming slowly. I'm loving what's coming, but the pace of it is making me think it will take years to write this piece. Especially with all I have on the plate. But screw it, "We all have our talents." Well this will be one of mine.

Owning it.

2004-11-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

So we are back on Griot: He Who Speaks the Sweet Word, and man does it feel good. As a group the four of us are hitting on all cylinders. David is showing the vulnerability, I've been looking for. Larry, is breaking his own walls down, and Barb is directing with her hyper focused precision in an effort to make us perfect for when we head to NY. I'm excited. Very excited. I realized this week what my problem as an actor has been with Griot. Blast of truth here: I have never felt truly comfortable with Griot and the characters I've been playing. I think because on a whole, I play characters that aren't the center of the scene, the majority of the characters I play in the piece are mostly supporting. This was a little hard for my ego. I mean, I was given the commission for this piece, I did a large majority of the writing, the play is my concept, and damn it, I wanted to star in it. But that line of thought was stopping me from doing the real work. Ego has to go out the door for an artist to truly work. This time out, I realized if I go into the performance working with and for the other actors, I will stand out. And that's what I've been doing. Working what I got to do, to the point that I feel like now, I am serving the work. And that is what this whole thing is supposed to be about serving the play, and the play serves the audience.

On other fronts, most of the work with "Chalk" has slowed down. Mostly because I need someone on my team to help realize the piece in the business aspect. Barb is too busy with a million and one other project, and so am I. She and I work best together on the creative side. As for business I need a manager, or an agent someone that is about me, and my work, has the connections and to make things pop. But hasn’t that been my struggle for a long time? Either way I keep on keepin’ on because, that’s what I do.

Earlier someone wrote that I was whining too much in this blog. I disagree. I talk about my struggles, but, I’m not complaining. It’s life. Everyone deals with it. There is nothing special about my struggles. They are what they are. I thank God for them because they make me who I am. If I was like many of my friends who are artist, with no children and no cares, I may be doing the same thing they are doing, nothing. My children, my life, the obstacles all of it make me a stronger writer, and dedicated artist, struggling to find the space between it all. This gives me the determination that I will succeed. What success is? I’m not sure, but I will get there. Because that’s what I do at my best, I live up to my motto “I’ll find a way or make one.” At worse I whine a little in this blog, bare with me.

Growing Seeds

2004-11-16T05:43:00.000-08:00

Today I got the word that I had been chosen to recieve a grant from the State of Florida!!!!! The Grant is the Individual Artist Fellowship. I applied for the interdisciplinary Artist category. This is the first year that I have applied for grants, four in total. I haven't applied before, because i didn't really see the importance of it. I always thought the money would be nice, but it wasn't big enough incentive, as I figured most of the big money grants, I would not recieve. It's only been in the last year, (when money has been tight) and I began thinking that in order to break through to the "bigger leagues" I need to find something that translated in the acedemic world. Thus a Grant on the resume looks really good. So I started applying. I feel pretty confident in saying that the other Grants are long shots, but right now, I'm really happy about the one i just recieved.
Figuring out how to spend the money wisely is now the next chore. I've got so many ideas about what I want to do, but all of them eat the award of 5,000 grand pretty quickly.
In the meantime, GRIOT has begun it's production cycle again. I am sooo blessed to work with talented folks like David, Larry, and Barbara. We do some magical things together. I can see how all of us have grown since the last time we performed the piece. The two new part of the the play seem to be going well, but we haven't tried them with an audience yet. Barb and I have perfected our working relationship in reguards to GRIOT. Initially it was hard for both of us. For me as the head writer, I had a vision I wanted to keep intact, and at times would step on Bab's directing toes. On her part she at times, unintentionally limited my creativy by pushing us forward, when I wanted to create more with a piece. This time out, I'm being very aware of the postion she's in and she is giving me more freedom.
Currently, I'm in the process of sending out Griot packages to everyone and their momma trying to get some interest from different folks before we get to NY so we can get them out to see the play. It's our hope to use the piece asa vehicle to get a run in NY. Today, I'm going to start targeting poeple outside the box, and get them to come. By this, I mean people like Camille Cosby, (Bill's wife) this is the type of show she would love and as a producer of the "Having Our Say" I think it would be a great idea to have her come out. All of it is a long shot, but so was the Grant.
As far as CHALK is concerned, I'm somewhat lukewarm on it. Things aren't working out the way I had hoped they would. I have to sit down in the near future and get back on the planning. I think the major problem with the progress of the piece is me. With all the other projects I'm involved with, I am the engine that pushes the work forward. With Chalk, I was taking a back seat and letting others do some of the work. I did this primarily because I need to work on other things. But it is becoming evident, that I need to roll my sleeves up and jump back into the fray.
Still working on the screenplay. In the middle of writing, I had to move, so things have not been as steady as I'd like as far as the pace of writing, but on a whole the piece is still moving forward, and at this point, that's all I really need.

Long time gone

2004-10-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

So it's been almost a month since I've sat down to write this journal. If anyone out there has been reading and wondering where I've been, I'm sorry, but I've been consumed with writing other stuff. Namely a new screenplay, and reworking some of the Griot script.

Since the last time I wrote I've been working my bum off. I was in Annapolis for a week working with a production of Chalk at Broadneck High School. The kids and teacher of this school were absolutely brilliant. It's still difficult to teach students a "Poetical" because very few people have seen what a "Poetical" actually is, but on a whole I thought the kids did really well. I don't know if I'll be able to see the actual production, but I will be very interested to see how it came out. The teach working with the kids is one of the dedicated hard working teachers that I meet all over the country, but don't get enough credit. These children are blessed to have such an incredible individual as their teacher.

So the screenplay I've been working on something really different. I've never been crazy about writing screenplays, because it seems like the pie in the sky. With a play I can pretty much control when it hits the stage. With a movie, no chance. I'm writing a really simple story, that hopefully, one day, I will be in a position to film. It's right in line with what I said earlier about doing a movie in 2005.

Also on the film front I was asked to write screenplay for a film that was to be filmed here in Jacksonville. The concept was brought to me by creative types that I totally trust. So I worked on an idea to pitch to the money types and from there, we would see what was happening. We did and the money types loved it. They agreed to pay me, to write the screenplay. I decided I would not write a word until I saw some money. I'm glad I did. First it was you'll get the money next week, then it was the week after that, then it's we have to re-discuss this. Blah-blah-blah. Of course they never came with the money. They came back and said I should write it for free and when the movie is done we share in the profits. Yeah right. I'd end up writing for two months then the project would go nowhere, and I've got a script I can't use and no money. No thank you.

So that's about it not much cooking on this end but hopefully next week I'll have a lot me.

It could be worse

2004-09-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

So I’m in Chicago as a part of the Single File Theatre Festival. And I’m here to report it’s not much of a festival. I dig the people that put the festival together, but I must admit that the lack of audience is definitely a downer. The staff is great. The space is good. Chicago is one of my faviorite cities especially this time of the year. But coming up here from Jacksonville on my own dime to perform for 12 people one night, and 6 the next is a little rough. Thankfully, Holly Bass is also with me along with out director Barbara. Holly got into the festival because I prodded her to apply, I thought it would be cool for all of us to be there together. Thank God I did. It’s not half as bad when you have someone to commiserate with.

This is nothing new. I’ve done this several times in New York at the Nuyorican. I good venue that lives off of it’s reputation. And it’s deserved. The Nuyo is legendary. And whenever I’m in town, I always stop by. I love the place, but still it has a lot to be desired when it comes to theatre and promotion. They don’t have to promote the poetry, because it is a staple, but theatre is something altogether different. So several of the times I’ve been in NY, I’ve had microscopic audiences. It hurts some when you are pouring your heart out on the stage, and get nothing in return. But hey, that’s the way it is sometimes. It’s all apart of paying your dues, and Lord knows I’ve got a ton more to pay. So you suck it up, get on stage and give the 4 people in the audience the best show they ever saw.

The week that was

2004-09-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

So I wrote earlier that i was not going to write about my family in this blog. And for the most part I will not, but this week, family is all wrapped up in my work, and there is no way to write this blog honestly, without dealing with this week.
My father is a great man. A baptist minister with a huge congration. I love and respect him. But I will never be him. For a long time I think I wanted to live up to that. Not necessarily becoming him, but living up to his standard. Maybe it's the influence of my mother who has set such high standards for me, and I've always felt inclined to reach for them. Lately though, I've been realizing that their standard may not fit mine. Not that I am shooting lower, but at a completely different target. They never wanted me to follow this path I'm on. I don't have the language to tell them that i didn't choose the path, it choose me. I just do what i need to do to live. This is very much a survival thing to me writing and performing is like breathing I can't just stop. But they don't understand that. They think it takes away from my time with my immediate family, but it doesn't no more then any other father working a 9 to 5.
So this week in the local weekly newspaper, Folio Weekly, I was the cover story. I've know the write of the piece for awhile and have a good level of comfort with him, and I think he did a good job. But i haven't been able to enjoy the story or seeing my face all over town, primarily because of my parent's reaction.
My mother called it smut. Based on two things. One in the article, I use some foul language. Shit, ass, and fuck. (in that order) all in context and all make sense, I wish i hadn't for her sake, but on a whole, it is what it is. Secondly, I spoke about my personal life. Things that has happend to me on my journey. I am not ashamed by any of it. It is my life, I am not perfect. Things have happened, what is more important is how i handled them. Personally, I proud of my desicions, even the bad ones that have lead me to this point. I'm not where I want to be, but I've come so far from where I was.

Who loves you baby?

2004-08-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

Is anyone out there? Sometimes I want to ask myself, what the hell am I doing? I have to remind myself to follow my own path, but sometimes, this “own path shit” gets lonely. I mean lonely as I have no professional peers, besides my right hand wonder-twinn Bassey Ikpi. She is one of the few people I started out with and am still in constant contact with. I know how this happened. I started out with a lot of poets, slamming, and touring. But now, I’m not really in that loop anymore. Whenever I reach out to those people they make it very clear that the past does not define the present. It’s too bad, cause it would be good to have a base of folks I could talk to about the things I was trying to do. The place I’m at now, is a mixture of performance poetry and hip-hop theatre. Because I didn’t start off with the Hip-Hop Theatre cats, I don’t know them well and there seems to be a certain level of distrust. We are all decidedly protective of our own little worlds. Meanwhile I’m knocking on both doors trying to make it happen. All of this happened when I started reading people I know

Enough of the whining.

I do have a strong group around me. My peeps, Larry Knight, David Pugh… incredible poets/writers. I don’t think either one of them realize how talented they are. Quite honestly, because they don’t realize how good they are, I don’t feel like they are living up to their potential. But they will. It just takes a bit for the realization to hit home. I can see Larry beginning to come into his own in performance. Before he started working with my director Barbara, he was good. Good words, great voice. Now he has all of that including soul. He’s broken out of the confines his great voice put him in, and found the soul of his work. Every time we perform together, I am somewhat amazed at his growth. I don’t think he even notices, he just does it. David was much more polished when he started working with Barbs but I think that is part of David’s problem. He is an incredible performer, but he needs to dig deeper. I know D, carries a lot of pain with him. It’s written all over his face, and I think it stops him from digging deep, and being honest on stage. So now he gives great performances, but there is no vulnerability. It’s like watching Superman beat up bank robbers. To the average human, men with guns are a big deal, but to Supes? Nada. Now, let Lex pull out some Kryptonite, and you have good drama. David is flawless, but sometimes on stage, I’m looking to see the flawed human we all are. That being said, there aren’t many people in the world that can rock like David. I have seen women wiggling in there seats listening to him. The three of us on stage is gunpowder, and Barbara is the match.

What to say about Babszilla? She drives me crazy, but has been such a good friend, she drives me to work as hard as I do and sometimes there is little money for both of us at the end of the rainbow. She took me from a poet that speed through all his poems into what I am today, and I still have a ways to go. I’m still learning consistency. I think I have it, but I need a higher level of consistency. Everything I do on stage comes from her proding and pushing. She told me when we first started working together, that I had the package, but just needed to learn how to use it. In the last four years she has patiently held me by the hand as I jumped head first into my art. I’ve picked up other professional friends like Holly Bass who has become a sister to me, and a few others. My boy Ian who does all my graphics and web stuff at no cost, has supported me from day one. On the days when I want to quit he always gives me this look of, “What the hell are you thinking” I couldn’t do half the shit I do without him pushing me along. And then there is Stacie. All the words I could write on this page could not sum up how she has supported me, but per her request, I will refrain from writing about her on this blog. All in all, these people keep me afloat.

Even still, on days like today, I feel like: Where am I going? I mean in my heart I know this path that has being created in front of me is where I need to go, it’s the manifest destiny that I know is there, but sometimes can’t see the end result. The thing is, I’ve been walking down this road for a long time but honestly don’t really know where it’s heading. I keep myself going, because I’m not doing this for the destination, as much as I am doing it for the work. Primarily, I’m scared to think of the end. Because if I do, it may distract me from the work, but maybe the work is the end. Maybe, I don’t need the lofty goals, and just the work. The uncertainty of one foot in front of the other is very similar to how I wrote poems. With poems I never know where they are going to go, but I’ve learned the key with poetry, for me, is to not worry about where the poem is going, but trust that it is going.

Eunice

2004-08-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

Eunice
By: A. L. Letson Jr.

“Eunice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Girl, get down here and wash these dishes.
You know what you suppose to do!!!”

You got to think
That somewhere along the line
Her parents had something to do with it.

North Cakalaky whuppins’
from the hand that loved her the most.

It’s summer,
1943 in Tryon North Carolina
And the sun bakes your skin,
Without mercy or regard.
White folks getting red,
like the blood under their skin
is about to boil.
Black folks getting blacka
Like midnight their father,
Has stretched his fingers
around their collective soul
In an effort to taken them home.

Mississippi Goddamn!
But right now we in North Carolina

As Eunice Kathleen Waymon
Sits on the mahogany bench
Ten year old fingers
Preparing to tickle the ebony and ivory
It’s her first piano recital at the Robert E. Lee Library
in Downtown Tryon
and everybody who’s anybody, in this small southern hamlet
has come to see the little colored girl,
that can play so well.

Her parents on the front row,
her four brothers, and three sisters,
floating somewhere in the periphery.

She arches her back
relaxes her fingers and begins
to play.

She doesn’t sing,
She just closes her eyes.
and plays.

There is music in her fingertips,
that comes forward when pressed against
the temporary friction of Piano keys.
She hears the silence between
the notes,
In the wide open spaces
where only her,
and the music reside.

But something is happening outside
She tries to ignore it
and just play.
But something is happening outside
She tries to ignore it
and just play.
Just play,
Just play
Like her teacher taught her
But, it’s too loud and she has to look.
Her fingers continue to move
On autopilot she glances
at the audience
As the librarian, is escorting her parents
from the front row to the back
So a white couple can have their seat.

Mississippi Goddamn.

But we’re in Tryon right now.

And she’s looking at the white keys
beneath her powerless ten year old fingers,
that are still playing
the water in her eyes is too heavy,
and it just wants to fall.
And she wants to stop.
There are some burdens ten year olds
should not be forced to carry,
but she can’t let it drop.

She finishes the song,
To thunderous applause,
But she doesn’t want to play no more.
It aint fun no more.
She wanna go home.

Until over the heads of the smiling,
homogenized, crowd she sees her daddy’s face,
as he mouths the words,
“You know what you suppose to do”

And she closes her eyes
and plays.

But this time her fingers hit the keys harder
Play a little faster.
That wide open space has got fire in it now
Higher than it now
And it just don’t wanna stop.
she can’t let it drop.
So she plays and plays and plays
Until the pain goes away.
Missippipp Goddamn!

But it never goes away for long.

Twenty years later
After she’s renamed herself
From a boyfriend’s pet name,
Nina.
And a French actress.
Simone.
So she can sing in piano bars
to pay for her education
without her momma knowing.

Twenty years from
that piano recital,
she’s a star now.
But the pain don’t stop

It’s born in the faces
Of four dead black girls
Charred in the remains of an Alabama church

Carried on the wings of Negro Spirituals,
And in the righteousness of civil disobedience
It’s given a rhythm by the marching protestors
Who’s eyes were watching God as they put
One foot in front of the other,

The pain is hidden,
Under the weight fire hoses,
Attacking dogs
And swinging nooses

But on June 12th 1963
As the children of Medger Evers
Watch their daddy bleed to death
On the front steps
From a gun shot in the back
The pain becomes to much to bare…
Mississippi Goddamn

And she wants to cry
But she hears her daddy’s voice.
“you know what you suppose to do…”

Ms. Nina Simone
walks out from back stage
Sits on a mahogany bench
Fingers preparing to caress the ebony and ivory
It’s 1964 Carnegie Hal
New York, New York.
And even here black girls should know their place
They want her to laugh
Sing the blues, Gershwin maybe.
And she does
Until that pain comes back.
Half way through the set
She finishes a song, arches her back
Nods to the band
And plays….

Mississippi Goddamn

Copywright 2004 Al Letson

You oughta be in pictures.

2004-08-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

So the big goal for 2005 is a movie. It's aboslutely crazy, I know. I have four major projects I have to work on. Plus two grants that I applied for that will basically have me working a fulltime job doing theatre stuff in the new year, if I get them which is highly suspect. But even if I don't get the grants my plate is full. But the whisper has been instistant. The whisper has been saying, "above all create, challenge yourself." I can't be like a million other actors who go to LA or NY begging someone to put them in a film. That's too pedestrian for me. I need to feel like it's in my hands. Maybe it isn't but still, i need to be in action. But above all the ambition, a story has stuck it head out and it is demanding to be told. So I call my film guy and tell him...."Dan, I making a movie this year. I want you to be down, but I'm making the movie if you are or not." I think that was an assholey approach, but when I'm caught up in something I don't have time for pretty speach. Dan knows this. So instead of being bitchy, he says, "I'm down for whatever you are..." That's the first piece. The other piece is Ed. Ed Keyes saved my life once, no BS, I mean he saved my life. He and I have been talking about making a movie together forever, I told him and he of course is down. So I'm doing it. I have a microscopic budget, but so what. I have done more with less and will continue to do so. Watch me.

Tipping Point

2004-08-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Erie Pennsylvania is beautiful this time of the year. I’ve never been here before, but I love it. Of course I’ve probably seen only 1/4 of the city, but that part of seen is so green and peaceful.

I’m in Erie, with my director Barb, to work with the Ophelia Project on ways to create a national push for my play Chalk. Very exciting. The people in the Ophelia Project are genuinely good people. I’ve never done much work with a non-profit before, except watching an ex girl friend work endlessly at her under-funded under appreciated job in the field of environmental health. I never really thought about using my work to connect with a “cause” but hey, if the shoe fits… So I guess maybe a little explanation is needed when discussing the scenario. The Ophelia Project is a national nonprofit that works to end "Relational Aggression". "RA" has been called GIRL AGGRESSION, because it the way girls usually express aggressive tendacities. It's not the out and out fighting, but ignoring someone, spreading rumors, "cattiness" this type of behavior can damage girls for the rest of their lives. Chalk is a play I wrote about girl aggression with this play I created a genre I call a POETICAL.

po·et·i·cal n.
1. a movie or play that uses performance, or “slam” poetry, in it as important elements in developing the story and portraying the emotions of the characters

To be honest, I didn’t actually create a new genre, maybe I named it, or re-energized it, because I think Shakespeare and Greek Theatre were both doing this type of work. I think I just took iambic pentameter and put a beatbox to it. So this is a great way to speak to a new generation of theatre folks. All of this makes Chalk the perfect vehicle for the Ophelia Project. So this weekend I spent a lot of time listening, learning and trying to figure out how to make it all happen. While I’m listening to all the conversation, it hits me that these people not just the Ophelia Project, but people like them, do the real work. The work no one wants to talk about, the heavy lifting that all of us benefit from but have no time or desire to do ourselves.

The one common thing I hear from educators across the country, is how they are tired of teaching children for a test. I think it’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard of. How in the hell can you judge the quality of an education by a standardized test? It’s impossible. What you create is drones, trained to pass a test, not students that are taught to think. But of course politicians have to find someway to validate their existence. So instead of doing the real work necessary to help the youth, they give a test. And of course in disadvantaged areas, the children test poorly. Hmmm wonder why? Could it be that the social-economical culture is created to help them fail? That there are bigger issues then whether they can pass a test. And maybe if we were willing to put tax dollars into our schools instead of subsidiesing tobacco farmers to not grow tobacco, or giving money to NFL teams to build bigger stadiums, just maybe we could create a school system that works.

I’m getting off subject. Chalk has the ability to push my career forward. I’m excited, but not too excited. I’ve learned that all the big plans mean nothing if you don’t work for them. The biggest problem with the “O” project is that they have never done this sort of thing before. And quiet honestly neither have I so, we are both feeling our way through the dark.

I wonder how things work for regular playwrights. The process seems to slow to me. Writing something, and sitting it on the shelf until someone decides to read it. Or the process of trying to get an agent to read your work, and then push you forward. Slow. And it also takes control out of your hands. I can’t do that. I’m sure at some point I will have to, but right now, I just got to keep pushing forward, and work the connections.

Things Fall apart...

2004-08-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

This week is the National Poetry Slam in St. Louis MO. I love the slam, and everytime August comes along, I miss it more. This year though is a little strange. My man from DC, Patrick Washington gave me a call to fill me in on the haps. Patrick, AKA Black Picasso, is an emcee, an incredible rapper, and a very impressive poet. I think these are too separate artforms. They are related but separate. Pic is a good emcee because he's got skills, he's a good poet cause he got the skills. I would be a terrible emcee because i don't have rappin' skills. Most people fall in my category just cause you can rock the mic at a poetry event doesn't mean you can rock with the emcee's. And the same goes for Rappers (they seem to think they can be poets more then the other way around.)

So, Pat's telling me how bad things are in St. Louis. I've never been to the city to perform or anything of the sorts, but from what he's saying the audience is just not there for a Nationals. I've had my beef with each of the Nationals I've been to, but all of them have had incredible crowds. This one seems to be pretty skeletal. All of this brings up a couple thoughts.

1) I miss the hell out the people I started slamming with. People like Phil West, Mike Henry, Regie Gibson, DJ Renegade, Taylor Mali, Ben Porter Lewis. Great people, incredible poets, and good times. I miss them like a mutherphuka! So I am going to make it my mission to reconnect with as many of them as possible. They have all given me so much in my life as a performer. I'm sure by now most of them, have moved on and don't really remember me, but, what the hell.

2) WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE SLAM? I looked on the website, (which by far is the whackest website for Nationals), and read the list of poets competeting. And it looks like a list of has-been-rappers! All these whack ass names! WHY DOES A POET NEED A STAGE NAME? Why are we "spiting" poems? What the hell are they thinking? Then I remember what they are thinking, because I thought the same thing when I entered the slam.

I was coming from Jacksonville a city that had no team, hell there were no teams in Florida at the time. Back then I was a flight attendant for American Airlines and I could fly anywhere for free. This gave me the ability to go to slams at the drop of a dime. When I first heard about the slam it was in 96' when Mouth Almight released the CD from the 94' slam in San Fran. I loved that CD and still own it today. The CD had all these poets with synonyms,flashy names like the Invisible Man,and others. At the time I was looking for the flash so I listened these people non stop. I never NEVER listened to the people with regular names, I mean how good could you be if your name was just Patricia Smith? Then one day I was washing the dishes and the cd just played. The poem was "Undertaker". It was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. And it was by this lady name Patricia Smith. I will never forget how stupid I was. I felt like the biblical Paul who'd been blind, until the scales fell from his eyes. Just like that I got it. It's not about Flashy names, or assumed idenities, but the work. the words. the heart and soul. This is one the one thing I thought poetry had on hip-hoppers. We speak the truth, or at least we should. Michael Harper said "the job of the poet is to tell the truth" and that truth, the personal truth is what should drive us.

So now the next frame of thought is, how did so many poets collectively not learn that lesson? The answer? Poets like me.

Poets like me who love the slam, but eventually left for whatever reason. Because if Patricia had left before I got in, I never would have known. If Regie Gibson had moved on, how would I have learned? They passed that scaredness of the slam to me, and I have left it on the counter. I can not be mad at who ever picked it up. I should have seen it coming before I left. New poets coming into the slam who cared nothing about the tradition, couldn't tell you who Marc Smith was, didn't care about the shoulders upon which they stood. It upset me, but ultimately, what could I do? So I left, following other paths.

I look at the Slam now, like an old girl friend, one that you have a lot of love for, but everytime you see her, she looks worse that she did the time before. I want to hold her, help her, talk to her about our previous lives. But her eyes are hollow now, and when she looks at me there is no recognition in her face.

Juggle

2004-08-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

This has been a busy week, and it doesn't stop. In the next couple weeks, I have to get my stuff together so I can make this mini-tour happen. I need to make the dollars! Barbara and I have been working non-stop on the Griot dates. Our game plan is to make school dates at Theatre Jax. Right now Nov. 22nd and 23rd. Bus kids in and have a good show. Hopefully, we'll make good money for those two dates. Then we're trying to work it out with the Ritz. I'd like to do the nighttime performances, we won't make a lot of money there, but honestly, I could careless. I'd just like to see the play on that stage.

Sept. is already starting to book up solidly. I'll be in the B-more area working for a bit, and also taking part of the Single File Solo performance festival in Chicago. That will be interesting. There is so much going on I have to figure out a way to maximize all of it. When I look at how many projects I have working, it's scary that I can easily loose sight of the days, and allow dates to sneak up on me.

Money seems like it's going to even out in the next month or so. That will be a relief as I'm sure everyone in the house is sick of eating P&J sandwiches for dinner. Today I took $100 of my rent money and fulled the refigerator. I'll be a little late on the rent because of it, but at this point I don't care. We have to eat.

On the creative front. I have a new idea for a screenplay. I actually started off writing scripts as screenplays before I figured out that the stage was where I wanted to work for. But recently, as more of an exercise then anything else, I made Essential Personnel into a screenplay. I love the way I don't have to adhere to the limitations of the stage, it's wide open and there are so many ways you can play with it. The cost of that, is the fact that most of the screenplays that are written will never get produced. This is a problem for me. I'm use to writing a play, and putting it up, and honing it. Not with film, too much is needed from too many people to think that creating film will happen as easy as a play.

Living in Florida has a way of making me feel disconnected from the rest of the artistic world. Especially the work I do. There isn't a foundation for it anywhere. If I was a tradition playwright, finding a group to commiserate with would be easy. I'm not slamming anymore, so talking to slam poets and trying to build with them would be silly because they aren't so much interested in building as they are winning the next slam. On one side of the equation, I have the best reel of any poet in the nation, three plays being produced this year, and a lot of drive, but ultimately because I'm here in no man's land, no one really knows. Therefore I get passed over for a lot of stuff that could help me. On the flip side if I was in NY I'm sure I wouldn't have as many products as I do. I know because most of my friends in NY are equally as talented, and driven. The difference, they have to worry about living where for me, I can live like a pleblian, and still do my work, and not kill myself. Still it's frustrating.

A Begining

2004-07-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

I want to write this blog so I can look back on this crazy time in my life, and in the future understand it. Even looking at this first line makes me think that there is always more under surface than appears. When has my life not been crazy? That’s not a bad thing. I wouldn’t trade the choices and forks in the road I’ve chosen for something else. It is what it is, and here is where I stand, some regrets, but mostly intact.

At this point in my life I am a professional artist. It's hard to categorize what I do. Primarily, I am a spoke word artist, that's where I got my start like so many others, reading poems in a coffee shop. I've always been more ambitious than that so I started looking for any place that had a mic outside of Jacksonville. Luckly for me I stumbled into the slam scene and made a name for myself. I'm proud of my accomplishments in the field. Since that time I've stopped slamming, although, I day dream about returning. There is something intoxicating about performing, and the competition of the poetry slam that calls out to me. Since then I have tried to take the artform into different areas. The first has been my collaboration with a filmmaker name Dan. We have filmed two of my poems and turned them into movie shorts. This collabo, really got me thinking about how to expand the work. After the first movie was completed, I started working on a one man show, Essential Personnel, that has since traveled to many different theatres and recieved great reviews all over. One of the Theatres that brought the show in The Theatre Project, commissioned me to write a new piece for them. I also was commissioned by the Baltimore School of the Arts to write a play for their senior ensemble.

I think one day I'll look back at these commissions as the catalyst to launching my career. The work that was created has a buzz that I think will help propel me into bigger things. The first commission was "Griot: He Who Speaks the Sweet Word" Griot is a collaboration with two other poet/playwrights, Larry and David. They are great guys at the begining of their careers. Each brought something else to the project. For the most part I wrote the play. Larry and David gave great creative input along with a good friend Holly and my long time director Barbara. My music man, the incredible Zane 3 created a beautiful sound track that moves the play forward. "Griot" Deals with the tradition of storytelling in it's many incarnations from poetry to songs, to drama. The play has gone over like gangbusters.

The second commission is entitle "Chalk". "Chalk" is what I call a Poetical. A Poetical works just like a musical, but instead of the characters breaking out into song, the characters perform slam poetry. The BSA commision went really well. The new genre I'd created worked. (Ok so really I didn't create it, maybe I just named it, but reguardless, it worked) Since then, the Ophelia Project and picked it up and will be using it, as a teaching tool. We are talking about creating a "Chalk Day where schools all across the country will perform the play on the same day, and we use this to talk about the central issue in the play Relational Aggression. The play in it's roughest form is about girl aggression and how girls can be nasty with each other, and how it effects their future.

So all three plays are working for me right now, and I am always looking to work the poetry circuit. But I look back on it all, and honestly, I don't have much to show for it right now. For the last two years, I've been living gig to gig, which is worse then paycheck to paycheck, because gigs can be months apart. My family, and I will not talk about the specifics of my family on this blog, but I do have a family and several children. My family suffers the most.

Sometimes I want to stop writing and performing altogether and just work a regular job somewhere, but i've tried, and I can't cut the mustard anymore. I feel like I'm dieing working for someone else. Meanwhile, I'm not making enough money on my own to support my family and that weights heavily on me. So I guess this is what this blog is all about. Hopefully I'll obtain success, whatever that is, in the future and be able to look back at the road I took according to this Blog. I plan to chronical the ups and downs of being an artist struggling to juggle the family life, and at the same time maintain a certain amount of dignity. So fasten your seatbelt, get comfortable, and feel free to write me and tell me to stop whining when needed.