Rooting For You

We’re winning.

I am part of a teeming artist community. Two of my friends are working to become comedians. One is actually booking gigs and traveling to deliver the jokes. Another friend is a DJ, model, and yoga instructor. Now she’s got so much business she was able to quit her day job and be her own boss. Another artist succeeded at moving to Ghana and opening a studio. Sooo, I’m just so excited for them. A friend got married yesterday and I’ve been crying happy tears as she got closer to her nuptials.

Here’s the thing. People are weird when you are supportive of their success. One of my friends is so weirded out, I’ve stopped sending encouraging messages or congratulations. Now I just “Love and heart” all her posts regarding her accomplishments.

We say we want a different world, a better world, but you gotta be brand new too. Umkay. This new world we dreamed up together is awkward af. I mean, I don’t listen to one album. Depending on the day and my mood I need all kinds of music. Yes, there are Cardi B and Nicky Minaj camps. Still, I can appreciate them both without buying into the “us versus them.” I am grateful so many artists are producing new work. We need inspiration and more sass for our wounds. I don’t see artists as competition but as allies or comrades.

Being an artist is challenging enough without having to compete with each other. More importantly, I don’t believe in competition. We are all different, how can I beat someone at being themselves? It’s impossible. 

Let’s be clear, I will compete for grants and artist funding. Even then, I know it’s about what moves those set of judges. It doesn’t always mean that one artist’s work was better than everything submitted. When I walk into a museum, there are things that move me on a spiritual level and others that don’t even pique my interest. Still, they all must exist, so we all have an opportunity to feel something.

Photos don’t do it justice, you have to be in the room with Jackson Pollock’s work. There is energy around each of his pieces. 

I remember the first time I saw Kehinde Wiley’s exhibition. I was anchored seeing those large paintings of everyday people, a couple I knew in the community. It made the walls of the museum less foreign. Black men in bright colors, surrounded by flowers. It made a museum, with a permanent statue of Confederate General Bedford Forrest, feel less willfully ignorant. I’d never seen any art that large depicting Black people. Even though I love museums, I often feel invisible. 

Rich dark browns, framing curious and content eyes. It was more than magic.

So, I’ve been loving all the different projects coming out. I even appreciate art I don’t like or understand. It takes nerve and commitment to create. You have to trust your voice, vision and skill to convey the message you’re responsible for delivering. You have to surrender to the moment. Don’t get me started on the painters, dancers and musicians who train for years, always looking for opportunities to sharpen their skills.

I’m sharpening my pen here, blogging. I’m practicing communicating with an unknown audience. I’m using good grammar, kinda, some Black folk language and correct spelling. Text messaging and autocorrect is not going to undermine my skills. I’m also teaching myself to be understood by a wide variety of readers. Feel free to drop me a message and let me know how I’m doing. I love feedback.

Currently, I am working on how I phrase things. I’m trying to say the most in the least amount of words. My novel could have been better, if I used fewer words.

I’m a lifetime learner. I’m curious, artistically adventurist and I’ve got a ton of interests I’m finally allowing myself to embrace and explore. Most artists have a lot of passions and curiosities. I think of Gordon Parks every time I give myself permission to go wherever my heart is called.

Writing is my most consistent expression. So I regularly do writing exercises. I explore and attempt different forms of poetry. I love the Kwansaba, created in East St. Louis, Illinois. I go to writing groups and let other poets and writers critique my work. One group of Black elders broke me down. LOL! Like, I stopped writing for a while… well I never stopped writing, I stopped writing publicly. I meditated on their criticisms. They were right, I could write better.

On top of that, I read ferociously. Sometimes I can’t believe how much I’ve read. One of my literature apps, something like an online library, said I reached my checkout limit a week before September ended. How? 

I’m gearing up for NANO, which means preparing to write my next novel. I’m excited and anxious. I want to make sure my next novel reflects all I’ve learned.

I shared all this to say, artists go through so much to show up and create. We work, have families and juggle all the life responsibilities like other people… Except when others are resting, we surrender to this deep passion to reflect our world or the world we’d like to see. We fight through our own self-destruction, fear and self-doubt to create. So when I consider all of this, I’m just so grateful to know people who keep moving, creating and accomplishing their dreams.

Whenever an artist I know wins a grant, gets a position to work in their chosen discipline, or makes enough to dedicate themselves completely to their art I’m beside myself with joy. I’m beside myself with hope. I recently realized that actors are artists. The shows we watch were created by writers. I know that sounds dumb, but I never identified with an artist being celebrated. Most of the artists I knew were struggling. Not just financially, but mentally and physically trying to find the time to work in their passion. 

Families are more understanding if you can give them a lavish lifestyle, but when you work a regular blue-collar gig and want to spend four hours in the studio writing a poem. It’s seen as selfish. It’s like you’re in a dream you refuse to accept can’t happen. Most of the artists I know were dealing with low self-worth because the people around them felt their art was a waste.

Capitalism tells us we need certain things. Life tells us we need certain things. Of these, a house, health insurance, savings, reliable transportation and clothes that don’t make people follow you to see if you are stealing are not too much to ask. Feeling like the only thing you love  is a waste makes you feel like a waste. 

For years, most of the artists I knew were financially unstable. Which made them mentally unstable. A few killed themselves. Some physically, others metaphorically. They checked out, got on the hamster wheel to prove they deserved love and weren’t selfish. Others started doing drugs and are functioning addicts with some appearance of the American Dream. Then there are those missing, whose families are just relieved they are no longer financial burdens. One was killed. Another is living on the streets or living in some toxic abusive mess avoiding the arts. So, I bought into the struggling artist narrative. While dancing to Beyoncé.

Until a few years ago. One artist in the community was teaching how to live as an artist. This artist makes quilts. His quilts do tours on their own. He travels to different colleges to discuss his work. I love him for freeing me from my own mental limitations. He’s this huge burst of light and darkness. On his social media, he does yoga and explains how he moves through his darkness. For the first time, someone was openly discussing the challenges of being a sensitive human and a successful artist.

I’m not talking about the fragility we accuse each other of being. I’m talking about someone who actively listens to a person suffering, without becoming apathetic. Someone able to decipher and extract the full picture. Someone who is able to see themselves as a heroe, victim, and villain without judgment. Someone who vibrates from a place of deep love.

I felt Rwanda, in vivid nightmares as a kid.

I dreamed of being found and cornered by people who looked like me. It was the first time I questioned being an African in the diaspora. If my neighbors were coming to kill me, skin doesn’t make us kin or even connected.

Dreaming. Walking around daydreaming. Sometimes, I’d hear people being killed and I’d wake up hysterical. I imagined fields of large sunflowers, that used to be guards welcoming the sun. All of a sudden, they stood silent. While brown people with machetes snaked through their cultivated rows, converging in clearings where beautiful homes stood dark, pretending to be abandoned, afraid of visitors.

Sometimes, I’d be one of many hiding in the attic, cellar or barn. We’d be hushing each other, listening wildly for any unfamiliar sounds. For some reason, even though it is many of us, we never think to fight back. Only to hide and be quiet. Babies can’t be hushed. In fact, the more afraid mamas are the more anxious their babies are to be soothed.

We’d refused refuge to women with small children. Our own women. Our own nieces and nephews. Maybe that was better than being suffocated, when anxiety made us more animal than human. Maybe that’s why we didn’t survive.

My eyes are fixed on the form of a grieving mother in the darkness. I knew her baby’s body and blanket was soaked with her tears. Desperate, still I prayed she hadn’t lost her will to live. I considered killing her too, so she would not give us all away in the agony of her guilt.

Other times, I’d see panic-drawn-out eyes darting around aimlessly for an escape. 

Once, I was sitting near a window, soothing maybe my own child, wrapped in a colorful blanket. For a moment, I believed, and I was relieved. Until a loud pounding downstairs rocked the whole sanctuary. Glass windows broke, muffled voices thundered inside and echoed outside. Gunfire exploded on both sides. Something falls heavy. Trampling stomps break into frantic shuffling serenaded by curses, prayers, pleas and the howls of defiant deaths.

From a corner, I felt the coolness of a large window not made to open. It framed the dark sky. Ravaged by impossibility, peace consumed me as soldiers hoofed up the steps like elephants, cramming in the narrow hallway.

They were demanded people open their doors and face their fate. Then, the ax would start chopping at the thick wood doors. Interrupted by boots kicking on stubborn doors clinging to their frames. Then desperate screaming and begging, extinguished by the sound of chopping.

I was grateful I didn’t lock my door. The savagery of how they broke in each room was as bad as the bodies scrambling for a way out of the ax’s path. For some reason, the hacking of the ax and the striking of their boot was more disturbing than the coming death.

Finally, a man in fatigues swings my door open. He’s so surprised it’s open, for a moment it felt like he remembered his manners and might offer a greeting. He steps in, holding the hook of his stained machete like an invitation, more than a threat. I put my child down and I stand to die. Knowing he won’t take mercy on them, some part of me still hopes he will spare them.

Then, I became both predator and prey. Then I was just playing a role. In some way, we’re both victims. We surrender to each other. Neither of us ever leave that room. There, every part of us dies.

These are the dreams I can only share with another artist. When artists meet up, we move from the sacred to the sacrilegious. We compare conspiracy theories and teach each other facts. I believe we experience the world on more levels. If we completely surrender to spirit we are but vessels for reflection and truth… molded and cut out by our biases. The most earnest artists are serial killers, seeking opportunities to butcher and sacrifice the versions of themselves crowding the spirit’s path to speak freely.

Knowing this, I see other artists as disciples. Our rituals are unorthodox and individual. I love gospel music. Still, for generations Jesus never came for my ancestors. I’ve stopped waiting.

I love the community of church, so I’m considering committing to one so I can join their choir. I’ve met many artists practicing religions for routine, to affirm and build social connections while fulfilling opportunities to help and serve people. As a result, some artists are my chosen family. I consider Nina Simone and James Baldwin my ancestors, though there are no blood ties. They did, so we could.

I listen to Carmen McCrae, Nina Simone and Josephine Baker like my favorite aunties. I laugh at the idea of Nina Simone shooting at a record executive, years before Prince took on the music industry. I mourn their spirits walking through so many fires. I celebrate and smile listening to big bands led by Count Basie or Duke Ellington. I get lost in Coltrane and Davis. I find myself with Alice Coltrane’s harping. I reexamine things after listening to Dick Gregory’s sets. I also realize comedians are teachers and some of the saddest people, and yet they make us laugh. 

Sometimes I mourn Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain. Wondering what it means to reach all your dreams and still feel hopeless? 

I love artists. I love people.

I celebrate everyone challenging themselves to be better. My spirit is full when they are rewarded for their hard work.

I am such a huge supporter of this St. Louis quilter, I enthusiastically suggested him to a body of Black poets curating art from local artists. I explained how his work is rooted in African-American tradition. More than one of the elders insinuated I was sleeping with him. When I dismissed the implication, they insisted. I spoke pf him too favorably not to at least be attracted to him. He is beautiful I admitted, but that wasn’t the reason I pitched his work. It was like they had never seen another person love someone or support someone without having some personal interest. Which was hard for me to grasp, when being an artist means you belong to the people.

Back then, I wasn’t as clear in my thinking as I am writing now. So I felt ashamed. My knee-jerk reaction was to justify wanting his work in the gallery. 

Meanwhile, he was being invited to universities and giving talks at Harvard. He had a living space separate from his studio, which I deeply admired. He had figured out how to make enough to not only support himself but to support a space to create. I imagined he might be who Baldwin became to Black culture. 

I gave someone jeans to take to him for his Saint Louis Blues piece. I imagined he would bring a lot of people to their exhibit. I imagined they would one day brag about meeting him.

Anyway, he inspires me. He gave me new dreams and goals. I pray that one day I am able to have a space just for creating. I want to make my parents proud answering this calling, like I see his parents beaming from his Paris exhibit. Let me note, my dad says he’s already proud of me whenever I tell him this. Anyway, I am experiencing other artists’ achievements with my mind blown, my ego checked and the impossible becoming tangible.

So, I guess, writing here I’m realizing there is something in it for me. When artists accomplish their dreams my disbelief is challenged and it’s like witnessing a miracle. Now, everywhere I look, artists I can call and text, are making it. I’m getting teary-eyed just considering their triumphs. So yeah, I’m yelling and pumping my fist. Yeah, I’m celebrating as they excel in their craft. Plus, I want my friends to be happy and successful. I want them to have joy, and whatever else their hearts desire.

Lately, I’ve been filled with a lot of gratitude. My life and my circle has changed, I guess. Not just artists, but everyone around me seems to be evolving. One friend chose sobriety. He’s lost all this weight. Another friend started a business helping people clean up their credit and manage their finances. Another friend opened a place to provide mental healthcare in an under-served community. Another friend is becoming a landlord… I think she’s bought like eleven houses. So I’m getting to hear about renting from a landlord’s perspective. Plays are being written and casted. Paintings are being made. There are so many dark things happening in the world but somehow all these people I love are finding light and being lights. YES!!

I’m out here, in awe of these amazing folks. Seeing the possibilities. Seeing the importance of art. More importantly, seeing that people can change and excel at any point they choose. It’s pretty awe-inspiring. So I’m their cheerleader, but, man, folks are not feeling cheers. So I’m not sure how to move forward. It feels icky to be viewed with suspicion for helping or being supportive. 

I dream of a community where we help and support each other. So I help, support, and get in where I fit in. I believe this creates more opportunities.

Maybe this is an opportunity for folks to work on negative reflexes to positive stimuli. If I’m honest, there are definitely artists who feel threatened. They aren’t nice though, more cordial. Like acknowledging me as we stretch on the starting line before we take our position and the gun blasts. There are reasons to be cautious. So I get the fear. Still, for the most part, I tend to expect the best from folks. Based on experience, rarely do they intend to cause harm. We’re all just human.

I guess, I’m pushing my own agenda. I want to create a space where we can enjoy and support each other without fear. Plus, a good amount of my favorite muses are collaborations. What if being extraordinary was the standard. At this point in my life, it feels like everyone has something great about them. We are all created equal but not the same and that’s what makes us all valuable.

Recently, I watched Kanye’s documentary. One man believed so deeply in Kanye, he filmed him all the time. This guy was literally Kanye’s hype man. Fast forward two decades or more and he’s curated this amazing documentary of Kanye’s rise to infamy. 

I’m learning to be more vocal about my intentions. After asking a friend about her craft, I explained I didn’t actually want to try it myself. It was more of me being amazed and wanting to hear her process. Also, creative processes can be adapted. Like praying or working out before starting a project could help artists in any discipline. I sometimes write before I write, to get rid of anything in my head not related to the project. Anyway, once I made it clear I wasn’t interested in going into her discipline the weirdness disappeared. We actually talk more frequently and she started sharing different projects.

I’m open to suggestions. I want to be a safe space for my friends and artists. I love seeing something first. There is something sacred about the moment you share your piece with the first person. It’s an honor to experience raw pieces. Before the world judges it or the artist. Before it is compared to other pieces or another artist’s work. I love to hear an artist’s thought process as they are naming a piece or trying to get to what the piece means… I feel chosen.

Especially since there are people, who I would never share my art with while it’s being born. That’s another reason why I’m so supportive, too. I’ve abandoned paintings and writings because they were torn down in the womb. 

I’m sorry for rambling. I’m working through all of my feelings as I write. I’m examining both sides of the coin. I want to be supportive but I don’t want to feel like a creep. I also don’t want to compete. I’ve got my own lane and tons of ideas I have yet to explore. I am never bored. I am already interested in things I can’t do well. I’m actually trying to get someone to get interested in some of my interests so I have a partner in crime, cause, baby, I am lost in the sauce. Don’t get it twisted, I find it fun to challenge myself and teach myself new skills. It would just be doper to have company on the journey. 

Over the years I’ve witnessed folks become themselves. Now that my perspective is cropped wider, I’ve noticed how people have transformed in a few months. It’s true, anything you want to do, you can. All you have to do is show up for yourself. Surround yourself with people accomplishing their dreams. Help them when the opportunity presents itself. Work the door at their show. Cook in the kitchen. Help them clean up after an event. 

To anyone here, reading this, I’m not into empty affirmations. Sometimes an affirmation can be a band-aid on a bullet wound. At the same time, I’ve been really hurting, feeling deeply wounded. When the right words made it clear, it was just a paper cut. In other cases, where it was more serious, I was affirmed. Which made me confident I could navigate the storm. So, yeah, it’s great to acknowledge and celebrate people reaching their goals. 

The Harlem Renaissance wasn’t one person, it was all kinds of artists working individually and collectively. So, yeah, I’m rooting for you, me and us. We can all make it. There is room for all our art. I don’t care that there are more books than I could read in a lifetime, yours still needs to be published. Someone needs your voice. That painting wants to travel. Let’s go!