February 23, 2026 • 67 mins
In this episode of Sacred Lessons, host Mike de la Rocha sits with Chris Rivas for a powerful conversation about identity, belonging, and the quiet lie that so many of us carry: that we are not enough. Actor, author of Brown Enough, and cultural storyteller, Chris challenges harmful notions of supremacy and masculinity while inviting us to reclaim our stories as medicine for ourselves and for our communities. Together, they explore awakening, intimacy, consumption, and the courage it takes to unlearn what we were taught about taking up space. This episode is for anyone who has ever asked, Am I enough?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What are the cycles fathers passed down that sons are
left to yield. What if being a man was holding
it all together? I've been learning how to let go.
This is a space where to find the power to
heal and transform. I'm Mike Dela Rocha. Welcome to say
your lessons. Some of us grow up believing we take
(00:24):
too much space. Others grow up believing we're not allowed
to take up any space at all. Welcome to sacred lessons.
I'm Mike Dela Rocha. Today, my guest is someone who
has made it his life's mission to challenge that lie,
to remind us that we are all enough. Actor, author,
(00:45):
storyteller Chris Reeves. I first connected with Chris through his
book Brown Enough, which felt like someone had finally said
out loud that things so many of us grew up
whispering in our own heads. Brown enough? Am I Latino enough?
Am I enough? For this world? Chris's work digs deep.
(01:10):
He creates spaces of belonging and conversations that open the heart.
His art disrupts harmful notions of supremacy, challenges binary ways
of thinking, and invites us to reclaim our stories as
pathways to healing. Not just for ourselves before our communities.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Sweet, honored, received, grateful.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, I am so honored, Chris, because I've been wanting
to meet you through so many friends, mutual friends, but
even before the mutual friends, through your life and your artistry,
your book Brown Enough, even just the title, it was like,
(01:57):
it was like you went into my brain and wrote
the words I was too afraid to say. Grate, thanks,
and so one. I just want to thank you for
having the courage and the strength and the vulnerability to
speak truth that so many people, including myself, unfortunately the
society makes us feel. And when I got to learn
more about you through your bio and then watching your
(02:19):
podcasts and just your work, and then one of my
best friends, Fidel Rodriguez, Oh, I did not know that
was a connection, bro, That's that was the first connection.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Cool, Fidel was in my wedding. Fidel's the one that
teaches me all around and everything, and he was like, Mike,
I took this dude in with a thousand books to
make sure that young brown and black children knew that
they were worthy, that they were blessed, that they were loved.
(02:51):
And here it's a book society may say the opposite,
but fuck that read this and be proud of who
you are. So anyways, thank you for being a part
of this journey.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Thank you, Thank Fidel. I did not know that that
was the initial, you know, I thought it was I
know Tara and some others, but man, Fidel, Yeah is
a blessing. Probably too many has been to me and
to you it sounds like. So shout out to the
many people who support us and ancestors here and past
and yeah beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well for those that don't know your story, can you
just contextualize it even before getting to the book. But
how did you get to the seat that you're at
right now?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm a kid who didn't like myself. I don't know why.
I don't know what karmic dance that was in this life,
but I just like I didn't like who I was,
Like I was just always like. I didn't like my ears,
I didn't like my aesthetics, I didn't like my being,
and I knew there was a place in me where
I could enjoy who I was. And so my whole
life has been one of moving closer to this love
(04:01):
of self cliche, corny but also wildly profound. We've all
felt it in like really small moments and then we've
all felt that disconnect and probably more moments. And so
I'm this kid who's asking big questions of life. And
thank god the theater found me, because the theater brought
me so close to pretend and the ways we pretend
(04:22):
for good and for bad. And I was like, damn,
I'm good at pretending. I'm so good at it. I'm
so good at being someone else. I'm so good at
pretending not to be heard. I'm so good at this.
And so there was an intimacy with pretending that I
really fell in love with when I found the theater,
and the theater gave me my whole life. It introduced
(04:44):
me to art, it introduced me to John Leguizamo, which
really changed my life. You know. I saw a brown kid,
Colombian like half of me from Queens on a stage
performing to a Broadway house full of white people, and
I've never seen anything like it. I wasn't pretending to
be somebody else, he was being himself, and that was
like the crucial element that I didn't I couldn't comprehend then,
(05:07):
but I know that I went home at fourteen years old,
I took a shower and I started writing my own
one man show, you know, like in the shower, I
was like, I too can tell my story, which I think,
is this really crucial ingredient that alchemized something in me.
I have a story worth telling, and it's something I
would like all people to feel that they have. That's
(05:29):
the taking up space you talked about. I have a
story worth telling. I am worthy of taking up space.
I am worthy of my experience and sharing that with others,
and that there's medicine there. You know. We walked in
and I saw Eldridge Cleaver soul on Ice and like,
like wasamo, I remember where I was when I read
that I was renting a woman in some like a
(05:49):
room in some woman's house in college. And I opened
that book and I finished it. I finished it that night,
and this person was telling his experience and I saw
the whole world. So there's like all these little moments
where that's my life. My life is one of these
moments where I know that I am worthy of taking
up space, and that has brought me closer to myself
(06:14):
and closer to this deep love of who I am
where I don't have to pretend anymore, because there's also
an exhaustion to pretending like it's very tiring, and I
don't want to be tired anymore. I have a beautiful
dharma teacher who said to me, tension is who you
think you are. Relaxation is who you are, and I
am in my phase of relaxation.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Wow, you said the intimacy of pretending, yeah, which probably
is the greatest definition I've ever heard of masculinity. And so,
since this is a conversation around healing and man in particular,
a lot of the mass I have worn in my
(06:56):
life in phases has been trying to pretend to be
someone I'm not based upon this ideal of this is
what a man is supposed to be, even though I
know in this this question of words, because we're we're
we're lovers of words. Yeah, And I even hate the
word man and woman in a lot of ways because
(07:17):
we are all of this and more and and and
pretending that we're not is the biggest lie I found
for myself. Were there are moments like you mentioned going
to Broadway and that was like a flashpoint where there
are other moments where you started to start to like alchemize,
like you said, you know what, this pretending is not
(07:38):
who I am. I need to be brave enough or
I need to figure out a way to be my
full authentic self.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, millions, I think I use the word intimacy m
crucially because it is far more important in our life
to be intimate with our life than just when we're
trying to, you know, make love or or have sex.
You know, like intimacy with your life. Be intimate with
(08:06):
why your stomach feels the way it does. You know
when you're not waking up in peace, you know when
you act in a fool, you know when you're pretending,
like you know when you're exhausted, and yet we do
it anyway. Be intimate with the question why do I
do with the thing I know is wrong for me?
But I do it anyway. And so I use this
(08:26):
word intimacy like really, it's not an accident, Like intimacy
is a big part of my life. I want to
be intimate with my life. That's what writing did for me,
That's what art has done for me. Like I come
up with a question, I don't really care about answers.
I care about asking a big fat question, And then
as real key says, maybe I can live myself into
an answer, but I gotta be intimate. I gotta know
(08:49):
what boils my blood, what turns me on, what pisses
me off, what scratches the itch, what makes the wound
even deeper, what turns the wound into a scar. And
so there's so much pretending, Like there's so much pretending
I have done in my life to be a man
(09:09):
around the intimacy of sex. And why am I doing
this right now? And I should go home. I'm tired.
I don't want to be, you know, flirting with this
person or why am I going here? Fomo all of this? Uh,
I think it's kind of non stop until you stop, right.
Ignorance is bliss until you've tasted bliss, and then the
rest is just ignorance.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Because there's something that forced you to stop.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I'm going to return to this word exhaustion always sort
of energized by life. So it's not like tired, like
I need to take a nap, I want to go
to bed. It's more an exhaustion of the mind. Meditation,
change my life. Meditation, Yeah, that's what did it. The
first time I actually got quiet, I could hear how
(09:59):
fucking loud it Sorry, can I do that? I could
hear how loud it was, and I thought, that is
so exhausting, the thousands of thoughts that say you should
do this, you should be this, you should go here,
no go here, that like just that role and when
you sit and you know, for me, my relationship to
(10:20):
sitting is like it's the first, one of the first
times that and actually making art the mind quiet and
I love the piece of that quietness. I think it's
so special. And that's where we are, That's where we are.
Like man, woman, they them this that enough, not enough
(10:41):
all at once. I think when you try to be
one thing, you're going to exhaust yourself. But when you
break the vessel and you try to be all things,
that's like a profound piece. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And so you mentioned a lot about questions. Yeah, what's
the driving question in this particular moment of your journey?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
That's a great that's a great question. What is my
question right now? Because I have asked a lot of
good questions and answered them, my question right now today
is what is if Tension is who we think we are,
and rest is who we are?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Where am I? Where are you?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
You know? I've done so much work, ma am I
to do list, knocked it out like, got it, got it,
got it. My Wikipedia page keeps growing, got it, got it,
got it. And still I'm unsatisfied. I will never be
satisfied because you can never reach a sustaining version of
happiness through consumption. I think consumption is directly tied to tension,
(11:44):
and it's directly tied to that. I'm not enoughness. I
gotta I gotta eat, I gotta consume. I need more,
I need more. I gotta accomplish this. I got to
accomplish this. And one day I'm gonna wake up and
I might miss my whole life. I might miss my
whole life because I was out here increasing my Wikipedia page.
And that's terrifying to me.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it was crazy because this morning I woke up
and went for a walk with my partner and this
idea of consumption, Wow, an exhaustion and a system of
capitalism that's all about consumption and competition.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The machine.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
We feed the machine. And then the thing is the mindfulness.
The ability to be still allows you to be outside
the machine. And I started to think about, oh, I'm
going to interview Chris Brown. Enough and the key word
for me in your book is enough. And I was like,
what is wrong with you, Mike that you feel that
(12:47):
you have to buy something in order to feel worthy?
What is it that you go into debt buying things
you don't need? What gap within my own self? Am
I trying to fell in the wrong way? And we
had a very tenuous conversation because I got defensive rather
than just sitting still and listening and being like, you're right,
(13:08):
You're trying to mirror back to me that I am enough.
We don't need to consume all this stuff, and in fact,
the consumption makes you more exhausted, Like you just said,
with all these young people and people that have been
touched by your story through various platforms, various artistry, book podcasts, acting,
(13:29):
what do you see and what do you tell these
folks that are feeling overwhelmed, over consumed, exhausted, tired? What
is your message for them for I.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Think it starts with stopping. Yeah, Like it starts with
that word intimacy, And we can't feel all that while
we're stuck in the in the in the undertow, like
we come up for air and we get hit again
with the wave we get hit again with the wave,
like we need to be able to stop. You need
to be to step outside of the machine and see
the machine, like that's crucial. And you talk about masculinity,
(14:06):
like consumption is directly time to masculinity because because men
are takers or also what's that Ishmael, you know that
book leavers and takers. That's how smile separates the world.
There are levers and there are takers, and the takers
have caused so much harm. And there is the taking
of We take resources from the land, We take things
(14:28):
from people until they and if we think if they
can't give us anything because they were there for us
to take, like we're always at the center of our lives.
We take, we take, consume, consume if all the things
we were meant to consume were actually meant to fill us,
don't you think you would be full by now? We're
not full? And so we need to be able to
(14:48):
stop in order to see what high do I get
from this? How does this sustain me for a little bit?
How does this make me feel good? Oh? That's why
I keep flirting with all these people because I really
don't have any self worth. I need them to smile
at me. I need them to make me feel good
(15:09):
because I really can't give that to myself. That's wild,
and I don't need to beat myself up about it.
But like I'm intimate with the idea that like, oh,
I can't give this to myself, I need it from
other people. That's also a version of consumption. And like
you said, we have been This is an uphill battle, y'all.
We have been trained to consume. It's in the stock
(15:32):
market needs you to be a consumer, like the world
needs you to buy shit, both physically and spiritually. Right,
because like you need to be better. You should take
this workshop, you need to be healthier, drink that juice, actually,
take this supplement. You just gotta stop. If tension is
(15:57):
who we think we are, then relaxation is there's a letting.
Oh I'm going to stop for one second. Maybe that
one second turns into two. I don't need another supplement.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
He's so deep, bro, You're dropping so many gems right now.
I can't even I'm not going a roller coaster. But
the biggest jam right now when you mentioned that book Ishmael.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh, it's great. Huh.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
My father's name was Ishmael. Really is Ishmael. And when
you said that, it was as if my dad was
telling me. The lesson that he taught me and his
death in his passing was he never stopped.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He never stopped there you go. And so many of
us men feel like we can't afford to stop, and
that's what's leading to unhealthy practices, harmful stuff to ourselves
and others, and just you know, dying prematurely, frank, and
so what a powerful thing. Just breathe, just stop, just breathe,
(17:07):
Just be still, listen to your true inner voice. What
is really your ache? What is really your purpose?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Here?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
With brown Enough in particular, I felt like it was,
you know, because my spiritual practices were reflections of each
other in my cash right, But it's almost like it
was a love letter to you as a way to
have a love letter to everybody else. What was the
motivation for that art form, that book?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Many other people who Thank god I was able to
listen to the call. I think our job as artists,
but not as artists, I'm sorry, as people like I
think everybody is an artist creating something. I do see
the world through a very artistic lens because I think
being an artist, especially now more than ever. If artists
weren't important, dictators, wouldn't you know, they wouldn't be some
(18:03):
of the first people a dictator wanted to kill or silence.
And what world are we living in? Even in this country.
I will take away your books, I will take away
your money for art. I will take away your voice
and your identity and so off my artists. Pedagogy platform
my life speaking truth. Usef Kumunyaka, who's like a mentor
(18:27):
of mine, says, your only job is to remain open.
I like that. That's your only job. You got to
stay open. And then when the call comes, you need
to be able to receive it. And if you're too
busy do another shit, you ain't going to receive it.
You won't be able to hear the call and respond
to the call. And so thank god I was able
to hear the call. I wrote a play about the
(18:50):
Dominican man James Mom was based on that play did well.
A scene from that play got in the New York
Times about dating white women. That went well. And all
these people reached out to me and they said, do
you have a book, And I said, I do not
have a book, and then one agent said, you do,
and she helped me. She booked, dueled me. You know,
it's like she helped me find my baby and bring
(19:12):
my baby into the world, and she found sort of
the themes in which I think and move through the world.
And that led to someone else who helped me, and
two beautiful editors, and so really it was just listening,
and I think it is one of my best gifts.
I am good at hearing the call, like I will
go to the call for better or for worse. I
(19:33):
will always go to the call. I care less about
even the finale or the how like I will take
the next step, and I will take the next step,
and that's it. I kept taking the steps, and then
all of a sudden the book was out and I
don't think I even knew, like it's I'm very proud
of this. It's curriculum in high schools around the country
(19:54):
right now. I did not write this for a high schooler,
like or I didn't write it for young me. I
don't know. I'm just kind of I'm in the flow.
I'm in the flow. I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm
in Mexico having a fight with my partner and I'm thinking, oh,
you know, like it's just all happening. I'm in I'm
in it, I'm intimate with it. Only now can I
(20:15):
look back and say, I think I did something, But.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Who taught you this jump in the net will appear? This?
For me sitting here, it's almost like an unshakable faith
that if I listen, if I'm in alignment, I don't
need to know the outcome, the result.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I just have to be in that. Well, where did
that come from? That's a good question. I'll say one
part my parents. My parents really did not come from
an easy life as children. And my dad is the
OG manifesto. Like before anyone ever said vision board in
(20:56):
my father's office was the vision board. It was house Miami,
it was some boat, it was I mean, he would
never call it a vision board. He just had it
pinned up on the wall in the office vision board,
like you know. And you can't just you can't just
be like it's gonna you gotta They busted the ass.
They worked. They worked a nine to five and a
(21:18):
seven to three am. That's work. That's a lot of work.
I mean, like I didn't see them for like a
year and a half. My sister raised me, you know,
So I come from a lineage of hard work and belief.
This this manifesting belief, and and so I think part
(21:39):
of it is that right, they just kept they just
kept going. They just keep going. And then I don't know,
I found I found the dharma at some point in
my life. I like believing in in a god or
goddesses and many gods and uh and spirits and ancestors.
(22:01):
I like that stuff. It makes me feel more whole
and closer than myself. It's not for everybody, and that's okay.
But for me, it has given me. It has grounded
me in moments of fear, It has reminded It has
not broken me when I could have been broken. It
has reminded me of my enoughness in a world that
(22:23):
constantly tries to tell you you are not enough. And
it let me keep walking towards the net. And so
that's it. I got lucky. There's a level of luck
in this life. I think we know that we all
know people who don't have the luck, and that's their karmic.
(22:44):
I do believe we've been like everybody's mother and father
a thousand times. We like doing the dance I like
what the Buddha says, You've been here as many times
as it takes a hawk to wipe away the tip
of a mountain with a scarf. It's like a lot
of times. And so whatever it is in this dance,
I can still hear the call, and that call and
(23:05):
that faith in that spirit has allowed me to just
walk towards the net. And there are days where you're like, no,
this is whack. I don't want to walk towards the net.
I'd rather like, go get a job. I'd rather just
do something that's not so like it'll work out.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So let me ask you this. The definition I've heard
of luck is preparation meets opportunity. Do you agree with
that definition?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yes? And and no?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Preparation meets opportunity in the karmic sense. We prepared many
many lives. So sure, yeah, preparation meets opportunity. Yes, in
the reality of this world, right here, right now. I
don't ever want to spiritually bypass anything like I don't
(24:01):
want to say that someone born in a country that
is being having genocide committed as preparation meets opportunity. I
don't want to say that the little girl who has
to leave her homeland as preparation meets opportunity. And so
(24:24):
it's a yes and and a no. And it may
be in a shore and a definitely not. And that's
fucked up and that's sweet, and it's all of it.
And I don't say that to like, I don't make
anyone sad, but I also don't not want you to
not be sad. Like enjoy your Trader Joe's and know
that like someone would love a grocery store all at
(24:47):
the same time, doesn't make it. It's just it's just the
fullness of how we can move through the world. We
can really have more of an appreciation for what's here.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, and what do you share? First off, thank you
for that beautiful, truthful answer. You know, we live in
the belly of consumption, exhaustion capitalism that's feeding the dominant
global culture, which is one that wants us to numb ourselves.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So we don't consumption, So we take lives. That's what
I was going to what take land, We take lives?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But what are the practices or ways that you've found
effective of trying to I don't want to say convinced,
but expand the possibility for those around you to consider
what you just said, that this lifestyle is a part
of folks in different parts of the world not too
(25:57):
far from us, not being able to live their full
authentic styles because a bomb might be dropping on them
or they might have been stolen from their families. Like,
have you found ways to get folks to consider their
connection to others that they may not know?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I don't think it's our job to I s that
age old like be the light and if someone wants
a flame, they will come find you, or they will
be like, oh, it's nice to be light. Maybe I
can be light. We can share, but we don't teach,
(26:43):
you know, we can share and live out of practice,
but maybe not preach. I think there's like a fine line, right,
Someone's only gonna wake up when they want to wake up.
You know, you got the homie who's like keeps dating
the same person, Like what the fuck's wrong with that dude,
And it's like we're just gonna keep touching the hot
(27:05):
stove until we're like, god, it hurts so much and
so first, I don't think it's like we're all on
our path. You know, we wake up. When we wake up,
we stop stubbing our toe when we're actually ready to
stop stubbing our toe. I've had the fortune of spending
time in you know, AA circles and addiction circles, and
(27:26):
I think it's really beautiful to hear someone say I
know it was wrong for me, but I did it anyway.
That's profound. I know it's bad for me, and I
kept doing it anyway. And then one day they said, whoa,
it's bad for me. I don't want to do it.
(27:47):
You cannot make someone get there. They got to get there,
They got to hear the call. They gotta stop stopping.
And so how can people realize how wild it is
this world that we all cause harm right, Like I'm
drinking plastic bottles harmful. It ain't your fault, it ain't
(28:10):
my faults. What it is we got a lot of
plastic Like, uh, we have to stop and we have
to feel it. And I gotta pick this water bottle up,
and I say, and I gotta say, damn. Actually, when
I walked in here, I took another one of these
and instead of walking back outside because my lazy ass
was tired from a long day and getting that first
(28:32):
bottle I opened, I decided to start drinking this one.
And I gotta admit that, and I gotta say, oh,
I talk all this shit about taking care of the
land and this like that, and I want to be
a good, you know person. I couldn't just walk back
and get my original bottle. Interesting, and I gotta meet that,
(28:55):
and I gotta be intimate that, and I gotta hope
the next time I will be president intimate enough to
take six steps to get the first bottle of water
I opened. Even better, I could say I sat in
my car when I parked here, and I said, I
have a reusable water bottle and I and I know
they're going to give me water, and I chose to
leave the reusable water bottle inside. Intimate. I think that's
(29:19):
how you do it.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, what so, yes, and what's coming up for me
is like if my primo, who's driving through LA as
we speak, says, oh, I listened to this podcast, and yeah,
that makes all sense, Mike. But I have to work
(29:43):
my ass off. I have no time to think about anything,
so just providing for my family and yes, like I agree,
Like I have to be that person that I'm hopeful
folks will consider. And I'm not perfect by any fucking
stretch of imagination, but trying to just show alternative ways
(30:06):
of being, alternaive ways of thinking, making the connection between
that thought and my action is contributing to land theft
or not, pollution or not. But what do you tell
those those folks like my cousins stuff be like, I can't.
I don't have time for that. I can't do that.
I gotta keep working, I got to keep consuming. I
wish I could be able to take some time to
(30:27):
be present, but I can't. Obviously, like you said, there's
a thin line between teaching, preaching and just being. But
what do you share with those that are seriously considering
it or just like, no, not at all. Those are
not at all. You're like, all right, cool, well, when
when you touch the stove too much, you'll get it.
(30:48):
But for those that are like, yeah, I wish I
could be there, but I can't because of the conditions
of my life, I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Think that's I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, which opens
up a whole other can of worms. Like some people
don't even have the freaking privilege in time to consider
another way, which is exactly what the machine wants of them. Also,
rans they want you tired, and they want you exhausted,
(31:15):
and they want you struggling for the next thing and
the next thing, and that's also fucked up, right, And
then again, it's not our job to like. If you
are the type of activist or a person who's getting
upset at other people not changing, you gotta look, you
gotta you gotta look in worm like you lost the
whole point. You know you lost. You missed, you missed it,
(31:36):
You went on the wrong exit. Live your life with
as much care and peace as you are willing to
live your life so that you go to bed in
peace and you wake up in peace. What we're really
seeking here is a calm and healthy immune and nervous system,
a body that isn't constantly anxious. And so if you
(31:59):
are Earth defender and you look at someone putting gas
in their car and it fucking boils your blood, you
should feel like worry about this vessel and trust that
like someone will see how you live. You don't fly, sick,
WHOA right, I'm gonna go get on this delta plane.
But someone will meet you and say, yo, you don't fly,
(32:21):
why don't you fly? And you'll tell them I don't
fly because of this. I believe in this. No, that's interesting,
and like maybe they'll still get on a plane. But maybe,
you know, now like Google flights has, like they show
you which one has the least emissions, maybe they'll buy
that one. WHOA, you did that? Or maybe when they
go car shopping next time, they'll be like, maybe I
(32:43):
should get electric. Maybe they'll just ask the question. They
might go back to gad you know. But like, it's
not our job to change people or to tell Primo,
uh go buy organic shit. It's our job to live
with as much intention as we have the courage to
live with. And I know how, you know, ignorance is
(33:05):
bliss until you taste it bliss. I know how I
would like to move through the world, and I would
like to go to bed knowing that I caused a
little less harm, or I left a place cleaner than
I found it. I saw that on a bathroom in Austin,
and it changed my life. I went into this public
bathroom and said, please leave this place cleaner than you
found it. And I thought, God, if I could leave
each place I walk into a little cleaner than I
(33:26):
found it, that's a nice world. I feel like I did.
I did good. But it's not my job to tell
you to leave it cleaner than you found it. Live
your life right, Like if I got a babysit you
and you and you and you. That's exhausting. I'm already tired.
Let me just leave it cleaner than I found it.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So let me ask you. You mentioned you know so
much of who I've become and am is because of,
you know, the environment I grew up and obviously in
the society, but my parents and you were talking about
your your parents having to work multiple jobs, and that
(34:07):
it was your sisters that really raised you. Was that
the seed of a lot of this way that you're
thinking about identity and self? Was it your sisters that
were like the primary models.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Sister or sister? Sorry? Uh?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
And queens? Is the model about I think about identity itself.
I come from the most diverse place in the world.
I don't say that like hyperbolically, like I actually was
raised in a place that has one hundred and thirty
eight spoken languages. I can maybe name twenty spoken languages,
like one hundred and thirty eight in one borough. That's
(34:48):
wild and so I only knowed an unbelievably beautiful wide
array of diversity and identities and diasporas and cultures and
hips and flavors and hairs, like I only know that,
and I know that they actually coexist quite beautifully, you know.
So like I my relationship to identity comes comes from that, uh,
(35:15):
you know, go over to this store to buy your hummus,
go here to get this, you know, and go to
the wall. They got to get that, like all on
one block. Yeah, So I think that's that's my identity
journey is growing up a kid in New York. New
York is already diverse, God blessed, and then uh and
then Queen's especially, and then being able because I couldn't
(35:38):
even answer the questions about why is my sister was
taught Spanish but I wasn't, you know, having a Dominican
grandmother who looked black, and then a Columbian grandmother who
don't who look white. You know, my mama's white passing.
I'm too young to know all that, you know. I'm
too young to even know hustle and hard work like that,
Like that's even a privilege to get to name and
to explore and to make art where I can interview
(36:01):
my parents and yeah, so so all of that was
just happening. And you know, again, right place, right time,
maybe it is your opportunity like I was. I was
born in that place at that time, during those years,
and it informed me enough to return to it, to
examine it, to be intimate with it, to have a
(36:22):
relationship with what was happening.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
M what was what was allowing you to be able
to return to it and have that conversation?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I mean, that's right, I've done. You know. I
read James Baldwin, I read Eldridge Cleever, and I said, man,
I have not asked questions about my own life. It
was like as simple as that, sitting in my you know,
college housing, reading these books and thinking, I don't know,
I haven't really done the work. I haven't asked these
questions about myself. Why do I move through the world
(36:56):
in this way? Why do I like this? Why don't
I like this? Why does this person turn me? But
this person doesn't turn me on? And so I'm reading
these books and I'm asking these of myself. And then
part of that is making art. It's my vessel. It's
what I'm supposed to do. And in the making art,
I had the beautiful privilege and great parents who were
willing to let me ask them questions as people, not
(37:17):
as parents. Crucial, crucial, all adults. If you haven't met
your parents as people, meet them as people. You got
too many stories if you think about them as parents.
Everyone's just doing the best with what they can with
what they got, which goes back to the primo and
this and the recycling. Everybody's just doing the best with
what they got, right, And so I've had a lot
(37:37):
of art that let me ask these big questions about
my life and my history and my parents, and my sister,
and my friends, and my city and my block, you know,
my relationship to all of it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Man, Meet your parents as people, Yeah, as a powerful,
powerful statement.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Meet your lovers as people. Meet your friends is people,
everyone as people, because then you put them in the box.
You are friend. You know, we're like, we're really like
cave people. We think we're wise, but we're just like
we're just like in the cave. Like you a friend,
you love her, your partner, your wife, you know, you
know your husband.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
It's been interesting. I've been touring this book for the
last six months, so I've been very privileged to be
you know, thirty five cities across the country, and so simple, Chris,
that I've gone into these places without expectation and just
(38:39):
trying to learn and grow and see people as people
without the boxes or the labels, and where I consistently
hear because we live in this moment of manufactured division,
fear for a purpose, for consumt and all this other stuff.
(39:01):
But the one thing that's been consistently shared has been
I just don't want someone to judge me for whatever reason,
I just want to belong, which a lot of hearing
you in this conversation and reading your book, it's really
(39:24):
you know you said cavemen, but it's really just ancestry.
It's ancient. We're all hardwired for connection. We're all meant
to belong. These systems and structures are trying to separate.
About the end of the day, our spirit, our sad
wants to connect outside of the labels, outside of all
this other stuff. How far you want to get with it,
(39:44):
I want you to go because I'm in a masterclass.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I don't stop right now, because if you really want
to go far out, I do want to go. Take me.
It's not it's not that the spirit wants to connect.
The spirit is exactly there's one spirit, right, and there's
no even vessel. It's just one thing, and so it
(40:10):
wants to return to one. Whereas the Dharma calls it emptiness.
If you are empty, you are everything. I was just
about to say, there is no you can't not be
your whole block, and you can't not be the starving
child in another country. Whereas tik not Ham says, call
me by my true name. I'm the young child just raped,
(40:32):
and I am also the pirate who has not yet
learned enough love to not rape. I am both. I
am the boy holding the gun and the child army,
and I am the man who gave him the gun,
and I am the bullets. Call me both. You know
there's nothing we're not. It's like the far out and
(40:54):
so you know, ah, all the spirit is connection. It's
not seeking, it is it. Yeah, And so if we
stopped enough hard as hell, like we have all felt it.
This is why falling in love is really cool. Falling
in love is an inkling to that feeling, because when
(41:14):
you fall in love, you know that first like head
over heels moment, all of a sudden life is perfect.
All those stories about how you fucked up or you
did this, you were late, or you don't have enough money,
and then your job ain't right, you didn't get that audition.
It doesn't mean anything because you felt like literally your
whole world, you are connected to everything. The traffic is perfect,
(41:37):
the weather's perfect, like everything is perfect, and then you
know it like fades and then you gotta like you
forget shit and you forget that your connection. Well, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
The crazy thing is like, because we started talking about
Octavia Butler and Bell Hooks and this feeling of falling
in love, it is just going is just remembering what
is the truth? That oneness right where the feeling, the excitement,
the joy, the newness. But then ball hook says, love though,
(42:11):
becomes an active choice because at some point the honeymoon
fades and everything fades. And what I'm what I'm what
I'm appreciative of this conversation is you're reminding me that
we're all falling into love. That's because what oneness is.
But then we have to choose that love all the
(42:33):
time because everything around us is not wanting us to
do that.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, but we don't do so it's it's so hard
you know Vedanta says love the cokecin like you love
your mother? Why are you being so selfish? Why should
your mother be more important than that? It's because you
put label on it, caveman mother love. But really you're saying,
this person did this for me and so I because
(42:58):
we do this dance. What have you done for me lately?
You give me, I give you a little. And then
with back to falling in love, you think you think
it's that person, like I'm in love with that person.
It's actually you. It's just a feeling inside of you, right,
they just reminded you for some whatever reason, that person
was a beautiful mirror that showed you what you are
capable of feeling on a consistent basis. But you think
(43:19):
it's them, and then so when you break up with them,
you go find someone else because you would like to
feel it again, and then you end up just constantly dating.
You're just like all we ever date is ourselves. Fun fact,
like you never really marry. You know that you're just
like constantly in relationship with yourself and you're you're you're
expanding or decreasing of yourself. Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
How in love with yourself. Are you right now? Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Uh? How in love with myself? I feel yeah, in
this moment, I feel really in love with myself. I mean,
look where I am. I get to have these conversations,
and so I've where I need to be, yeah, and
(44:08):
where I would like to be. As you know, no,
self just connect. It's just it's just connection. It's just
like Hafiz has this poem with that sweet moon language,
and he says walking around with that sweet look in
the eye, saying what everyone else is thinking, love me,
(44:30):
But of course you don't say it out loud because
you would seem crazy. But why don't you be the
person with enough courage to say love me? And I
think the opposite end of that is saying love me,
but also I love you because they want to say it,
but they don't say it out loud, and so ah,
and so I also even care less about self love
now these days. Fun fact, I believe relationship precedes care.
(44:57):
If you develop a relationship to something, you can learn
how to care about it. And so I'm interested in
building really intimate, deep relationship, not just with people who
I have deemed worthy of it. I want it with
everyone and everything, including the plastic bottle. I got to
build a relationship to plastic in order to care about it.
(45:20):
I gotta build a relationship to the earth in order
to care about it. I have to build a relationship
to you in order to care about it. And then
the relationship building gets easier. So then we don't just
treat people like thank you for helping me and whatever,
get out of my way. Thank you, Barista, I see
you thirty times a day. I don't know your name. Like,
build a relationship, then maybe the care will come. I
(45:42):
think it will.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, well yeah. One of the main things I've been
trying to model is that the West wants us to
believe that healing is this solo journey. It's a self act.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well yeah, because then you can buy more of to
help you heal.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
But it's a communal one like I can't heal. Like
even right now, I am becoming a better version of
myself being in relationship with you. But that wouldn't have
happened without the relationship. So therefore, my own remembering of
who we are is incumbent upon me developing a real
authentic relationship with everything around me, including the person I'm
(46:24):
sitting across from and that's what I that's the choice,
the moment by moment choice I'm trying to remember and
practice in my daily life because in this life everything's
like run, run, run, run, run, but it's like no pause,
and remember the relationship and every movement. All the books
that you said that change your life, those are authors
(46:46):
that were part of movements of relationships with multiple moment,
multiple people. What do you share? I guess just in this,
I mean, man, Chris, I feel like I'm I subscribe
to that master class, that Mastered Class series, and I
(47:07):
feel like I'm in the middle of the six episodes
all rolled into like forty minute conversation. But I was
going to ask, like, is there something at this particular
moment of where you are that has yet to be
shared or said?
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Oh? For sure, I thank God hopefully you know. If
I've said it all, then then peace, Well I gotta
be here. If I played the game and uncovered everything
and tasted it all and not for consumption purposes, but
if I am so clear and awake, yeah, that I
have no more stories to tell, which my stories are
based on the questions I'm asking about life. You know,
(47:47):
the art I'm making, right now that I'm really excited about.
I'll leave next week to do it. Is a piece
called The Punchline. It's a live show. I'm going to
put sixty minutes on the clock. I'm going to give
us all the last hour of our life and we're
all going to die together and see what needs to change.
And it's based on a series of ritual in sixty minutes.
And I cannot wait to begin this journey.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Where is this happening? How do I go? What's going on?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
The first workshop is at a place called City Theater,
and then we'll start We have many workshops and we'll
start touring it. It's called the Punchline because what's the punchline?
You know? The kid to any good joke is knowing
the punchline? And what's the punchline in your life? Like
you will die, but you think it might happen far off,
or you think being a vegan will help, you know.
My dad always used to say, don't go to bed angry.
(48:32):
I might get hit by a bus. Hey am I
get hit by a bus? You know? And when I
started working on this show, the stories I hear, the
things that have been coming on, I just got diagnosed
with this. I might have a year to live. I
might have less. I was walking with my wife and
a tree fell on her. No joke, like the story.
(48:53):
It's just precious. It's precious. You know what's crazy? Ready
for this one? I like to one. This one's fine.
The next time you spend time with someone, you died
with them, Like you literally gave someone, Like we're doing this,
you gave me sixty minutes of your life. Y'all gave
(49:16):
me sixty minutes of your life. Now you might be
really pissed about that. You might be like, oh my god,
I just gave that person sixteen minutes of my life,
or you mean like, thank god, I gave him sixty
minutes of my life. And so we're on our phone,
we can be like, oh my god, I gave this
sixty minutes of my life. I gave a scream plastered
(49:38):
to my tiny little hand, sixty minutes of my life.
What the fuck? What are you giving your life to?
I'm literally giving you bits of my fucking soul. My time.
It's finite, yo, it don't come back, don't freak out.
(50:01):
It's exciting I've given you. And so I want to
be in spaces where I say I am glad I
gave a little bit of my life to that. And
if I'm in a place where I'm like, I don't
think I want to give much of my life to this,
it's time to reevaluate. I just gave you my life.
(50:23):
So when you're with someone, I'm giving you my life.
You gave me your life. I think that will change
some relationships in your life real quick.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I want to thank you for giving me a part
of your life in this com though.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, thank you, and thank you and thank you, thank
everyone out there.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah. So I want to ask you as you enter
into this evolving part of your journey with the workshop
and the tour. I know you thought about it, but
what is your punchline?
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I don't know. I just want to create a space.
And now I'm interested in art. So I used to
make art that is about spaces of belonging, and I
think that's I've succeeded. Good job, And now I'm interested
in art where people fall in love with each other.
That's what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
And that's why the death piece is so important, because
that allows us to fall in love because we don't.
Life is precious because we don't know.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, because we forget to appreciate. Yeah, we forget to
appreciate because we think it's long and it might be short.
Well it is short, for sure, you know. So every
morning I wake up and I say, life and death
are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly, opportunity is lost.
(51:55):
Let us awaken, awaken, do not squ onto your life.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I'm just sitting in it now. It's a powerful, powerful,
powerful energy and powerful wisdom that you're channeling and modeling
and being and sharing to allow us to come back
(52:25):
to be in love with each other. That's a very honorable, courageous,
beautiful badass.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
But also it should be fun. Well, that's the other
thing it does. That's the other thing it should. It
should light you up to say, oh my god, I'm
giving my life to something, to someone, and so like,
let me actually enjoy it, right, Oh, that would be
cool too, that would be extra cool too. Let me
actually enjoy it. Let me enjoy the ship out of
(52:56):
the latte. Let me enjoy it. You know, it's not
a manufactured happiness. It's like a genuine joy. My homegirl,
she got hit by a car. She didn't die. She
almost died, and she said, for a short time, super short.
It's like kind of like falling in love. Almost dying
is like falling in love in that way it wakes
you up. And she said, for a short time, she
(53:18):
would have a shitty day, and she said, I'm so
grateful to be able to have a shitty day. And
then she said she forgot that, and so shitty days
became shitty days. But for a second she was like,
it's so cool, they're not gonna have a shitty day
because I almost stopped having days. And so it's just
(53:39):
that's why I think art exists. That's why I think
these conversations exist, and these books exist, and we can
hopefully surround our life with things that remind us of
life's preciousness and remind us to not waste our time.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, before I go into we have a closing section
of the podcast, but I wanted to just ask, is
there anything that you feel compelled to share or say
that you haven't shared already?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Anything I feel compelled to share or say, thank someone
for giving them, thank somebody for the life that they
(54:38):
gave you. And both ways, right, like I like this,
I do like that look at someone in your life
and say, wow, thank you for giving me a bit
of your life. I hope I have done it justice.
(55:00):
I will do the work to honor the time you
have given me. And if you change your mind and
you'd like to give your life somewhere else, I will
honor that.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Yeah, beautiful, thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
So this part is called the Sacred Five. It's where
I ask five questions you answering a word or a sentence.
It's our opportunity for folks who are watching or listening
to take some practical things with them. Even though when
I read, listen, watch this, I'll have a notebook from
(55:45):
all the gems that have been consistently dropped in the
last sixteen minutes. So the first question, name three things
that make you feel safe, connected and whole.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Oh I had to say it. It's it's I'm gonna
just say it's honest. The Buddha, the dharma, and the
songa which is the ability to be peaceful community and
the teachings beautiful?
Speaker 1 (56:20):
What song, book or prayer brings you back to yourself?
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly,
opportunity is lost. Let us awaken, Awaken, do not squander
your life. You gotta say, do not squander your life
like this, do not squander your life. Then it sounds
like a far off spirit.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
It's funny you answered the question before even answered, which
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Why do you whisper like this?
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, tell you because it's the wind the spirit. Okay.
What's one daily ritual or practice that grounds you?
Speaker 2 (57:04):
My dog? My dog. I love my dog unconditionally. I
know it's possible to love everything like that. My dog
don't do shit for me, Like my dog doesn't like
clean up after my dog. Actually I clean up after it.
(57:24):
I pick its shit up it does something bad, I
captain it like it does nothing, and I'm out here
on my knees for it, and I love it unconditionally.
I know it's possible to love unconditionally.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
What's your dog's name?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
Lulu?
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Lulu. She's a legend, legend, legend, Lulu. Okay, what's one
small action listeners can take this week on their own
spiritual journey?
Speaker 2 (57:54):
Stop? Actually stop. If you're driving right now, pull over,
take a conscious breath. If you're on the highway, just
take the conscious breath, or get off the highway and
pull over. Stop. Stop rushing you like, don't have to
get where you think you're going so fast. Look around, Stop,
(58:18):
take a breath, look around, and then if you want
to keep going, keep going, but get in the habit
of taking small breath, small breaths and small moments to
dwell in the present moment, like stop. My grandma always
used to say, when you're in a rush, slow down. Yeah,
(58:42):
that's a hard one for me, but yes.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
All of us, all right, Chris, last one share a
one line blessing or quote that inspires you.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly,
opportunity is lost. Let us awaken, Awaken, do not squander
your life. Do you think you squandered your life?
Speaker 1 (59:23):
No, you didn't know. I always take this moment to
kind of reflect back, lessons, gifts, words that were shared
from the episode, and I'm literally lost for words, Chris.
(59:45):
As an artist, I'm lost for words. As a writer,
I'm lost for words. As a lover, I'm lost for
words because I don't think there are words to to
share the feeling that I have my bones to sit
(01:00:07):
across from someone who is living love manifested, who is
trying to shake us to remember our oneness that's dropping
bars from fucking ancient texts to the latest. There are
(01:00:30):
no words I honestly, I just want.
Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
To express my deepest affection, my deepest gratitude for choosing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
To spend your time with us. I want to thank
your ancestors for pouring consistently pouring into you. Even now.
My life is more richer because of this conversation. And I,
like I said, I feel like I was in a
masterclass and I'm being able to be in a space
(01:01:09):
in a conversation where I could cry because I am
so full of fucking joy because I'm looking at someone
that's like reminding me, like, man, there's so much love
and joy and happiness, like I am you, you are me.
How beautiful is this life? And so I just just
(01:01:31):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
And if you thrive, I thrive. Yeah. I think that's
a big part.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Of it, exactly. And that's probably why I'm lost for
words and why I'm crying and why I'm happy and
why all this Because I know we're thriving, because you're thriving.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
So just thank you from the bottom of my heart. Honestly,
Usually in this conversation's a guest is crying. Now I'm crying.
That's the power of fucking Chris Reads. Thank you, thanks,
thank you. Any last parting words.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Oh uh, I'm so honored to be here. Yeah, I'm
grateful that I get to continue to be in space.
Is that our ancestors get to be here too, and
not duld but like they're in the space. Yeah, you
know they're vibrating, you're listening, not going to your life,
(01:02:32):
not going in your life. Yeah, you know, ancestors is
new for me. We might have to go, but like, uh,
ancestors is a new thing for me. Yeah, spiritual for
a long time, practicing for a long time in my ways,
but the word ancestor is fairly new. I was talking
(01:02:54):
to Curly about this actually because he's like he sster
locked in excepreme and it's a new thing. And so
actually putting their photos on my altar this is all
new for me, and praying to them and asking from them,
just trying to make room for the mathematics our of
(01:03:15):
our ancestry, which is long like the amount of things
that had to happen in order for us to be
here right now. I love, It's like my ultimate superpower
I want to walk into a place and I want
to feel all of time and everything that ever happened
in that one spot. And I think ancestors can help
(01:03:37):
me do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
In fact, that's the role of ancestors, one of the
many roles is exactly what you just said. Really, I mean,
my relationship with my dad is stronger now and is
passing than it was was alive.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Yeah, Well, and I've gotten to a point where I'm
not afraid of ghosts or ancestors. Is I'm only here
because of them? And if I believe in oneness and energy,
then why would I be afraid of my own self?
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
It is the same connection, correct, timeless immortal love. Treat
the ephemeral with as much respect as you treat the femeral. Correct.
Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Yeah, and so that's my own dharma. Yeah, falling in
love with my ancestors. Because I'm doing so, I fall
in love with myself.
Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
I've been reading about uh you we can stop me
at any time, But I've been reading about anime. Not
the not the enema, not like the uh a beautiful
Japanese UH artwork, but uh, this chair has a spirit,
(01:04:52):
even the plastic, even the microphone and and and so
there are a bunch of practices is in treating and
honoring the spirit of the object. So again we're not
just taking, we're not just consumers. You chair, I use you. No,
you chair come from a long line of hands, embodies
(01:05:15):
and spirits that allow chair to be here. I get
to be in relationship with chair, not just use chair.
I get to be in relationship with microphone and history
of microphone and and things and labor and maybe abuse
and maybe harm and beauty and power of microphone. Right, So,
(01:05:35):
anima spirit in objects, and we often overlook objects, but
like you're constantly the spirit that embodies the object.
Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
And that's well, I guess we can start to close
with that because the thing about the chair. Now, the
thing about the chair, if you have an intimate, using
the one and only mis Revus's framework, an intimate relationship
with the chair, then you'll know that the chair is
(01:06:07):
made up of wood, and the wood is from a
tree that has been around for eons and generations and
with how there was stood all of the trauma and
all of the beauty of life as we know it,
and it's still here. And therefore the tree itself has
the wisdom that we need to remember our oneness with
the cells and the land and the cosmos and everything else.
(01:06:30):
But if you're so fast, you forget about your relationship
with the tree, with the self, with nature.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
If you're so fast you forget, that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
That's why we stop to remember, and that's how we'll end,
and we stop to remember.
Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Thank you, Chris.
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Sacred Lessons is a production of My Heart's Michael through
our podcast network, Sacred Lessons Media and The Prince Grow.
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What are the cycles fathers passed down that sons are
left to yield. What if being a man was holding
it all together? I've been learning how to let go.
This is a space where to find the power to
heal and transform. I'm Mike Dela Rocha. Welcome to say
your lessons. Some of us grow up believing we take
(00:24):
too much space. Others grow up believing we're not allowed
to take up any space at all. Welcome to sacred lessons.
I'm Mike Dela Rocha. Today, my guest is someone who
has made it his life's mission to challenge that lie,
to remind us that we are all enough. Actor, author,
(00:45):
storyteller Chris Reeves. I first connected with Chris through his
book Brown Enough, which felt like someone had finally said
out loud that things so many of us grew up
whispering in our own heads. Brown enough? Am I Latino enough?
Am I enough? For this world? Chris's work digs deep.
(01:10):
He creates spaces of belonging and conversations that open the heart.
His art disrupts harmful notions of supremacy, challenges binary ways
of thinking, and invites us to reclaim our stories as
pathways to healing. Not just for ourselves before our communities.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Sweet, honored, received, grateful.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, I am so honored, Chris, because I've been wanting
to meet you through so many friends, mutual friends, but
even before the mutual friends, through your life and your artistry,
your book Brown Enough, even just the title, it was like,
(01:57):
it was like you went into my brain and wrote
the words I was too afraid to say. Grate, thanks,
and so one. I just want to thank you for
having the courage and the strength and the vulnerability to
speak truth that so many people, including myself, unfortunately the
society makes us feel. And when I got to learn
more about you through your bio and then watching your
(02:19):
podcasts and just your work, and then one of my
best friends, Fidel Rodriguez, Oh, I did not know that
was a connection, bro, That's that was the first connection.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Cool, Fidel was in my wedding. Fidel's the one that
teaches me all around and everything, and he was like, Mike,
I took this dude in with a thousand books to
make sure that young brown and black children knew that
they were worthy, that they were blessed, that they were loved.
(02:51):
And here it's a book society may say the opposite,
but fuck that read this and be proud of who
you are. So anyways, thank you for being a part
of this journey.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Thank you, Thank Fidel. I did not know that that
was the initial, you know, I thought it was I
know Tara and some others, but man, Fidel, Yeah is
a blessing. Probably too many has been to me and
to you it sounds like. So shout out to the
many people who support us and ancestors here and past
and yeah beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well for those that don't know your story, can you
just contextualize it even before getting to the book. But
how did you get to the seat that you're at
right now?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm a kid who didn't like myself. I don't know why.
I don't know what karmic dance that was in this life,
but I just like I didn't like who I was,
Like I was just always like. I didn't like my ears,
I didn't like my aesthetics, I didn't like my being,
and I knew there was a place in me where
I could enjoy who I was. And so my whole
life has been one of moving closer to this love
(04:01):
of self cliche, corny but also wildly profound. We've all
felt it in like really small moments and then we've
all felt that disconnect and probably more moments. And so
I'm this kid who's asking big questions of life. And
thank god the theater found me, because the theater brought
me so close to pretend and the ways we pretend
(04:22):
for good and for bad. And I was like, damn,
I'm good at pretending. I'm so good at it. I'm
so good at being someone else. I'm so good at
pretending not to be heard. I'm so good at this.
And so there was an intimacy with pretending that I
really fell in love with when I found the theater,
and the theater gave me my whole life. It introduced
(04:44):
me to art, it introduced me to John Leguizamo, which
really changed my life. You know. I saw a brown kid,
Colombian like half of me from Queens on a stage
performing to a Broadway house full of white people, and
I've never seen anything like it. I wasn't pretending to
be somebody else, he was being himself, and that was
like the crucial element that I didn't I couldn't comprehend then,
(05:07):
but I know that I went home at fourteen years old,
I took a shower and I started writing my own
one man show, you know, like in the shower, I
was like, I too can tell my story, which I think,
is this really crucial ingredient that alchemized something in me.
I have a story worth telling, and it's something I
would like all people to feel that they have. That's
(05:29):
the taking up space you talked about. I have a
story worth telling. I am worthy of taking up space.
I am worthy of my experience and sharing that with others,
and that there's medicine there. You know. We walked in
and I saw Eldridge Cleaver soul on Ice and like,
like wasamo, I remember where I was when I read
that I was renting a woman in some like a
(05:49):
room in some woman's house in college. And I opened
that book and I finished it. I finished it that night,
and this person was telling his experience and I saw
the whole world. So there's like all these little moments
where that's my life. My life is one of these
moments where I know that I am worthy of taking
up space, and that has brought me closer to myself
(06:14):
and closer to this deep love of who I am
where I don't have to pretend anymore, because there's also
an exhaustion to pretending like it's very tiring, and I
don't want to be tired anymore. I have a beautiful
dharma teacher who said to me, tension is who you
think you are. Relaxation is who you are, and I
am in my phase of relaxation.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Wow, you said the intimacy of pretending, yeah, which probably
is the greatest definition I've ever heard of masculinity. And so,
since this is a conversation around healing and man in particular,
a lot of the mass I have worn in my
(06:56):
life in phases has been trying to pretend to be
someone I'm not based upon this ideal of this is
what a man is supposed to be, even though I
know in this this question of words, because we're we're
we're lovers of words. Yeah, And I even hate the
word man and woman in a lot of ways because
(07:17):
we are all of this and more and and and
pretending that we're not is the biggest lie I found
for myself. Were there are moments like you mentioned going
to Broadway and that was like a flashpoint where there
are other moments where you started to start to like alchemize,
like you said, you know what, this pretending is not
(07:38):
who I am. I need to be brave enough or
I need to figure out a way to be my
full authentic self.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, millions, I think I use the word intimacy m
crucially because it is far more important in our life
to be intimate with our life than just when we're
trying to, you know, make love or or have sex.
You know, like intimacy with your life. Be intimate with
(08:06):
why your stomach feels the way it does. You know
when you're not waking up in peace, you know when
you act in a fool, you know when you're pretending,
like you know when you're exhausted, and yet we do
it anyway. Be intimate with the question why do I
do with the thing I know is wrong for me?
But I do it anyway. And so I use this
(08:26):
word intimacy like really, it's not an accident, Like intimacy
is a big part of my life. I want to
be intimate with my life. That's what writing did for me,
That's what art has done for me. Like I come
up with a question, I don't really care about answers.
I care about asking a big fat question, And then
as real key says, maybe I can live myself into
an answer, but I gotta be intimate. I gotta know
(08:49):
what boils my blood, what turns me on, what pisses
me off, what scratches the itch, what makes the wound
even deeper, what turns the wound into a scar. And
so there's so much pretending, Like there's so much pretending
I have done in my life to be a man
(09:09):
around the intimacy of sex. And why am I doing
this right now? And I should go home. I'm tired.
I don't want to be, you know, flirting with this
person or why am I going here? Fomo all of this? Uh,
I think it's kind of non stop until you stop, right.
Ignorance is bliss until you've tasted bliss, and then the
rest is just ignorance.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Because there's something that forced you to stop.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I'm going to return to this word exhaustion always sort
of energized by life. So it's not like tired, like
I need to take a nap, I want to go
to bed. It's more an exhaustion of the mind. Meditation,
change my life. Meditation, Yeah, that's what did it. The
first time I actually got quiet, I could hear how
(09:59):
fucking loud it Sorry, can I do that? I could
hear how loud it was, and I thought, that is
so exhausting, the thousands of thoughts that say you should
do this, you should be this, you should go here,
no go here, that like just that role and when
you sit and you know, for me, my relationship to
(10:20):
sitting is like it's the first, one of the first
times that and actually making art the mind quiet and
I love the piece of that quietness. I think it's
so special. And that's where we are, That's where we are.
Like man, woman, they them this that enough, not enough
(10:41):
all at once. I think when you try to be
one thing, you're going to exhaust yourself. But when you
break the vessel and you try to be all things,
that's like a profound piece. Right.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
And so you mentioned a lot about questions. Yeah, what's
the driving question in this particular moment of your journey?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
That's a great that's a great question. What is my
question right now? Because I have asked a lot of
good questions and answered them, my question right now today
is what is if Tension is who we think we are,
and rest is who we are?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Where am I? Where are you?
Speaker 2 (11:20):
You know? I've done so much work, ma am I
to do list, knocked it out like, got it, got it,
got it. My Wikipedia page keeps growing, got it, got it,
got it. And still I'm unsatisfied. I will never be
satisfied because you can never reach a sustaining version of
happiness through consumption. I think consumption is directly tied to tension,
(11:44):
and it's directly tied to that. I'm not enoughness. I
gotta I gotta eat, I gotta consume. I need more,
I need more. I gotta accomplish this. I got to
accomplish this. And one day I'm gonna wake up and
I might miss my whole life. I might miss my
whole life because I was out here increasing my Wikipedia page.
And that's terrifying to me.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it was crazy because this morning I woke up
and went for a walk with my partner and this
idea of consumption, Wow, an exhaustion and a system of
capitalism that's all about consumption and competition.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
The machine.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
We feed the machine. And then the thing is the mindfulness.
The ability to be still allows you to be outside
the machine. And I started to think about, oh, I'm
going to interview Chris Brown. Enough and the key word
for me in your book is enough. And I was like,
what is wrong with you, Mike that you feel that
(12:47):
you have to buy something in order to feel worthy?
What is it that you go into debt buying things
you don't need? What gap within my own self? Am
I trying to fell in the wrong way? And we
had a very tenuous conversation because I got defensive rather
than just sitting still and listening and being like, you're right,
(13:08):
You're trying to mirror back to me that I am enough.
We don't need to consume all this stuff, and in fact,
the consumption makes you more exhausted, Like you just said,
with all these young people and people that have been
touched by your story through various platforms, various artistry, book podcasts, acting,
(13:29):
what do you see and what do you tell these
folks that are feeling overwhelmed, over consumed, exhausted, tired? What
is your message for them for I.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Think it starts with stopping. Yeah, Like it starts with
that word intimacy, And we can't feel all that while
we're stuck in the in the in the undertow, like
we come up for air and we get hit again
with the wave we get hit again with the wave,
like we need to be able to stop. You need
to be to step outside of the machine and see
the machine, like that's crucial. And you talk about masculinity,
(14:06):
like consumption is directly time to masculinity because because men
are takers or also what's that Ishmael, you know that
book leavers and takers. That's how smile separates the world.
There are levers and there are takers, and the takers
have caused so much harm. And there is the taking
of We take resources from the land, We take things
(14:28):
from people until they and if we think if they
can't give us anything because they were there for us
to take, like we're always at the center of our lives.
We take, we take, consume, consume if all the things
we were meant to consume were actually meant to fill us,
don't you think you would be full by now? We're
not full? And so we need to be able to
(14:48):
stop in order to see what high do I get
from this? How does this sustain me for a little bit?
How does this make me feel good? Oh? That's why
I keep flirting with all these people because I really
don't have any self worth. I need them to smile
at me. I need them to make me feel good
(15:09):
because I really can't give that to myself. That's wild,
and I don't need to beat myself up about it.
But like I'm intimate with the idea that like, oh,
I can't give this to myself, I need it from
other people. That's also a version of consumption. And like
you said, we have been This is an uphill battle, y'all.
We have been trained to consume. It's in the stock
(15:32):
market needs you to be a consumer, like the world
needs you to buy shit, both physically and spiritually. Right,
because like you need to be better. You should take
this workshop, you need to be healthier, drink that juice, actually,
take this supplement. You just gotta stop. If tension is
(15:57):
who we think we are, then relaxation is there's a letting.
Oh I'm going to stop for one second. Maybe that
one second turns into two. I don't need another supplement.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
He's so deep, bro, You're dropping so many gems right now.
I can't even I'm not going a roller coaster. But
the biggest jam right now when you mentioned that book Ishmael.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh, it's great. Huh.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
My father's name was Ishmael. Really is Ishmael. And when
you said that, it was as if my dad was
telling me. The lesson that he taught me and his
death in his passing was he never stopped.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
He never stopped there you go. And so many of
us men feel like we can't afford to stop, and
that's what's leading to unhealthy practices, harmful stuff to ourselves
and others, and just you know, dying prematurely, frank, and
so what a powerful thing. Just breathe, just stop, just breathe,
(17:07):
Just be still, listen to your true inner voice. What
is really your ache? What is really your purpose?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Here?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
With brown Enough in particular, I felt like it was,
you know, because my spiritual practices were reflections of each
other in my cash right, But it's almost like it
was a love letter to you as a way to
have a love letter to everybody else. What was the
motivation for that art form, that book?
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Many other people who Thank god I was able to
listen to the call. I think our job as artists,
but not as artists, I'm sorry, as people like I
think everybody is an artist creating something. I do see
the world through a very artistic lens because I think
being an artist, especially now more than ever. If artists
weren't important, dictators, wouldn't you know, they wouldn't be some
(18:03):
of the first people a dictator wanted to kill or silence.
And what world are we living in? Even in this country.
I will take away your books, I will take away
your money for art. I will take away your voice
and your identity and so off my artists. Pedagogy platform
my life speaking truth. Usef Kumunyaka, who's like a mentor
(18:27):
of mine, says, your only job is to remain open.
I like that. That's your only job. You got to
stay open. And then when the call comes, you need
to be able to receive it. And if you're too
busy do another shit, you ain't going to receive it.
You won't be able to hear the call and respond
to the call. And so thank god I was able
to hear the call. I wrote a play about the
(18:50):
Dominican man James Mom was based on that play did well.
A scene from that play got in the New York
Times about dating white women. That went well. And all
these people reached out to me and they said, do
you have a book, And I said, I do not
have a book, and then one agent said, you do,
and she helped me. She booked, dueled me. You know,
it's like she helped me find my baby and bring
(19:12):
my baby into the world, and she found sort of
the themes in which I think and move through the world.
And that led to someone else who helped me, and
two beautiful editors, and so really it was just listening,
and I think it is one of my best gifts.
I am good at hearing the call, like I will
go to the call for better or for worse. I
(19:33):
will always go to the call. I care less about
even the finale or the how like I will take
the next step, and I will take the next step,
and that's it. I kept taking the steps, and then
all of a sudden the book was out and I
don't think I even knew, like it's I'm very proud
of this. It's curriculum in high schools around the country
(19:54):
right now. I did not write this for a high schooler,
like or I didn't write it for young me. I
don't know. I'm just kind of I'm in the flow.
I'm in the flow. I'm thinking, oh my god, I'm
in Mexico having a fight with my partner and I'm thinking, oh,
you know, like it's just all happening. I'm in I'm
in it, I'm intimate with it. Only now can I
(20:15):
look back and say, I think I did something, But.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Who taught you this jump in the net will appear? This?
For me sitting here, it's almost like an unshakable faith
that if I listen, if I'm in alignment, I don't
need to know the outcome, the result.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
I just have to be in that. Well, where did
that come from? That's a good question. I'll say one
part my parents. My parents really did not come from
an easy life as children. And my dad is the
OG manifesto. Like before anyone ever said vision board in
(20:56):
my father's office was the vision board. It was house Miami,
it was some boat, it was I mean, he would
never call it a vision board. He just had it
pinned up on the wall in the office vision board,
like you know. And you can't just you can't just
be like it's gonna you gotta They busted the ass.
They worked. They worked a nine to five and a
(21:18):
seven to three am. That's work. That's a lot of work.
I mean, like I didn't see them for like a
year and a half. My sister raised me, you know,
So I come from a lineage of hard work and belief.
This this manifesting belief, and and so I think part
(21:39):
of it is that right, they just kept they just
kept going. They just keep going. And then I don't know,
I found I found the dharma at some point in
my life. I like believing in in a god or
goddesses and many gods and uh and spirits and ancestors.
(22:01):
I like that stuff. It makes me feel more whole
and closer than myself. It's not for everybody, and that's okay.
But for me, it has given me. It has grounded
me in moments of fear, It has reminded It has
not broken me when I could have been broken. It
has reminded me of my enoughness in a world that
(22:23):
constantly tries to tell you you are not enough. And
it let me keep walking towards the net. And so
that's it. I got lucky. There's a level of luck
in this life. I think we know that we all
know people who don't have the luck, and that's their karmic.
(22:44):
I do believe we've been like everybody's mother and father
a thousand times. We like doing the dance I like
what the Buddha says, You've been here as many times
as it takes a hawk to wipe away the tip
of a mountain with a scarf. It's like a lot
of times. And so whatever it is in this dance,
I can still hear the call, and that call and
(23:05):
that faith in that spirit has allowed me to just
walk towards the net. And there are days where you're like, no,
this is whack. I don't want to walk towards the net.
I'd rather like, go get a job. I'd rather just
do something that's not so like it'll work out.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
So let me ask you this. The definition I've heard
of luck is preparation meets opportunity. Do you agree with
that definition?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yes? And and no?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Tell me more.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Preparation meets opportunity in the karmic sense. We prepared many
many lives. So sure, yeah, preparation meets opportunity. Yes, in
the reality of this world, right here, right now. I
don't ever want to spiritually bypass anything like I don't
(24:01):
want to say that someone born in a country that
is being having genocide committed as preparation meets opportunity. I
don't want to say that the little girl who has
to leave her homeland as preparation meets opportunity. And so
(24:24):
it's a yes and and a no. And it may
be in a shore and a definitely not. And that's
fucked up and that's sweet, and it's all of it.
And I don't say that to like, I don't make
anyone sad, but I also don't not want you to
not be sad. Like enjoy your Trader Joe's and know
that like someone would love a grocery store all at
(24:47):
the same time, doesn't make it. It's just it's just the
fullness of how we can move through the world. We
can really have more of an appreciation for what's here.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Yeah, and what do you share? First off, thank you
for that beautiful, truthful answer. You know, we live in
the belly of consumption, exhaustion capitalism that's feeding the dominant
global culture, which is one that wants us to numb ourselves.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
So we don't consumption, So we take lives. That's what
I was going to what take land, We take lives?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But what are the practices or ways that you've found
effective of trying to I don't want to say convinced,
but expand the possibility for those around you to consider
what you just said, that this lifestyle is a part
of folks in different parts of the world not too
(25:57):
far from us, not being able to live their full
authentic styles because a bomb might be dropping on them
or they might have been stolen from their families. Like,
have you found ways to get folks to consider their
connection to others that they may not know?
Speaker 2 (26:19):
I don't think it's our job to I s that
age old like be the light and if someone wants
a flame, they will come find you, or they will
be like, oh, it's nice to be light. Maybe I
can be light. We can share, but we don't teach,
(26:43):
you know, we can share and live out of practice,
but maybe not preach. I think there's like a fine line, right,
Someone's only gonna wake up when they want to wake up.
You know, you got the homie who's like keeps dating
the same person, Like what the fuck's wrong with that dude,
And it's like we're just gonna keep touching the hot
(27:05):
stove until we're like, god, it hurts so much and
so first, I don't think it's like we're all on
our path. You know, we wake up. When we wake up,
we stop stubbing our toe when we're actually ready to
stop stubbing our toe. I've had the fortune of spending
time in you know, AA circles and addiction circles, and
(27:26):
I think it's really beautiful to hear someone say I
know it was wrong for me, but I did it anyway.
That's profound. I know it's bad for me, and I
kept doing it anyway. And then one day they said, whoa,
it's bad for me. I don't want to do it.
(27:47):
You cannot make someone get there. They got to get there,
They got to hear the call. They gotta stop stopping.
And so how can people realize how wild it is
this world that we all cause harm right, Like I'm
drinking plastic bottles harmful. It ain't your fault, it ain't
(28:10):
my faults. What it is we got a lot of
plastic Like, uh, we have to stop and we have
to feel it. And I gotta pick this water bottle up,
and I say, and I gotta say, damn. Actually, when
I walked in here, I took another one of these
and instead of walking back outside because my lazy ass
was tired from a long day and getting that first
(28:32):
bottle I opened, I decided to start drinking this one.
And I gotta admit that, and I gotta say, oh,
I talk all this shit about taking care of the
land and this like that, and I want to be
a good, you know person. I couldn't just walk back
and get my original bottle. Interesting, and I gotta meet that,
(28:55):
and I gotta be intimate that, and I gotta hope
the next time I will be president intimate enough to
take six steps to get the first bottle of water
I opened. Even better, I could say I sat in
my car when I parked here, and I said, I
have a reusable water bottle and I and I know
they're going to give me water, and I chose to
leave the reusable water bottle inside. Intimate. I think that's
(29:19):
how you do it.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, what so, yes, and what's coming up for me
is like if my primo, who's driving through LA as
we speak, says, oh, I listened to this podcast, and yeah,
that makes all sense, Mike. But I have to work
(29:43):
my ass off. I have no time to think about anything,
so just providing for my family and yes, like I agree,
Like I have to be that person that I'm hopeful
folks will consider. And I'm not perfect by any fucking
stretch of imagination, but trying to just show alternative ways
(30:06):
of being, alternaive ways of thinking, making the connection between
that thought and my action is contributing to land theft
or not, pollution or not. But what do you tell
those those folks like my cousins stuff be like, I can't.
I don't have time for that. I can't do that.
I gotta keep working, I got to keep consuming. I
wish I could be able to take some time to
(30:27):
be present, but I can't. Obviously, like you said, there's
a thin line between teaching, preaching and just being. But
what do you share with those that are seriously considering
it or just like, no, not at all. Those are
not at all. You're like, all right, cool, well, when
when you touch the stove too much, you'll get it.
(30:48):
But for those that are like, yeah, I wish I
could be there, but I can't because of the conditions
of my life, I.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Think that's I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, which opens
up a whole other can of worms. Like some people
don't even have the freaking privilege in time to consider
another way, which is exactly what the machine wants of them. Also,
rans they want you tired, and they want you exhausted,
(31:15):
and they want you struggling for the next thing and
the next thing, and that's also fucked up, right, And
then again, it's not our job to like. If you
are the type of activist or a person who's getting
upset at other people not changing, you gotta look, you
gotta you gotta look in worm like you lost the
whole point. You know you lost. You missed, you missed it,
(31:36):
You went on the wrong exit. Live your life with
as much care and peace as you are willing to
live your life so that you go to bed in
peace and you wake up in peace. What we're really
seeking here is a calm and healthy immune and nervous system,
a body that isn't constantly anxious. And so if you
(31:59):
are Earth defender and you look at someone putting gas
in their car and it fucking boils your blood, you
should feel like worry about this vessel and trust that
like someone will see how you live. You don't fly, sick,
WHOA right, I'm gonna go get on this delta plane.
But someone will meet you and say, yo, you don't fly,
(32:21):
why don't you fly? And you'll tell them I don't
fly because of this. I believe in this. No, that's interesting,
and like maybe they'll still get on a plane. But maybe,
you know, now like Google flights has, like they show
you which one has the least emissions, maybe they'll buy
that one. WHOA, you did that? Or maybe when they
go car shopping next time, they'll be like, maybe I
(32:43):
should get electric. Maybe they'll just ask the question. They
might go back to gad you know. But like, it's
not our job to change people or to tell Primo,
uh go buy organic shit. It's our job to live
with as much intention as we have the courage to
live with. And I know how, you know, ignorance is
(33:05):
bliss until you taste it bliss. I know how I
would like to move through the world, and I would
like to go to bed knowing that I caused a
little less harm, or I left a place cleaner than
I found it. I saw that on a bathroom in Austin,
and it changed my life. I went into this public
bathroom and said, please leave this place cleaner than you
found it. And I thought, God, if I could leave
each place I walk into a little cleaner than I
(33:26):
found it, that's a nice world. I feel like I did.
I did good. But it's not my job to tell
you to leave it cleaner than you found it. Live
your life right, Like if I got a babysit you
and you and you and you. That's exhausting. I'm already tired.
Let me just leave it cleaner than I found it.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So let me ask you. You mentioned you know so
much of who I've become and am is because of,
you know, the environment I grew up and obviously in
the society, but my parents and you were talking about
your your parents having to work multiple jobs, and that
(34:07):
it was your sisters that really raised you. Was that
the seed of a lot of this way that you're
thinking about identity and self? Was it your sisters that
were like the primary models.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Sister or sister? Sorry? Uh?
Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
And queens? Is the model about I think about identity itself.
I come from the most diverse place in the world.
I don't say that like hyperbolically, like I actually was
raised in a place that has one hundred and thirty
eight spoken languages. I can maybe name twenty spoken languages,
like one hundred and thirty eight in one borough. That's
(34:48):
wild and so I only knowed an unbelievably beautiful wide
array of diversity and identities and diasporas and cultures and
hips and flavors and hairs, like I only know that,
and I know that they actually coexist quite beautifully, you know.
So like I my relationship to identity comes comes from that, uh,
(35:15):
you know, go over to this store to buy your hummus,
go here to get this, you know, and go to
the wall. They got to get that, like all on
one block. Yeah, So I think that's that's my identity
journey is growing up a kid in New York. New
York is already diverse, God blessed, and then uh and
then Queen's especially, and then being able because I couldn't
(35:38):
even answer the questions about why is my sister was
taught Spanish but I wasn't, you know, having a Dominican
grandmother who looked black, and then a Columbian grandmother who
don't who look white. You know, my mama's white passing.
I'm too young to know all that, you know. I'm
too young to even know hustle and hard work like that,
Like that's even a privilege to get to name and
to explore and to make art where I can interview
(36:01):
my parents and yeah, so so all of that was
just happening. And you know, again, right place, right time,
maybe it is your opportunity like I was. I was
born in that place at that time, during those years,
and it informed me enough to return to it, to
examine it, to be intimate with it, to have a
(36:22):
relationship with what was happening.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
M what was what was allowing you to be able
to return to it and have that conversation?
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I mean, that's right, I've done. You know. I
read James Baldwin, I read Eldridge Cleever, and I said, man,
I have not asked questions about my own life. It
was like as simple as that, sitting in my you know,
college housing, reading these books and thinking, I don't know,
I haven't really done the work. I haven't asked these
questions about myself. Why do I move through the world
(36:56):
in this way? Why do I like this? Why don't
I like this? Why does this person turn me? But
this person doesn't turn me on? And so I'm reading
these books and I'm asking these of myself. And then
part of that is making art. It's my vessel. It's
what I'm supposed to do. And in the making art,
I had the beautiful privilege and great parents who were
willing to let me ask them questions as people, not
(37:17):
as parents. Crucial, crucial, all adults. If you haven't met
your parents as people, meet them as people. You got
too many stories if you think about them as parents.
Everyone's just doing the best with what they can with
what they got, which goes back to the primo and
this and the recycling. Everybody's just doing the best with
what they got, right, And so I've had a lot
(37:37):
of art that let me ask these big questions about
my life and my history and my parents, and my sister,
and my friends, and my city and my block, you know,
my relationship to all of it.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Man, Meet your parents as people, Yeah, as a powerful,
powerful statement.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
Meet your lovers as people. Meet your friends is people,
everyone as people, because then you put them in the box.
You are friend. You know, we're like, we're really like
cave people. We think we're wise, but we're just like
we're just like in the cave. Like you a friend,
you love her, your partner, your wife, you know, you
know your husband.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
It's been interesting. I've been touring this book for the
last six months, so I've been very privileged to be
you know, thirty five cities across the country, and so simple, Chris,
that I've gone into these places without expectation and just
(38:39):
trying to learn and grow and see people as people
without the boxes or the labels, and where I consistently
hear because we live in this moment of manufactured division,
fear for a purpose, for consumt and all this other stuff.
(39:01):
But the one thing that's been consistently shared has been
I just don't want someone to judge me for whatever reason,
I just want to belong, which a lot of hearing
you in this conversation and reading your book, it's really
(39:24):
you know you said cavemen, but it's really just ancestry.
It's ancient. We're all hardwired for connection. We're all meant
to belong. These systems and structures are trying to separate.
About the end of the day, our spirit, our sad
wants to connect outside of the labels, outside of all
this other stuff. How far you want to get with it,
(39:44):
I want you to go because I'm in a masterclass.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
I don't stop right now, because if you really want
to go far out, I do want to go. Take me.
It's not it's not that the spirit wants to connect.
The spirit is exactly there's one spirit, right, and there's
no even vessel. It's just one thing, and so it
(40:10):
wants to return to one. Whereas the Dharma calls it emptiness.
If you are empty, you are everything. I was just
about to say, there is no you can't not be
your whole block, and you can't not be the starving
child in another country. Whereas tik not Ham says, call
me by my true name. I'm the young child just raped,
(40:32):
and I am also the pirate who has not yet
learned enough love to not rape. I am both. I
am the boy holding the gun and the child army,
and I am the man who gave him the gun,
and I am the bullets. Call me both. You know
there's nothing we're not. It's like the far out and
(40:54):
so you know, ah, all the spirit is connection. It's
not seeking, it is it. Yeah, And so if we
stopped enough hard as hell, like we have all felt it.
This is why falling in love is really cool. Falling
in love is an inkling to that feeling, because when
(41:14):
you fall in love, you know that first like head
over heels moment, all of a sudden life is perfect.
All those stories about how you fucked up or you
did this, you were late, or you don't have enough money,
and then your job ain't right, you didn't get that audition.
It doesn't mean anything because you felt like literally your
whole world, you are connected to everything. The traffic is perfect,
(41:37):
the weather's perfect, like everything is perfect, and then you
know it like fades and then you gotta like you
forget shit and you forget that your connection. Well, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
The crazy thing is like, because we started talking about
Octavia Butler and Bell Hooks and this feeling of falling
in love, it is just going is just remembering what
is the truth? That oneness right where the feeling, the excitement,
the joy, the newness. But then ball hook says, love though,
(42:11):
becomes an active choice because at some point the honeymoon
fades and everything fades. And what I'm what I'm what
I'm appreciative of this conversation is you're reminding me that
we're all falling into love. That's because what oneness is.
But then we have to choose that love all the
(42:33):
time because everything around us is not wanting us to
do that.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, but we don't do so it's it's so hard
you know Vedanta says love the cokecin like you love
your mother? Why are you being so selfish? Why should
your mother be more important than that? It's because you
put label on it, caveman mother love. But really you're saying,
this person did this for me and so I because
(42:58):
we do this dance. What have you done for me lately?
You give me, I give you a little. And then
with back to falling in love, you think you think
it's that person, like I'm in love with that person.
It's actually you. It's just a feeling inside of you, right,
they just reminded you for some whatever reason, that person
was a beautiful mirror that showed you what you are
capable of feeling on a consistent basis. But you think
(43:19):
it's them, and then so when you break up with them,
you go find someone else because you would like to
feel it again, and then you end up just constantly dating.
You're just like all we ever date is ourselves. Fun fact,
like you never really marry. You know that you're just
like constantly in relationship with yourself and you're you're you're
expanding or decreasing of yourself. Yeah, that's weird.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
How in love with yourself. Are you right now? Oh?
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Uh? How in love with myself? I feel yeah, in
this moment, I feel really in love with myself. I mean,
look where I am. I get to have these conversations,
and so I've where I need to be, yeah, and
(44:08):
where I would like to be. As you know, no,
self just connect. It's just it's just connection. It's just
like Hafiz has this poem with that sweet moon language,
and he says walking around with that sweet look in
the eye, saying what everyone else is thinking, love me,
(44:30):
But of course you don't say it out loud because
you would seem crazy. But why don't you be the
person with enough courage to say love me? And I
think the opposite end of that is saying love me,
but also I love you because they want to say it,
but they don't say it out loud, and so ah,
and so I also even care less about self love
now these days. Fun fact, I believe relationship precedes care.
(44:57):
If you develop a relationship to something, you can learn
how to care about it. And so I'm interested in
building really intimate, deep relationship, not just with people who
I have deemed worthy of it. I want it with
everyone and everything, including the plastic bottle. I got to
build a relationship to plastic in order to care about it.
(45:20):
I gotta build a relationship to the earth in order
to care about it. I have to build a relationship
to you in order to care about it. And then
the relationship building gets easier. So then we don't just
treat people like thank you for helping me and whatever,
get out of my way. Thank you, Barista, I see
you thirty times a day. I don't know your name. Like,
build a relationship, then maybe the care will come. I
(45:42):
think it will.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Yeah, well yeah. One of the main things I've been
trying to model is that the West wants us to
believe that healing is this solo journey. It's a self act.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Well yeah, because then you can buy more of to
help you heal.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
But it's a communal one like I can't heal. Like
even right now, I am becoming a better version of
myself being in relationship with you. But that wouldn't have
happened without the relationship. So therefore, my own remembering of
who we are is incumbent upon me developing a real
authentic relationship with everything around me, including the person I'm
(46:24):
sitting across from and that's what I that's the choice,
the moment by moment choice I'm trying to remember and
practice in my daily life because in this life everything's
like run, run, run, run, run, but it's like no pause,
and remember the relationship and every movement. All the books
that you said that change your life, those are authors
(46:46):
that were part of movements of relationships with multiple moment,
multiple people. What do you share? I guess just in this,
I mean, man, Chris, I feel like I'm I subscribe
to that master class, that Mastered Class series, and I
(47:07):
feel like I'm in the middle of the six episodes
all rolled into like forty minute conversation. But I was
going to ask, like, is there something at this particular
moment of where you are that has yet to be
shared or said?
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Oh? For sure, I thank God hopefully you know. If
I've said it all, then then peace, Well I gotta
be here. If I played the game and uncovered everything
and tasted it all and not for consumption purposes, but
if I am so clear and awake, yeah, that I
have no more stories to tell, which my stories are
based on the questions I'm asking about life. You know,
(47:47):
the art I'm making, right now that I'm really excited about.
I'll leave next week to do it. Is a piece
called The Punchline. It's a live show. I'm going to
put sixty minutes on the clock. I'm going to give
us all the last hour of our life and we're
all going to die together and see what needs to change.
And it's based on a series of ritual in sixty minutes.
And I cannot wait to begin this journey.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Where is this happening? How do I go? What's going on?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
The first workshop is at a place called City Theater,
and then we'll start We have many workshops and we'll
start touring it. It's called the Punchline because what's the punchline?
You know? The kid to any good joke is knowing
the punchline? And what's the punchline in your life? Like
you will die, but you think it might happen far off,
or you think being a vegan will help, you know.
My dad always used to say, don't go to bed angry.
(48:32):
I might get hit by a bus. Hey am I
get hit by a bus? You know? And when I
started working on this show, the stories I hear, the
things that have been coming on, I just got diagnosed
with this. I might have a year to live. I
might have less. I was walking with my wife and
a tree fell on her. No joke, like the story.
(48:53):
It's just precious. It's precious. You know what's crazy? Ready
for this one? I like to one. This one's fine.
The next time you spend time with someone, you died
with them, Like you literally gave someone, Like we're doing this,
you gave me sixty minutes of your life. Y'all gave
(49:16):
me sixty minutes of your life. Now you might be
really pissed about that. You might be like, oh my god,
I just gave that person sixteen minutes of my life,
or you mean like, thank god, I gave him sixty
minutes of my life. And so we're on our phone,
we can be like, oh my god, I gave this
sixty minutes of my life. I gave a scream plastered
(49:38):
to my tiny little hand, sixty minutes of my life.
What the fuck? What are you giving your life to?
I'm literally giving you bits of my fucking soul. My time.
It's finite, yo, it don't come back, don't freak out.
(50:01):
It's exciting I've given you. And so I want to
be in spaces where I say I am glad I
gave a little bit of my life to that. And
if I'm in a place where I'm like, I don't
think I want to give much of my life to this,
it's time to reevaluate. I just gave you my life.
(50:23):
So when you're with someone, I'm giving you my life.
You gave me your life. I think that will change
some relationships in your life real quick.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
I want to thank you for giving me a part
of your life in this com though.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, thank you, and thank you and thank you, thank
everyone out there.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah. So I want to ask you as you enter
into this evolving part of your journey with the workshop
and the tour. I know you thought about it, but
what is your punchline?
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I don't know. I just want to create a space.
And now I'm interested in art. So I used to
make art that is about spaces of belonging, and I
think that's I've succeeded. Good job, And now I'm interested
in art where people fall in love with each other.
That's what I'm interested in.
Speaker 1 (51:22):
And that's why the death piece is so important, because
that allows us to fall in love because we don't.
Life is precious because we don't know.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, because we forget to appreciate. Yeah, we forget to
appreciate because we think it's long and it might be short.
Well it is short, for sure, you know. So every
morning I wake up and I say, life and death
are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly, opportunity is lost.
(51:55):
Let us awaken, awaken, do not squ onto your life.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I'm just sitting in it now. It's a powerful, powerful,
powerful energy and powerful wisdom that you're channeling and modeling
and being and sharing to allow us to come back
(52:25):
to be in love with each other. That's a very honorable, courageous,
beautiful badass.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
But also it should be fun. Well, that's the other
thing it does. That's the other thing it should. It
should light you up to say, oh my god, I'm
giving my life to something, to someone, and so like,
let me actually enjoy it, right, Oh, that would be
cool too, that would be extra cool too. Let me
actually enjoy it. Let me enjoy the ship out of
(52:56):
the latte. Let me enjoy it. You know, it's not
a manufactured happiness. It's like a genuine joy. My homegirl,
she got hit by a car. She didn't die. She
almost died, and she said, for a short time, super short.
It's like kind of like falling in love. Almost dying
is like falling in love in that way it wakes
you up. And she said, for a short time, she
(53:18):
would have a shitty day, and she said, I'm so
grateful to be able to have a shitty day. And
then she said she forgot that, and so shitty days
became shitty days. But for a second she was like,
it's so cool, they're not gonna have a shitty day
because I almost stopped having days. And so it's just
(53:39):
that's why I think art exists. That's why I think
these conversations exist, and these books exist, and we can
hopefully surround our life with things that remind us of
life's preciousness and remind us to not waste our time.
Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah, before I go into we have a closing section
of the podcast, but I wanted to just ask, is
there anything that you feel compelled to share or say
that you haven't shared already?
Speaker 2 (54:15):
Anything I feel compelled to share or say, thank someone
for giving them, thank somebody for the life that they
(54:38):
gave you. And both ways, right, like I like this,
I do like that look at someone in your life
and say, wow, thank you for giving me a bit
of your life. I hope I have done it justice.
(55:00):
I will do the work to honor the time you
have given me. And if you change your mind and
you'd like to give your life somewhere else, I will
honor that.
Speaker 1 (55:13):
Yeah, beautiful, thank you.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (55:23):
So this part is called the Sacred Five. It's where
I ask five questions you answering a word or a sentence.
It's our opportunity for folks who are watching or listening
to take some practical things with them. Even though when
I read, listen, watch this, I'll have a notebook from
(55:45):
all the gems that have been consistently dropped in the
last sixteen minutes. So the first question, name three things
that make you feel safe, connected and whole.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Oh I had to say it. It's it's I'm gonna
just say it's honest. The Buddha, the dharma, and the
songa which is the ability to be peaceful community and
the teachings beautiful?
Speaker 1 (56:20):
What song, book or prayer brings you back to yourself?
Speaker 2 (56:25):
Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly,
opportunity is lost. Let us awaken, Awaken, do not squander
your life. You gotta say, do not squander your life
like this, do not squander your life. Then it sounds
like a far off spirit.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
It's funny you answered the question before even answered, which
I was gonna say.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
Why do you whisper like this?
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, tell you because it's the wind the spirit. Okay.
What's one daily ritual or practice that grounds you?
Speaker 2 (57:04):
My dog? My dog. I love my dog unconditionally. I
know it's possible to love everything like that. My dog
don't do shit for me, Like my dog doesn't like
clean up after my dog. Actually I clean up after it.
(57:24):
I pick its shit up it does something bad, I
captain it like it does nothing, and I'm out here
on my knees for it, and I love it unconditionally.
I know it's possible to love unconditionally.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
What's your dog's name?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
Lulu?
Speaker 1 (57:43):
Lulu. She's a legend, legend, legend, Lulu. Okay, what's one
small action listeners can take this week on their own
spiritual journey?
Speaker 2 (57:54):
Stop? Actually stop. If you're driving right now, pull over,
take a conscious breath. If you're on the highway, just
take the conscious breath, or get off the highway and
pull over. Stop. Stop rushing you like, don't have to
get where you think you're going so fast. Look around, Stop,
(58:18):
take a breath, look around, and then if you want
to keep going, keep going, but get in the habit
of taking small breath, small breaths and small moments to
dwell in the present moment, like stop. My grandma always
used to say, when you're in a rush, slow down. Yeah,
(58:42):
that's a hard one for me, but yes.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
All of us, all right, Chris, last one share a
one line blessing or quote that inspires you.
Speaker 2 (58:53):
Life and death are of supreme importance. Time passes swiftly,
opportunity is lost. Let us awaken, Awaken, do not squander
your life. Do you think you squandered your life?
Speaker 1 (59:23):
No, you didn't know. I always take this moment to
kind of reflect back, lessons, gifts, words that were shared
from the episode, and I'm literally lost for words, Chris.
(59:45):
As an artist, I'm lost for words. As a writer,
I'm lost for words. As a lover, I'm lost for
words because I don't think there are words to to
share the feeling that I have my bones to sit
(01:00:07):
across from someone who is living love manifested, who is
trying to shake us to remember our oneness that's dropping
bars from fucking ancient texts to the latest. There are
(01:00:30):
no words I honestly, I just want.
Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
To express my deepest affection, my deepest gratitude for choosing.
Speaker 1 (01:00:44):
To spend your time with us. I want to thank
your ancestors for pouring consistently pouring into you. Even now.
My life is more richer because of this conversation. And I,
like I said, I feel like I was in a
masterclass and I'm being able to be in a space
(01:01:09):
in a conversation where I could cry because I am
so full of fucking joy because I'm looking at someone
that's like reminding me, like, man, there's so much love
and joy and happiness, like I am you, you are me.
How beautiful is this life? And so I just just
(01:01:31):
thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
And if you thrive, I thrive. Yeah. I think that's
a big part.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Of it, exactly. And that's probably why I'm lost for
words and why I'm crying and why I'm happy and
why all this Because I know we're thriving, because you're thriving.
Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
So just thank you from the bottom of my heart. Honestly,
Usually in this conversation's a guest is crying. Now I'm crying.
That's the power of fucking Chris Reads. Thank you, thanks,
thank you. Any last parting words.
Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Oh uh, I'm so honored to be here. Yeah, I'm
grateful that I get to continue to be in space.
Is that our ancestors get to be here too, and
not duld but like they're in the space. Yeah, you
know they're vibrating, you're listening, not going to your life,
(01:02:32):
not going in your life. Yeah, you know, ancestors is
new for me. We might have to go, but like, uh,
ancestors is a new thing for me. Yeah, spiritual for
a long time, practicing for a long time in my ways,
but the word ancestor is fairly new. I was talking
(01:02:54):
to Curly about this actually because he's like he sster
locked in excepreme and it's a new thing. And so
actually putting their photos on my altar this is all
new for me, and praying to them and asking from them,
just trying to make room for the mathematics our of
(01:03:15):
our ancestry, which is long like the amount of things
that had to happen in order for us to be
here right now. I love, It's like my ultimate superpower
I want to walk into a place and I want
to feel all of time and everything that ever happened
in that one spot. And I think ancestors can help
(01:03:37):
me do that.
Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
In fact, that's the role of ancestors, one of the
many roles is exactly what you just said. Really, I mean,
my relationship with my dad is stronger now and is
passing than it was was alive.
Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Yeah, Well, and I've gotten to a point where I'm
not afraid of ghosts or ancestors. Is I'm only here
because of them? And if I believe in oneness and energy,
then why would I be afraid of my own self?
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
It is the same connection, correct, timeless immortal love. Treat
the ephemeral with as much respect as you treat the femeral. Correct.
Speaker 1 (01:04:19):
Yeah, and so that's my own dharma. Yeah, falling in
love with my ancestors. Because I'm doing so, I fall
in love with myself.
Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
I've been reading about uh you we can stop me
at any time, But I've been reading about anime. Not
the not the enema, not like the uh a beautiful
Japanese UH artwork, but uh, this chair has a spirit,
(01:04:52):
even the plastic, even the microphone and and and so
there are a bunch of practices is in treating and
honoring the spirit of the object. So again we're not
just taking, we're not just consumers. You chair, I use you. No,
you chair come from a long line of hands, embodies
(01:05:15):
and spirits that allow chair to be here. I get
to be in relationship with chair, not just use chair.
I get to be in relationship with microphone and history
of microphone and and things and labor and maybe abuse
and maybe harm and beauty and power of microphone. Right, So,
(01:05:35):
anima spirit in objects, and we often overlook objects, but
like you're constantly the spirit that embodies the object.
Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
And that's well, I guess we can start to close
with that because the thing about the chair. Now, the
thing about the chair, if you have an intimate, using
the one and only mis Revus's framework, an intimate relationship
with the chair, then you'll know that the chair is
(01:06:07):
made up of wood, and the wood is from a
tree that has been around for eons and generations and
with how there was stood all of the trauma and
all of the beauty of life as we know it,
and it's still here. And therefore the tree itself has
the wisdom that we need to remember our oneness with
the cells and the land and the cosmos and everything else.
(01:06:30):
But if you're so fast, you forget about your relationship
with the tree, with the self, with nature.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
If you're so fast you forget, that's it.
Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
That's why we stop to remember, and that's how we'll end,
and we stop to remember.
Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Thank you, Chris.
Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Sacred Lessons is a production of My Heart's Michael through
our podcast network, Sacred Lessons Media and The Prince Grow.
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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