January 20, 2026 • 33 mins
Damon Davis reflects on how stories shape meaning, memory, and responsibility. Working across film, music, visual art, and public installation, Davis explains why he lets the story dictate the medium and how creative practice begins with close attention to place, history, and lived experience.
Throughout the conversation, Davis discusses subjectivity and fairness in storytelling, the implications of local work entering national institutions, and why art often becomes one of the lasting records of a moment in time. He shares how process, patience, and care guide his decisions, and why resisting labels allows the work to remain honest and grounded in context.
Rather than offering prescriptions, Davis leaves us with a way of thinking about creative practice that values intention over posture, meaning over speed, and the long life of work made with care.
0:22 — Introduction and Background
2:21 — Letting the Story Dictate the Medium
2:54 — Early Life, Family, and Creative Roots
4:59 — Process, Symbols, and Public Monuments
7:53 — Local Stories Going National
8:20 — Ferguson and Making Whose Streets?
10:53 — The Smithsonian and Art as Historical Record
15:06 — Art as a Tool for Truth and Authenticity
15:52 — Grief, Tropes, and Telling Difficult Stories
17:04 — Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Power
18:30 — Teaching, Stillness, and Self-Awareness
20:23 — Accolades, Ego, and Staying Grounded
22:29 — Relationships and Creative Fuel
23:48 — Activism, Burnout, and Branding
25:40 — Fatigue, Relevance, and Stepping Away
26:36 — Creating an Opera
30:16 — The Three Phase Creative Vision
33:00 — Being Unapologetically Creative
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
And so sometimes I, I, I shy away from the title activist
because it's like a job for people.
Yes, I make the things that I care about and I care about
other people. I think about empathy and
passion and basically reflectingthe times that I live in.
Welcome to Unapologetically Creative, a podcast from the
(00:26):
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host Andrew Ram Sammy and in this series we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
(00:50):
resonates and endures. Damon Davis is an award-winning
post disciplinary artist, filmmaker and musician based in
St. Louis, MO.
His practice, part therapy, partsocial commentary, tackles
identity, power, mythology through a remarkable range of
media. He's gained national attention
(01:11):
with All Hands on Deck, a publicart installation during the
Ferguson uprising, and Co directed the Sundance feature
documentary Whose Streets. Damon is also a Saint Louis
graduate, a Ted Fellow, A fellowEmmy Award winner like myself,
and a 2020 VCFA Film MFA alumnixwho now teaches in our film
(01:32):
program. In today's episode, we're going
to dive deep into Damon's creative journey from Saint
Louis to international acclaim and explore how he's harnessed
multiple mediums to heal, challenge, and build community.
Damon Davis, welcome to an apologetically creative.
What's up? How you doing Andrew?
(01:53):
I love that tone. We need more of that Damon Davis
in the world. You know the radio voice.
That's it. That is the that is the radio
voice. Damon, your your work spans so
many different facets. Public installations, film,
music, illustration, and and so much more.
You're about to do an opera. You're recording an opera.
(02:16):
How do you decide which medium is best to convey a story?
I think it's it's dictated by the story.
So I think in mediums is like tools in a toolbox, right?
So a 3 minute song, they tell ittell all you need to know about
a story or it convey whatever message or emotion I'm trying to
(02:36):
get across to people. Sometimes you need a 2 hour
movie to do that. Sometimes you need an opera, you
know what I'm saying? Sometimes you just need one
image, right? So 1st I figure out what I want
to say, who I want to say it to,and I let the story dictate how
the message is conveyed. How did your early life in Saint
Louis with roots and activism and resilience influence you as
(03:00):
an artist and and how did I kindof create that social vision for
you that then turned into creativity?
Like I've been making stuff my whole life.
I just when most kids give up, Ijust didn't.
But I grew up around, you know, working class black people.
I was my, my, my parents were very aware of things.
They, they, I'm a generation late, I guess you would say.
(03:22):
So my parents grew up in the 50sand 60s.
That was when they were, you know, young, right?
My pops went to Vietnam. He was also a black militant.
My mom grew up in the Deep Southin Louisiana.
She came up to Saint Louis in the 60s and had my older
brothers and sisters. So I had kind of two generations
(03:42):
of people that had lived through, you know, what America
puts black people through, right?
And so, and, and nobody ever letme forget that.
You know, my dad had, he gave me, I had two sets of homework,
right? I had the homework from school
and I had his homework. And it was, you know, like
history and things of that nature, you know, and I just
(04:03):
talk about the things I care about.
And so sometimes I, I, I shy away from the title activist
because it's like a job for people.
It's just, I make the things that I care about and I care
about other people. I think about empathy and the
passion and, and, and basically reflecting the times that I live
in. I, I look at the world around
me. I had a really good art teacher
in high school. He's a, but he, he's, you know,
(04:24):
and everybody like that one person that he was that one
person for me. And he told me art only comes
from three places. So it either comes from the
world inside of you, the world around you, or the world you
can't see. These would be God, mythology
and things of that nature. And so that's what I'm looking
at. That's what I'm talking about.
(04:44):
And I'm trying to just tackle basically three things, myth,
power, and identity. And that's what I've learned
overwatching myself and, and going back and dissecting my own
work that I'm talking about those three things in one way or
another. Sometimes they they bumping into
each other but that's what I'm always thinking about.
In that manifestation, how does that turn into either image or
(05:04):
sculpture or sound like what arebecause we again, your your work
spans so many different platforms.
How do you choose what The thingis that then manifest into
whatever the that creative output becomes?
I think I give myself permissionto to do what I want to.
I just, I just start making sometimes and sometimes I don't
know exactly where it's going. And, and, and I, I, I, I
(05:29):
attributed to something like andChristianity, they talk about
the Holy Ghost. I think that's what genius is or
what creativity is. It jumps in and out of you.
So you just got to create moments in space through,
through different exercises, youknow, to allow that type of
force in you, right. So just an example.
I guess I was just working on a public, I still working on the
(05:51):
public monument called Pillars of the Valley to commemorate a
black neighborhood in Saint Louis.
That was displaced and gentrified early on in the whole
urban renewal renaissance back in the 50s, right?
So the first projects come from Saint Louis.
A lot of those in Saint Louis with Puerto Eico projects, a lot
of those people that lived in that neighborhood ended up in
(06:14):
those in those projects. They ended up out of North
County and stuff. But it but it was in the center
of the city where downtown SaintLouis is right now was a
primarily black neighborhood called Mill Creek Valley.
And so I'm looking at the stories of these people.
I'm looking at the circumstancesof why they left.
I'm looking at what's left behind.
And I'm also looking at the factthat people like me that grew
up, I grew up in East St. Louis, IL That's that's
(06:35):
different. So that's across the river.
But but for the lack of a betterword, I grew up in the Saint
Louis metropolitan area my wholelife.
And for me to be a black kid, like I told you, with parents
that were aware that knew about these things.
I didn't know anything about a whole neighborhood of people
that got moved out that look like me.
And so my agenda was to make sure that that don't happen no
more with any more kids, whetherblack or white, so that, you
(06:57):
know, that this place was occupied by a group of people
that did a lot to create the city that you that you live in.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just go by, I take those things like all of those factors
that I just said. Then I start to try to build out
symbols. What?
What when we talk about people being forgotten, forgotten
implies history. And that means time or time.
(07:19):
It implies time and that that's where history comes from.
So I start thinking about what symbols of time, the, the
universal symbol of time is a hourglass.
No matter where you go, no matter who you talk to, you
don't got to speak the same language.
Everybody knows what hourglass means, right?
So I tried to take that, break it down to its most common
denominator, you know, and then start to play with shapes and,
(07:39):
and play with the, the symbols you know.
So it's, it's, it's literally like when I find the story, I
think about what what I want to say.
And then I try to, I try to simplify it for myself and then
add layers as I go. Yeah.
As you know, I've, I've worked with the Black press and one of
the things that I've always saidwith about the Black press is
that when a local story goes national, the Black press loses
(08:01):
equity in that conversation. What inspired you to to do whose
streets and how did it feel to see it elevated into what became
a a national conversation and that national consciousness and
how important was it you for youto have equity in that
conversation? Yeah, I so I, I, I was, I went
(08:22):
out to Ferguson. I went out to Ferguson basically
as a another angry person that was tired of butter conditions
that we was in. I didn't go out there to make a
movie. I didn't go out there with a
camera. So so I went out there with
everybody else. And the thing that made me want
to make a movie and use the skills that I, I, I garnered
through working through film wasthe fact that that story got
(08:44):
taken and already elevated. So, so we watched it in real
time get elevated and we also watched the narrative get
shifted and and reshaped and edit it.
You know what I'm saying, to edit out the point of view of
the protester, why anybody wouldever be mad.
And that's a age-old tactic of power to and also isolate things
as though this is, this is a random thing happened.
(09:07):
It has nothing to do with hundreds of years before or it
has nothing to do what's coming after it, right?
It's it's a, it's a age-old tactic to kind of isolate people
and isolate the ideas and they and they pain.
So what? And also watching the these
these news outlets that are quote UN quote legitimate come
into where we live at right extract stories and then them do
(09:31):
it people that you thought you could trust watching them do it
and turn it into something else.So I wanted to make sure that
somebody from there, I told the story from the point of view of
the protesters, right? And I didn't do it alone.
I worked with my my friend and collaborates about Folian.
She was from out of town. Also Lucas, who was our DP, they
came in, but they weren't from there.
(09:53):
And they also thought it was important that somebody from
there told the story. So we agreed to to collaborate
on that. And then then we was rolling.
But I, I knew that if somebody that wouldn't and, and not like,
I feel like I didn't show. I was, I was a part of that
movement. As you know, as another
protester, I became kind of a cultural organizer because I was
(10:13):
the guy that could draw. So I was doing drawing the
Flyers. I was the one I've been rapping
my whole life so I could get people in venues to talk, you
know, using these skills that I built up.
I felt like it was that time forme to that I had a purpose with
it. And so then I started to use
those skills. But I knew that if we just let
somebody else tell the story, a whole chunk of it would be lost
(10:34):
to history. And that the the, the people
that had, I guess, caused the problem would be in control of
the narrative. So they could remove any empathy
for the, for, for, for, for the movement that had been built out
of what happened to Mike Brown and who and for the people that
wanted justice for. So your work has gone on to
(10:55):
become installed as a part of the Smithsonian collection, and
it's now archived as a part of America's kind of racial
narrative. When something gets moved to a
place like the Smithsonian, or something gets elevated to that
national level, you're so deeplytied to local and community.
(11:16):
How do you strike a balance between doing that work,
creating that work, and then ultimately that work ends up
going perhaps somewhere else where it's not resigning there
locally anymore? Yeah, yeah.
That's funny. You asked me that.
Nobody's ever talked to me aboutthat, right?
And so it was I, I had, I had doubts and trepidations about
(11:37):
letting that that piece of work or or multiple pieces with this
with Smithsonian, but but I had doubts about it.
And I talked to a lot of people around me and what ultimately I
felt like is the pros was that it goes to a museum by that
level, it will be taken care of an archive, right?
(11:59):
And it would also be a testamentto to the people where I come
from that that local community that did something and knowing
that that local community shouldshook up not only the nation,
but the world, right? The cons was that I don't
necessarily trust the structure that that place represents,
(12:19):
right? And I don't and, and I don't
necessarily I didn't want to I guess add to what it's not over,
right. So you think that because you
think that you just won something because it is not
history. And the way that we talk about
history in the way that these things unfold, especially now
with how fast things move with the Internet, is that you think
(12:41):
things are behind you and they are not right, right.
They, they actively happening. So I, I really struggle with
what I should do, what I should do with it because these these
works are kind of actively against with this or, or at
least the structure that allows this place to exist.
That doesn't mean that the people that work there believe
(13:02):
that. That doesn't mean.
So I when I talked to my father when he was still alive and I
talked to a bunch of friends andit was just like, this is yeah,
this for this community. But what, what just happened is
this is National History, right?This is this is the history of
this place. And it's people that come before
you and it's people that come after you, right?
And so outside of who you are and what you did, this thing is
(13:25):
a testament to that time. And that's the way art works,
right? So, so when you think about the
only reason we know about the Egyptians is because of the art
they left. The reason we know about the
Greeks is because of the art like, and artists are the
architects that the pots that's made the the the the language is
cut into stone. That's why we know about these
people and right. And so when we gone, that's what
like those things are important.And so I decided like, if it was
(13:48):
going to go anywhere, it should be somewhere where everybody
kids is going to be in the same place and people that's going to
be in the continuum of that struggle had access to see those
things. So they so they would know what
we've been through and so that they could, you know, use it for
whatever, whether it's to relateto it or whether they thinking
about other ways to fight the problem is still going on.
Hopefully it'll be gone. But you know, the chances for
(14:12):
that is slim just on just talking about where what the
problem is and where we sit at in it, you know.
Is the history of what happened in Ferguson a part of Ferguson?
Or is the history a part of Ferguson, a history of America?
I think it's definitely history of America.
I think that it's multiple Fergusons.
They happen over and over again,you know what I mean?
(14:33):
And back to like this ideology of like these things are
separate, isolated incidents. They not right, not you know
what I'm saying? It don't take much to see the
the correlation and, and and howthese things are basically in
the continuum that happen over and over again.
So I'm just, I'm just somebody that that's living through this
time. And I and I was in again, I was
(14:54):
in a place to and, and I, and I used what I had to to talk about
how I was feeling and what people around me was going
through. You know what I'm saying?
And in 1020, like it could be tomorrow, it'll be somebody else
doing the same thing, right? In whose streets?
You're capturing a lot of collective grief.
Yeah. How did that deepen your
relationship with your creative practice?
(15:15):
It let me know part is a very powerful tool.
Moving images is the is the mostpowerful sort of tool we got
right now, especially as, as youknow, people, people don't read
as much as they used to. It's like the main way that
people get information And when people are getting manipulated
and lied to and, and in in the age of the Internet and the age
(15:38):
of fake news and all that, it's really important to to make
authentic things right. So.
So looking back I might not haveknew the gravity of it then, but
the further out I get away from it, I understand the gravity of
what we did right? How do you balance the
authenticity of telling that story, but then also not falling
into the trap of the trope of grief always hitting the black
(16:00):
community? Yeah.
It's very hard not to talk aboutgrief with the with the with
what that story was right. So and so in certain that ain't
the best example of of not falling into a troll, but some
but the but or cliche, but cliches work because they true.
Like the reason the cliche worksis because you've been seen it
(16:22):
in real life over and over again, right.
So so in that case, I wasn't worried about, you know, the the
classic black creative. I don't want to fall into this
and I don't I wouldn't work. No, I just was going to tell the
story from what it was. And that was about grief and
that was about anger, right? But when we get into things
that's coming from that I'm making up, that's when that
conversation comes into play. Like how how authentic is this
(16:45):
to my own experience to make sure that I'm not just playing
into some story that even I havestarted to believe, you know
what I'm saying? But but in that and that
particular instance, it was about grief and it was about
pain and it was true to black people been going through that
for generations. So it was just for me to put a
put a mirror or put a put a light on that.
Your description of what you do is so interesting.
(17:08):
You describe your work as being part therapy, part social
commentary. How do you operate as a tool for
that kind of personal and communal healing without taking
necessarily a side? Yeah, or.
Are you taking a side? Yeah.
Like, I don't think that art or anything in life is a objective.
(17:31):
And I think we tell this lie over and over again.
So as the journalists tell this lie that they objective, when we
say objective, we're usually talking about one specific
person's lens, right? Yeah.
And whenever I tell it from my lens, then it's subjective,
right? But but who's, who in society
gets to say who's the default and who has been the default for
(17:51):
quite some time? We never call that into
question, right, Right. But whenever those people ain't
at the center, that's when they get, you know, they get nervous.
And now, now we need to talk about subjective and objective,
but everything is subjective. And I'm, I'm old enough to know
that I will be telling a lie if I, if I didn't say that.
So that ain't even a question tome.
I know that my stuff is subjective.
I can only tell it from my pointof view, but I want to be fair
(18:14):
about it. I do want to be fair about it.
I'm not trying to over or exaggerate certain things.
You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to be fair about it.
But that is, that is undeniable.And you cannot get around
subjectivity. That's a human thing, yeah.
So when you have that conversation and you're teaching
here at PCFA, we're here at our summer residency at Cal Arts,
(18:36):
how do you equip students and storytellers to engage with
social issues in a meaningful way?
I want people to be still. I think that's the best way to
put it. Be still for a second and then
ask yourself what is in front ofyou?
What do you, how does it make you feel and on on an honest
level? And then how do you sort of
(18:57):
bottle that feeling, right? And the bottle might be a song,
It might be, you know, like backto that back to that toolkit,
right? But it takes an incredible
amount of self-awareness. I said this to, to actually
another podcast I was on. It's it's basically me
tessellating between delusion and self-awareness, right?
(19:18):
And and high amounts of that, right.
And knowing when to turn which one on, right?
Yeah. And and knowing like knowing
when you are delusional, right? Like.
How do you know when? You're delusional.
I think it's like you take a step back and you look Yeah,
you. That's that's why be when I
might be contradicting myself, but the best way I can think of
is like you take a step back andit's objective as you can be
(19:40):
like, does this make sense to you outside of whatever emotion
you got going on? If you angry, right, look at it
when you're not angry, does it make sense?
Are you are you, are you being true to you?
Because once it's out there thatthat's how your feelings go,
right? Or do you care about that?
Maybe it's just about capturing that feeling in that moment,
right? That I think it's hard.
I'm not always on point with it,but I know that I've been trying
(20:03):
to exercise that lately, that I understand that part of what art
does is give hope and and provide faith.
That's delusion, right? It might be the most possible,
the most positive I guess way delusion can come about, but
that's what it is. Yeah, so let's double down on
that delusion. You were named a Ted Fellow
(20:25):
you've been recognizing as a newvoice in independent film.
Just when I was coming back froma residency or something, I turn
on CBS Sunday Morning or CBS Saturday Morning and there you
are. How have these accolades shaped
your approach? Or have they not have they draw
it have a fester into more delusion to you as a as an
(20:47):
artist? Or what does that all mean when
when you're getting so much attention for your work?
Yeah, I like to think that it doesn't do that doesn't fester,
you know what I'm saying? But I'm also a human being with
an ego that's not, you know, I'mnot going to lie to myself about
that. But I like, I know that where I
live at, that doesn't matter. And I think because of the
people I'm around and the place that I'm at, like, and I, and I
(21:08):
just don't, I'm always thinking about the next thing I'm going
to do. And I, and I feel like because
I'm, I'm, I'm creating because Ilove it.
Not, not to get those accolades,not to, you know what I'm
saying? I'm only I'm, I'm one of the few
lucky people that can say that this is my my profession, right?
So it's, it's, it's kind of balancing that.
But but past paying my regular bills, I'm not looking for all
(21:30):
kind of like I think too much money going to bring problems.
I mean, I've watched it happen before, right?
So it's usually about me expressing myself and basically
art is the byproduct of me living life.
So, so if it starts to get in the way of me living life, like
I'm walking around and it's changing the way I, I live and I
move around, then I'm, I'm failing at what my calling is,
(21:51):
right. So I, I, I don't have that, that
problem of the ego. I think, I think it might be in
the opposite direction where I'msuper self-conscious.
Yeah. And I think that's the negative
things like I, I get super self-conscious.
I don't want to let people down and and and it honestly, when
you step back, nobody cares, right, Like not, not in a
(22:11):
positive way, like not out like,like only when you when you
start thinking you big, you justbigger than you are people
worrying about their self all right, and it's a glimpse.
They like, they look at something, they like it, they
keep moving, right, right. But people are not obsessed with
you, right? And they not obsessed with me.
And as long as I can keep that, then I'll be all right, you
know? Well, look, I appreciate the
fact that the last time I was inSaint Louis, which was late last
(22:32):
year, and I and I said, hey, I'mgoing to be in town, let's go
have a coffee. And you're like, absolutely.
Yeah. How important is it to remain
engaged with people that you've met along the way that you know,
as you continue to build your body of work and that portfolio
of folks that are within your life?
That when people like me reach out and say, hey, let's go have
some coffee. And not just because I'm the
(22:53):
president of the college or justin a very kind of genuine way to
just to take that time and just to pause for a second and just
say, I don't know why Andrew's talking to me or why he wants to
reach out to me, but let's go have coffee.
Like how do you stay grounded like that?
Because one, the work is made out of relation.
Like relationships are the most important thing in life to me,
right? Because they supersede money.
(23:16):
Like you don't need money if you've got relationships and
stuff like that, right? So, and also the work for, for
lack of a better phrase, the work is made of people.
The work is made of my experience with people.
So I so I try not to and I'm, I'm, I'm pretty introverted,
right? So, so I got to balance it, but
I, but I get inspired by having conversations with people like
(23:37):
you and everybody else include, I don't know what you're going
to say to me and it might spark something else.
So like the, the interactions I have with people or the building
blocks or what I make anyway. So it's super important to me.
So balancing all of that could probably be really taxing,
right, between the activism and the artistry, like how do you
sustain your well-being and amidall of this political and
(23:57):
creative work and then all the that's going on in the world.
Right now, yeah, yeah, I ain't really figured that out, you
know what I'm saying? I I try to stay active.
I try to. And again, it's like, why not?
It's not activism to me. It's just what I'm thinking
about. So the best thing is, is like,
sometimes I got to mitigate how much of that I take in, right?
(24:19):
How much of what's going on in the world and balancing you
don't want to be out of. I don't want to choose to be
naive or choose to run from the realities of the world, but I
also need to protect my own mental and emotional well-being,
right? Sometimes it's like you unplug
and stuff like that. But I don't think that I'm
(24:40):
balancing activism. I think that I'm just making
work and that's what I care about.
And it's funny that in this world or in this time period,
activism has become a brand, right?
It's a brand of thing. But we but if we were, if I was
Bob Marley, you wouldn't be asking me about why you such an
activist if I was needing some more like that was just what
they was doing. And then one day people stop
talking about reality, right? They got deeper and deeper into
(25:03):
capitalism. They got deeper and deeper into,
let's just talk about money and for, you know, like, like the,
the, the culture, the cultural icons started to move further
and further, closer to power. And at, and at one point
everybody looked up to the people that were speaking for
regular people. And, and so I grew up listening
to those people and looking at those people.
(25:23):
So I never once thought about itas activism.
And I and I and I, I try not to,no matter how much, you know, I
even in this interview, I, you know, I'm, I'm very adverse to
taking that, taking on that title, right?
Because I'm trying not to ever get, you know, just don't buy
your own BS, right? Yeah, yeah, basically.
But don't you at any point get tired?
Don't you just get emotionally exhausted?
(25:45):
And especially you say you're anintrovert, so even extroverts
get tired too. I'm one of those.
What do you do? I'm always tired, you know what
I'm saying? And and sometimes I like this
just my lot in life. And then sometimes I'd like back
to on put like sometimes people don't see me for for, for for a
month, two months, you know whatI'm saying?
And not like my family. They talk to me, but I'm not
(26:06):
rushing to stay relevant. Like you know how how how I
would works and the Internet andlike you got to put up every
day. Right every I mean posting.
I'm not worried about that. I'm, I'd rather make things that
mean something to me and then put it out when it's ready, then
be out here just trying to get people to look just to make sure
I, they don't forget about me. Sometimes it's OK to be
forgotten about because you can reassess the world and you can
be a normal human being. So like, but as far as being
(26:29):
tired, I feel like I'm always tired.
And I thought that was just a part of the the aging process.
So some of this new work is now taking you down the path of an
opera. Yeah, yes.
And that was where did that comefrom?
Yeah, that's one of the one of the more autobiographical
pieces, but. Tell us about it so.
I went into about more than 10 years.
(26:51):
We looking at like 10, almost 15years ago.
I went down a deep sunrise hole like, and I don't know if it
whoever listens or sunrise is a legendary jazz musician and he
is a one-of-a-kind. You know, if you, if you ever
seen somebody that is truly weird and one-of-a-kind, you
should, if you haven't, you should look him up, right?
And I remember like, and, and I literally had a dream and then I
(27:13):
woke up and wrote it down right.And the, my girlfriend at the
time, she can verify all of thisbecause I woke up, I wrote it
down. And then the next day after I
did that, I started to see parallels in the story with
music that I was working on. This is at this point, music is
my main thing, right? You know what I'm saying?
Like everybody else is going to get out of here rapping.
Like at least my friends and thepeople that's around me.
(27:35):
That was the thing. And I wouldn't go into the NBAI
learned that early, but I could do this, right?
And so since that moment, for probably the past decade, I've
just been slowly piercing the story together through music,
right? And I call it an opera.
It's based in black music. It's, it's, it's rap, it's R&B,
it's jazz, it's soul, it, it's black American Music over the
(27:56):
last 150 years. But when I started looking to
the ending, and at this point, nobody, I didn't, there was no
examples of, of people using thelanguage of opera or the idea of
opera with the music that I'm talking the genres that I'm
talking about. So 1 was I just hadn't, I wanted
to see it and it wasn't in the world yet, right?
That's one thing. But also I, when I, when I
(28:17):
looked it up, the nobody had a clear definition of what opera
was. And the only thing that was
clear is the story told, the music.
And then when I start to look atwhat I was already doing that
that's a concept album, right? And so I just started
continuously building on the, I just started continuously
building on this concept album, right?
And so after a while in the pandemic, I guess it was still
(28:39):
sci-fi, you know what I'm saying?
No, people, people thought we would never coming outside
again, right? So I applied for a grant through
Opera America. And they was like, yeah, this
might be the future of this whole situation, people living
listening to opera. And it was new.
It was fresh, you know what I'm saying?
It was. And it was based in the now it
was music of of now, you know what I'm saying?
And I got that was the first grant.
(29:01):
And since then it, you know, it kind of gave me the confidence
to keep talking to people about it and it allowed us to record
almost all of it. We almost finished now, you
know, and I got a couple other grants and we just kept building
right. And it and it, and last March
got to play. We got to play part of it at
Carnegie Hall. And it, and it ended with a
standing ovation. People don't know who I am.
(29:23):
They don't know who we are. We ain't from New York.
Well, you know what I'm saying? I'm from Saint Louis, right?
And so, and this is not my world.
This is clearly not classical music.
They ask people that come to seeclassical music see all the
time, but some about it got to them, you know what I'm saying?
So it so that was even more of an affirmation to just know that
all of this hard work, you know,whether they like it or not, you
(29:44):
could respect what what what we was doing, right.
And, and yeah, we just been, I've just been building it with,
with, with my collaborator, collaborators slowly but surely,
you know, and now it's a now it's to the point like I want to
see it finished. Like I know what it is.
But like it, it's like it's, it's grown past the older I get.
(30:05):
My, I used to just make, I want to get stuff out.
I was really anxious. But now I want to make sure it's
right because I know once it's out of my hands, it's done
right. Yeah.
And what does that finished product look like for you?
What I want to do is in my my heart of hearts is a three phase
thing. So first it starts with the
recorded, I guess, episodic podcast, 8 episodes, episodic
(30:26):
storytelling. What but music as the vehicle to
tell the story about a kid that can astral project in his sleep,
right. He he he basically the story of
using animation. I mean, using imagination to
escape from from whatever traumaor current circumstances you
did. And I think that I'm it's based
(30:47):
on me. I think that I've done that
throughout my life. If you knew where I come from,
the people I come from and to bewhere I am today, it and it was
my imagination. Yeah, I like that took me there.
And so this is a metaphor for that.
So first it starts with that podcast.
Second is full fledge, you know,whatever that looks like a, a
stage opera, you know, costumes,people go, you know, you
watching it in, in real time andwatching it play out.
(31:10):
And then I, the the last form isa is a obviously I'm teaching
the PIM program. I love movies, right?
So I want to see it as a movie, right?
And it may be a, I'm thinking animated because of a child
protagonist, but I want to see it.
And that's my final form becauseI can put it all together.
I can put the visuals together with the sound, with the
feeling, with the story, and it can live there.
So those three, those, those arethose are the three phases.
(31:33):
I'm still in phase one. Wow.
Yeah. What does it mean to you to be
unapologetically creative? Yeah, I really think about
apologizing to nobody and most things.
You know what I'm saying? Not not, you know when I'm
wrong, I'm wrong. I can say that sure.
It's like I think we and the time we, we, we sit in, I think
we, we, we, we catch on the words and the zeitgeist.
(31:55):
And I think we, we, we brand things.
And I think unapologetic has become a word that I think
people think they need to say. But I don't think you need to
say it. You don't until there's a moment
where somebody asked for an apology.
We don't got to say nothing about being apologetic.
I think it's just being authentically you, right?
And being being you for no otherreason than being you and, and,
(32:21):
and the creativity. I think like you're walking can
be creativity, right? It is.
It's just about adaptability andsurvival in many cases and
depending on who you are, where you come from.
But I think like being you without worrying about offending
people or outwardly trying to offend.
(32:41):
But you know, it's just like you're not worried about other
people. You worried like, like you're
being you with a, with a care freeness and a calmness and a,
and a centeredness and a resolveto, to live life the way you
want to. And, and hopefully that comes
across in what I'm doing. For Damon, creativity is not a
brand or a posture. It is a way of moving through
(33:04):
the world honestly, shaped by lived experience and close
attention to what is happening around him.
And rather than offering answers, Damon leaves us with a
way of thinking about creative work that values process and
time. It's an approach grounded in
honesty, restraint, and the belief that work made with care
(33:25):
will carry its meaning forward long after the moment has
passed. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Creative. Be sure to follow the show and
stay tuned for more insightful conversations in the episodes
ahead. To learn more about the Vermont
College of Fine Arts, visit vcfa.edu.
And so sometimes I, I, I shy away from the title activist
because it's like a job for people.
Yes, I make the things that I care about and I care about
other people. I think about empathy and
passion and basically reflectingthe times that I live in.
Welcome to Unapologetically Creative, a podcast from the
(00:26):
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host Andrew Ram Sammy and in this series we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
(00:50):
resonates and endures. Damon Davis is an award-winning
post disciplinary artist, filmmaker and musician based in
St. Louis, MO.
His practice, part therapy, partsocial commentary, tackles
identity, power, mythology through a remarkable range of
media. He's gained national attention
(01:11):
with All Hands on Deck, a publicart installation during the
Ferguson uprising, and Co directed the Sundance feature
documentary Whose Streets. Damon is also a Saint Louis
graduate, a Ted Fellow, A fellowEmmy Award winner like myself,
and a 2020 VCFA Film MFA alumnixwho now teaches in our film
(01:32):
program. In today's episode, we're going
to dive deep into Damon's creative journey from Saint
Louis to international acclaim and explore how he's harnessed
multiple mediums to heal, challenge, and build community.
Damon Davis, welcome to an apologetically creative.
What's up? How you doing Andrew?
(01:53):
I love that tone. We need more of that Damon Davis
in the world. You know the radio voice.
That's it. That is the that is the radio
voice. Damon, your your work spans so
many different facets. Public installations, film,
music, illustration, and and so much more.
You're about to do an opera. You're recording an opera.
(02:16):
How do you decide which medium is best to convey a story?
I think it's it's dictated by the story.
So I think in mediums is like tools in a toolbox, right?
So a 3 minute song, they tell ittell all you need to know about
a story or it convey whatever message or emotion I'm trying to
(02:36):
get across to people. Sometimes you need a 2 hour
movie to do that. Sometimes you need an opera, you
know what I'm saying? Sometimes you just need one
image, right? So 1st I figure out what I want
to say, who I want to say it to,and I let the story dictate how
the message is conveyed. How did your early life in Saint
Louis with roots and activism and resilience influence you as
(03:00):
an artist and and how did I kindof create that social vision for
you that then turned into creativity?
Like I've been making stuff my whole life.
I just when most kids give up, Ijust didn't.
But I grew up around, you know, working class black people.
I was my, my, my parents were very aware of things.
They, they, I'm a generation late, I guess you would say.
(03:22):
So my parents grew up in the 50sand 60s.
That was when they were, you know, young, right?
My pops went to Vietnam. He was also a black militant.
My mom grew up in the Deep Southin Louisiana.
She came up to Saint Louis in the 60s and had my older
brothers and sisters. So I had kind of two generations
(03:42):
of people that had lived through, you know, what America
puts black people through, right?
And so, and, and nobody ever letme forget that.
You know, my dad had, he gave me, I had two sets of homework,
right? I had the homework from school
and I had his homework. And it was, you know, like
history and things of that nature, you know, and I just
(04:03):
talk about the things I care about.
And so sometimes I, I, I shy away from the title activist
because it's like a job for people.
It's just, I make the things that I care about and I care
about other people. I think about empathy and the
passion and, and, and basically reflecting the times that I live
in. I, I look at the world around
me. I had a really good art teacher
in high school. He's a, but he, he's, you know,
(04:24):
and everybody like that one person that he was that one
person for me. And he told me art only comes
from three places. So it either comes from the
world inside of you, the world around you, or the world you
can't see. These would be God, mythology
and things of that nature. And so that's what I'm looking
at. That's what I'm talking about.
(04:44):
And I'm trying to just tackle basically three things, myth,
power, and identity. And that's what I've learned
overwatching myself and, and going back and dissecting my own
work that I'm talking about those three things in one way or
another. Sometimes they they bumping into
each other but that's what I'm always thinking about.
In that manifestation, how does that turn into either image or
(05:04):
sculpture or sound like what arebecause we again, your your work
spans so many different platforms.
How do you choose what The thingis that then manifest into
whatever the that creative output becomes?
I think I give myself permissionto to do what I want to.
I just, I just start making sometimes and sometimes I don't
know exactly where it's going. And, and, and I, I, I, I
(05:29):
attributed to something like andChristianity, they talk about
the Holy Ghost. I think that's what genius is or
what creativity is. It jumps in and out of you.
So you just got to create moments in space through,
through different exercises, youknow, to allow that type of
force in you, right. So just an example.
I guess I was just working on a public, I still working on the
(05:51):
public monument called Pillars of the Valley to commemorate a
black neighborhood in Saint Louis.
That was displaced and gentrified early on in the whole
urban renewal renaissance back in the 50s, right?
So the first projects come from Saint Louis.
A lot of those in Saint Louis with Puerto Eico projects, a lot
of those people that lived in that neighborhood ended up in
(06:14):
those in those projects. They ended up out of North
County and stuff. But it but it was in the center
of the city where downtown SaintLouis is right now was a
primarily black neighborhood called Mill Creek Valley.
And so I'm looking at the stories of these people.
I'm looking at the circumstancesof why they left.
I'm looking at what's left behind.
And I'm also looking at the factthat people like me that grew
up, I grew up in East St. Louis, IL That's that's
(06:35):
different. So that's across the river.
But but for the lack of a betterword, I grew up in the Saint
Louis metropolitan area my wholelife.
And for me to be a black kid, like I told you, with parents
that were aware that knew about these things.
I didn't know anything about a whole neighborhood of people
that got moved out that look like me.
And so my agenda was to make sure that that don't happen no
more with any more kids, whetherblack or white, so that, you
(06:57):
know, that this place was occupied by a group of people
that did a lot to create the city that you that you live in.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just go by, I take those things like all of those factors
that I just said. Then I start to try to build out
symbols. What?
What when we talk about people being forgotten, forgotten
implies history. And that means time or time.
(07:19):
It implies time and that that's where history comes from.
So I start thinking about what symbols of time, the, the
universal symbol of time is a hourglass.
No matter where you go, no matter who you talk to, you
don't got to speak the same language.
Everybody knows what hourglass means, right?
So I tried to take that, break it down to its most common
denominator, you know, and then start to play with shapes and,
(07:39):
and play with the, the symbols you know.
So it's, it's, it's literally like when I find the story, I
think about what what I want to say.
And then I try to, I try to simplify it for myself and then
add layers as I go. Yeah.
As you know, I've, I've worked with the Black press and one of
the things that I've always saidwith about the Black press is
that when a local story goes national, the Black press loses
(08:01):
equity in that conversation. What inspired you to to do whose
streets and how did it feel to see it elevated into what became
a a national conversation and that national consciousness and
how important was it you for youto have equity in that
conversation? Yeah, I so I, I, I was, I went
(08:22):
out to Ferguson. I went out to Ferguson basically
as a another angry person that was tired of butter conditions
that we was in. I didn't go out there to make a
movie. I didn't go out there with a
camera. So so I went out there with
everybody else. And the thing that made me want
to make a movie and use the skills that I, I, I garnered
through working through film wasthe fact that that story got
(08:44):
taken and already elevated. So, so we watched it in real
time get elevated and we also watched the narrative get
shifted and and reshaped and edit it.
You know what I'm saying, to edit out the point of view of
the protester, why anybody wouldever be mad.
And that's a age-old tactic of power to and also isolate things
as though this is, this is a random thing happened.
(09:07):
It has nothing to do with hundreds of years before or it
has nothing to do what's coming after it, right?
It's it's a, it's a age-old tactic to kind of isolate people
and isolate the ideas and they and they pain.
So what? And also watching the these
these news outlets that are quote UN quote legitimate come
into where we live at right extract stories and then them do
(09:31):
it people that you thought you could trust watching them do it
and turn it into something else.So I wanted to make sure that
somebody from there, I told the story from the point of view of
the protesters, right? And I didn't do it alone.
I worked with my my friend and collaborates about Folian.
She was from out of town. Also Lucas, who was our DP, they
came in, but they weren't from there.
(09:53):
And they also thought it was important that somebody from
there told the story. So we agreed to to collaborate
on that. And then then we was rolling.
But I, I knew that if somebody that wouldn't and, and not like,
I feel like I didn't show. I was, I was a part of that
movement. As you know, as another
protester, I became kind of a cultural organizer because I was
(10:13):
the guy that could draw. So I was doing drawing the
Flyers. I was the one I've been rapping
my whole life so I could get people in venues to talk, you
know, using these skills that I built up.
I felt like it was that time forme to that I had a purpose with
it. And so then I started to use
those skills. But I knew that if we just let
somebody else tell the story, a whole chunk of it would be lost
(10:34):
to history. And that the the, the people
that had, I guess, caused the problem would be in control of
the narrative. So they could remove any empathy
for the, for, for, for, for the movement that had been built out
of what happened to Mike Brown and who and for the people that
wanted justice for. So your work has gone on to
(10:55):
become installed as a part of the Smithsonian collection, and
it's now archived as a part of America's kind of racial
narrative. When something gets moved to a
place like the Smithsonian, or something gets elevated to that
national level, you're so deeplytied to local and community.
(11:16):
How do you strike a balance between doing that work,
creating that work, and then ultimately that work ends up
going perhaps somewhere else where it's not resigning there
locally anymore? Yeah, yeah.
That's funny. You asked me that.
Nobody's ever talked to me aboutthat, right?
And so it was I, I had, I had doubts and trepidations about
(11:37):
letting that that piece of work or or multiple pieces with this
with Smithsonian, but but I had doubts about it.
And I talked to a lot of people around me and what ultimately I
felt like is the pros was that it goes to a museum by that
level, it will be taken care of an archive, right?
(11:59):
And it would also be a testamentto to the people where I come
from that that local community that did something and knowing
that that local community shouldshook up not only the nation,
but the world, right? The cons was that I don't
necessarily trust the structure that that place represents,
(12:19):
right? And I don't and, and I don't
necessarily I didn't want to I guess add to what it's not over,
right. So you think that because you
think that you just won something because it is not
history. And the way that we talk about
history in the way that these things unfold, especially now
with how fast things move with the Internet, is that you think
(12:41):
things are behind you and they are not right, right.
They, they actively happening. So I, I really struggle with
what I should do, what I should do with it because these these
works are kind of actively against with this or, or at
least the structure that allows this place to exist.
That doesn't mean that the people that work there believe
(13:02):
that. That doesn't mean.
So I when I talked to my father when he was still alive and I
talked to a bunch of friends andit was just like, this is yeah,
this for this community. But what, what just happened is
this is National History, right?This is this is the history of
this place. And it's people that come before
you and it's people that come after you, right?
And so outside of who you are and what you did, this thing is
(13:25):
a testament to that time. And that's the way art works,
right? So, so when you think about the
only reason we know about the Egyptians is because of the art
they left. The reason we know about the
Greeks is because of the art like, and artists are the
architects that the pots that's made the the the the language is
cut into stone. That's why we know about these
people and right. And so when we gone, that's what
like those things are important.And so I decided like, if it was
(13:48):
going to go anywhere, it should be somewhere where everybody
kids is going to be in the same place and people that's going to
be in the continuum of that struggle had access to see those
things. So they so they would know what
we've been through and so that they could, you know, use it for
whatever, whether it's to relateto it or whether they thinking
about other ways to fight the problem is still going on.
Hopefully it'll be gone. But you know, the chances for
(14:12):
that is slim just on just talking about where what the
problem is and where we sit at in it, you know.
Is the history of what happened in Ferguson a part of Ferguson?
Or is the history a part of Ferguson, a history of America?
I think it's definitely history of America.
I think that it's multiple Fergusons.
They happen over and over again,you know what I mean?
(14:33):
And back to like this ideology of like these things are
separate, isolated incidents. They not right, not you know
what I'm saying? It don't take much to see the
the correlation and, and and howthese things are basically in
the continuum that happen over and over again.
So I'm just, I'm just somebody that that's living through this
time. And I and I was in again, I was
(14:54):
in a place to and, and I, and I used what I had to to talk about
how I was feeling and what people around me was going
through. You know what I'm saying?
And in 1020, like it could be tomorrow, it'll be somebody else
doing the same thing, right? In whose streets?
You're capturing a lot of collective grief.
Yeah. How did that deepen your
relationship with your creative practice?
(15:15):
It let me know part is a very powerful tool.
Moving images is the is the mostpowerful sort of tool we got
right now, especially as, as youknow, people, people don't read
as much as they used to. It's like the main way that
people get information And when people are getting manipulated
and lied to and, and in in the age of the Internet and the age
(15:38):
of fake news and all that, it's really important to to make
authentic things right. So.
So looking back I might not haveknew the gravity of it then, but
the further out I get away from it, I understand the gravity of
what we did right? How do you balance the
authenticity of telling that story, but then also not falling
into the trap of the trope of grief always hitting the black
(16:00):
community? Yeah.
It's very hard not to talk aboutgrief with the with the with
what that story was right. So and so in certain that ain't
the best example of of not falling into a troll, but some
but the but or cliche, but cliches work because they true.
Like the reason the cliche worksis because you've been seen it
(16:22):
in real life over and over again, right.
So so in that case, I wasn't worried about, you know, the the
classic black creative. I don't want to fall into this
and I don't I wouldn't work. No, I just was going to tell the
story from what it was. And that was about grief and
that was about anger, right? But when we get into things
that's coming from that I'm making up, that's when that
conversation comes into play. Like how how authentic is this
(16:45):
to my own experience to make sure that I'm not just playing
into some story that even I havestarted to believe, you know
what I'm saying? But but in that and that
particular instance, it was about grief and it was about
pain and it was true to black people been going through that
for generations. So it was just for me to put a
put a mirror or put a put a light on that.
Your description of what you do is so interesting.
(17:08):
You describe your work as being part therapy, part social
commentary. How do you operate as a tool for
that kind of personal and communal healing without taking
necessarily a side? Yeah, or.
Are you taking a side? Yeah.
Like, I don't think that art or anything in life is a objective.
(17:31):
And I think we tell this lie over and over again.
So as the journalists tell this lie that they objective, when we
say objective, we're usually talking about one specific
person's lens, right? Yeah.
And whenever I tell it from my lens, then it's subjective,
right? But but who's, who in society
gets to say who's the default and who has been the default for
(17:51):
quite some time? We never call that into
question, right, Right. But whenever those people ain't
at the center, that's when they get, you know, they get nervous.
And now, now we need to talk about subjective and objective,
but everything is subjective. And I'm, I'm old enough to know
that I will be telling a lie if I, if I didn't say that.
So that ain't even a question tome.
I know that my stuff is subjective.
I can only tell it from my pointof view, but I want to be fair
(18:14):
about it. I do want to be fair about it.
I'm not trying to over or exaggerate certain things.
You know what I'm saying? I'm trying to be fair about it.
But that is, that is undeniable.And you cannot get around
subjectivity. That's a human thing, yeah.
So when you have that conversation and you're teaching
here at PCFA, we're here at our summer residency at Cal Arts,
(18:36):
how do you equip students and storytellers to engage with
social issues in a meaningful way?
I want people to be still. I think that's the best way to
put it. Be still for a second and then
ask yourself what is in front ofyou?
What do you, how does it make you feel and on on an honest
level? And then how do you sort of
(18:57):
bottle that feeling, right? And the bottle might be a song,
It might be, you know, like backto that back to that toolkit,
right? But it takes an incredible
amount of self-awareness. I said this to, to actually
another podcast I was on. It's it's basically me
tessellating between delusion and self-awareness, right?
(19:18):
And and high amounts of that, right.
And knowing when to turn which one on, right?
Yeah. And and knowing like knowing
when you are delusional, right? Like.
How do you know when? You're delusional.
I think it's like you take a step back and you look Yeah,
you. That's that's why be when I
might be contradicting myself, but the best way I can think of
is like you take a step back andit's objective as you can be
(19:40):
like, does this make sense to you outside of whatever emotion
you got going on? If you angry, right, look at it
when you're not angry, does it make sense?
Are you are you, are you being true to you?
Because once it's out there thatthat's how your feelings go,
right? Or do you care about that?
Maybe it's just about capturing that feeling in that moment,
right? That I think it's hard.
I'm not always on point with it,but I know that I've been trying
(20:03):
to exercise that lately, that I understand that part of what art
does is give hope and and provide faith.
That's delusion, right? It might be the most possible,
the most positive I guess way delusion can come about, but
that's what it is. Yeah, so let's double down on
that delusion. You were named a Ted Fellow
(20:25):
you've been recognizing as a newvoice in independent film.
Just when I was coming back froma residency or something, I turn
on CBS Sunday Morning or CBS Saturday Morning and there you
are. How have these accolades shaped
your approach? Or have they not have they draw
it have a fester into more delusion to you as a as an
(20:47):
artist? Or what does that all mean when
when you're getting so much attention for your work?
Yeah, I like to think that it doesn't do that doesn't fester,
you know what I'm saying? But I'm also a human being with
an ego that's not, you know, I'mnot going to lie to myself about
that. But I like, I know that where I
live at, that doesn't matter. And I think because of the
people I'm around and the place that I'm at, like, and I, and I
(21:08):
just don't, I'm always thinking about the next thing I'm going
to do. And I, and I feel like because
I'm, I'm, I'm creating because Ilove it.
Not, not to get those accolades,not to, you know what I'm
saying? I'm only I'm, I'm one of the few
lucky people that can say that this is my my profession, right?
So it's, it's, it's kind of balancing that.
But but past paying my regular bills, I'm not looking for all
(21:30):
kind of like I think too much money going to bring problems.
I mean, I've watched it happen before, right?
So it's usually about me expressing myself and basically
art is the byproduct of me living life.
So, so if it starts to get in the way of me living life, like
I'm walking around and it's changing the way I, I live and I
move around, then I'm, I'm failing at what my calling is,
(21:51):
right. So I, I, I don't have that, that
problem of the ego. I think, I think it might be in
the opposite direction where I'msuper self-conscious.
Yeah. And I think that's the negative
things like I, I get super self-conscious.
I don't want to let people down and and and it honestly, when
you step back, nobody cares, right, Like not, not in a
(22:11):
positive way, like not out like,like only when you when you
start thinking you big, you justbigger than you are people
worrying about their self all right, and it's a glimpse.
They like, they look at something, they like it, they
keep moving, right, right. But people are not obsessed with
you, right? And they not obsessed with me.
And as long as I can keep that, then I'll be all right, you
know? Well, look, I appreciate the
fact that the last time I was inSaint Louis, which was late last
(22:32):
year, and I and I said, hey, I'mgoing to be in town, let's go
have a coffee. And you're like, absolutely.
Yeah. How important is it to remain
engaged with people that you've met along the way that you know,
as you continue to build your body of work and that portfolio
of folks that are within your life?
That when people like me reach out and say, hey, let's go have
some coffee. And not just because I'm the
(22:53):
president of the college or justin a very kind of genuine way to
just to take that time and just to pause for a second and just
say, I don't know why Andrew's talking to me or why he wants to
reach out to me, but let's go have coffee.
Like how do you stay grounded like that?
Because one, the work is made out of relation.
Like relationships are the most important thing in life to me,
right? Because they supersede money.
(23:16):
Like you don't need money if you've got relationships and
stuff like that, right? So, and also the work for, for
lack of a better phrase, the work is made of people.
The work is made of my experience with people.
So I so I try not to and I'm, I'm, I'm pretty introverted,
right? So, so I got to balance it, but
I, but I get inspired by having conversations with people like
(23:37):
you and everybody else include, I don't know what you're going
to say to me and it might spark something else.
So like the, the interactions I have with people or the building
blocks or what I make anyway. So it's super important to me.
So balancing all of that could probably be really taxing,
right, between the activism and the artistry, like how do you
sustain your well-being and amidall of this political and
(23:57):
creative work and then all the that's going on in the world.
Right now, yeah, yeah, I ain't really figured that out, you
know what I'm saying? I I try to stay active.
I try to. And again, it's like, why not?
It's not activism to me. It's just what I'm thinking
about. So the best thing is, is like,
sometimes I got to mitigate how much of that I take in, right?
(24:19):
How much of what's going on in the world and balancing you
don't want to be out of. I don't want to choose to be
naive or choose to run from the realities of the world, but I
also need to protect my own mental and emotional well-being,
right? Sometimes it's like you unplug
and stuff like that. But I don't think that I'm
(24:40):
balancing activism. I think that I'm just making
work and that's what I care about.
And it's funny that in this world or in this time period,
activism has become a brand, right?
It's a brand of thing. But we but if we were, if I was
Bob Marley, you wouldn't be asking me about why you such an
activist if I was needing some more like that was just what
they was doing. And then one day people stop
talking about reality, right? They got deeper and deeper into
(25:03):
capitalism. They got deeper and deeper into,
let's just talk about money and for, you know, like, like the,
the, the culture, the cultural icons started to move further
and further, closer to power. And at, and at one point
everybody looked up to the people that were speaking for
regular people. And, and so I grew up listening
to those people and looking at those people.
(25:23):
So I never once thought about itas activism.
And I and I and I, I try not to,no matter how much, you know, I
even in this interview, I, you know, I'm, I'm very adverse to
taking that, taking on that title, right?
Because I'm trying not to ever get, you know, just don't buy
your own BS, right? Yeah, yeah, basically.
But don't you at any point get tired?
Don't you just get emotionally exhausted?
(25:45):
And especially you say you're anintrovert, so even extroverts
get tired too. I'm one of those.
What do you do? I'm always tired, you know what
I'm saying? And and sometimes I like this
just my lot in life. And then sometimes I'd like back
to on put like sometimes people don't see me for for, for for a
month, two months, you know whatI'm saying?
And not like my family. They talk to me, but I'm not
(26:06):
rushing to stay relevant. Like you know how how how I
would works and the Internet andlike you got to put up every
day. Right every I mean posting.
I'm not worried about that. I'm, I'd rather make things that
mean something to me and then put it out when it's ready, then
be out here just trying to get people to look just to make sure
I, they don't forget about me. Sometimes it's OK to be
forgotten about because you can reassess the world and you can
be a normal human being. So like, but as far as being
(26:29):
tired, I feel like I'm always tired.
And I thought that was just a part of the the aging process.
So some of this new work is now taking you down the path of an
opera. Yeah, yes.
And that was where did that comefrom?
Yeah, that's one of the one of the more autobiographical
pieces, but. Tell us about it so.
I went into about more than 10 years.
(26:51):
We looking at like 10, almost 15years ago.
I went down a deep sunrise hole like, and I don't know if it
whoever listens or sunrise is a legendary jazz musician and he
is a one-of-a-kind. You know, if you, if you ever
seen somebody that is truly weird and one-of-a-kind, you
should, if you haven't, you should look him up, right?
And I remember like, and, and I literally had a dream and then I
(27:13):
woke up and wrote it down right.And the, my girlfriend at the
time, she can verify all of thisbecause I woke up, I wrote it
down. And then the next day after I
did that, I started to see parallels in the story with
music that I was working on. This is at this point, music is
my main thing, right? You know what I'm saying?
Like everybody else is going to get out of here rapping.
Like at least my friends and thepeople that's around me.
(27:35):
That was the thing. And I wouldn't go into the NBAI
learned that early, but I could do this, right?
And so since that moment, for probably the past decade, I've
just been slowly piercing the story together through music,
right? And I call it an opera.
It's based in black music. It's, it's, it's rap, it's R&B,
it's jazz, it's soul, it, it's black American Music over the
(27:56):
last 150 years. But when I started looking to
the ending, and at this point, nobody, I didn't, there was no
examples of, of people using thelanguage of opera or the idea of
opera with the music that I'm talking the genres that I'm
talking about. So 1 was I just hadn't, I wanted
to see it and it wasn't in the world yet, right?
That's one thing. But also I, when I, when I
(28:17):
looked it up, the nobody had a clear definition of what opera
was. And the only thing that was
clear is the story told, the music.
And then when I start to look atwhat I was already doing that
that's a concept album, right? And so I just started
continuously building on the, I just started continuously
building on this concept album, right?
And so after a while in the pandemic, I guess it was still
(28:39):
sci-fi, you know what I'm saying?
No, people, people thought we would never coming outside
again, right? So I applied for a grant through
Opera America. And they was like, yeah, this
might be the future of this whole situation, people living
listening to opera. And it was new.
It was fresh, you know what I'm saying?
It was. And it was based in the now it
was music of of now, you know what I'm saying?
And I got that was the first grant.
(29:01):
And since then it, you know, it kind of gave me the confidence
to keep talking to people about it and it allowed us to record
almost all of it. We almost finished now, you
know, and I got a couple other grants and we just kept building
right. And it and it, and last March
got to play. We got to play part of it at
Carnegie Hall. And it, and it ended with a
standing ovation. People don't know who I am.
(29:23):
They don't know who we are. We ain't from New York.
Well, you know what I'm saying? I'm from Saint Louis, right?
And so, and this is not my world.
This is clearly not classical music.
They ask people that come to seeclassical music see all the
time, but some about it got to them, you know what I'm saying?
So it so that was even more of an affirmation to just know that
all of this hard work, you know,whether they like it or not, you
(29:44):
could respect what what what we was doing, right.
And, and yeah, we just been, I've just been building it with,
with, with my collaborator, collaborators slowly but surely,
you know, and now it's a now it's to the point like I want to
see it finished. Like I know what it is.
But like it, it's like it's, it's grown past the older I get.
(30:05):
My, I used to just make, I want to get stuff out.
I was really anxious. But now I want to make sure it's
right because I know once it's out of my hands, it's done
right. Yeah.
And what does that finished product look like for you?
What I want to do is in my my heart of hearts is a three phase
thing. So first it starts with the
recorded, I guess, episodic podcast, 8 episodes, episodic
(30:26):
storytelling. What but music as the vehicle to
tell the story about a kid that can astral project in his sleep,
right. He he he basically the story of
using animation. I mean, using imagination to
escape from from whatever traumaor current circumstances you
did. And I think that I'm it's based
(30:47):
on me. I think that I've done that
throughout my life. If you knew where I come from,
the people I come from and to bewhere I am today, it and it was
my imagination. Yeah, I like that took me there.
And so this is a metaphor for that.
So first it starts with that podcast.
Second is full fledge, you know,whatever that looks like a, a
stage opera, you know, costumes,people go, you know, you
watching it in, in real time andwatching it play out.
(31:10):
And then I, the the last form isa is a obviously I'm teaching
the PIM program. I love movies, right?
So I want to see it as a movie, right?
And it may be a, I'm thinking animated because of a child
protagonist, but I want to see it.
And that's my final form becauseI can put it all together.
I can put the visuals together with the sound, with the
feeling, with the story, and it can live there.
So those three, those, those arethose are the three phases.
(31:33):
I'm still in phase one. Wow.
Yeah. What does it mean to you to be
unapologetically creative? Yeah, I really think about
apologizing to nobody and most things.
You know what I'm saying? Not not, you know when I'm
wrong, I'm wrong. I can say that sure.
It's like I think we and the time we, we, we sit in, I think
we, we, we, we catch on the words and the zeitgeist.
(31:55):
And I think we, we, we brand things.
And I think unapologetic has become a word that I think
people think they need to say. But I don't think you need to
say it. You don't until there's a moment
where somebody asked for an apology.
We don't got to say nothing about being apologetic.
I think it's just being authentically you, right?
And being being you for no otherreason than being you and, and,
(32:21):
and the creativity. I think like you're walking can
be creativity, right? It is.
It's just about adaptability andsurvival in many cases and
depending on who you are, where you come from.
But I think like being you without worrying about offending
people or outwardly trying to offend.
(32:41):
But you know, it's just like you're not worried about other
people. You worried like, like you're
being you with a, with a care freeness and a calmness and a,
and a centeredness and a resolveto, to live life the way you
want to. And, and hopefully that comes
across in what I'm doing. For Damon, creativity is not a
brand or a posture. It is a way of moving through
(33:04):
the world honestly, shaped by lived experience and close
attention to what is happening around him.
And rather than offering answers, Damon leaves us with a
way of thinking about creative work that values process and
time. It's an approach grounded in
honesty, restraint, and the belief that work made with care
(33:25):
will carry its meaning forward long after the moment has
passed. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Creative. Be sure to follow the show and
stay tuned for more insightful conversations in the episodes
ahead. To learn more about the Vermont
College of Fine Arts, visit vcfa.edu.
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