Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Small help from small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small it's so funky.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, hey, small Dave says, we have a treat today
because we're going to get a.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Lot of vocabulary if you think. Okay. So this person
loves to say they.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Don't be using vocabulary, and they do be using vocabulary
because they're a thinker and a writer. And I'm so
excited to get to interview Nana quame A Deja Brenna.
So he is the author of the book Chain Gang
All Stars, which is a book that grounds the prison
industrial complex in a game show in the future, and
(00:48):
through this lens, he is able to speculate the future
of not just black people, but of capitalism. And this
is such a unique and necessary not well, it's not
necessarily unique, but it's a very necessary method of using
the narrative form.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So when we.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Decided to talk about well we decided to do a
podcast episode, I was like, what are we going to
talk about?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
What I want to talk about? And we came up
with speculating a black future.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Because as a writer, you really get the opportunity through
different forms, whether it be narrative form, whether it be poetry,
whether it be script to consider things in a way
that I feel like in our reality, we just don't
get the opportunity to do. Like when I would speak
philosophically on Instagram about possibility, folks would just lose their minds, like, no,
(01:35):
you're supposed to only talk within this particular grid work
of the things that we already know. And for me,
someone who's imaginative and believes that our imagination is one
of our greatest tools of not just like joy, but
also survival, that feels very hindering. And what Naa does
in his work and what he's going to talk about
in this interview is he considers, speculates what could and
(02:02):
couldn't be, but not just on like negative ways, but
on all the ways.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And just like our episode that we did with.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Ruha Benjamin Imagination as Resistance, it continues this ethos that
if you're only basing what could be on the ingredients
that have been given to you by those who don't
even want you to be anything, you've already lost your
boarding pass to your liberation. I love getting to talk
(02:30):
to creatives. I love the any talk to creatives who
are also very conscious and proud and excited to be
a creative. And that is something that Nana absolutely is.
Nana is out of Rockland, New York. I met him
at a nonprofit Protecto Fio. They had a festival, not
a festival, they had a fundraiser that I was hosting,
and he had come to read a piece and you know,
(02:51):
be a part of really just community.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So it's really great to see.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Another artistic intellectual existing in that space and time and
having them right here on Small Thos podcasts.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Let's get into it. Speculating a black future.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I almost commented yesterday on somebody's Instagram like and again
I hate to be overtly like in like the fighting
of the Internet, but it was like random posts I
don't know how got on my algorithm about like someone's like, oh,
somebody said they were going to buy me a luxury bag,
and this is what they got me. And it was
like a Michael Core's bag, which I guess is like
not luxury enough for this particular person. And I went
to comment like global temperatures on the planet arising just
(03:32):
wanted to be like, bro, like I get what you're saying, sure,
but like you guys are losing the fucking plot, Like
we're losing the.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Flot right, and yes, and I want at least that
I want at least.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
That, Yeah, we can have fun.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You guys just came into a conversation. Let's just what
we were already talking.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Is about speculating a black future.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely, like yes, And you can be annoyed by my
course because that's not a luxury brand. And say, Michael
course also is probably a part of the sweatshop. I
don't know, like you know what I mean, Like you can't.
You can also like take a moment to I would
have preferred Cotur because at least I know that that's
not contributing to the to the fast fashion ways that
(04:16):
is watching it sports of Donna.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Let it be based in some type of moral ethic
and not inherited vague esthetic that is like one hundred
percent amoral and only based in like a sort of
external validation machine that who knows who even controls it.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Probably some money guy you don't even like.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And this is Nana.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Hey, guys, sorry, I shouldn't use sound effects.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
It's not my show.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah I did it one we're talking about it.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Just said I'm gonna do it. Ag Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know that Brendan's job is after the show, he
puts in all the sounds.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Oh, I didn't know that, My bad, Brandon, I already
do like three more times.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Max, Like Brandon is like, he's an incredibly effective and
capable sound engineer, but he's a brilliant sound escape artist.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, and he told me he's a musician as well.
So big ups to Brandon. Yeah, a nice sound for
him too, like a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Here are unicorn, Brandon, you are? Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So we decided on this theme side effects of a
speculative black future, because that's really what.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You be writing about.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Absolutely, So let's first of all just say like, how
did you come up with that as well? No, you know,
we were just saying off camera that not not be
using basic words, but this is not basic.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, and it's not my worry. I have a good
story about that, Like I think I said it, like,
I don't even like the word speculative. When I first
saw it was in a review for my first book,
and I was like, oh my god, how dare they
stay for Friday Black, my short story collection, the first book? Okay,
And I was like, how dare you say that? And
I looked at what speculative meant I said, oh, yeah,
that is kind of me, that is most me. And
(06:04):
so what do you think it meant. I don't know,
you know, I was like, I don't understand, so I'm offended.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I would like to use these big words right. Well,
for the record, speculative in the dictionary is engaged in
expressing or based on conjecture rather than knowledge, which.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Is what a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
People get mad about on the Internet, and they try
and apply it to me.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But I'm like, no, I'm speaking for backs.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, and I would add that speculative fiction or like
speculative in the literary sense. It's sort of like to me,
it's just the employee of the imagined to sort of
like instill a fictive world with things that are not
physical realities but are informed by our historical and present
physical reality. So I'm using my imagination to sort of
(06:50):
maybe extrapolate from where we are in this moment to
create a world that.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Is an echo or a reflection of what is.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So that gives me a way to wade through some
particular issues.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh okay came into the scene.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Lammba a way to weigh through issues or conversations and
think about how the world works. It's a way of
getting at the heart of things by sometimes going through
the detour maybe.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean it has a certain level of like pattern
recognition being applied, right because like if you look at
Octavia Butler and folks are like, oh my gosh, Like
she predicted it, like she saw it coming. I mean,
it is eerie that she had the year solid like
twenty twenty five imparable of this hour. But she did
what I believe or what I feel like you're doing,
Like she assessed based on patterns and the present where
(07:43):
things could proceed and use those things to imagine what
could perhaps take place and how we could respond to
it and how we can respond to the now.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Absolutely, Like this is a quote that's coming to me
right now, which is from Out of War Ragnarok, and
at one point that literary text, even though I say
that as a joke, but it also is a character
talks about it's about the nature of the thing, not
the form. And I think when you work in the
speculative space, where really a lot of the times like
(08:16):
we're thinking about the nature of these things and we're
transforming into slightly different forms to speak directly, maybe even
more directly about the nature of a thing. Give me
an example example it's easy for me is in my
last book, Chain Gang All Stars, I'm thinking largely about
the carceral system, the prison industrial complex. I could write
a book about an actual prison or a fittive retelling
(08:37):
of a specific prison, and that would be really privileging,
like the specific forms that are sort of dangerous and
violent in our world right now. I think for me,
when I think about the nature of the thing, I'm
thinking about sort of like the implications and ideas that
the carceral system has set forth, which is that humanity
can be assigned or unassigned, that there are several instances
(08:58):
where it's okay to kill him beings, and that that
killing bee administered and done by the government. There's spaces
where slavery is okay.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah. The system created the prisons. The prison then created
the system.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, and so like in that case, even while transforming
the form of the thing, while creating this system where
there's like sort of gladiatorial combat, gladiatorial blood sport, I'm
still thinking about the nature of this thing, which is
basically like obscene and overt disregard for humanity and to me.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
That is a way of thinking about specuative work.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And for sometimes, even though I'm taking this what some
people might read as like a giant conceit or like
a lot of fictive liberties, I think I could get
more directly at the nature of a thing, because sometimes
we get hung up on the specificity, like the form.
So that is to say, if I wrote a story
about Rikers in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You got something wrong, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Got one little thing wrong. Or they'd be like, well
that's Rikers, or well that's that thing, or that's nineteen
eighties right right right.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
They can kind of like nuance it.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Out exactly and they'll get me wrong. There is a
really important power in the reporting and the stories that
do do that, and those stories.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Inform this book absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
But my way is a way for me to get
straight at the nature of something. And that's what I
like about speculative fiction. Even though I write also quote
unquote realism. I'm about to teach a class, and I
think what we think of realism and surreal and speculative,
I think they're much closer than we think. But anyways,
that's how I think of it.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Well, now say that about.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Okay, so you know you want to.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, I just I heard myself talking a lot of
let me just quiet.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well you're talking at a very high level right now.
So that's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Like when I go back and do the intro after this,
I have to tell people like so just turn your
ears up.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
This is not a casual convo.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
But I use norbal language mostly right when you write, not.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
When you talk, because I'm literally here like oh, because
I said to myself, Oh, you're talking to.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
None of it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
It's gonna be late. It's gonna be fun. No, it's not.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
No, no, it will be my degrees right now, all
of them.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You kind of got me in teaching mold because these
are like very like teacher kind of questions and things
I would talk about in like a So I'm kind
of in that mode a little bit.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
But it doesn't have to be that way. It can
be a combo. You can ask me questions back.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yes, So just with the spectrum of reality thing like
my the teacher, he said, I was in MFA in
grad school and I was writing these different modes. One
way was like this sort of like fake Juno Diaz
super realistic.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
But like with like style way.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh yes, I haven't heard about Juno in a while.
Didn't you have the whole sex or haraffment situation that
kind of shut him down?
Speaker 4 (11:24):
He got a lot of trouble. He got a lot
of trouble.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I was gonna say, because he was popping and then
he was not.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
In Yeah, he got to put it there and pay.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
This is all pre that, okay, But I'm mostly commenting
on the realism factory writing in realism, like familiar reality.
Then I had these other stories with ghosts and a
whole bunch of like weird shit.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Well, so wait, let's bring it down, like, let's clarify
it even more for folks, Like, so you said you
were writing in a who know das style? Can you
give people even more of a description of what that?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
So he would be writing about like sort of macheese
mo or boys thinking through like the hole mucheese mo
stuff in like Newark where he's from, but it's actually
a familiar new Wark. I was writing stuff that was
a very close representation of Spring Valley, Rock and County
where I'm from, or maybe even a Queen's where I
was born, And it was like using my understanding of
that space to recreate an a fictive level, like the
(12:24):
actual specific world in a way that anyone could identify
as like, oh yeah, this is like if not specifically
that town, a similar city or a similar suburb. So
that's like a realism versus anywhere us. Yeah, and there's nothing.
I mean again, this is where later on I'm going
to upset this. But to the average reader, there is
nothing magical happening. There is nothing that is outside of
(12:47):
the plot of a plausible reality. That is to say,
whatever happens in the story, someone could tell you that happened,
and you used to be like damn, but you wouldn't
be like that's impossible, yeah, right, versus the surreal, the speculative,
or maybe even the sci fi, all these things that
are on the other side of that spectrum of the
real that's more towards the unreal. Now, if one is real,
it's called ten unreal or ten could even be a
(13:08):
dream where okay, maybe there's uh people have superpowers, or
maybe people can fly or ghosts are real. On talking
and joking with the characters, what about if they can
talk to animals?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Can we do that?
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Or they can talk to animals?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Like those kind of things, and sometimes the speculative is
I operate usually right in the middle, where so that's
like the far end, but like right in the middle
of that spectrum might be something like changing where like
this could physically happen, but it would require us to
go a little bit further down a certain path that
we're maybe already on. But even just the presentation of
that is like is that real?
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That unreal?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
That tension in your mind is a part of the
project tree. But the thing I had when I was
in grad school, the problem I had was back then,
back in my day, I was like, so it was
twenty thirteen, twenty thirteen, it felt to me like to
be successful as author, you have to like really error
towards that first kind of gory, the Juno Diaz, the
more realism.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Kind of style.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Was that just the era at the time.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
I think that that's a big conversation.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I think in general the DA moment as well.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I think that the elite spaces always prefer that, and
it has to do like if this can get in
something around contatatory. But I think that the less sort
of like, I mean, it's weird because now someone could
really argue that with Marvel and whatnot, and those things
are being super unreal but they're so popular. But I
think if you think about the movies that win, like
the Oscar, it's almost always going to be like a
(14:31):
bio pick because I think there's like a sort of
implicit argument that representing reality as is is like somehow
the highest form of art or something, and I don't
know exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Why it is.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Put back on that in that I feel like particularly
representing reality of like the under class because.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
It's a porn. It's like a trauma porn.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, like look what one this year? Like a broke
Russian stripper gets a chance at noe.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
What's it called Anna something? The movie that won Best Picture?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Like yes, she's literally just like a chicken Jersey I
think or Brooklyn or something, and she I'm talking like
this and then she's like a stripper. She meets this
Russian like rich guy. He tells her that he's gonna
marry her and she believes him and then like he
of course ends up not And that's the film. I mean,
(15:28):
I'm not saying it wasn't like enjoyable Best Picture, No, Yeah,
Like there's no like character development or anything happening, Like
you know, there's no cinematography in that regard, but I
just feel like there's a voyeurism that happens with getting
to be in the mix and see it but not
be of it and not be responsible to fix it.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
That makes a lot of sense, And there's so many
other elements I could think of it as to why,
like the certain trends happen. But for me, I don't
know what it was, but I just know that it
felt to be the case to me. Even though my
professor's name is George Saunders is known for kind of
like crazy out there stories and he's the reason why
I went to MFA. So anyways, I went to office
hours and I was like, all right, George. Basically without asking,
(16:10):
I was asking should I write these kind of stories,
these like some more serious realistic stories or these like
weird stupid, funny stuff And he was just like yes,
And that changed my life. That was it. What he does.
This a ghost story is a realism story. And if
you think about the people who I care to be
associated with as a writer, like with Tony Morrison, people
(16:31):
are talking about realism or unrealism. They're saying you're just
the goat and Tony Morrison has a lot of ghosts
and whatnot, a lot of.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Like, there's a lot of magical realism happening in there
all over the place.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Exactly, a lot of magical things. But also depending on
what your sensibility is, like he said, a ghost story
is a realism story.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I mean, Beloved is the return of exactly. But you're there,
you know, you're like they're arguing it, but you're like
she is.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
You have to represent whatever you're writing. I don't care
if you're writing about being in some Ivy League school
or if you're writing about ghosts in a cabin. You
have to represent it so the reader can fill it.
And for some people the experience of being in an Ivy
League school is just as surreal as the other. For
some people the experience as getting bombed in real time
(17:16):
feels super duper surreal. But that's someone's experience right now. Yes,
And so to me the realism idea. Also, dreams are
part of reality, So I think that the spectrum is
a lot more collapsible.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Than people think.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
But that's again maybe not super useful, but I'm actually
teaching whole class focusing on that this is coming semester
where at Hbert William Smith College is like an upstate
school Geneva, New York in the winter, owning for It's
only a semester. It's like a little fellowship thing. So
I have to be there till December.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I got to write anyways, Okay, oh there you go,
get it right.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I need to paint, like in general, like on a
canvas or like house.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No, on a canvas. I mean I need to write.
I need to paint.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I need to just make more room to do like
art for art's sake, to also speculate the black future.
Like I feel like this conversation is beyond just the
context of writing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So like I have a wo woman show.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
At the end of the show, the final monologue of
the show is a doll who is the black doll
in the white doll black doll tests.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Did you ever heard about those?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yes, treaty ugly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
So she basically like breaks out of the test and
is like, I want to take y'all out of here.
Let's go somewhere it's like better than this, and she
takes the whole audience through a portal to the land
of Everything, like you can be whoever you are, Like
you're not limited to being pretty, ugly, smart, black, nice, whatever,
Like you are everything that's been before, you are everything
that you are now, you are everything that you want
(18:44):
to be. Can you imagine that? Like, can you allow
yourself to imagine freedom? That's a concept throughout the course
of the show, Like the concept of liberation beyond that.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Which you've seen.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yes, yes, is there a.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Version of liberation that you even speculate?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And to me, it's a huge part of the superpower
of like working in the speculative spaces, but even understanding
if someone goes to your Seizere show, like they have
to stretch a muscle that is required for a real revolution,
And it's that willingness to imagine something that's like not
real but is real in that moment. So to me,
like that practice of imagining, deeply imagining that which does
(19:25):
not exist, which can be done by taking in work
that employees that which does not exist, is like inherent
to the project of like revolution and like real movements
towards like liberation.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's what it's always been artists, and it's a big
deal as artists so much a part of those movements.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It's a huge part of it, and it makes me
feel it's the reason why I feel like what we
do isn't pointless or isn't masturbatory, or isn't like just
just like give an award or not. Yeah, it's actually
really important. I really believe that.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I feel like I always felt that, but I didn't
know it. Like I always felt like, I know I'm
not doing bullshit.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I know I'm not doing bullshit, but.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I don't feel like I really knew it until I
was able to connect the dots between really understanding socialism
and like the movements of socialism and communism that have
systematically and consistently been like snuffed out and really silenced,
and how deeply connected artists have been in all of
(20:33):
those movements and globally.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Was there like a moment that you can like sort
of like think back to where like something clicked or
like kind of came together for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Actually, and it's very very recent because my mom, so
I was writing my memoir and post October seventh already
had started awakening things because I basically in watching the Palestinians,
it wasn't about watching them be harmed, It was watching
their resilience, watching their like unwillingness to lose dignity, to
(21:05):
lose sight of like their connectivity to their faith, their
connectivity to their their land, to their indigenuity, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Like that really reopened for.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Me, like what our ancestors really about, right, because we've
lost sight of that here in the United States particularly.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But in writing my.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Memoir, I was writing a chapter about that and how
Pallisie affected me in that way. And I asked my
mom to bring my books and my notebooks and my
syllabi and my reading you know, like they'll have like
these big reading books like books. Hello, They'll have these
like big bound like course readings.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Different papers and articles. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So I had her bring all those. But more importantly,
I started looking through my notebooks. I start looking through
my notes from grad school, where I had professors like
Robin Kelly and Stephen Gregory and Manning.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Maryble and I was like, hold the oh, I've always
been a.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Marxist, because I realized that I've been talking about And
so I started reading like these poems that I had written,
and all of my poems and all of my raps
are like I'm not about money.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
We're too much about like and I'm like, but you're
in the midst of hip hop.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, yeah, you seem disappointed by this story.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, No, I'm not disappointed at all. I'm like, I'm
feeling like connected to it because what I was going
to say is something that I've discovered. Sometimes your work
knows before you before you do. Yeah, that's what I
was thinking. I've seen it a bunch of times where
like it goes a lot of different ways too, Like
I had never identified as like, oh I have anxiety
(22:40):
or whatever this and that. Then I remember looking at
some of my old stories and I was like, wait, what, like,
you're not okay? And I think with that, what I
was thinking for you is that it feels like I mean,
it also start a straight line, right like you have time,
you have awakening, and you have a wakening again, then
you have a again. It gets like more and more big,
(23:01):
more and more specific. Sometimes it gets more and more
like precise. To me, it's really.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Okay, Wait, can I read you this?
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So I wrote this while I was sitting next to
Foxy Brown. I forgot who was on the other side
of me, but we had all been called to this
like meeting by Minister Farakhan because the beef between fifty
and jar Rule had reached such a fever pitch that
he was concerned that we would see another scenario with
(23:27):
Pock and Big.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So he had called all of like folks in hip hop.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Is your life like Minister Farrah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Interviewed him like several times not insane.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Didn't say for any nor person to hear, like, let
you talking about I was not talking about surreal Okay, sorry,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Which speaks to you saying like for some people it
feels like ah, but then this is what it was.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And so we were all called like most many of
us immediately.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You were the call is to heal, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
And so while I was there, I was doodling. I
was like writing notes. So like here's a doodle.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh wow, I've seen that you can do like real
art stuff. I'm gonna ask you more about that in
a second, Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So check this out.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Envy and money share the same color for a reason
because they're what we consume instead of the food for
thought we should be eating, believing that it's at the
root of being better people.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
But really, ain't shit changed if it's the root of evil.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
We pull guns for funds, get low for dough, killing
each other on the daily, and stead he's slaying our souls.
Our goals don't extend beyond reaching the pot of gold,
because we invest no time in helping each other through
the storms to get to the rainbows.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Lord knows.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Paper is a delightful enabler, but it don't grow on
trees because it ain't made by the creator. Won't catch
me in church on Sundays. But I believe in the
divine and that we're made in a vision universal of
inner lights that shine. And this grind and this hustle
and this world does our glow as we steal each
other's luminescence when we feel our own or again low.
But alas, it all comes back to having and having that.
(25:05):
And it seems like everybody wants only what another's got.
But see, we got to achieve the understanding that unity
is the fruit on which we need to feed. Because
money make the world go round, but it don't move
mountains and it won't move me.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Oh my god, let's go mutual aids. And it was
bars beyond all like the real content, like I like
all the like the way the colors was working in it,
thank you, and then lumines Sence and that even it
was I mean I love that. That was fire and
(25:40):
like it was like the green, like the color. Then
it kind of became I for like green, like oh,
like healthy things to eat, and then we went to
roots like I.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
But like my first single was the hook was literally I.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Want a Lexis and Abama coop, a Benz and a range.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Rove to but nothing I do was just for the money.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I want a condo with a pant house, a manshiain
with a guess house, but nothing.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I do it's just for the money. I do this
for the love. Like that was the song that was
my first. Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So you're right the work I never thought of it
that way, but the work knows before you do.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, that's the kind of magical thing about art again,
like to me, a magic of it. I think work
and like being creative and using your imagination not to
be like cheesy or corny, but like the accouterments or
like the false parts of being like in a physical
human form kind of fallaway. And I think a lot
of the like horrible, horrible, horrible people have written incredibly
(26:48):
loving ideas like the constitutional rights or like the Bill
of Rights.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Those kind of things are like a really good example
when you have.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Like horrible people like advocating for like really important things,
if you actually in their lived life, it's like, hey,
isn't that a weird and super glaring contradiction that you're
a slave owner and you said all right, and like
they can't get there, but they're in inner inner part
kind of new and this, like the idea, this makes
me feel like faith and hope for our humunity in general,
(27:15):
because I think once like when I write and when
I revise and I revise and revise our.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Revis I get a chance to be my highest self
on the page.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
But when it's not like in the room, my insecurities,
my fears, my worries, my doubts, these things that are
like very a part of Nana the person, yet kind
of block like Nana like the essence, And I try
my best to be like that idea helps me be
really generous towards kind of anyone.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
And so it's kind of like a Buddhist thing.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
They're like if someone like says something poorly like don't
pay attention to that, think about what they do. And
if they do something poorly, don't think about that. Think
about like what their heart is, and if their heart
seems bad, think about what their heart could have been.
It's like this like grace path that you try to
get to. But I think that you can see that
happen sometimes in people's work and and their art and
their creativity. I think art sometimes shows you, oh, yeah,
(28:07):
that guy's like a dickhead in their lived experience of life.
But when they get a chance to make this thing,
this weird other part pokes out that I think is.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Like in most of us.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Like the Peea Harmon documentary was the first time I
ever watched documentary about somebody and liked them less. Yeah,
because I only knew him as pee wee, Right, I
only knew him as this like really fun loving, like
awkward childlike character that is part of my childhood. But
then when I watched his documentary and saw like the person,
(28:36):
it speaks to what you're talking about, which is like
the person was kind of a zighead, just in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But when they were doing their art, it.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Was the refined aspect of like their highest self.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, And for me, it's really important to believe in
that because it's kind of connected to like the ablition
thing too, like that idea that like, it's sort of
like a willingness to believe in a goodness that doesn't.
I don't get me wrong, I'm not romantic about this.
Some people are bad and their art says I fuck too,
like you know, like sometimes sometimes that happens. But I
like to believe that even the worst, those who like
(29:11):
in this version of them being alive on this planet,
they have a capacity for something better that has somehow
gotten maligned or misguided or somehow fucked up otherwise.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to say they
or not.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I mean when I think about a black future and
speculating a black future, there are like particular aspects of
this present that I would want to leave behind.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Do you have any that you can think of.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
That I want to leave behind?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well? Number one, like I said, I've abolitioned this, so
I think prison as it exists in a better world
would not exist and really what it is.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Even though it's easy to.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Think about the negative aspects of abolition, mean like that,
what are we taking away? I think mostly about all
the things that we would have to add so that
black future that I'm imagining, this universe, healthcare, everyone has
access to food and they don't have to kill themselves
to get it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Everyone has access to quality education.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I mean literally literally those things, like most so called
crime just disappeared.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
There it is. I just did a whole video about
this earlier today.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, because people were saying, you know that the reason
why Trump is occupying dcs because of the crime.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
And I'm like, Okay, first of all.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
We're so stupid, They're dumb.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
This is for them.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Sorry, that's the wrong sound this sound.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I also liked the other sound too though, because are
you dumb? Stupid?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Stupid?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
It's actually spooky. It's spooky.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
It's like, oh yeah, this litletary occupation is good for us.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Fucking I'm like, I don't understand the mental gymnastics required
to do that, and so I like to tell myself
these are bots, like, these are bots that have been
sent here to try to push this narrative. So the
way that you like do the grace path, I do
the bot path.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I do it too sometimes when it's really really bad. Also,
it's just a fact if you're seeing on the internet,
it is, yes, like somebody in arrest is just laughing,
just laughing at it, like you're typing to do like
make myself calmer.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I definitely yesterday I had to like throw my phone on.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The couch, like get away from me, Like stop letting
them attack you. Well it stop letting yourself be like
inundated by this. But the crime is a result of
scarcity more often than not, like the crime that a
lot of people are committing. I'm not talking about crimes
of passion. I'm not talking about like pedophilia, but I'm
(31:33):
talking about the more common crimes of theft whatever. Yes,
And the things that come along with that are scarcity,
and the scarcity is created and the scarcity is beyond.
Just like the scarcity of resources, it's also like scarcity
of truth, right, So if you have a scarcy of
truth about your actual identity, then you are not given
(31:54):
the opportunity to actually love yourself in a way that
will cause you to protect yourself by making good choices exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
And to me, it's the scarcity of love in our institutions.
And again not to be too foo foo ha, like
you know, everything is peace and love, but like I
genuinely think, like if love and like compassion was like
fundamentally sown into our institutions. Even those other crimes you mentioned,
I think they would stop if people felt cared for. Generally,
I think like the violence that people absorb gets like
(32:22):
shot out into the world through them later on, the
violence that they've seen that they absorbed it. I'm not
saying like there would be nothing anyone would ever do,
but I think that, yeah, the so called criminals are
just people have been abandoned in various forms by the
institutions around them.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
How did you develop into this kind of person? Like
what was your upbringing?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Like, I think, I mean, there's a lot, but I
think I also can have a lot of compassion for
people because I've been very lucky in some ways.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
I've also have some unluckiness.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
And I think I needed both. So on the lucky side,
both our parents are from Ghana, so exactly I can't
speak tree, but enough be pacho to all the Gunmians,
but having okay, So I think it's a point to
come from people who understand that America is like not
the heart of everything. Number one fact, it's a huge
insane lottery that I can't ever skip over. And I
think a lot of us on the sort of like
(33:17):
some like intellectual side, even though I try my best
not to even consider myself like a public intellectual. Like
I'm like, listen, sometimes I'm just I don't know what
the fuck I'm saying. It's like it's just assume I
don't just leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Honestly, Can I please ask you to stop doing that
because there's too much platforming and pedestaling of ignorance, as
like us saying no, it's so annoying, but it's like
being and it's actually like really deeply disconcerting. How like
expertise is now considered elitist.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I just think like for me to have expertise, like
I like when it's like real expertise, and I don't
know that I've always earned in every single subject that
but anyways.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
You have to be an expert to talk about.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Not everything, but like I don't know, sometimes I I
don't mind it, but I feel like I have a
story about this that I just actually like. It is
called Black Death Correspondent, and I came to it when
there was a time where because my first book, someone
in America would die and I I can interview with
somebody in Germany about like, well what is the block?
I can't do a German accent, but what is the
(34:18):
situation of the blocks? And that's the how they would
say in America, and I'm like what, Like, I don't know,
so I think that I've become jaded.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Oh, Like they were like interviewing you about your book
and then would be like, what's going on with these
negroes dying?
Speaker 4 (34:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The black and black crime crap?
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah, and it'd be like someone like in like Iceland,
there's something seriously and it was like it got weird.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
So I think, I like, these places don't even have
black people like that, So like the question because like
what's going on with the whites and Iceland dies?
Speaker 4 (34:43):
It's all just news?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
It all just weird, not even news, all just money
and whatever. But anyways, I lost track. So how I
got to be this way? I want an insane lucky
lottery that both my parents are educated, both of them
even have another degree. My father had been a judge
in Ghana. My mother was a teacher and when she
came here she got a master's degree in education. So
that alone, that alone sets me up to be in
(35:05):
this like very very particular place. And I try to
never forget that, especially when I'm like talking and debating
with others. Another thing that is, like, so I was
one in Queen's other than that frek city. To me,
it was actually I loved it. I thought stairwells just
were supposed to smell like urine. That was just like
what I knew. And then we moved to a house
in Spring Value, Rocking Cary. But it was a house
and we were so upset to go. I remember, and
(35:27):
I got like my good childhood, like those like nice childhood.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
My next door neighbor has a basketball court.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Is my best friend like that kind of like yeah,
idyll that period in a very important formative period from
like let's say like nine or fourteen. No, but they
had one a lot of stuff that we didn't have,
like the neighbors had, So I could I've been on
the slipping slide. I think I've been concussed on a
slip and slide before you know, you did it right,
you kind of unconcious had your sliding down this shit. Anyways,
(35:53):
but on the unlucky side of the Saturday side. And
this is something I've been getting practiced like talking about
because I've been thinking about writing about it now. My
mom has serious mentalth conditions, a serious mentalth condition which
made it so that she couldn't work. And so when
I'm in like high school, like we start doing the
like electricities out a lot, the TV's out, the things
of like poverty are starting to become like a big
(36:15):
part of my life. But I'm really just interested in
like hiding them. I feel like that was my whole thing,
and it changes my attitude towards like I'm going to
fix this. I'm a pretty competitive and I used to
be like a certain type of ambitious, but those things continued.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
My mother's mental health decline.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
That time period, my grandfather died, which I think I
don't know somehow this offeel connected me.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
But all that to say is that house.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Got lost in like foreclosure slash, you know, last minute
sale to someone. Then we moved to apartment when I
was in college, and then we got a victim from
that space. I said all that to say, I think
it's a very lucky in particular situation to sort of
like be in like an extreme privilege situation and then
kind of also like lose that privilege in a particular
way too. Yes, and I think that allowed me to
(36:56):
I got and got to see both sides. Yeah, And
I don't wish for this on anyone, but this is
sort of my therapists sort of speaking. My my mom's
having that situation early on kind of innoculized me from
a lot of like the fuckeral that happened in teenage,
Like I didn't I didn't drink time.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Was in college. I'm still not a huge drinker.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I can't smoke weed anymore, and I barely smoked thin
now I actually can't.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It just makes me like two stress out.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
But that protected me from like just you know, like
getting too deep into like the wrong things and maybe
even more than all that stuff I started writing.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
But it could have gone the other way, you know
what I'm saying. Like some would say that that's what
sent them to etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
So it's it is.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's for a lot of them. I got lucky though,
because my person something about your personality, personality, but also
the education and also this kind of like almost sense
of maybe it's probably a problematic sense, like a self
righteous sense that I'm not going to decrease this pain
until I've like wan over it until I fixed it.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
My who ideas like I'm gonna get a house for
my family or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And I think i've you drinking as like an easy
way out or something, even at a young age. Again,
I think it's a little bit self righteous. But all
those things I think came together. And also, yeah, writing
became an escapism from like not wanting to deal with
the fact of my mom being totally transformed by she's
like schizophrenics gets effective disorder.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
Those things.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Having that be like so active as part of my
life I think brought me to writing as well.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I didn't ask you what brought you to writing?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
That's how I became this person though, which is a
part of it.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Why ask you how you became a loving, compassionate person,
not what brought you to writing.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
But it's the same thing though, no same thing.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Because you could have not been a writer and been
a loving, compassionate cab driver.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, But for me, my writing is about compassion. My
writing is about like that stuff, like that's what it
is ultimately, Like that's the battery in the back of it.
Like to me, the real thing is like having experienced suffering.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Again, not to be too Buddhism about.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
It, but are you a Buddhist.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I'm like, like, damn your clothes, Like I'm Christian. Buddhists like,
you know, like mixing between them. I really like, not
big onlike anybody. But the thing I like best about
Buddhism is that the buddh is like, I'm not a god, y'all.
I'm just trying to tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
A thing that's just trying to put you on.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, but people try to make him a god, but
he's like explicitly like, please listen, I'm not a god.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
And if you have to choose peace or my teachings,
choose peace. So I think I like that. But also
I grew up the players of God, and I grew
up hyper Christian. I've been to both the Catholic version.
I've been to Pentecostal. My mom's be some tongues. I've
been to church for three hours just to take a
break to go to church again. I've done every Warren
form of it, yes, and I've done the catetiues in classes.
So I Christianity just like in me, I guess at
this point. Yeah, and that also helps you, though I
(39:26):
can't act like it doesn't on some level, despite the
crazy representation of white nationalism. Jesus's main thing was like, hey, guys,
I know I said a lot of stuff, but the
main thing is love that guy, Like you love yourself
and you'll be good. And somehow they're like, we hate
gay people. Somethime that's what they got. It's like, what,
that's the main thing you got from this whole big
(39:46):
ass book.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yep, we hate everybody, hate everyone else. Oh we haven't.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I feel like we haven't really talked about like speculating
a black future.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
It's all that because it's gonna be one way, Like
there's love and compassion as a standard.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Well, I'd to go into our special Patreon segment and
talk about where that can exist in the diaspora.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Wars Do you know who? The diaspora wars are like.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
The sort of tensions between like black communities. Yes, I
mean they asked for wars, Like what's going on now?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
When we'll talk about it? So you don't seem interested
in talking about this? So now you're making me second
guess that as a question.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I mean, I don't feel disinterested. Part of my soul
was just hoping that, like most of us get it that.
It's like, Yo, we're in the same dog.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I when they said immigrants, people just thought that meant Latinos.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
So we're still not there.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Well, the record though, the lighter version of the diaspora
Wars Gotten Wine all Off is better than Nigerian's and
then but I do can see that Senegalese is kind
of the best of all, but it's kind of a
different thing.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Well, we're going to go over to the Patreon segment
to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Okay, Well, I'll wrap this.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Up by telling you this story.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
So I was at this dinner one time with Herbie
Hancock and no big deal.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I was like, wait, he's going to be okay, Okay, yeah,
She's like so meme faara con Herbie Hancock and my
Angelou popped up a little bit, but she couldn't stay
that long and go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So they had like the dinner and then like we
went up to they had like this like lounge area.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Who had the dinner? What is the thing?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
So this was for a jazz competition, okay, and my
homeboy Ben Williams.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Shout out to Ben. He's an incredible bass player.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
And I was supposed to hook up with a very
loser nigga and I got stood up. I did clean
my house though, so thank you Frank. I did clean
my house.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
And so I was in the house moping, this is.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
For this guy.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
He did show up, show up or what?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
He literally said that he was staying home to watch
a movie with his mom.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Then my mom can decide.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Note my mom came to visit, and like the next weekend,
we were at the grove and we saw him with
a white girl and he saw us and I was like.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Girl, that's crazy, But why did he make up a
better you know?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
But also why don't you just not like if you
don't want to come through this, don't come through.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Anyways, I was moping better.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I was moping and Ben hit me and was like, hey,
what are you doing because I just played for this
competition And they were having a dinner and they said,
I can bring somebody and I haven't gotten to catch
up with you since I've been in town, and I
was like, I just I don't know, and he was like, well,
Herri and Kopp will be there, and I was like,
I'll get dressed. Also, this was also like when I
had first implemented like go where you're invited, Like you know,
(43:08):
like you just got stood up, but like these people
want you there.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Go.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
It was perfect, meant to be.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Meant to be.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
So I went and they were having like a dinner
post competition, and then after that they had just kind
of like a lounge hang where Herbie was just like
hanging out in his sawar comes and just chit chatting.
But then they had like this side room that had
like little victuals and orderbs and whatnot. So I snuck
over there to like get a little bite, and then
(43:36):
Herbie came in. He had overheard me talking to my
homegirls talking about getting stood up by the way, and
he was like, well, you know, life just kind of
happens that way.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And he was like, you know, that's the thing about life.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And then he just started going into herbie lands and
he was like, yes, like he just in your book
that's what would happened, and it would make perfect.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Sense in my head. There's a keyboard, not the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
So he starts telling me about how all of us
are artists, and I'm like, Harby, what you're talking about
And he was like, because life requires creativity, it requires
so often for us to decide how we are going
to think beyond the borders of our ability, we have
to be innovative, and how we get meals, we have
(44:22):
to get innovative, and how we care for our children.
He was like, all of that is creativity. There is
an art to that. And even though my father is
a ridiculous, terrible human, he once said, I had called
him because I have clairvoyance, and I called him because
I was like, why do I have this? Like it's
not mentioned on my mom's side? Is it on your side?
And he was like, well, yes, But a lot of
(44:43):
it has to do with also that you're an artist,
because artists do god work. You create something from nothing.
So he was like, you exist off of a grid.
You have no limitations in the way that other people do,
so you are able to tap into vibrations and you know, realms,
et cetera that other people wouldn't even let themselves be
(45:06):
able to because they have the limitations of this particular
life we're in. Mm.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Wow, he said something.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
That's real, yeah, and then he acted up. So that
was that.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
But I got the good part, you know, I got
the throw away, the rind.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
It's in everybody though. That's what I'm trying to say.
Everybody got that piece in them.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
They do.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
That's why when people ask me why I dated certain people,
I'm like, they had this piece. I thought I was
gonna come back. So yes, tell me, you said you
have to write?
Speaker 2 (45:41):
What are you working on next?
Speaker 4 (45:42):
So a couple of different things.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Do you like writing?
Speaker 4 (45:44):
I love writing?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Oh? Nice?
Speaker 3 (45:46):
But no, Okay, First off, I'm a life right now,
so if I don't or if I can't. If I didn't,
I have to as maybe more honest. But I really
like the state of being just after I wrote.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Well, that's the part I was like, nobody likes writing.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
We like the results.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, I like the feeling, and most of the time
I don't feel like I wrote well. So most of
the time I don't love writing. I love writing as
a whole because I can zoom out look at the
big picture of a life saving type of thing. But
the actual act can be like really painful and brutal.
And then also the worst than writing bad is not
writing at all. That's also painful and ma real. So
the only good state is like the hour and a
(46:22):
half after I just wrote pretty good, before the doubt
settles in and I think I am trash again, But
that little hour, I'm like, Wow, I'm like, actually the
best in the world. I'm like, it's so crazy. They
really be having thoughts like, man, I wonder what's going
to feel like, like what kind of envelope are going
to send my MacArthur in, Like I gotta stop like
(46:42):
what together look like? For like an hour. Then I'm like,
oh wait, no, I'm actually the worst. So yeah, I
do like it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Sarah Disco Parker is on the voting board for the
Booker Prize.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
For the Booker I know, I know Kylie, Kylie who
read She's one of the other judges.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
She's a great author.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Okay, No, I thought you meant Kylie Jenner and I
was about to just flip the camera.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Just know that's your thing.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
I don't know famous people that once.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
No, I didn't know you were saying you know them.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I thought you were about to say, like, I know
that Kylie Jenner is on and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
No, no, no, no, Kylie read the author great author
is also on that, and I was like it. And
I've never really watched Sex in the City, but obviously
I know Sarah Jessicoe Parkers, and I was like, is
she cool?
Speaker 4 (47:18):
And she said she's very cool.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, but why is she on?
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I don't care if she's cool.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, No, you're actually the real question. I was just
trying to be like nice and lighthearted about it. You're
asking a real question. You're asking the real court had question.
That's why you have to want the podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
So are you working on anything right now?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (47:40):
I forgot I didn't answer the question.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, sorry, Yes, I'm doing an adaptation for Chain Gang,
So I'm working on the show potentially, which is harrowing
and scary, and I got notes recently, so we'll see
how that goes.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
How dare they how?
Speaker 4 (47:56):
I'm also working on let.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Me because that gives me ada that they gave you.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
Notes, I'll say it.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
We can talk offline.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, but for the most part they're actually okay, okay, yeah,
for the most part, the actually okay, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
actually pretty good. I'm working on a short story collection again.
My first book was a short story collection, and I'm
doing another one, and I'm starting to feel like one
of those stories may be a novel now too, So
that's over there. But the main thing right now is
(48:26):
a short story collection and adaptation of Chain Gang for
a TV show, The Last.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
All right, well, we'll speculate on that black future and
that it is everything your heart desires, and you all
can go and get the full box set of all
you have to compile it yourself. But of all of
your books, two of them.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Just two.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
Yeah, it's a box set now because it's more than one.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
So yeah, and a digit brain. Yeah, did I pronounce
it right? Aj Brenya aj Brenan.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
What I say I j And I said Kwame versus Kwame.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
But people say Kwame.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
You know, I'm from the.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Nineties, So when I say Kwame, I'm saying Kwame in
the fucking polka dots, like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
People who go by Kwame, they like to say Kwame.
I know a bunch of Kamei's quames are doing really
good right now. Just for the record, I don't know
if you know this, are they Kwame Alexander.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Okay, author? Yeah, Kwame?
Speaker 4 (49:23):
On WATCHI that's my friend the chef.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Nice. What Kwame am I thinking of?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
No?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
You know what, I'm not thinking of Kame. I'm not
thinking about Hai kim My bad.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
For all Kwame's You're very offended.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
That you sorry, sorry, but shout out to the Kwames.
I'm glad to hear that the quamis is.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I hear Kwame in.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Well right now.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Well, thank you for this fabulous conversation. That did bring
my energy up, because when I got on, I was
definitely irritated about some other nonsense, but always good vibes.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
That's that love and compassion.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
This is incredible. I'm so grateful. This has been really incredible.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Did oh h
Small help from small human areas.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Small it's so funky.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, hey, small Dave says, we have a treat today
because we're going to get a.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Lot of vocabulary if you think. Okay. So this person
loves to say they.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Don't be using vocabulary, and they do be using vocabulary
because they're a thinker and a writer. And I'm so
excited to get to interview Nana quame A Deja Brenna.
So he is the author of the book Chain Gang
All Stars, which is a book that grounds the prison
industrial complex in a game show in the future, and
(00:48):
through this lens, he is able to speculate the future
of not just black people, but of capitalism. And this
is such a unique and necessary not well, it's not
necessarily unique, but it's a very necessary method of using
the narrative form.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So when we.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Decided to talk about well we decided to do a
podcast episode, I was like, what are we going to
talk about?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
What I want to talk about? And we came up
with speculating a black future.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Because as a writer, you really get the opportunity through
different forms, whether it be narrative form, whether it be poetry,
whether it be script to consider things in a way
that I feel like in our reality, we just don't
get the opportunity to do. Like when I would speak
philosophically on Instagram about possibility, folks would just lose their minds, like, no,
(01:35):
you're supposed to only talk within this particular grid work
of the things that we already know. And for me,
someone who's imaginative and believes that our imagination is one
of our greatest tools of not just like joy, but
also survival, that feels very hindering. And what Naa does
in his work and what he's going to talk about
in this interview is he considers, speculates what could and
(02:02):
couldn't be, but not just on like negative ways, but
on all the ways.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
And just like our episode that we did with.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Ruha Benjamin Imagination as Resistance, it continues this ethos that
if you're only basing what could be on the ingredients
that have been given to you by those who don't
even want you to be anything, you've already lost your
boarding pass to your liberation. I love getting to talk
(02:30):
to creatives. I love the any talk to creatives who
are also very conscious and proud and excited to be
a creative. And that is something that Nana absolutely is.
Nana is out of Rockland, New York. I met him
at a nonprofit Protecto Fio. They had a festival, not
a festival, they had a fundraiser that I was hosting,
and he had come to read a piece and you know,
(02:51):
be a part of really just community.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
So it's really great to see.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Another artistic intellectual existing in that space and time and
having them right here on Small Thos podcasts.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Let's get into it. Speculating a black future.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I almost commented yesterday on somebody's Instagram like and again
I hate to be overtly like in like the fighting
of the Internet, but it was like random posts I
don't know how got on my algorithm about like someone's like, oh,
somebody said they were going to buy me a luxury bag,
and this is what they got me. And it was
like a Michael Core's bag, which I guess is like
not luxury enough for this particular person. And I went
to comment like global temperatures on the planet arising just
(03:32):
wanted to be like, bro, like I get what you're saying, sure,
but like you guys are losing the fucking plot, Like
we're losing the.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Flot right, and yes, and I want at least that
I want at least.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
That, Yeah, we can have fun.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
You guys just came into a conversation. Let's just what
we were already talking.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Is about speculating a black future.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Absolutely, like yes, And you can be annoyed by my
course because that's not a luxury brand. And say, Michael
course also is probably a part of the sweatshop. I
don't know, like you know what I mean, Like you can't.
You can also like take a moment to I would
have preferred Cotur because at least I know that that's
not contributing to the to the fast fashion ways that
(04:16):
is watching it sports of Donna.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Let it be based in some type of moral ethic
and not inherited vague esthetic that is like one hundred
percent amoral and only based in like a sort of
external validation machine that who knows who even controls it.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Probably some money guy you don't even like.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
And this is Nana.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Hey, guys, sorry, I shouldn't use sound effects.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
It's not my show.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Yeah I did it one we're talking about it.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Just said I'm gonna do it. Ag Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know that Brendan's job is after the show, he
puts in all the sounds.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Oh, I didn't know that, My bad, Brandon, I already
do like three more times.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Max, Like Brandon is like, he's an incredibly effective and
capable sound engineer, but he's a brilliant sound escape artist.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, and he told me he's a musician as well.
So big ups to Brandon. Yeah, a nice sound for
him too, like a thing.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Here are unicorn, Brandon, you are? Okay.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So we decided on this theme side effects of a
speculative black future, because that's really what.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You be writing about.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Absolutely, So let's first of all just say like, how
did you come up with that as well? No, you know,
we were just saying off camera that not not be
using basic words, but this is not basic.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, and it's not my worry. I have a good
story about that, Like I think I said it, like,
I don't even like the word speculative. When I first
saw it was in a review for my first book,
and I was like, oh my god, how dare they
stay for Friday Black, my short story collection, the first book? Okay,
And I was like, how dare you say that? And
I looked at what speculative meant I said, oh, yeah,
that is kind of me, that is most me. And
(06:04):
so what do you think it meant. I don't know,
you know, I was like, I don't understand, so I'm offended.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
I would like to use these big words right. Well,
for the record, speculative in the dictionary is engaged in
expressing or based on conjecture rather than knowledge, which.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Is what a lot of.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
People get mad about on the Internet, and they try
and apply it to me.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
But I'm like, no, I'm speaking for backs.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, and I would add that speculative fiction or like
speculative in the literary sense. It's sort of like to me,
it's just the employee of the imagined to sort of
like instill a fictive world with things that are not
physical realities but are informed by our historical and present
physical reality. So I'm using my imagination to sort of
(06:50):
maybe extrapolate from where we are in this moment to
create a world that.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Is an echo or a reflection of what is.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So that gives me a way to wade through some
particular issues.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Oh okay came into the scene.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Lammba a way to weigh through issues or conversations and
think about how the world works. It's a way of
getting at the heart of things by sometimes going through
the detour maybe.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
I mean it has a certain level of like pattern
recognition being applied, right because like if you look at
Octavia Butler and folks are like, oh my gosh, Like
she predicted it, like she saw it coming. I mean,
it is eerie that she had the year solid like
twenty twenty five imparable of this hour. But she did
what I believe or what I feel like you're doing,
Like she assessed based on patterns and the present where
(07:43):
things could proceed and use those things to imagine what
could perhaps take place and how we could respond to
it and how we can respond to the now.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Absolutely, Like this is a quote that's coming to me
right now, which is from Out of War Ragnarok, and
at one point that literary text, even though I say
that as a joke, but it also is a character
talks about it's about the nature of the thing, not
the form. And I think when you work in the
speculative space, where really a lot of the times like
(08:16):
we're thinking about the nature of these things and we're
transforming into slightly different forms to speak directly, maybe even
more directly about the nature of a thing. Give me
an example example it's easy for me is in my
last book, Chain Gang All Stars, I'm thinking largely about
the carceral system, the prison industrial complex. I could write
a book about an actual prison or a fittive retelling
(08:37):
of a specific prison, and that would be really privileging,
like the specific forms that are sort of dangerous and
violent in our world right now. I think for me,
when I think about the nature of the thing, I'm
thinking about sort of like the implications and ideas that
the carceral system has set forth, which is that humanity
can be assigned or unassigned, that there are several instances
(08:58):
where it's okay to kill him beings, and that that
killing bee administered and done by the government. There's spaces
where slavery is okay.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah. The system created the prisons. The prison then created
the system.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah, and so like in that case, even while transforming
the form of the thing, while creating this system where
there's like sort of gladiatorial combat, gladiatorial blood sport, I'm
still thinking about the nature of this thing, which is
basically like obscene and overt disregard for humanity and to me.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
That is a way of thinking about specuative work.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
And for sometimes, even though I'm taking this what some
people might read as like a giant conceit or like
a lot of fictive liberties, I think I could get
more directly at the nature of a thing, because sometimes
we get hung up on the specificity, like the form.
So that is to say, if I wrote a story
about Rikers in particular.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You got something wrong, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Got one little thing wrong. Or they'd be like, well
that's Rikers, or well that's that thing, or that's nineteen
eighties right right right.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
They can kind of like nuance it.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
Out exactly and they'll get me wrong. There is a
really important power in the reporting and the stories that
do do that, and those stories.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Inform this book absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
But my way is a way for me to get
straight at the nature of something. And that's what I
like about speculative fiction. Even though I write also quote
unquote realism. I'm about to teach a class, and I
think what we think of realism and surreal and speculative,
I think they're much closer than we think. But anyways,
that's how I think of it.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Well, now say that about.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Okay, so you know you want to.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Yeah, I just I heard myself talking a lot of
let me just quiet.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Well you're talking at a very high level right now.
So that's the other thing.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Like when I go back and do the intro after this,
I have to tell people like so just turn your
ears up.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
This is not a casual convo.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
But I use norbal language mostly right when you write, not.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
When you talk, because I'm literally here like oh, because
I said to myself, Oh, you're talking to.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
None of it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
It's gonna be late. It's gonna be fun. No, it's not.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
No, no, it will be my degrees right now, all
of them.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You kind of got me in teaching mold because these
are like very like teacher kind of questions and things
I would talk about in like a So I'm kind
of in that mode a little bit.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
But it doesn't have to be that way. It can
be a combo. You can ask me questions back.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yes, So just with the spectrum of reality thing like
my the teacher, he said, I was in MFA in
grad school and I was writing these different modes. One
way was like this sort of like fake Juno Diaz
super realistic.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
But like with like style way.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh yes, I haven't heard about Juno in a while.
Didn't you have the whole sex or haraffment situation that
kind of shut him down?
Speaker 4 (11:24):
He got a lot of trouble. He got a lot
of trouble.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I was gonna say, because he was popping and then
he was not.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
In Yeah, he got to put it there and pay.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
This is all pre that, okay, But I'm mostly commenting
on the realism factory writing in realism, like familiar reality.
Then I had these other stories with ghosts and a
whole bunch of like weird shit.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Well, so wait, let's bring it down, like, let's clarify
it even more for folks, Like, so you said you
were writing in a who know das style? Can you
give people even more of a description of what that?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
So he would be writing about like sort of macheese
mo or boys thinking through like the hole mucheese mo
stuff in like Newark where he's from, but it's actually
a familiar new Wark. I was writing stuff that was
a very close representation of Spring Valley, Rock and County
where I'm from, or maybe even a Queen's where I
was born, And it was like using my understanding of
that space to recreate an a fictive level, like the
(12:24):
actual specific world in a way that anyone could identify
as like, oh yeah, this is like if not specifically
that town, a similar city or a similar suburb. So
that's like a realism versus anywhere us. Yeah, and there's nothing.
I mean again, this is where later on I'm going
to upset this. But to the average reader, there is
nothing magical happening. There is nothing that is outside of
(12:47):
the plot of a plausible reality. That is to say,
whatever happens in the story, someone could tell you that happened,
and you used to be like damn, but you wouldn't
be like that's impossible, yeah, right, versus the surreal, the speculative,
or maybe even the sci fi, all these things that
are on the other side of that spectrum of the
real that's more towards the unreal. Now, if one is real,
it's called ten unreal or ten could even be a
(13:08):
dream where okay, maybe there's uh people have superpowers, or
maybe people can fly or ghosts are real. On talking
and joking with the characters, what about if they can
talk to animals?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Can we do that?
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Or they can talk to animals?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Like those kind of things, and sometimes the speculative is
I operate usually right in the middle, where so that's
like the far end, but like right in the middle
of that spectrum might be something like changing where like
this could physically happen, but it would require us to
go a little bit further down a certain path that
we're maybe already on. But even just the presentation of
that is like is that real?
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That unreal?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
That tension in your mind is a part of the
project tree. But the thing I had when I was
in grad school, the problem I had was back then,
back in my day, I was like, so it was
twenty thirteen, twenty thirteen, it felt to me like to
be successful as author, you have to like really error
towards that first kind of gory, the Juno Diaz, the
more realism.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Kind of style.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Was that just the era at the time.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
I think that that's a big conversation.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
I think in general the DA moment as well.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I think that the elite spaces always prefer that, and
it has to do like if this can get in
something around contatatory. But I think that the less sort
of like, I mean, it's weird because now someone could
really argue that with Marvel and whatnot, and those things
are being super unreal but they're so popular. But I
think if you think about the movies that win, like
the Oscar, it's almost always going to be like a
(14:31):
bio pick because I think there's like a sort of
implicit argument that representing reality as is is like somehow
the highest form of art or something, and I don't
know exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Why it is.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Put back on that in that I feel like particularly
representing reality of like the under class because.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
It's a porn. It's like a trauma porn.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, like look what one this year? Like a broke
Russian stripper gets a chance at noe.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
What is this?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
What's it called Anna something? The movie that won Best Picture?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Like yes, she's literally just like a chicken Jersey I
think or Brooklyn or something, and she I'm talking like
this and then she's like a stripper. She meets this
Russian like rich guy. He tells her that he's gonna
marry her and she believes him and then like he
of course ends up not And that's the film. I mean,
(15:28):
I'm not saying it wasn't like enjoyable Best Picture, No, Yeah,
Like there's no like character development or anything happening, Like
you know, there's no cinematography in that regard, but I
just feel like there's a voyeurism that happens with getting
to be in the mix and see it but not
be of it and not be responsible to fix it.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
That makes a lot of sense, And there's so many
other elements I could think of it as to why,
like the certain trends happen. But for me, I don't
know what it was, but I just know that it
felt to be the case to me. Even though my
professor's name is George Saunders is known for kind of
like crazy out there stories and he's the reason why
I went to MFA. So anyways, I went to office
hours and I was like, all right, George. Basically without asking,
(16:10):
I was asking should I write these kind of stories,
these like some more serious realistic stories or these like
weird stupid, funny stuff And he was just like yes,
And that changed my life. That was it. What he does.
This a ghost story is a realism story. And if
you think about the people who I care to be
associated with as a writer, like with Tony Morrison, people
(16:31):
are talking about realism or unrealism. They're saying you're just
the goat and Tony Morrison has a lot of ghosts
and whatnot, a lot of.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Like, there's a lot of magical realism happening in there
all over the place.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Exactly, a lot of magical things. But also depending on
what your sensibility is, like he said, a ghost story
is a realism story.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I mean, Beloved is the return of exactly. But you're there,
you know, you're like they're arguing it, but you're like
she is.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
You have to represent whatever you're writing. I don't care
if you're writing about being in some Ivy League school
or if you're writing about ghosts in a cabin. You
have to represent it so the reader can fill it.
And for some people the experience of being in an Ivy
League school is just as surreal as the other. For
some people the experience as getting bombed in real time
(17:16):
feels super duper surreal. But that's someone's experience right now. Yes,
And so to me the realism idea. Also, dreams are
part of reality, So I think that the spectrum is
a lot more collapsible.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Than people think.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
But that's again maybe not super useful, but I'm actually
teaching whole class focusing on that this is coming semester
where at Hbert William Smith College is like an upstate
school Geneva, New York in the winter, owning for It's
only a semester. It's like a little fellowship thing. So
I have to be there till December.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I got to write anyways, Okay, oh there you go,
get it right.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I need to paint, like in general, like on a
canvas or like house.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No, on a canvas. I mean I need to write.
I need to paint.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I need to just make more room to do like
art for art's sake, to also speculate the black future.
Like I feel like this conversation is beyond just the
context of writing.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
So like I have a wo woman show.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
At the end of the show, the final monologue of
the show is a doll who is the black doll
in the white doll black doll tests.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Did you ever heard about those?
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yes, treaty ugly. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
So she basically like breaks out of the test and
is like, I want to take y'all out of here.
Let's go somewhere it's like better than this, and she
takes the whole audience through a portal to the land
of Everything, like you can be whoever you are, Like
you're not limited to being pretty, ugly, smart, black, nice, whatever,
Like you are everything that's been before, you are everything
that you are now, you are everything that you want
(18:44):
to be. Can you imagine that? Like, can you allow
yourself to imagine freedom? That's a concept throughout the course
of the show, Like the concept of liberation beyond that.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Which you've seen.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Yes, yes, is there a.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Version of liberation that you even speculate?
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
And to me, it's a huge part of the superpower
of like working in the speculative spaces, but even understanding
if someone goes to your Seizere show, like they have
to stretch a muscle that is required for a real revolution,
And it's that willingness to imagine something that's like not
real but is real in that moment. So to me,
like that practice of imagining, deeply imagining that which does
(19:25):
not exist, which can be done by taking in work
that employees that which does not exist, is like inherent
to the project of like revolution and like real movements
towards like liberation.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
That's what it's always been artists, and it's a big
deal as artists so much a part of those movements.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It's a huge part of it, and it makes me
feel it's the reason why I feel like what we
do isn't pointless or isn't masturbatory, or isn't like just
just like give an award or not. Yeah, it's actually
really important. I really believe that.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I feel like I always felt that, but I didn't
know it. Like I always felt like, I know I'm
not doing bullshit.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I know I'm not doing bullshit, but.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I don't feel like I really knew it until I
was able to connect the dots between really understanding socialism
and like the movements of socialism and communism that have
systematically and consistently been like snuffed out and really silenced,
and how deeply connected artists have been in all of
(20:33):
those movements and globally.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Was there like a moment that you can like sort
of like think back to where like something clicked or
like kind of came together for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Actually, and it's very very recent because my mom, so
I was writing my memoir and post October seventh already
had started awakening things because I basically in watching the Palestinians,
it wasn't about watching them be harmed, It was watching
their resilience, watching their like unwillingness to lose dignity, to
(21:05):
lose sight of like their connectivity to their faith, their
connectivity to their their land, to their indigenuity, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Like that really reopened for.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Me, like what our ancestors really about, right, because we've
lost sight of that here in the United States particularly.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But in writing my.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Memoir, I was writing a chapter about that and how
Pallisie affected me in that way. And I asked my
mom to bring my books and my notebooks and my
syllabi and my reading you know, like they'll have like
these big reading books like books. Hello, They'll have these
like big bound like course readings.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Different papers and articles. Yeah, I got it.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
So I had her bring all those. But more importantly,
I started looking through my notebooks. I start looking through
my notes from grad school, where I had professors like
Robin Kelly and Stephen Gregory and Manning.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Maryble and I was like, hold the oh, I've always
been a.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Marxist, because I realized that I've been talking about And
so I started reading like these poems that I had written,
and all of my poems and all of my raps
are like I'm not about money.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
We're too much about like and I'm like, but you're
in the midst of hip hop.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, yeah, you seem disappointed by this story.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
No, No, I'm not disappointed at all. I'm like, I'm
feeling like connected to it because what I was going
to say is something that I've discovered. Sometimes your work
knows before you before you do. Yeah, that's what I
was thinking. I've seen it a bunch of times where
like it goes a lot of different ways too, Like
I had never identified as like, oh I have anxiety
(22:40):
or whatever this and that. Then I remember looking at
some of my old stories and I was like, wait, what, like,
you're not okay? And I think with that, what I
was thinking for you is that it feels like I mean,
it also start a straight line, right like you have time,
you have awakening, and you have a wakening again, then
you have a again. It gets like more and more big,
(23:01):
more and more specific. Sometimes it gets more and more
like precise. To me, it's really.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Okay, Wait, can I read you this?
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So I wrote this while I was sitting next to
Foxy Brown. I forgot who was on the other side
of me, but we had all been called to this
like meeting by Minister Farakhan because the beef between fifty
and jar Rule had reached such a fever pitch that
he was concerned that we would see another scenario with
(23:27):
Pock and Big.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
So he had called all of like folks in hip hop.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Is your life like Minister Farrah.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Interviewed him like several times not insane.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Didn't say for any nor person to hear, like, let
you talking about I was not talking about surreal Okay, sorry,
go ahead.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Which speaks to you saying like for some people it
feels like ah, but then this is what it was.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And so we were all called like most many of
us immediately.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
You were the call is to heal, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
And so while I was there, I was doodling. I
was like writing notes. So like here's a doodle.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh wow, I've seen that you can do like real
art stuff. I'm gonna ask you more about that in
a second, Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
So check this out.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Envy and money share the same color for a reason
because they're what we consume instead of the food for
thought we should be eating, believing that it's at the
root of being better people.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
But really, ain't shit changed if it's the root of evil.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
We pull guns for funds, get low for dough, killing
each other on the daily, and stead he's slaying our souls.
Our goals don't extend beyond reaching the pot of gold,
because we invest no time in helping each other through
the storms to get to the rainbows.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Lord knows.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Paper is a delightful enabler, but it don't grow on
trees because it ain't made by the creator. Won't catch
me in church on Sundays. But I believe in the
divine and that we're made in a vision universal of
inner lights that shine. And this grind and this hustle
and this world does our glow as we steal each
other's luminescence when we feel our own or again low.
But alas, it all comes back to having and having that.
(25:05):
And it seems like everybody wants only what another's got.
But see, we got to achieve the understanding that unity
is the fruit on which we need to feed. Because
money make the world go round, but it don't move
mountains and it won't move me.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Oh my god, let's go mutual aids. And it was
bars beyond all like the real content, like I like
all the like the way the colors was working in it,
thank you, and then lumines Sence and that even it
was I mean I love that. That was fire and
(25:40):
like it was like the green, like the color. Then
it kind of became I for like green, like oh,
like healthy things to eat, and then we went to
roots like I.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
But like my first single was the hook was literally I.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Want a Lexis and Abama coop, a Benz and a range.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Rove to but nothing I do was just for the money.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I want a condo with a pant house, a manshiain
with a guess house, but nothing.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I do it's just for the money. I do this
for the love. Like that was the song that was
my first. Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So you're right the work I never thought of it
that way, but the work knows before you do.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, that's the kind of magical thing about art again,
like to me, a magic of it. I think work
and like being creative and using your imagination not to
be like cheesy or corny, but like the accouterments or
like the false parts of being like in a physical
human form kind of fallaway. And I think a lot
of the like horrible, horrible, horrible people have written incredibly
(26:48):
loving ideas like the constitutional rights or like the Bill
of Rights.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Those kind of things are like a really good example
when you have.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
Like horrible people like advocating for like really important things,
if you actually in their lived life, it's like, hey,
isn't that a weird and super glaring contradiction that you're
a slave owner and you said all right, and like
they can't get there, but they're in inner inner part
kind of new and this, like the idea, this makes
me feel like faith and hope for our humunity in general,
(27:15):
because I think once like when I write and when
I revise and I revise and revise our.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Revis I get a chance to be my highest self
on the page.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
But when it's not like in the room, my insecurities,
my fears, my worries, my doubts, these things that are
like very a part of Nana the person, yet kind
of block like Nana like the essence, And I try
my best to be like that idea helps me be
really generous towards kind of anyone.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
And so it's kind of like a Buddhist thing.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
They're like if someone like says something poorly like don't
pay attention to that, think about what they do. And
if they do something poorly, don't think about that. Think
about like what their heart is, and if their heart
seems bad, think about what their heart could have been.
It's like this like grace path that you try to
get to. But I think that you can see that
happen sometimes in people's work and and their art and
their creativity. I think art sometimes shows you, oh, yeah,
(28:07):
that guy's like a dickhead in their lived experience of life.
But when they get a chance to make this thing,
this weird other part pokes out that I think is.
Speaker 4 (28:14):
Like in most of us.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Like the Peea Harmon documentary was the first time I
ever watched documentary about somebody and liked them less. Yeah,
because I only knew him as pee wee, Right, I
only knew him as this like really fun loving, like
awkward childlike character that is part of my childhood. But
then when I watched his documentary and saw like the person,
(28:36):
it speaks to what you're talking about, which is like
the person was kind of a zighead, just in my opinion.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But when they were doing their art, it.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Was the refined aspect of like their highest self.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah, And for me, it's really important to believe in
that because it's kind of connected to like the ablition
thing too, like that idea that like, it's sort of
like a willingness to believe in a goodness that doesn't.
I don't get me wrong, I'm not romantic about this.
Some people are bad and their art says I fuck too,
like you know, like sometimes sometimes that happens. But I
like to believe that even the worst, those who like
(29:11):
in this version of them being alive on this planet,
they have a capacity for something better that has somehow
gotten maligned or misguided or somehow fucked up otherwise.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Sorry, I don't know if I'm allowed to say they
or not.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I mean when I think about a black future and
speculating a black future, there are like particular aspects of
this present that I would want to leave behind.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Do you have any that you can think of.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
That I want to leave behind?
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Well? Number one, like I said, I've abolitioned this, so
I think prison as it exists in a better world
would not exist and really what it is.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Even though it's easy to.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
Think about the negative aspects of abolition, mean like that,
what are we taking away? I think mostly about all
the things that we would have to add so that
black future that I'm imagining, this universe, healthcare, everyone has
access to food and they don't have to kill themselves
to get it.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Everyone has access to quality education.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I mean literally literally those things, like most so called
crime just disappeared.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
There it is. I just did a whole video about
this earlier today.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, because people were saying, you know that the reason
why Trump is occupying dcs because of the crime.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
And I'm like, Okay, first of all.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
We're so stupid, They're dumb.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
This is for them.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Sorry, that's the wrong sound this sound.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I also liked the other sound too though, because are
you dumb? Stupid?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Stupid?
Speaker 4 (30:36):
It's actually spooky. It's spooky.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
It's like, oh yeah, this litletary occupation is good for us.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Fucking I'm like, I don't understand the mental gymnastics required
to do that, and so I like to tell myself
these are bots, like, these are bots that have been
sent here to try to push this narrative. So the
way that you like do the grace path, I do
the bot path.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I do it too sometimes when it's really really bad. Also,
it's just a fact if you're seeing on the internet,
it is, yes, like somebody in arrest is just laughing,
just laughing at it, like you're typing to do like
make myself calmer.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
I definitely yesterday I had to like throw my phone on.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
The couch, like get away from me, Like stop letting
them attack you. Well it stop letting yourself be like
inundated by this. But the crime is a result of
scarcity more often than not, like the crime that a
lot of people are committing. I'm not talking about crimes
of passion. I'm not talking about like pedophilia, but I'm
(31:33):
talking about the more common crimes of theft whatever. Yes,
And the things that come along with that are scarcity,
and the scarcity is created and the scarcity is beyond.
Just like the scarcity of resources, it's also like scarcity
of truth, right, So if you have a scarcy of
truth about your actual identity, then you are not given
(31:54):
the opportunity to actually love yourself in a way that
will cause you to protect yourself by making good choices exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
And to me, it's the scarcity of love in our institutions.
And again not to be too foo foo ha, like
you know, everything is peace and love, but like I
genuinely think, like if love and like compassion was like
fundamentally sown into our institutions. Even those other crimes you mentioned,
I think they would stop if people felt cared for. Generally,
I think like the violence that people absorb gets like
(32:22):
shot out into the world through them later on, the
violence that they've seen that they absorbed it. I'm not
saying like there would be nothing anyone would ever do,
but I think that, yeah, the so called criminals are
just people have been abandoned in various forms by the
institutions around them.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
How did you develop into this kind of person? Like
what was your upbringing?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Like, I think, I mean, there's a lot, but I
think I also can have a lot of compassion for
people because I've been very lucky in some ways.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
I've also have some unluckiness.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
And I think I needed both. So on the lucky side,
both our parents are from Ghana, so exactly I can't
speak tree, but enough be pacho to all the Gunmians,
but having okay, So I think it's a point to
come from people who understand that America is like not
the heart of everything. Number one fact, it's a huge
insane lottery that I can't ever skip over. And I
think a lot of us on the sort of like
(33:17):
some like intellectual side, even though I try my best
not to even consider myself like a public intellectual. Like
I'm like, listen, sometimes I'm just I don't know what
the fuck I'm saying. It's like it's just assume I
don't just leave me alone.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Honestly, Can I please ask you to stop doing that
because there's too much platforming and pedestaling of ignorance, as
like us saying no, it's so annoying, but it's like
being and it's actually like really deeply disconcerting. How like
expertise is now considered elitist.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I just think like for me to have expertise, like
I like when it's like real expertise, and I don't
know that I've always earned in every single subject that
but anyways.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
You have to be an expert to talk about.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
Not everything, but like I don't know, sometimes I I
don't mind it, but I feel like I have a
story about this that I just actually like. It is
called Black Death Correspondent, and I came to it when
there was a time where because my first book, someone
in America would die and I I can interview with
somebody in Germany about like, well what is the block?
I can't do a German accent, but what is the
(34:18):
situation of the blocks? And that's the how they would
say in America, and I'm like what, Like, I don't know,
so I think that I've become jaded.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Oh, Like they were like interviewing you about your book
and then would be like, what's going on with these
negroes dying?
Speaker 4 (34:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (34:31):
The black and black crime crap?
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Yeah, and it'd be like someone like in like Iceland,
there's something seriously and it was like it got weird.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
So I think, I like, these places don't even have
black people like that, So like the question because like
what's going on with the whites and Iceland dies?
Speaker 4 (34:43):
It's all just news?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
It all just weird, not even news, all just money
and whatever. But anyways, I lost track. So how I
got to be this way? I want an insane lucky
lottery that both my parents are educated, both of them
even have another degree. My father had been a judge
in Ghana. My mother was a teacher and when she
came here she got a master's degree in education. So
that alone, that alone sets me up to be in
(35:05):
this like very very particular place. And I try to
never forget that, especially when I'm like talking and debating
with others. Another thing that is, like, so I was
one in Queen's other than that frek city. To me,
it was actually I loved it. I thought stairwells just
were supposed to smell like urine. That was just like
what I knew. And then we moved to a house
in Spring Value, Rocking Cary. But it was a house
and we were so upset to go. I remember, and
(35:27):
I got like my good childhood, like those like nice childhood.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
My next door neighbor has a basketball court.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
Is my best friend like that kind of like yeah,
idyll that period in a very important formative period from
like let's say like nine or fourteen. No, but they
had one a lot of stuff that we didn't have,
like the neighbors had, So I could I've been on
the slipping slide. I think I've been concussed on a
slip and slide before you know, you did it right,
you kind of unconcious had your sliding down this shit. Anyways,
(35:53):
but on the unlucky side of the Saturday side. And
this is something I've been getting practiced like talking about
because I've been thinking about writing about it now. My
mom has serious mentalth conditions, a serious mentalth condition which
made it so that she couldn't work. And so when
I'm in like high school, like we start doing the
like electricities out a lot, the TV's out, the things
of like poverty are starting to become like a big
(36:15):
part of my life. But I'm really just interested in
like hiding them. I feel like that was my whole thing,
and it changes my attitude towards like I'm going to
fix this. I'm a pretty competitive and I used to
be like a certain type of ambitious, but those things continued.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
My mother's mental health decline.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
That time period, my grandfather died, which I think I
don't know somehow this offeel connected me.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
But all that to say is that house.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Got lost in like foreclosure slash, you know, last minute
sale to someone. Then we moved to apartment when I
was in college, and then we got a victim from
that space. I said all that to say, I think
it's a very lucky in particular situation to sort of
like be in like an extreme privilege situation and then
kind of also like lose that privilege in a particular
way too. Yes, and I think that allowed me to
(36:56):
I got and got to see both sides. Yeah, And
I don't wish for this on anyone, but this is
sort of my therapists sort of speaking. My my mom's
having that situation early on kind of innoculized me from
a lot of like the fuckeral that happened in teenage,
Like I didn't I didn't drink time.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Was in college. I'm still not a huge drinker.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
I can't smoke weed anymore, and I barely smoked thin
now I actually can't.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
It just makes me like two stress out.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
But that protected me from like just you know, like
getting too deep into like the wrong things and maybe
even more than all that stuff I started writing.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
But it could have gone the other way, you know
what I'm saying. Like some would say that that's what
sent them to etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
So it's it is.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
It's for a lot of them. I got lucky though,
because my person something about your personality, personality, but also
the education and also this kind of like almost sense
of maybe it's probably a problematic sense, like a self
righteous sense that I'm not going to decrease this pain
until I've like wan over it until I fixed it.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
My who ideas like I'm gonna get a house for
my family or whatever.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And I think i've you drinking as like an easy
way out or something, even at a young age. Again,
I think it's a little bit self righteous. But all
those things I think came together. And also, yeah, writing
became an escapism from like not wanting to deal with
the fact of my mom being totally transformed by she's
like schizophrenics gets effective disorder.
Speaker 4 (38:10):
Those things.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Having that be like so active as part of my
life I think brought me to writing as well.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I didn't ask you what brought you to writing?
Speaker 4 (38:18):
That's how I became this person though, which is a
part of it.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Why ask you how you became a loving, compassionate person,
not what brought you to writing.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
But it's the same thing though, no same thing.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Because you could have not been a writer and been
a loving, compassionate cab driver.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, But for me, my writing is about compassion. My
writing is about like that stuff, like that's what it
is ultimately, Like that's the battery in the back of it.
Like to me, the real thing is like having experienced suffering.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
Again, not to be too Buddhism about.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
It, but are you a Buddhist.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I'm like, like, damn your clothes, Like I'm Christian. Buddhists like,
you know, like mixing between them. I really like, not
big onlike anybody. But the thing I like best about
Buddhism is that the buddh is like, I'm not a god, y'all.
I'm just trying to tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
A thing that's just trying to put you on.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, but people try to make him a god, but
he's like explicitly like, please listen, I'm not a god.
Speaker 4 (39:03):
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
And if you have to choose peace or my teachings,
choose peace. So I think I like that. But also
I grew up the players of God, and I grew
up hyper Christian. I've been to both the Catholic version.
I've been to Pentecostal. My mom's be some tongues. I've
been to church for three hours just to take a
break to go to church again. I've done every Warren
form of it, yes, and I've done the catetiues in classes.
So I Christianity just like in me, I guess at
this point. Yeah, and that also helps you, though I
(39:26):
can't act like it doesn't on some level, despite the
crazy representation of white nationalism. Jesus's main thing was like, hey, guys,
I know I said a lot of stuff, but the
main thing is love that guy, Like you love yourself
and you'll be good. And somehow they're like, we hate
gay people. Somethime that's what they got. It's like, what,
that's the main thing you got from this whole big
(39:46):
ass book.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Yep, we hate everybody, hate everyone else. Oh we haven't.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I feel like we haven't really talked about like speculating
a black future.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
It's all that because it's gonna be one way, Like
there's love and compassion as a standard.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
Well, I'd to go into our special Patreon segment and
talk about where that can exist in the diaspora.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Wars Do you know who? The diaspora wars are like.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
The sort of tensions between like black communities. Yes, I
mean they asked for wars, Like what's going on now?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
When we'll talk about it? So you don't seem interested
in talking about this? So now you're making me second
guess that as a question.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I mean, I don't feel disinterested. Part of my soul
was just hoping that, like most of us get it that.
It's like, Yo, we're in the same dog.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I when they said immigrants, people just thought that meant Latinos.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Yeah, ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
So we're still not there.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Well, the record though, the lighter version of the diaspora
Wars Gotten Wine all Off is better than Nigerian's and
then but I do can see that Senegalese is kind
of the best of all, but it's kind of a
different thing.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Well, we're going to go over to the Patreon segment
to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Okay, Well, I'll wrap this.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Up by telling you this story.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
So I was at this dinner one time with Herbie
Hancock and no big deal.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
I was like, wait, he's going to be okay, Okay, yeah,
She's like so meme faara con Herbie Hancock and my
Angelou popped up a little bit, but she couldn't stay
that long and go ahead. Sorry.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
So they had like the dinner and then like we
went up to they had like this like lounge area.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Who had the dinner? What is the thing?
Speaker 1 (41:39):
So this was for a jazz competition, okay, and my
homeboy Ben Williams.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Shout out to Ben. He's an incredible bass player.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
And I was supposed to hook up with a very
loser nigga and I got stood up. I did clean
my house though, so thank you Frank. I did clean
my house.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
And so I was in the house moping, this is.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
For this guy.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
He did show up, show up or what?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
He literally said that he was staying home to watch
a movie with his mom.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Then my mom can decide.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
Note my mom came to visit, and like the next weekend,
we were at the grove and we saw him with
a white girl and he saw us and I was like.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
Girl, that's crazy, But why did he make up a
better you know?
Speaker 1 (42:35):
But also why don't you just not like if you
don't want to come through this, don't come through.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Anyways, I was moping better.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I was moping and Ben hit me and was like, hey,
what are you doing because I just played for this
competition And they were having a dinner and they said,
I can bring somebody and I haven't gotten to catch
up with you since I've been in town, and I
was like, I just I don't know, and he was like, well,
Herri and Kopp will be there, and I was like,
I'll get dressed. Also, this was also like when I
had first implemented like go where you're invited, Like you know,
(43:08):
like you just got stood up, but like these people
want you there.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
Go.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
It was perfect, meant to be.
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Meant to be.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
So I went and they were having like a dinner
post competition, and then after that they had just kind
of like a lounge hang where Herbie was just like
hanging out in his sawar comes and just chit chatting.
But then they had like this side room that had
like little victuals and orderbs and whatnot. So I snuck
over there to like get a little bite, and then
(43:36):
Herbie came in. He had overheard me talking to my
homegirls talking about getting stood up by the way, and
he was like, well, you know, life just kind of
happens that way.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
And he was like, you know, that's the thing about life.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
And then he just started going into herbie lands and
he was like, yes, like he just in your book
that's what would happened, and it would make perfect.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
Sense in my head. There's a keyboard, not the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
So he starts telling me about how all of us
are artists, and I'm like, Harby, what you're talking about
And he was like, because life requires creativity, it requires
so often for us to decide how we are going
to think beyond the borders of our ability, we have
to be innovative, and how we get meals, we have
(44:22):
to get innovative, and how we care for our children.
He was like, all of that is creativity. There is
an art to that. And even though my father is
a ridiculous, terrible human, he once said, I had called
him because I have clairvoyance, and I called him because
I was like, why do I have this? Like it's
not mentioned on my mom's side? Is it on your side?
And he was like, well, yes, But a lot of
(44:43):
it has to do with also that you're an artist,
because artists do god work. You create something from nothing.
So he was like, you exist off of a grid.
You have no limitations in the way that other people do,
so you are able to tap into vibrations and you know, realms,
et cetera that other people wouldn't even let themselves be
(45:06):
able to because they have the limitations of this particular
life we're in. Mm.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
Wow, he said something.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
That's real, yeah, and then he acted up. So that
was that.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
But I got the good part, you know, I got
the throw away, the rind.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
It's in everybody though. That's what I'm trying to say.
Everybody got that piece in them.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
They do.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
That's why when people ask me why I dated certain people,
I'm like, they had this piece. I thought I was
gonna come back. So yes, tell me, you said you
have to write?
Speaker 2 (45:41):
What are you working on next?
Speaker 4 (45:42):
So a couple of different things.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Do you like writing?
Speaker 4 (45:44):
I love writing?
Speaker 2 (45:45):
Oh? Nice?
Speaker 3 (45:46):
But no, Okay, First off, I'm a life right now,
so if I don't or if I can't. If I didn't,
I have to as maybe more honest. But I really
like the state of being just after I wrote.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Well, that's the part I was like, nobody likes writing.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
We like the results.
Speaker 3 (46:02):
Yeah, I like the feeling, and most of the time
I don't feel like I wrote well. So most of
the time I don't love writing. I love writing as
a whole because I can zoom out look at the
big picture of a life saving type of thing. But
the actual act can be like really painful and brutal.
And then also the worst than writing bad is not
writing at all. That's also painful and ma real. So
the only good state is like the hour and a
(46:22):
half after I just wrote pretty good, before the doubt
settles in and I think I am trash again, But
that little hour, I'm like, Wow, I'm like, actually the
best in the world. I'm like, it's so crazy. They
really be having thoughts like, man, I wonder what's going
to feel like, like what kind of envelope are going
to send my MacArthur in, Like I gotta stop like
(46:42):
what together look like? For like an hour. Then I'm like,
oh wait, no, I'm actually the worst. So yeah, I
do like it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Sarah Disco Parker is on the voting board for the
Booker Prize.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
For the Booker I know, I know Kylie, Kylie who
read She's one of the other judges.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
She's a great author.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Okay, No, I thought you meant Kylie Jenner and I
was about to just flip the camera.
Speaker 4 (46:59):
Just know that's your thing.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
I don't know famous people that once.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
No, I didn't know you were saying you know them.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
I thought you were about to say, like, I know
that Kylie Jenner is on and I was like, oh.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
No, no, no, no, Kylie read the author great author
is also on that, and I was like it. And
I've never really watched Sex in the City, but obviously
I know Sarah Jessicoe Parkers, and I was like, is
she cool?
Speaker 4 (47:18):
And she said she's very cool.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, but why is she on?
Speaker 4 (47:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
I don't care if she's cool.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
No, No, you're actually the real question. I was just
trying to be like nice and lighthearted about it. You're
asking a real question. You're asking the real court had question.
That's why you have to want the podcast.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
So are you working on anything right now?
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (47:40):
I forgot I didn't answer the question.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
Yeah, sorry, Yes, I'm doing an adaptation for Chain Gang,
So I'm working on the show potentially, which is harrowing
and scary, and I got notes recently, so we'll see
how that goes.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
How dare they how?
Speaker 4 (47:56):
I'm also working on let.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Me because that gives me ada that they gave you.
Speaker 4 (48:01):
Notes, I'll say it.
Speaker 2 (48:04):
We can talk offline.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Yeah, but for the most part they're actually okay, okay, yeah,
for the most part, the actually okay, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
actually pretty good. I'm working on a short story collection again.
My first book was a short story collection, and I'm
doing another one, and I'm starting to feel like one
of those stories may be a novel now too, So
that's over there. But the main thing right now is
(48:26):
a short story collection and adaptation of Chain Gang for
a TV show, The Last.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
All right, well, we'll speculate on that black future and
that it is everything your heart desires, and you all
can go and get the full box set of all
you have to compile it yourself. But of all of
your books, two of them.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Just two.
Speaker 4 (48:54):
Yeah, it's a box set now because it's more than one.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
So yeah, and a digit brain. Yeah, did I pronounce
it right? Aj Brenya aj Brenan.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
What I say I j And I said Kwame versus Kwame.
Speaker 4 (49:06):
But people say Kwame.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
You know, I'm from the.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Nineties, So when I say Kwame, I'm saying Kwame in
the fucking polka dots, like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
People who go by Kwame, they like to say Kwame.
I know a bunch of Kamei's quames are doing really
good right now. Just for the record, I don't know
if you know this, are they Kwame Alexander.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Okay, author? Yeah, Kwame?
Speaker 4 (49:23):
On WATCHI that's my friend the chef.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Nice. What Kwame am I thinking of?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
No?
Speaker 2 (49:29):
You know what, I'm not thinking of Kame. I'm not
thinking about Hai kim My bad.
Speaker 4 (49:32):
For all Kwame's You're very offended.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
That you sorry, sorry, but shout out to the Kwames.
I'm glad to hear that the quamis is.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
I hear Kwame in.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Well right now.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Well, thank you for this fabulous conversation. That did bring
my energy up, because when I got on, I was
definitely irritated about some other nonsense, but always good vibes.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
That's that love and compassion.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
This is incredible. I'm so grateful. This has been really incredible.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Did oh h
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