Everyone looks to me for the answers and right now I’m looking for answers. I keep thinking: “write a book that changes the world” and I keep asking myself why?
I put all my eggs in one basket. Just because I write does it mean it’ll change the world?
I think the real question here is one of worthiness, of deservedness.
Do I deserve to write? Am I worthy of it? (Who put these questions in your head)?
In many ways the industry has won, for now.
They’ve beaten me into not believing in my work.
The nature of my whatever is such that the more I accomplish, the more I expect.
It’s been a long time, we shouldn’t have left you,
without a dope beat to step to, step to.
Homeboy last night may have been wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about a few.
What use is all that interpreting skill if I don’t use it? Especially now, when I need money.
It was largely independent work (esp as freelance) & it kept the mind/body occupied.
It gave me something to do, a reason to leave the house, it was a solid vocation.
I got burnt out on it after a while but I think that had as much to do with being in-house.
I became an expert at it. It forced me to use my brain in novel ways. It was a fun challenge.
It also was painful in a lot of ways. Hard on the mind. Interp headaches.
It’s amazing how we’ll romanticize anything after the fact, and look at the past as better than.
I mean even when I was grinding in those dark days first back in America… I looked to Africa.
And when I was miserable in Africa, I looked to the worst times of my life.
It’s interesting how my people only think of me as some tragic story. They don’t know me.
They discredit everything I’ve been through as bad choices.
So when they label my younger counterparts as bad people making bad choices… I’m like YO!
None of this shit is a choice. Y’all gotta stop foisting your perfect ideals onto us.
My nigga: we the last ones left (but life goes on).
Life is weird, and Ironic, Alanis Morrissette, Danny Brown.
I used to be down bad, in horrible living situations, and I’d downplay it. And then romanticize it.
In love with viewing the struggle as some noble thing. As if to struggle = to be pure.
Well there’s plenty of evil people that struggle & smile. Are they more, or less, worthy/than?
Back in the day I used to set goals for three things to do that day. That was it, just three.
Many times I’d end up getting more than three things done, but also sometimes not even 1.
What mattered was that I had a goal for the day and I tried my best & I was easy on myself.
My nature is still to run run run through everything.
My mind & body are saying you’ve ran too far, too long, we can’t do this anymore.
And then I beat myself up for it like: ha! What a loser you are! What a shameful person!
You know, I think about all my issues with shame & I forget the role my people had.
Niggas don’t know me, bro. They never have, they never will.
But that’s okay because Allah knows me, and Loves me, and never judges me.
And that’s why I have writing. To process all this misunderstanding. I’ve just managed to turn it into something of a vocation, a career, because niggas don’t know me. Never have. Maybe will.
Look at me romanticizing the struggle of niggas not knowing me. So I learned how to open my mind/body/soul so niggas who don’t know me could get a glimpse. And maybe understand.
But they still don’t.
Maybe the reason why I’ve been so driven to run so hard, to accomplish so much in so short of a time… is because niggas don’t know me, don’t understand me, never have, maybe never will.
And for sure niggas have always judged me. Aunties sitting in their subcis circles of gossip memorization.
“did you hear the thing about Said? It’s tragic. Someone died in his family.”
But no one died. Only thing which died was their impression of me. And quite frankly I’m better for living without that pressure. Only pressure now comes from within.
It’s funny to hear that people look at the darkest time of my life as a tragedy. I used to, too. Used to be ashamed about it. And now I know why. Because my people are ashamed on my behalf.
So much so that they equate my dropping out of college as the most shameful thing ever. And the subsequent years, even more shameful…
Niggas don’t know me, can’t understand that I was fighting for my life on those streets.
All they saw was what I couldn’t be.
And in those days all I had was writing.
When you peel back all the layers of ephemera surrounding this bullshit writing life (in a professional sense), then you see what’s underneath:
A nigga who is misunderstood, just trying to survive. To hold on.
A lot of people write for a lot of different reasons.
The question I have to ask myself is why?
I have to find my why again. My previous why was to survive the mfa game.
Now I’m done with that, and I need a new why. Which is to say my old why.
A time when I just wrote because I enjoyed it, I was a nerd about it, smelling my words like I smell coffee beans. Deeply. Through sifted hands like Barbados hot white sands (shouts to the old me, the used to spit poems me, now a nigga so lonely, and sometimes even ahem ahem).
You gotta remember, bro: it’s not about what you do. It’s about how you feel about it.
I had a lot of reasons for wanting to become an interpreter, but the reality didn’t match the fantasy. That’s okay. All to the good.
I still feel incomplete, like I have to chase so much, just to be whole. Or to be okay, if not whole.
That’s not healty, bro.
PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH, STEP ONE: Be kind to yourself.
You don’t need to make anything of yourself.
You already are something, and a pretty wonderful thing at that.
Words gifted to me from a long lost friend.
It’s a cold world, but get comfort from the fact that one day it will end.
That’s a guarantee.
Maybe on Judgement Day niggas will finally understand me. But it’ll be too late.
We’ll all be too busy.
With our impending fate.
Yung Nigga, Big Belly, Never Ate.