Purple Moonlight
If you are still obsessed with Moonlight like I am, then this is the soundtrack you’ve been waiting for.
See also: The Chopstars’ Purple Moonlight Mixtape Is Utterly Brilliant.
The Countdown Continues
I have a cold that just won’t let up, but I’m grateful that it’s happening now. I’d hate to get sick right before my trip.
My school is year-round, and we began a new session last week. I told my students “Listen, all we have to do is get to April 14. Because April 15, ima be on that plane, heard?” Several of them were excited for me, and one wanted to know how much it cost me. I was hesitant to tell him because I didn’t want it to seem like I was bragging. But I thought about it, and I felt he needed to know so he could make his own plans some day!
I told him flights to London were expensive, and I wasn’t eager to pay that much, but I really wanted to go. I then explained that it was much cheaper to stay in an Airbnb than a hotel, and some people his age might opt to stay in a hostel.
After I explained the cost, he definitely felt it might be attainable for him. If not London, then maybe someplace closer.
Anyway…
A few things happened to me a few weeks ago that led to a shift in my writing priorities. First, I began reading Eric Braeden’s book I’ll Be Damned. Second, I saw the Maya Angelou edition of American Masters. I was deeply moved by the later, and it became crystal clear to me that Maya’s life was changed by the writing of her life.
I’ve never been an elegant writer, at least it doesn’t feel like it on my end. So I’m not saying that I can write something that will ever get a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize. But I think I finally realized that there is meaning in my life thus far. I used to think I could never write my autobiography because I wasn’t old enough or that it wasn’t interesting enough or that I wouldn’t be able to be objective or introspective enough.
Then I realized that perhaps the reason I couldn’t move forward in writing about my vampire gang or about Adrian Collins was because I hadn’t yet paused to take stock of my own life yet.
And truly, it’s the perfect time to do so. I am teaching students who are old enough to be my grown children. Had I had a child at 19, that child would be 18 by now. Hell, I could be a grandfather! So in seeing these students navigate their own lives, I feel somewhat fulfilled, even satisfied, that this is the time to investigate what has been and what could have been, so that my next level of being is even better than the first. It was a transformative experience for Maya Angelou and I am hoping for the same thing for me.
Mind you, I am not trying to be the grandfather of any movements. I am just trying to be a writer and a teacher.
Countdown
What About Love? A Terrible Essay About Moonlight
Every time I’ve seen Moonlight, I’ve called–or struggled to call–the first great love of my life. I want to tell him to watch it. I guess I’ve already told him in some way. We’re friends. We’re collaborators. I love him. I resent him. I hate him. I forgive him. I forget him.
I see Moonlight and I remember.
This film will be an emotional roller coaster for anyone who was once a gay black boy. Your mileage may vary.
I have been asking my straight male friends to go see this film as soon as possible. I have seen it twice now. I want them to know.
I write the love that I want to see. I write the love that I want to have. I write the love I thought I had sixteen years ago.
I am 37. I know what I am doing with every facet of my life except this.
The human brain is not fully developed until at least age 25, and I believe that. I want so desperately to believe that the love I fell in sixteen years ago could be that impulsive, basketball and pledge boots love that became Adrian and Isaiah from my novels, that could have grown into the Barack and Michelle of the black gays. I want to believe, also, that the bloody, transformative love between Justin and Dante in my last novel, could have been based in that kernel of love I once felt.
And the poems that I look back on. I am ashamed. I am embarrassed. The lack of development in my brain is evident in the simple verse and histrionics, but what can you tell a 21-year old who’d had his first taste?
Moonlight wrecked me. The actors, superb in any way, portrayed the kind of romance that I want:
Innocent love.
Forgiving love.
Redemptive love.
No one looks at me. That’s what this feels like.
Ashton Sanders (Chiron) was my favorite actor. Walk with me… he gave the kind of performance that Cynthia Erivo gave as Celie in Broadway’s The Color Purple revival. With his body, he became Chiron. Every walk, every tear, every mumble. I believed him as I believed her, every toe point and frown.
What about love?
I believe Moonlight to be a love story, more than it is a story about mass incarceration, drug addiction, bullying, or homophobia–yet it is all of those things, too. It has to be.
What about tears when you’re happy?
I’ve seen Moonlight twice now. The second time, I saw how the actors looked at each other and I believed them and I wanted to be looked at that way.
Last week, I thought someone looked at me like that.
And I thought that perhaps not even he ever looked at me like that.
But I don’t think it was anything, really. I think it was just a moment that I wanted to see, that somehow my hand pushed the planchette to the answer I wanted to see at that moment.
I write these moments. I watch these moments. Thank you, Barry Jenkins. Thank you, Tarell McCraney.
But I do not live these moments and I don’t know that I can.
Posted without revisions and with all due anxiety.
Will I Still Be Apologizing When I’m 50?
Note: I began writing this essay literally a year ago, and for various reasons left it in draft form. I am now revisiting it in light of Nate Parker’s past coming to light. New comments will be in italics. [Read more…] about Will I Still Be Apologizing When I’m 50?