Inspiration meets fate

Meeting Spike Lee and Ernest Dickerson

When I entered San Diego State I was in a program to help minority students get prerequisites done and get help getting use to college. It was in the summer and I was dating this girl I had met in the program. We were told by the program director, who was African American not to go see Mo Better Blues on campus, which was showing for free!

Having seen Do the Right Thing at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, which was so packed I had to sit in the isle, I went anyway with my girlfriend. Some other female student ratted on us and we got caught. The director scolded me and I told him to, “go fuck yourself!” Then I walked to my room. It felt like the end. I started to pack my stuff. A lot of my cohorts thought it was fucked up.

Somehow I was able to make up and say I was sorry, keeping myself from being expelled from the program as well as my girlfriend who didn’t get kicked out either. We had to clean up some rank dishes in the kitchen but it felt like a triumphant moment anyway. But that’s how much it meant to me.

So going to see Spike at the Colburn Theater across from the Disney Hall, in downtown Los Angeles was great. I had to go because I wasn’t sure if I would ever have a chance to meeting either one of them at the same time in the same place. It was inspiring and cool and down to earth. I was also able to give each of them a copy of my novel and I got a pound from Spike.

The cool part was learning about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of two of the most important African American artists in the 20th and 21st Century. It seems to always be true that to succeed one has to take risks or else forever not know what is on the other side of the door of possibilities. Like Lee’s grandmother saving up social security checks so that he could have the opportunity to be educated twice, as an undergrad at Morehouse and as a film student at NYU. It likes there’s nothing we can’t do, if we strive hard enough and are willing to risk failure to satisfy our artistic goals. There has to be a family that supports those aspirations, something Spike made clear. He’s an institution, a marketer and creator of Cinema, a consummate artists. It costs money to make films and art and he will be the fist one to tell you. That’s what makes him such a great mentor. His directness and real politic expression of New York, African American life – the African American Experience as a whole.

It was fitting to walk up to the stage by hook or by crook and take a chance and hand him my art and for him to take it into his hands and look me in the eye. That’s all that I needed. It was like destiny. I know about taking risks. I’ve been doing it my whole life. A a lot of us have and we are the better for it creatively.