XXII (22)
“You’d better tell… your story fast. Because if you lie…it will come to pass.” Stevie Wonder - Jesus Children Of America
Stevie Wonder has so many great songs, I’d be hard pressed to say which one is my personal favorite, but that one is way up there, and has a stickiness that I can’t shake. It is both a call to action and a warning. “Are you hearing what your (He’s) saying? Are you feeling, what your praying? Are you hearing, praying, feeling what you say inside?” I had to double check the lyrics, it’s actually "hearing what He’s saying” but I also think it’s important to ask ourselves, are we hearing what we’re saying, and is it the truth?
Tell your story fast. Don’t rush it, but we cannot wait. Your story is your life and it will pass us by, so it’s all about making the most of it while we’re here. In a Master Class today with Ruben Santiago Hudson, one of the great storytellers I’m glad I’ve been able to learn from, somebody said storytelling is identity formation.
Every time I have the opportunity to tell my story, I learn something new or find some hidden insight that I didn’t know was there. I remember when I first met Ruben in the summer of 2019 at the Black Arts Institute, he asked us to share out grandmother’s songs. He clarified what he meant by that today, as some of us weren’t lucky enough to grow up with our grandparents in our lives. I was lucky enough to grow up knowing my grandparents on my Mom’s side, speaking of which, I need to call my Grandma as she’s the only living grandparent I have left. On my Dad’s side, Grandpa Alec, passed when I was six years old. I’m super grateful that he came and stayed with us for the holidays the year before he passed, because I have a memory of him playing with me and some new walkie talkies I had. My Grandma Ernestine lived in Miami and passed when I was 13, I did get to know her some, but the distance was hard to close.
So tell your story. This year my intention is to become a great storyteller. Be brave enough to look deeper, and bold enough to share fully. I also heard something about, if we don’t define who we are for ourselves, people will try to do it for us, they’ll tell stories about us. If we’re not careful, we will accept narratives about ourselves that somebody else wrote.
People believe stories. The narrative some people are falling for disturbs me. So we need to tell better stories, and hope that the world can start believing in a better vision.
“Jesus Children Of America” is off of Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, one of the greatest albums of all time, by the way.
