The Third Eye

One of the greatest joys of my college years was watching producers make beats. Big Rob J and I made a hobby of documenting this process with our cameras. To watch a sample or the a series of chords turn into something that makes your head bob on it's own is beauty personified for me. But then again I'm a music head. I always have been.

Even as a boy some of my most vivid memories are of the pre-divorce Saturdays when my Mom made pancakes while my Dad played Coltrane. Pop used to make me stand in front of the speaker and tell him all of the instruments that were on the recording. And I got good at it. I just never had the patience to learn an actual instrument. So I chose words instead.

But the song that always stayed with me from those days at J-thrill and Sparky's crib in the West End was Roy Ayers "The Third Eye", used by the Pharcyde on the "Passin' Me By (Fly As Pie Mix). It would only be in my later school years that I would develop any interest in and knowledge of chakras and precognition, of faiths outside of Christianity and the untapped abilities within the human mind.

"The Third Eye" played on a road trip I took ago, as I drove down a dark highway with no idea of where I was going. It was the perfect metaphor for where I was then, swearing to God that I knew how it was going to all play out. I knew that my life as a grownup was going to be nothing but me having it made. No down times. No need for comebacks. Some of that was my own ego. But most of it was not understanding just how young I was, and how young I still am.

I looked in the mirror yesterday and studied the ways my face has both changed and remained the same since I was a little one. I remember being so shy that I could barely look at people my parents introduced me to. And yet I was the same kid who playful pulled a .38 snub nose cap gun on a car salesman and had him believe for a moment (even though I was like six) that it might have been the real thing.

When I put on Roy Ayers this morning I found myself revisiting this brain teaser I've enjoyed since I was a kid. If I could make one one minute phone call into my past, what time would I choose? What would I say? Right now it would probably to the Fall of 2000, when Glass and I were out on his porch in LA putting together my very first pitch, the story of my first novel as a movie, a pitch that wouldn't have sold without him and the other two guys I brought with him. I can still smell the smoke from Glass's cigar as he tried to tell me what screenwriting was. But I wasn't ready to listen. I need to go through all of this to figure out what really mattered.

So as I'm about to embark West the first thing I feel is fear. I am a fisherman with a family and empty cupboards. If I don't deliver not only I, but those who I care about will suffer the consequences of my failure. But I also have backup this time, galvanized forces willing and ready to fight on my behalf as long as I honor my part of the deal.

It may not unfold in the way that I dream, but it'll happen. The fantasy part of it is what gets me through the days: me whispering some private joke to my wife before I button my coat and head up to the podium at the Oscars. I'd shoutout Baldwin and Wright, Oscar Micheaux and Gordon Parks. Hell, I might even make Jet Magazine ;)

The reality of it keeps me up at night sometimes. Laala and I talked about it last night, about how hard it is to be a person of color who understands that the way to the money and power is by becoming translucent, that the only way to help your people often lies in erasing your ties to them long enough to get through the enemy gates.

I'm sharpening my weapons in preparation for another battle, a fight I was trying to sleep out of existence until certain parties decided to wake me up. My lips are curling into a smile. Somehow know that this time around that I cannot lose. Out.