I wanted to start by acknowledging three pieces of art that have shaped me.
Obligatory Disclaimer: I’m a creativity enjoyer, not a critic.
Plastic 100° Celsius by Sampha
There were couple choices I debated putting here: Frank Ocean’s Pink Matter (Amazing Andre 3000 verse), Warm Winds by SZA (The second half with Isaiah Rashad is heavenly), Thump Shit by EST Gee and 42 Dugg even popped in my head (a half joke but song’s hard). But I have to give the nod to what I think is Sampha’s best song. The songs continues to have relevance in my life regardless of where I am. I’ve heard it stripped down, I’ve heard it played live (shoutout to Saturn), and it just never gets old to me. I love a good status quo song, explaining to the audience where they’ve been or where they’re at. Solidified in the soundtrack to my life.
Photo Creds: Carrie Mae Weems
The Kitchen Table Series by Carrie Mae Weems
I wanna say I stumbled upon Carrie Mae Weems work in my photography class in high school (shoutout Mr. Moncrief). There was something about her grounded, slice of life work that spoke to me immediately. The ideas of using a kitchen table to subvert expectations of her identity as a black woman and the use of the same setting to create a world was just cool to me (Did I know all of this at the time? Of course not; I just thought the photos looked cool.) What I feel like this work did for me is it allowed me to start figuring out how to craft stories and ideas from everyday life.
Moonlight (2016) dir. by Barry Jenkins
There was a stretch in high school when I was pirating movies with a torrent. Pulp Fiction, The Green Mile, quote-unquote “all-time movies”. I saw a trailer for Moonlight, it piqued my interest, and made a mental note to watch when I got a chance. Pushed it up my own queue after the Oscar’s debacle and the next day off from school, I downloaded it (sorry Barry). It’s still hard to full encapsulate what this movie did for me. At that point, I had seen a lot of great movies but it was the first I watched with the intent to understand. It showed me what subtext and saying a lot within silence looked like. I consumed interviews from cast and crew in order to learn more. I studied it over and over in hopes that I would always be able to create something fractionally as beautiful. Yeah, this the one.