019 | Blessed are the meek

Embracing awareness to the totality of life.

The subject above is Juliana AKA “Diamond” by Mark Laita

When I was a kid, our family had a Palestinian friend. He was the type of person that would take their shirt off their back to give to you. As I grew older, anytime I needed a favor, he was a phone call away. He drove an old black Mercedes-Benz, would douse himself with the green Polo fragrance, would play Arabic music full volume, and gambled religiously. He was short, stocky, sweated way too much, and was by far the strongest person I knew — his arms were like two jackhammers.

As a teenager, I worked with him. He managed a recycling business that rented out dumpsters. The job consisted of me spray painting dumpsters red or accompanying him throughout Chicago collecting payments from Palestinian-owned businesses that rented out his dumpsters.

Many years later, I got a tattoo on my arm that says إِنْ شَاءَ اَللَّه Inshallah (God Willing) something that I would often hear the Muslim community say. Somebody would say We’ll be doing this tomorrow, Inshallah. Meaning, only if God allows it. I’m not Muslim but I appreciated their faith and devotion to Allah and the acknowledgment that fate is ultimately not in our hands.

On one occasion, my family asked him to help us move. Because of the nature of his work, he had access to large trucks that we could use to haul all our belongings. On the way there, he picked up a man off the side of the road and offered him cash in exchange for a few hours of manual labor.

The man obliged. It was an older homeless, thin, African-American man, with missing teeth, a paper-thin t-shirt, dark black eyes, with no shortage of charm.

His name was James Dean.

When I looked out our window and saw the two of them pull up in the truck, I thought to myself, who the hell is this stranger? They both rushed upstairs and began carrying the boxes full of our belongings.

As soon as James Dean walked into my room, he noticed that my walls were covered in James Dean memorabilia, and through his missing teeth, he blurted out James Dean! That’s my dude!

Immediately we bonded over this dead actor from the 50s who was known for his iconic film, Rebel Without a Cause. He told me that as a teenager, and coincidently, we both went to the same high school, he had a film class where they screened Rebel Without a Cause. From that moment on, he would skip whatever class was necessary to sneak into the room and catch it. I don’t blame him.

That particular film spoke to me when I was a teenager so to be able to identify that common thread between the two of us caused an instant connection.

From that moment on, this homeless man, whose real name was Steve, decided to adopt the name James Dean, which is what his friends referred to him as.

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Years later, I would run into James Dean. In the evenings he would hang around outside a Mexican restaurant and ask customers for spare change. Anytime I saw him, we would embrace and he’d express enthusiasm for the stories I would tell him about college. He thought graphic design was the coolest thing ever and his words of encouragement never went unfulfilled.

I haven’t seen him in a while but I think about him often. Despite the differences in our backgrounds, we shared similarities, a love for James Dean, and our sense of humor.

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I’ve been watching a YouTube series called Soft White Underbelly. It’s a series of interviews with what society considers outcasts. It’s a production by photographer Mark Laita. He candidly interviews pimps, addicts, prostitutes, gang members — you get the idea…

I consider it a series on the spectrum of humanity and its vast shapes and forms. His interviews shed light on a part of society that we are conditioned to collectively disregard and abandon. In the interviews, we are exposed to the consequences of a series of decisions that ultimately lead to turmoil.

Soft White Underbelly is a journey into human fragility and ever so often, we might even see glimpses of ourselves in the characters that share with us their stories.

And before you ask: Christian, what does this have to do with creativity?

Creativity as I know it is about being attuned to the reality of the world. We tell stories through our work and it’s imperative that we look at life in all dimensions.

By being exposed to vulnerable confessions, I think our receptiveness heightens and we become more conscious of the stories and work we want to produce.

In an article titled How to Practice Bearing Witness, author Jules Shuzen Harris writes:

Bearing witness invokes a sense of interconnectedness, a direct realization of the wholeness of life.

This, I think nourishes our creative pursuits and allows for the expression of our awareness to come forth.

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Beginner’s Mind | A Playlist

To go with this issue, I’ve created a playlist.

If you follow the Beginner’s Mind playlist below on Spotify, every month or so, it’ll be refreshed with new music.

1. Sinful Fuckers Lee “Scratch” Perry

2. Let Your Yeah Be Yeah The Pioneers

3. Summer Breeze Jackie Mittoo

4. Fu Man Chu Desmond Dekker

5. You Don’t Know Bob Andy

6. Is It Because I’m Black Ken Boothe

7. Riding For A Fall John Holt

8. Man Next Door Dennis Brown

9. Desire Augustus Pablo