Spike Lee, gentrification, and the importance of words

two students stayed after their final exam yesterday, and a colleague and i spent 45 minutes talking to them about Spike Lee, gentrification, and the importance of writing down the words you encounter but do not know.

Part 1: Spike Lee

i remember seeing Do the Right Thing when i was about 13 or so. i knew it was good, but it didn't feel good, and i didn't understand the ending. or why i felt like the good guy and the bad guy. or even which one was which.

i didn't have the words for it at the time, but the film captured the emotional complexity of race in America unlike anything i had ever seen or heard. it couldn't be taught, it couldn't be spoken - it could only be felt in the moments when the pizza parlor burned and heard on the sidewalk on the morning after...


Part 2: gentrification

i moved to Washington Heights in August 1999, and i jokingly referred to myself (even back then) as poised on the spear tip of gentrification. the 90's were a good decade for my vocabulary, and i moved to Manhattan with a pocket full of fifty cent words to describe the way i felt. i pointed my entire purpose and being at ridding myself of the parts of me that were not my own, and page after page filled in composition pads as i took the long A Train ride from 181st to Columbus Circle...


Part 3: the importance of words

eventually i learned that i would never rid myself of the parts of me that were not my own because there is nothing that is not my own. i learned that all those fifty cent words were bankrupt, that they could never confine or describe the extent of my being.

all the racism, all the sexism, all the consumption - i claim them all. i accept the inevitability of our divinity and marvel at the extent of our hubris. i still write down the words i encounter, but do not know...