Brother West (32 page)
My
Matrix
connection did not end with the initial release of the film. I was also asked to be a major spokesperson to the media. Additionally, religious scholar Ken Wilbur and I were invited to provide scene-by-scene commentary for the
Matrix
Trilogy DVD box set. We spent over two days, buried in the studio with Larry there to encourage us.
I consider
The Matrix
to be a cultural monument marking the turn of the century in America. This is due to its moral vision, technological wizardry, and multicultural embrace. For the first time in American film people of color are at the center of the future.
The teachable moment provided by Tavis Smiley’s documentary classic,
Stand
, lays bare the rich humanity of black men in a way unprecedented on screen. It was a great honor and joy to be part of Tavis’s visionary and courageous work of art. For the first time in American film, black men were seen praying, crying, holding hands, and hugging, as well as engaging in sophisticated intellectual discussions about politics, religion, culture, and music. Our soul patrol that has existed for years was now made manifest for millions. In this age of Obama, where America is still filled with too many negative stereotypes of black men, the film
Stand
presents the best of who we are.
One of the personally moving moments in the film is our trip to Jubilee Hall at Fisk University, where Mom and Dad first met when they were students. I kissed the exact spot Dad first met Mom. I imagined when he first saw her there, she blew his mind, and the rest is West family history.
At the film’s premier in Los Angeles, and at subsequent screenings in Philadelphia, Memphis—and especially my hometown Sacramento at the Irene B. West Elementary School on my fifty-sixth birthday, fifteen years after my father’s funeral with my whole family and whole community present—I witnessed an incredible overflow of catharsis, tears, and laughter.
The depths of healing catalyzed by community-sponsored
Stand
screenings was reflected in ritual handshakes, standing ovations, and never-ending, loving embraces that affirmed black manhood. One brother said to me, “
Stand
hit me so hard in my heart, I hadn’t been moved like that since my mother’s funeral.” Another brother commented, “This movie changed my life. I’m now dedicated to being a better person.” Participating in
Stand
with my dear brothers in the film and my dear brothers and sisters at screenings across the country has been a sublime experience.
To My Beloved Clifton and Zeytun West:
M
Y PRIMARY AIM IN LIFE
is to be of value to you. This means first and foremost to let you know and feel that you are loved no matter what you do or where you are. To be loved is to be and to be fully human is to cultivate the capacity to give and receive love. It is a gift of grace that you have loving mothers and loving relatives who are willing to support your dreams. Yet it is your choice whether or not you will allow our love to direct and guide you to wisdom and maturity.
The first steps toward wisdom and maturity are to gain self-respect and self-confidence. There can be no quest for wisdom without a healthy regard for one’s self. And there can be no advent of maturity without a strong belief in oneself. The benchmark of wisdom is the courage to examine oneself fearlessly just as the hallmark of maturity is the courage to exercise constant humility in the pursuit of a noble cause greater than oneself. The perennial foes of wisdom and maturity are arrogance toward others, manipulation of others, and seizing undue entitlements for oneself.
The most essential lesson I can offer from my twentieth-century life for your twenty-first-century lives is to find and sustain joy every day that you breathe by touching the lives of others and inspiring people through your example to reach higher and serve better. There is no doubt I have fallen short of my lofty goals. But my fallible efforts as a blues philosopher to spread paideia, to make deep education a democratic force for good, and to make the struggle for justice a desirable way of life, have brought me great joy.
I do want you to be happy, but more importantly I want you to seek wisdom. I want you to be so full of self-respect that you cannot but respect others. I want you to be so self-confident that you breed self-confidence in others. I want you to elevate yourselves by uplifting others and to love yourselves by being of service to others. And as a Christian, I beseech you to bear your cross in life with faith, courage, and compassion.
Despite all the hype about globalization and multicultural exchange in the twenty-first century, your crucial tasks in life remain the same as mine—to make it from womb to tomb with grace and dignity such that your contributions leave the world better than you found it. The true measure of your humanity will always rest upon the depth of your love and the quality of your service to others.
I have great hope for you and your life’s journeys and I pray you never forget, when we are long gone, the depth of sacrifice made for you, by generations past and those who loved you dearly.
Love,
Dad
“Y
OU JUST GOT HERE
,”
the lady tells the bluesman. “Can’t you stick around?”
“Blues won’t let me,” the cat says. “Can’t stay in one place. Gotta keep moving.”
My raw blues—the blues of my life—has to do with voicing the social misery of “the least of these,” those less fortunate than myself. And what bluesman doesn’t face some unexpected lyrics tied up with women and money? Nothing unusual about that. But the way that I sing my blues—in lectures and books, on hip-hop albums and TV shows, in adult-education classes and prisons, in college auditoriums and church pulpits—well, that
is
unusual.
The fact that my blues have spread to Africa, Central America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia is an international phenomenon that stirs me up even more. It means I just gotta keep on steppin’
.
What a blessing it was to deliver the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in Cairo, Egypt, the Nelson Mandela Lecture in Pretoria, South Africa, the UNESCO Lecture in Santiago, Chile, and the Albert Einstein Forum Lecture in Berlin, Germany. Benjamin Barber’s historic interdependence movement has taken me to Casablanca, Mexico City, Brussels, and Istanbul. Steppin’ is my character, my mission, my joy.
As a bluesman, though, I carry the pain that I have caused others. I say my calling comes before my romantic relationships, and surely it does. But are they mutually exclusive or am I someone unable to simply settle down?
I like singing my blues. Like many a bluesman before me, I like my spirits. As a lover of Jesus, I could live without my cognac and Captain Black Gold tobacco in my pipe, but I’d hate to be tested.
I like moving from city to city, country to country, gig to gig, offering up my version of the truth to anyone inclined to listen. I like talking my talk, doing my thing. I like to get paid for my songs, though I sing many for free.
I like seeing
Race Matters
translated into Japanese, Italian, and Portuguese. I like seeing
The American Evasion of Philosophy
translated into Chinese, Spanish, and Italian. I like that there are hundreds of thousands of copies of my book
Democracy Matters
translated into Spanish. There’s also an edition that’s selling in the French-speaking world. I like the fact that all nineteen of my books are still in print with the exception of the two that won the American Book Award in 1993.
I like being the first black recipient of the James Madison Medal, the highest award given to a graduate of the Graduate School of Princeton University.
I like the fact that seven insightful books, both scholarly and mainstream, have been published on my life and work. I hope that this represents the positive impact of my work on the lives of others.
I like that my only piece of published fiction, “Sing a Song,” has been adapted into a play by Andreas Patterson at Alabama State University.
I like that the remarkable young hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco has honored me by naming his Grammy-nominated album
The Cool
after a lecture I gave in Chicago. Lupe was in the audience when I suggested that we must view intellectual engagement as something cooler than bling bling. My two-hour dialogue with Lupe at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan forever remains an inspiration to me.
I like learning that my beloved grand niece, Deja, won the Cornel West Distinguished Award at John F. Kennedy High School in Sacramento, the same school attended by me and my brother Cliff, her grandfather.
I like performing with those bebop jazz giants, the Heath Brothers, thanks to the grand Renaissance man James Mtume, the son of Jimmy Heath. And who wouldn’t be honored to work on the same stage with Sweet Honey in the Rock, the famous artistic activists with deep gospel roots? I was also honored to collaborate with the renowned dance group of Lula Washington.
I like that on my most recent CD,
Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations
, I collaborated with outstanding artists like Talib Kweli, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, and Cliff West.
I was delighted to be named MTV Artist of the Week and gratified when the album hit the Billboard charts: #1 Spoken Word and #37 R&B/Hip Hop.
I like the thrill of collaborating with the incomparable musical genius of our time, Prince, who had graciously invited me to his Bel Air mansion. When I walked through the door, I was directly approached by a beautiful Latina, who was overflowing with intellectual passion. She wanted to discuss everyone from Nietzsche to Lou Salome. We talked and danced for hours to the live music of Prince, Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and John Legend. At evening’s end, I told the sweet lady that it was a delight. Salma Hayek went her way and I went mine.
I like that I’ve been invited to perform on the albums of many other good people: Gerald Levert, Rhymefest, Raheem DeVaughn, Dead Prez, John Mellencamp, Cornel West Theory—a prophetic Christian hip-hop group that honored me by adopting my name— jazz icon Terrence Blanchard, and the upcoming artist Ohene. I also cherish my relationship with my dear brother Wynton Marsalis, the reigning icon and exemplar of excellence in contemporary jazz.
I like that these days more people recognize me from my little movie roles than my books. Ironically, I made my film debut in
The Matrix Reloaded
, the movie that broke all existing box office records. At the kind invitation of the incomparable Wachowski brothers, Larry and Andy, I flew down to Sydney, Australia where both
The Matrix Reloaded
and
The Matrix Revolutions
were being shot. When the DVD boxed set trilogy came out I was privileged to do a scene-by-scene commentary, along with religious scholar Ken Wilbur. I’ve performed in films such as Adam Nemett’s
The Instrument
, Astra Taylor’s
Examined Life,
Justin Dillon’s
Call
+
Response, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
, directed by Rebecca Miller (daughter of my dear brother, the late great Arthur Miller), and Tavis Smiley’s documentary,
Stand
.
I am also pleased to work with Warrington and Reggie Hudlin at the Black Film Foundation—a seminal institution in Hollywood. I was also among the first fellows at the British Film Institute in London, led by my dear brother Colin McCabe.
I like that, although I’ve been highly critical of dumbed-down TV shows, I’ve also seized opportunities to use the medium, as the classical poet Horace defined entertainment—to instruct and delight. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on C-SPAN, all due to the support of its visionary founder, my good friend Brian Lamb. I am always delighted to appear on Amy Goodman’s progressive
Democracy Now
show on a regular basis. When my dear brother Bill Maher calls, as he frequently does, I do my best to hop out to L.A. and work with him on
Real Time
. I revel in his comic brilliance and progressive politics even as I joyfully wrestle with his agnosticism. Furthermore, I have made numerous appearances on my dear brother Tavis Smiley’s show on PBS—the best talk show in the business. He has also been kind enough to have me serve as a commentator for seven years on his radio show on PRI brilliantly produced by the late Sheryl Flowers.
I like rereading Alfred North Whitehead on the adventure of ideas, Eric Auerbach on the history of Western literature, Harold Goddard on Shakespeare, Eric Bentley on the life of the drama, Walter Kerr on tragedy and comedy, Ernst Robert Curtius on the Latin middle ages, Eric Voegelin on Plato, M.H. Abrams on romanticism, Harold Bloom on canonical texts, or George Santayana on anything.
I like knowing that the Cornel West Academy of Excellence, founded by Antoine L. Medley of Future Black Men of America in Raleigh, North Carolina, is dedicated to “helping young black boys become responsible black men.”
I like the fact that the beautiful Cornel West Wall exists on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Trenton, New Jersey. I am grateful for the illustrious talent of artist Luv One.
I like having public dialogues with leading philosophic thinkers like Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Simon Crichley, Robert George, and Judith Butler.
I like critically examining and joyfully celebrating the artistic genius of Jane Austen by giving one of the major interviews for the historic exhibition of her written manuscripts and letters at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
I like being one of the inaugurators, along with Darell Fields, Kevin Fuller, and Milton Curry, of the black architectural magazine
Appendx
—the only journal of black architectural theory.
I like using the spotlight of public dialogues to highlight the struggle for love and justice. Teaching, like the preaching I was raised on, can be entertaining without losing an iota of its substance.
I like being a twenty-first-century cosmopolitan open to the cultures of the world and eager to learn from different peoples around the globe.
I like being a free black man who is never afraid or ashamed to be joyously full of gut-bucket sophistication, refined funk, and deep love.