EPILOGUE: Drops of Gold #001 <-> “Just be real.”

This is the epilogue to drops of gold #001, “Just be real.”

My March 25th 2014 Subway Moment haunted my thoughts for months following. Almost without fail, each morning I would awake thinking of this boy hero, visualizing him as a spirit animal for living my life with clean energy, conviction and courage.

I felt this cathartic story had a message to touch others, so I wrote it all down as screenplay to perhaps turn it into a Sundance-esque short.

My filmmaker friend Adam Hootnick thought enough of it to introduce me to his producer friend Phoenix Higgins of Resonance Story Company who grew up in the environment where Sam lived. Adam felt it was important to see if the story landed as true through eyes of one who could identify with the black perspective.

Phoenix agreed to meet the following week.

As I concluded the story unfold over a coffee at Starbucks, he looked pained. Phoenix rubbed his bald head as if something wasn’t quite right.

“What is the message here?,” Phoenix asked. “Just to confront every challenge head on? Because, ya know, in my neighborhood growing up, what that boy did, that’s the way you might get a bullet in the head.”

Phoenix asked to sit with the story for a few days, saying he would call me if something came to him.

I thanked him for his time, as in my life experience this response was code for non-resonance and that we wouldn’t speak again.

Several days later, my phone rang from an non-ID’d number. It was Phoenix.

The measured tone of his words told me he had been tormented on some level by the story, perhaps harkening back to his own childhood.

“Tell me the story again from the point that she fired the imaginary kill shot — in as much detail as possible.”

I closed my eyes and expressed to the moment. I described flashes of how the little boy softened his glance, and equally so his stance, how his palms were turned outward almost in silent surrender, how he asked his question without aggression, his voice inflection softened “down” versus amping up — and specifically how he seemed almost as concerned for the girl’s constitution, as he was to invite a new standard.

Phoenix was quiet, then slowly said, “So he commanded respect, by not demanding anything. He wasn’t calling her out, he was calling her up. He reached out versus lashing out. That’s a a naturally born leader right there. Okay, I understand now. I believe you saw what you think you saw. Let’s meet for a lunch, I have a film shooter you should meet that actually grew up on 110th street.”

Three weeks later, Phoenix, Jamal and I did meet for lunch in the Bowery at Gemma. I immediately liked Jamal and he was intrigued. Jamal tempered his enthusiasm by expressing a challenge to thread the authenticity of a Haley’s Comet moment by recreating something that was perfect raw emotion, the challenge to shoot on a moving subway, and costs and timing involved. Ultimately, I decided to leave it as a story in my mind’s eye, and to speak it in moments it felt aligned for another to receive. One of those synchronicity moments was the honor of meeting at Summit Series the brilliant filmmaker from London, Gary Turk, who inspired me to Look Up in the first place.

One day, perhaps this story will be shared as a powerful short, or a Ted Talk. In the meantime, it continues to be my beacon for living.

Thank you Sam.

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