Host: Catherine Burns
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]]
Catherine: [00:00:13] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. And I'm Catherine Burns.
The Moth is all about true stories told live. And many Moth stories involve those moments in life when we find ourselves in unknown territory. Sometimes it's by choice when we push towards some unfamiliar place, like the edge of old maps, where the cartographers would write, “Here there be dragons.” Other times, we get shoved towards the edge against our will.
That's the case in our first story told by Cole Kazdin at a show we produced with our friends at Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures. Here's Cole.
[cheers and applause]
Cole: [00:00:49] I wanted a fresh start. My boyfriend Adam broke up with me. I was living in New York. He broke up with me and moved across the country to Los Angeles. He was a good guy. It was just one of those going nowhere for three years kind of relationships. Neither of us had done anything horrible, like have an affair. We liked each other. We just weren't a good fit, which my mother used to tell me on the phone all the time, “You, guys, are both such nice people. Maybe you're just not a good fit.”
But Adam and I were just passive enough to keep it going. If things ever got bad, like if one of us might start to muster the courage to pull the plug, then it would be someone's birthday, [audience laughter] or we'd get really great concert tickets and that would keep the relationship going. I remember in three years, Adam never told me he loved me. I think I loved him, but I wasn't going to say at first, because that's how mature I am.
And then, one day, Adam took me out to this really nice dinner and he told me he really cared about me and he didn't want to marry me. It was a reverse proposal. [audience laughter] And we broke up and that was it. He moved to LA. I remember it was so painful, I just wanted to forget him and forget even the last three years. Just wake up one morning and start fresh.
I got my wish. I woke up in an ambulance wearing a cheerleading outfit, which, if you're over 30 and it's not Halloween, just raises questions. [audience laughter] There were EMTs all around me, and I was being placed on a gurney, and then I was being put into a CT scan and then I was in this hospital room with all these concerned strangers gathered around the bed. But they weren't strangers. I just couldn't identify them. Because what I didn't know is there had been an accident.
Earlier that day, I'd been filming a television pilot. It was a movie spoof show, and the pilot was a parody of Bring it On, the cheerleading movie. And the producers, who were horrible, horrible people, strong armed me into doing a stunt we hadn't planned or rehearsed. I was to be thrown high up in the air and caught. I was thrown high up in the air. I landed on my back and my head. I suffered a massive concussion. I could barely walk and I had no idea who I was. Diagnosis, amnesia.
So, I also didn't know that my boyfriend had broken up with me and moved across the country to LA. I didn't know anything. In the hospital, someone put a cell phone up to my ear. They said it was my mother on the phone. I heard this frantic female voice. It meant nothing to me. A friend knew where I lived and took me home, dug the keys out of my purse, put me into bed. I wanted to call my dad. I just had that thought. And my friend said, “Why don't you rest? We can call him later.”
But I wanted to call my dad and I needed help, because I didn't know the number. And again, my friend just said, “Why don't you sleep for a little while and then we can call him?” I got so frustrated, he was putting me off and I didn't understand why. And I said, “I want to call my dad. Why aren't you helping me?” He looked at me like I was out of my mind. And finally, he said, “We just did call your dad. In fact, we've done this three times. Every time you hang up the phone, you ask if you can call your dad. So, we can call him, but it'll be the fourth time and I'm just worried we're going to freak him out.”
This whole conversation, by the way, is happening with me still wearing the cheerleading outfit. [audience laughter] Because when the hospital discharges you, it's like prison. They give you the clothes you showed up with, which for me was the costume from the pilot, which is a little white pleated miniskirt and a little navy and white top. I had both short and long-term amnesia. I knew some things, like I knew how to speak and I knew how to read, but I didn't know the big stuff, like who I was. I also couldn't retain anything.
So, if someone left the room and came back 10 minutes later, we had to start over. I was living, quite literally, moment to moment, a cat walks into the bedroom, what is this cat doing here? They tell me it's my cat. People came and went, but they were all strangers to me from a past I didn't even know existed. They tried to help. I remember my best friend Amy stormed into my bedroom screaming, “She's a vegetarian. Don't let her eat any meat.” [audience laughter]
It sounded familiar, but it didn't mean anything. I could have been gnawing on a veal shank. It sounded important, so I didn't want to forget it. There was a pad of post it notes and a pen on my bedside table. So, I wrote it down, so I wouldn't forget. I wrote, “You are a vegetarian.” Someone had called Adam and he flew in from LA right away. He just stayed at my bedside with tears in his eyes. In fact, the first night, he slept in my bed with me, which I thought was weird and presumptuous, [audience laughter] like, “Who is this guy?” He told me he was my boyfriend, but I mean, he could have been the mailman. I don't know. [audience laughter]
And the next day, he showed me pictures of us together to see if he could jog my memory or maybe even to make a case for the fact that were a couple. Apparently, it was a recent trip I had just taken to LA. Adam and Cole at the beach. Adam and Cole in front of Man's Chinese Theater. Adam and Cole in the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. I was in the pictures, but I remembered none of it. I wrote everything down. I was terrified of forgetting. Every piece of information was precious. Anytime someone told me something, or on the rare occasions where something might come back on its own, I wrote it down. “You are a vegetarian. We are at war with Iraq. Kristen is your friend who is slutty.” [audience laughter]
One afternoon, I was coming home from physical therapy. I was in a cab going over the Queensboro Bridge and I noticed the hole in the skyline where the World Trade Center twin Towers used to be. That's weird. I wrote it down. Post it, note. “Twin towers gone.” Adam was the wonderful boyfriend. This accident was the best thing to ever happen to our relationship. He took care of me, took me to my weekly neurologist appointments and almost daily physical therapy. He gave me my medications and then held me at night when I woke screaming from the nightmares that those medications gave me or from the sheer disorientation of not knowing who or where I was.
A girl from yoga visited. I do yoga. [audience laughter] What else do I do? I was on this detective mission to find out who I was. I found journals written in my handwriting in another language. Adam tells me it's Portuguese, from when I lived in Brazil. “I lived in Brazil? That's so cool. [audience laughter] What else do I do? Do I paint? Can I cook? Am I an asshole? What if I'm an asshole?” [audience laughter] I overheard doctors saying things like, “We don't know how long she's going to be like this and we're not sure if she'll ever fully recover.” They're talking about me. I'm sitting there in the room while they're having these conversations.
The only thing that I could be sure of was this growing pile of post it notes on my bedside table. The bigger that pile got, the more of a person I became. But it still wasn't me. It was just information filling an empty space. One afternoon, I was in a cab coming home from physical therapy, going over the Queensboro Bridge and I started to cry. I didn't know why. I just started crying and I couldn't stop. And it was right as were passing the hole in the skyline where the Twin Towers used to be. It was a really chilling empty space, almost like ghosts of buildings. And I felt flooded. I wailed and I didn't understand it. And then, it hit me. I was remembering not a fact or a person, but a feeling. It was the first time since the accident that I felt real.
That night, Adam was tucking me into bed. He had just given me my medications. So, he was writing on a post it note that he had just given me my medications for when in 10 minutes I asked if it was time to take my medication. I was watching him, the way he was taking care of me and I was overcome. And I said, “I love you.” And he said nothing. So, I said it again, because I had amnesia and I could get away with that. [audience laughter] “I love you.” And again, nothing. I didn't understand. And then, it came back, the breakup and all the pain that went with it. His move to LA. And then, a post 911 reconciliation. September 11th happened and we decided we were going to give it one more try.
I went to LA to visit him. We went to the beach, and we went to Man's Chinese Theater and we rode the Ferris wheel, the Santa Monica Pier. But I didn't care about the past anymore, because all I knew was this, right now. And here was this man doing everything for me. And if this wasn't love, what was? And why was he even here? I think the answer is he's a really, really good person. He cared about me very, very deeply. But he was a Giuliani boyfriend, good in crisis. [audience laughter] Maybe he loved me and couldn't say the words. I'll never know. I think I loved him. But maybe I just wanted to say thank you and I couldn't tell the difference.
It took about six months for me to recover. My memory just came back slowly over time. And then, I must have been fully healed, because a few months after that, Adam and I broke up again. [audience laughter] Only this time I knew it was coming because we'd done it before. I had wanted this fresh start and I got it. I mean, I lost everything. I lost myself. But it didn't change reality and it didn't even change me. I was still the same person. I was even in the same relationship. When I got myself back, I realized nothing had changed. But this time, there was something comforting about that, because it meant I finally knew who I was and it meant I could move forward. It meant even without my memory, I was still me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:13:50] Cole Kazdin is a writer, performer and four-time Emmy award winning television news producer living in Los Angeles. She's won The Moth GrandSLAM Championship there three times. Cole's story appears in The Moth's new book, All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown.
[melodious piano music]
Coming up, a father in Sheffield, England, is forced to use a most unusual weapon to defend himself, when The Moth Radio Hour returns.
[melodious piano music]
Jay: [00:14:50] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:15:45] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our next storyteller is Simon Bill. The Moth now has a regular presence in London and Simon told the story there live at Islington's Union Chapel. Here's Simon.
[cheers and applause]
Simon: [00:16:03] This is something that happened a bit more than three years ago. It happened in 2013, in July. I was sitting at home in my big Victorian house in Sheffield. It was a warm night, and the windows were open and I was at home with my daughter who was asleep. It was late at night and I was thinking of going to bed myself. I'd been hearing percussive sounds coming from outside. Well, they sounded close, but there's a thing that hot weather does where far things sound close. So, I thought it's that sort of thing.
I was about to go to bed when I heard that unmistakable sound of somebody booting a door, my back door. I looked out the bedroom window. The bedroom window is over the back door to the house, which goes into the kitchen. There's a man booting the door repeatedly. So, I said, “Oi.” [audience laughter] And he said, “What?” [audience laughter] And I said, “Well, fuck off.” [audience laughter] And he said, “Come down and meet me if you can.” So, I knew at this stage, I was going to have trouble with this man. [audience laughter]
So, I ran downstairs, went to the living room where I got the phone, the landline, picked it up, dialed 999 and raced into the kitchen, which is where he was at the door he was going to come through and made a 999 call where I was looking at him through the window of the back door, repeatedly ramming the door. For some reason, they always picked very slow speaking people to answer 999 calls. [audience laughter] So, it was “Which service do you require?” and the call proceeded.
I was about to give my address and the frame of the door splintered completely. And I thought, right, he's in with the next one. So, I said, “Too late, he's in.” I dropped the phone on the kitchen table and I thought, I need something. So, I ran to the covered under the stairs where we keep garden tools and stuff. I looked at the shovels and the spades and the rake. The spade could have been very handy, because a spade makes a reasonable weapon if you're hit on the head with it. But I used to collect Victorian swords. I lost interest in it as a hobby [audience laughter] and I'd sold most of them. But I still had the 1796 British light cavalry saber, [audience laughter] which is a fearsome looking thing.
Even if I don't use it from a psychological perspective, it's what I need right now. Not now, but Google it later. The 1796 British light cavalry has a very broad, very wide curved blade. It looks awesome. So, I grabbed it. I rushed back into the kitchen. Oh, the other thing about it is that in movies when people draw swords it goes swing. And real swords mostly don't, but this one does because it has a steel scabbard. So, as I'm entering the kitchen, I'm drawing the sword and it goes schwing. [audience laughter] So, we enter the kitchen from both directions simultaneously, me and the burglar. He walks almost through the door. This guy is off his nut. His eyes are blue and red. Because of the red, the white of his eyes is completely bloodshot and he's got a cudgel or club.
Basically, it's a thing, the size and the shape of a baseball bat that he's holding, ready to hit someone with it. So, he's ready and I'm ready. I see him register the sword, the sabre, and he bolts. I think, brilliant. It's worked perfectly. What I want to do at this stage is lock the back door, but I can't because it's in bits. So, I need to make sure he's off the property. And so, I run out into the back garden. At this point, he changed his mind about being frightened of the sword and decided he wasn't frightened at all anymore.
He ran at me and he started trying to hit me with this length of timber, this club and then ensued quite a long fight. It was a fight in which he was trying to hurt me, but for all sorts of reasons, which I'll go into in a second, I was trying to look, not hurt him, but look as if I was going to, because I needed to get him off the property. So, yeah, why wasn't I trying to actually hurt him since he was obviously so intent on doing it to me? Well, there is the moral thing, but partly it was because I seemed to be thinking a lot during this violent episode [audience laughter] was that my daughter was or had been asleep upstairs. I thought, she's got to have heard that. Sound of a man booting a door in was immense.
I had this mental image of her coming downstairs. If I had hit him with the sabre, of her coming out and saying, “Daddy, what's all that?” And seeing me standing over this twitching corpse of a burglar [audience laughter] with blood everywhere. So, I thought, well, that can't happen. So, I had to get him off the premises. So, there was this long, long fight during which he was swinging at me with his club and I was ducking and blocking, and I was swinging at him with a sword and he was backing off, as you would when a chunky piece of metal keeps going by your face a lot. So, we're back around the side of the house.
It's quite a big house, this across the back garden around the side of the house where he'd got the thing he had actually was I'd been collecting some wood for the stove and I had some lengths of wooden handrails that thick timber. What I'd been hearing earlier was him snapping the end off a nine-foot length to make something more-handy to use as a weapon. So, the house is on a dual carriageway, but there's no one around. It's dead quiet. So, there's just two men swinging at each other with primitive weapons. [audience laughter]
We go away up the dual carriageway. This battle's been going on for a minute which when you're really fighting like crazy is a long time. [audience laughter] I reached the point where I'm out of ideas and I've got no energy left. I think any second now, he's going to realize I'm not trying to hurt him and then what am I going to do? But at that point he gave up and he disappeared. I can't emphasize how quickly this man was moving. I don't know what he was on, but it was helping him to move around very quickly. He was just gone like that. It was like a spot on the horizon, like a genie evaporating.
Then I turned and started walking back to the house. I was thinking how I was going to explain to my daughter Evelyn that daddy had been out. She's 10 at this time. What daddy was doing outside in the garden with a sword and why he looked all shattered. I was beginning to, “Oh, I can leave the sword by the door, I don't need to take it in.” I was just developing my strategy and I heard very fast footsteps behind me. He'd run away very quickly and he'd come back quicker. [audience laughter] I turned and he was almost on me with his arms raised above his head with his both about to hit me with the club. I took the blow.
We hit each other simultaneously. I turned and swung the sword across my body, catching him on the chest at the same time as his club caught my forearm. Then he kept running. The sword actually is blunt. If it had been sharp, it would have been much, much more messy. I think I broke the skin, but I think he was basically not that badly injured. He was gone this time. He just bolted up the dual carriageway. I got back in the house. Evelyn had slept through the whole thing. She wasn't there. [audience laughter] So, I made another 999 phone call and the police turned up incredibly quickly afterwards. I said that was quick. And they said, “No, we were responding to the earlier one.” [audience laughter]
They were so tall up, they had guns and armor and riot shields and stuff. Apparently, you can find out where a phone call is coming. They said, “Yeah. No, we heard a lot of it over the phone. We heard crash, bang, wallop.” And also, as luck would have it, the burglar had been running up the dual carriageway and he ran into this convoy of police vans full of heavily armed police, [audience laughter] and they caught him there and then they actually had him in the van.
Well, obviously he was arrested very much. He was remanded in custody. It took a long time for it to come to court. Came to court in December, and I was very glad I didn't have to go to court, because he fessed up right at the last minute and he said, “Yeah, I did do it then.” He got three and a half years for aggravated burglary. Now, that's not quite the end of it. This story got into the Guardian magazine. It has a feature called Experience, which is real experiences. This article had a huge response online. It was like there was 15,000 shares and hundreds and hundreds of comments. Most of them were nice comments, people saying, “I'm glad you're okay, and that sounds horrible.” Some of them were actually, like, reviews.
They were negative reviews of my performance [audience laughter] dealing with a violent intruder. A lot of them, these hostile reviews came from the United States, especially Texas. [audience laughter] I had no idea that people in Texas read the Guardian, but some do. What they felt was that where I'd gone wrong is I didn't kill him. [audience laughter] I didn't enter into-- Because you can't really have a serious conversation online about serious matters. So, I would have answered. I thought of answering online, but I didn't. So, I haven't actually spoken to any of those people. But what I would like to say to them if I got a chance to do it in a sensible context, is if it does ever happen to you that you have a violent intruder, and I know you're going, [unintelligible [00:27:15] please. Some people really want a violent intruder.
If it does happen, and it almost certainly won't, the first thing you think of doing should not be that you start shooting guns in the house, because it's just going to go badly wrong from there on. I've told my daughter that it happened this year and she went, “Really?” It's three years on now, and she's old enough and enough time has elapsed. So, she was quite surprised that she'd slept through a thing that was that big in her own house. And that is the end. The burglar will be getting out, so anytime now. [audience laughter] I'm okay, my daughter's okay and I hope, even though I don't love the guy, I hope he's okay now too. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:28:13] That was Simon Bill. Simon is the author of the very funny novel, Artist in Residence. He's also a painter, and he's most known for making these oval shaped paintings that are all the same size but feature wildly diverse subject matter. Dried maize bath sealant, champagne corks and dental floss.
When Simon and I were working on his story, I asked him about why he thinks someone would dream of having a standoff like this. He said he thinks that some people seem to really want a violent intruder, because they think they're going to have a chance to be like Bruce Willis in the Die-Hard movies or something. They see that as being manly. But what Simon actually did, keeping himself, his daughter, and for the most part, even the intruder, safe from harm, that seems like a real man to me.
Do you have a story about something crazy that happened to you? Call our pitch line, which will let you leave a two-minute version of a story you'd like to tell. The number to call is 877-799-M-O-T-H, or you can pitch us the story right on our website, themoth.org. Here's a pitch we liked.
Johnny: [00:29:19] Years ago, I was working at a great Italian restaurant here in New York City. My hero Al Pacino walked in. He walked in with about eight people. So, I walked up to the table and said, “Hi, I'm Johnny. Really nice to meet you all. I just wanted to tell you today our special is the pappardelle. It's amazing.” Al Pacino said, “I'll take salad, lettuce and tomato and stuff and a diet Coke.” And I said, "Mr. Pacino, that's wonderful, but I really would love for you to try the pappardelle. It's amazing. He said, [unintelligible [00:29:49] salad, Johnny.” Okay. So, I ran to the kitchen. I gave the order. I was a little disappointed.
When I went outside, he looked at me and he got up and he waved at me in a sticky way to head back to the restaurant towards the bathroom. I was a little nervous, but it's Al Pacino. I followed and he said, “Listen, that's my aging manager. They want me to lose £20. Make me a linguine with clam sauce, extra spicy, bring it to the office and wave at me when it's ready.” I said, “Of course, Mr. Pacino.” I went into the kitchen, “Let me get a linguine with clam sauce extra spicy for Mr. Pacino.” When it was ready, I waved at him, winked and now me and Pacino had a star, had a little secret. It was so beautiful. He went downstairs, he loved to be scoffed it down in a minute he's like, “Mm, that was good.”
Anyway, they left, they said goodbye. I thought, at least get an email, but I didn't. And then, the next day, he ran back in and he said, “Hey, listen, let me get a linguine with clam sauce extra spicy tonight.” I got a plane to catch.” So, I made him a linguine with that extra clam sauce and I kept saying to him, “Mr. Pacino, I know I don't want to ask you too many questions, but I'd like to know a few things about acting and what's your process?” When he left, he gave me his email.
As he was walking out, he smashed his face into the chandelier door of the restaurant. He fell down and he was going, “Ahh, ahhh” I said, “Mr. Pacino, are you okay? I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. I hope you're okay. Let me call the ambulance.” He looked through his fingers and he said, “Gotcha, Johnny. That's acting lesson number one. I'll have more lessons for you the more linguini you get me.”
Catherine: [00:31:27] Again. You can pitch us your own story by calling 877-799-M-O-T-H or by going to themoth.org.
Coming up, the rise and fall of a one hit wonder hip hop star. That's next on The Moth Radio Hour.
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Jay: [00:31:58] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:32:48] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. And now, we're going to hear from Chenjerai Kumanyika. He told this story live at a show we did in partnership with the Blue Man Group. We actually performed a Moth show on their New York City with the Blue men themselves hosting silently. Here's Chenjerai.
[applause]
Chenjerai: [00:33:11] On December 21st, 2007 at 02:15 PM, a colleague at my job told me the boss wanted to see me and I should brace myself, because the boss wasn't pleased. Now, when I say my job, what y’all should know is this was a temporary job. When I say it was a temporary job, what you should know, is that my performance today determined whether I would be asked back tomorrow.
So, when I went in the boss's office, here's what she said. “Hi, Chenjerai. Yesterday I asked you to make 200 Gilmore Girls Thanksgiving Day special DVDs, but the Excel spreadsheet that you made ordered more than that.” “Okay, how many more?” “1 million Gilmore Girls Thanksgiving Day special DVDs. Can you explain that, please?” “I could. I have no idea how to use Microsoft Excel. [audience laughter] I lied about my skills to get this job. [audience laughter] My solution to the first two problems has been when in doubt, hit enter.”
What I'm trying to explain to you is on December 21st, 2007 at 2:15 PM, my life sucked. And it didn't just suck because I had a job that I was no good at and that few people wanted, it sucked because only two years ago I had a job that I was very good at and that everyone wanted. I was a full-time hip hop artist. You see, in 1995, four friends and I decided that the music industry was missing something. What the game needed was a group that was the Fugees, but not quite as talented. [audience laughter] Kind of like The Roots, but not quite as creative. So, we formed the Spooks. After years of grinding out demos and everybody telling us we were never going to make it, we finally did the impossible. We came up to New York and we signed a record deal.
One day the CEO of our record label called us into his office. And his assistant said we should brace ourselves, because he was very excited. “Spooks,” he likes saying that. A little too much for a white guy, in my opinion. [audience laughter] “I figured out how we're all going to make millions, and it comes down to two words, Laurence Fishburne.” I was like, “Wait a minute, you mean like the movie star Laurence Fishburne? Apocalypse Now Laurence Fishburne? Morpheus, The Matrix, Laurence Fishburne?”
According to our CEO, the Laurence Fishburne had agreed to make our song, the main theme song of the first film he ever directed. All we had to do was go to dinner with him and solidify the deal. No problem. Went up to New York, waited out in front of a restaurant, and sure enough, the Laurence Fishburne pulled up on a scooter. [audience laughter] Not only did he agree to put our song in his film, but he agreed to be in our music video. Awesome.
So, like many genius artists before us, Jimi Hendrix, James Baldwin, the Spice Girls, we blew up in Europe first. We got a gold album in the UK, then we got a gold single in France, then we got a gold single in Belgium, we got a gold single in Sweden. I was telling this to a friend of mine the other day, bragging. And he was like, “Wait a minute. Doesn't it only take 3,000 albums to gold in Belgium?” “Yeah, that's true. But how many gold albums you got? Fuck you. Don't be a hater, man.” [audience laughter] We were top 10. You know what I'm saying? We were top 10 all over Europe. You know what I mean? That meant we did all the TV shows, we did like Viva, MTV, Jools Holland, Top of the Pops, you name it.
We were flying all over doing concerts like Glastonbury, Leeds, Ross killed the all those shows. I finally felt like we had made it when one day my manager told me we had a problem. We had to do two shows in two different countries on the same day. The solution was simple. Sony rented a private jet. 8 o’clock show in Berlin, 11:30 show in London.
And as we were flying across Europe from one set of screaming fans to another in a private jet drinking specially procured Scandinavian pear ciders, I was sitting next to a record exec that I felt like was becoming my friend. Because a lot of people around us at this time just were telling us what we wanted to hear. They had a financial incentive to do that, but this person was somebody I felt like, I'm starting to trust. So, I was like, “Susan, I got an idea. When we finish touring, let's just meet up somewhere in Europe, like all of us. In fact, maybe we could make it like a yearly thing. Just like pick a place in Europe, somewhere in the world and just kick it.”
We had been laughing up to that point. But suddenly, she got really serious and she took my hand and she said, “Listen, Chenjerai, I have to be honest with you. I don't know where you're going to be next year. Enjoy it while it lasts.” She knocked the wind out of me with that one. “What do you mean we're going to be making music next year? We're good at this and people like our songs. I like doing this. I thought we were finally part of the club. Look at this private jet. Look at these specially procured Scandinavian parasites.” [audience laughter]
But she was right. Two months later, a marketing exec called us into his office and said that due to a poorly chosen third single, they had run out of money to promote our album and it was over. I moved to Los Angeles, I got married and eventually, I found myself in a cubicle producing Gilmore Girls DVDs. But even then, I felt like I still had a foot in the game. I think my wife felt the same way, because she was like, “Honey, I have a job for you where you work with some celebrities. Are you interested?” And I was like, “Of course.” But if I'm going to be around my people, I'm probably going to need to go shopping.
She reached in her purse, pulled out the JCPenney card. She was like, “Get a suit. Not the most expensive one. You'll be working security.” Fair enough. I went to the gig. Now, this was a gathering of the black filmmaking elite. You know, Spike Lee was there, Tyler Perry was there. Yeah, the whole cast from The Wire was there. And then, coming out of a limousine was the Laurence Fishburne. Now, I'm not going to lie. At that point, people weren't treating me as a security guard too well, but I was like, “Now, they're going to learn.” You know what I'm saying?
I didn't just get Laurence Fishburne's autograph. He was in my video. But as he got closer, I started to second guess myself a little bit. I was like, “Wait a minute. What if he wants me to go in? I can't. I'm working. How am I going to explain that?” Actually, I was like, “He's not going to ask me to go in.” I'm sitting here in a JCPenney suit. I didn't even have dress socks on. I had sweat socks on. And come to think of it, I haven't even made music in months or whatever. You know what I mean? I'm not an artist really anymore. I'm not in the rap game. I make Gilmore Girls DVDs, and I'm not even good at that.
I got more and more nervous. As he got closer, I just second guessed myself. And when he got right next to me, I actually turned my head because I just didn't want to have to explain what my situation was. I don't know if I felt more depressed or relieved at that moment.
A few weeks later, I interviewed for a job as an administrative assistant. Now, this firm was in a cramped office, dimly lit, the kind of place where there's just insidious pop music leaking out of the radio, but nobody hears it because they're hopelessly staring into their computer screens. I was hopelessly staring at my resume, trying to figure out how I was going to explain these gaps in it and why a hip hop artist was really excited about being a full-time administrative assistant. As I was listening to the music, suddenly, it started to sound familiar. And then, I recognize that song. I was like, “Wait a minute, I wrote that song. [audience laughter] That's Things I've Seen. That's the song that did it for us.”
One of the employees looked at a coworker and coworker was like, “Yo, remember this song Things I've Seen? I fucking love that shit. The song was hot.” I got excited, like maybe somebody was going to recognize me. I started looking around, but no one recognized me. And that's okay. I think that was the point. What I always loved about making music, was that you don't have to be a big important person to make compelling songs that can reach out and touch somebody. I didn't have to suffocate trying to pretend to be some rock star that hangs out with Laurence Fishburne to keep doing that. I also realized in that moment that maybe I have more to offer the world than Excel spreadsheets. I was looking for a third door where I could do what I wanted and at the same time, I could make opportunities for other people to make music.
I found that door when I was offered the opportunity to run a studio for an incredible nonprofit organization called Street Poets. Street Poets takes marginalized youth and helps develop them into artists and teachers and healers. While I was working as street poets, I was able to get my PhD and become a professor of media studies. And now, sometimes when I'm sitting in my office, my students just come in and they're so excited to tell me about their dreams and their fears. I know I should tell them, like, “Listen, y'all, it's hard out there. Life kicks your ass. Play it safe.” But I never do. I tell them, “Go for it. Enjoy it while it lasts. But brace yourself, because when it doesn't, sometimes you got to figure out who you're not, so you can become who you are.” Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:43:47] Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika is a scholar, activist and artist, who holds a creativity professorship at Clemson University in South Carolina. I first met Chenjerai when I read his article, Vocal Color in Public Radio, which was produced for the website transom.org. The article went viral and spawned a much-needed discussion about diversity in public media. To read that piece, to see a clip of the Blue Men hosting and to see the Spooks video for Things I've Seen starring Chenjerai and the Laurence Fishburne, go to themoth.org. You're actually listening to the song right now. You can also read his story in our new book.
[Things I've Seen song by Chenjerai]
Catherine: [00:44:51] Our final story is from James Shuter. He told it at one of our open-mic StorySLAM competitions in Melbourne, Australia, which is supported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABCRN. The theme was Borders. Here's James.
[applause]
James: [00:45:11] So, I was 23 when I first traveled overseas. My buddy Gavin and I were in Berlin and we were staying with a bunch of German students. This particular night, we were playing cards, and having a few beers and we were listening to the radio. Suddenly, the Germans started yelling at each other and started yelling at the radio and jumping up and down. Gavin and I were looking at each other going, “Is this just like a German thing? What's going on?” They started yelling out, “die Mauer. die Mauer.” And we're going, “die Mauer. What's die Mauer?” And they said, “The wall. Thew wall” I'm looking around, “What's wrong with walls?” I do have to admit that my geopolitical knowledge of the European situation at the time wasn't brilliant. [audience laughter]
Anyway, eventually, they managed to explain to the ignorant Australian that the east and West German governments had just come to an agreement to open the border and that the Berlin Wall, which was five minutes away, was open. So, we went downstairs and joined the throngs of people, flooding towards the closest border crossing, which happened to be Checkpoint Charlie. Most of you have probably seen some of the vision from that night. It was just incredible. It was the little Trabant cars coming across from East Germany. They made of plastic, and they were all the same color and they were just jammed with the happiest people that you could ever imagine seeing.
There were people coming across on bicycles, in trams, walking. There were people who had their dressing gowns on. It was the middle of winter. They had just dropped everything and walked out of their houses in East Berlin to come across to West Berlin. It was incredible that night. We stayed up all night. We danced, we drank, we laughed. It was amazing. Woke up, didn't wake up, because we were still awake. [audience laughter]
When the sun came up the next day, we walked along the West German side of the Wall and we came across bunches of people who were just smashing that Wall with anything that they could get. They had hammers, they had picks, they had their hands, whatever they could use, they were trying to destroy this symbol of oppression. The gaps in the wall were getting bigger and bigger as went further along. You could see no man's land through there and you could see the fence on the East German side with the barbed wire on it. We made our way to the center of Berlin to the crossing at the Brandenburg Gate. There were thousands of people up on top of the Wall. This was one of the only places you could actually climb the Wall.
So, we managed to get up on top of the Wall, wiggled our way through the crowd and sat on the edge of the Wall looking over towards East Germany. There was a line of a couple of hundred East German soldiers in front of us. They were all well-armed. There's 100 meters of no man's land, and then there was the other fence. Everyone was chanting and singing on the Wall. It was this amazing feeling of happiness. And then, there was a bit of a commotion as someone from the East German side climbed the fence and started running towards West. The soldiers reacted almost instantly and they ran straight to this guy.
The silence of those thousands of people watching, this was the loudest thing that I've ever heard. He was surrounded by soldiers. And then, an officer came out of the guard tower at the Brandenburg Gate, walked over, spoke briefly to this man, and then took his hand and walked him over to the West German side of the Wall. The officer then put his hands like this and cupped them and helped the man up into the arms of all of the people waiting on the Wall. Again, the eruption of emotion and ecstasy that happened from that crowd is the most amazing thing that I've ever heard. I really don't think that the world needs borders. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:49:34] That was James Shuter. James produces new exhibitions for Museums Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. This was the very first story ever told at The Moth. And he says his greatest fear is public speaking. He also says that he still has no idea about the geopolitical situation in Europe. To see a photo of James climbing the Berlin Wall in 1989, go to themoth.org.
[Dancing in Berlin by Berlin]
You’re listening to the song Dancing in Berlin by the 1980s pop band Berlins. When the Wall came down, I was a 21-year-old student. My friends and I managed to find a cassette tape of the song. I think it was actually a cassette single, if you guys remember those. And we played it over and over that night, dancing and laughing. Like so many young people at the time, we had lived our entire lives in the shadow of the Cold War and the Wall coming down meant everything.
[Dancing in Berlin by Berlin]
That's it for this edition of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.
[Uncanny Valley by The Drift]]
Jay: [00:50:52] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly, Kirsty Bennett, Jenelle Pifer and Michelle Jalowski. Special thanks to Daniel Greenberg, Matthew Inman and Mark Ellingham, along with all our friends at Blue Man Group.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. The story from our pitch line came from Johnny Solo. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Duke Levine, Mark Orton, Angelo De Pippa, Spooks and Berlin. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just and verdant and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.