Wow, I logged on to our site this morning and realized the last blog I posted was "I'm Inspired by Kanye West". Interesting how timing has a way of being 'just on time' or 'just at the wrong time'. I thought to myself should I take the blog down considering the ultimate 'dumb-dumb' move he made a few days ago when he decided to yank the mic from a 17 year old country singer? Or do I leave it him up on the blog? After all, I meant exactly what I said in the last blog about him, he inspires me, mainly because he's just being himself for better or for worse.
I think it's times like these when I think about the complexity of human beings and what it truly means to be human. As I prepare to take the stage this week, I realize that my character, Candice, while an upstanding member of her church is clearly not without fault. Her anger and her bitterness at times gets the best of her, and her faith is put to the test. Hell, at some point don't we all do things that we wish we hadn't? Maybe some of us don't ever walk out on a limb, testing what we really do believe...and that's just it. Some of us are content with not living at all, not figuring out for ourselves what is wrong and what is right. Of course the danger of really "living" is that there are things that we will do along the way that we can't come back from doing, that leave a Hester Prynne like mark permanently attached to our reputation.
And while I don't agree with Ye's antics the night of the VMAs (I would have grabbed the mic back), as an actress, he made me painfully aware of the range of free human expression. Most of us are not free to be who we really are for better or worse, we hide behind who we think we should be, what we think society thinks we should be. When I think of Ye, I can't help but think of Emerson who says, "No law can be sacred to me unless it's a law of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong is what is against it." DAMN...if that ain't gangsta then what is? The question is what if one's nature is volatile, creative, temperamental and unstable? Well I think we know the answer to that question.
And while I personally would never snatch a mic from a kid at an award's show; I'm not qualified to say what I have and would do that appalls society. I've never liked the crackerjack box-like comfort of being labeled the 'nice' girl. I mean God forbid the day I break that particular mold by doing one thing that shatters that image. When that day comes, I only hope folks realize, there were no drugs, no crazy boys to 'put me up to it', no forms of depression that induced my crazy behavior. The truth is it's already in my nature, always was and always will be.
Shak
100.
