TO DOCUMENT A TIME

A spoken word piece and a bit of video inspired by my current project

To document a time is to connect it to history and very often to make it a myth.

To document your twenties is to acknowledge your discoveries and find lessons in your saddest mistakes.

To document a place to bask in its geography and note every change both colossal or simple as new street lamp.

It’s to acknowledge beauty and brutality, and see they are sometimes the same on the streets where you’ve loved and cried in falling rain.

To document a place is to remember passing fads and, in them, see philosophies.

It is to watch giants raise up, collectives fracture and to note that all endeavors have a season and that autumn can be just as vibrant as spring.

To document a place is to talk about “What used to be here” and “She used to live there” and “That new place is cool” and to fall into a lexicon of cliches.

To document a place is to count those that moved on and those that stayed, and to live in the past even as you smile at babies being pushed down the street.

I’m writing a book about Brooklyn in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In so doing I've been digging through old videos on my hard drive and found this 2009 walk up Fort Greene Place and onto DeKalb Avenue and the original home of Spike Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Film Works. The block looks pretty much the same but when I turn the corner you new Brooklyn high rise skyline hasn’t been built yet. This was shot for my doc Brooklyn Boheme, but I didn’t use it because we went in another direction (and a few facts are wrong.) Still its a nice time capsule and it inspired the piece above.