Are You Here To Be In Show Business? 65don’t need an alarm clock. What I try to do everyday is just live my
dream.
You know what’s really funny, I had learned how to do comedy
in the streets of Chicago, telling jokes and passing my hat, and I became
like the king of street performance in one summer in Chicago. But then
winter came, and nobody wanted to hear jokes in December on State
Street. I packed everything that would fit in my 1967 Buick LeSabre,
sold everything else, and drove to California so I could stand in the street
and do comedy for living. I really came to become a millionaire, but
when I got to Venice Beach I discovered my brother, and I discovered
that the world ain’t about me, and that I can’t find me until I find you.
Because I ain’t at my place; I’m where you are. Once I embrace you I
embrace myself, and only then am I free to be who I am.
Instead of trying to be a millionaire, I now attempt to be a
billionaire of being. Instead of trying to make my living, I live my making,
and my making shall make my living. That’s how I try to walk through
this thing called life. That’s why I get up in the morning. I’m living life
to the fullest each day. It ain’t necessarily whether I’m doing comedy, or
acting, or being a grandparent, or flying to Chicago to feed my mama
collard greens every three weeks. She’s seventy-seven years young and
just got past breast cancer, and now she’s fighting liver cancer, but when
I feed her, she’s up and about and her energy is good again. I’m just
living the life.
I think my purpose is to discover who I am. I think that is the
only job, the only curriculum, in this entire course of life. To discover
who I am and my connection to life and to that pulse and the energy. I
discover that by being honest and true to myself every day. And I try to
keep revealing a little bit more of myself every day, to myself.
What event or series of events led to your discovery?
I think it’s more like a series of events, because it didn’t just come to me;
it’s been coming to me, continually, over the years. When I got to Venice
Beach, I saw a life force that I had never seen before, where everybody
was interacting with everybody and so many people were about life and
Spirit. They weren’t necessarily putting a name on Spirit, but they were
about the goodness of the land and healing each other and raising folks
up. I saw that all mixed in, in the area where people were absolutely
crazy, and drug addicts, and wild gangsters, and all of that was blended
together in this area known as Venice Beach.