I'm so glad I can finally talk about this…
I have been wanting to for so long, but until now, the only space I could speak on it, without cloaking my words, was with the person who brought it to me.
I hope you hear and feel the joy, gratitude, and gravity behind what I am about to say.
If you have been following my writing since the beginning of Onion Soup, and even for the newest subscribers, you would know my last few years have been a spiritual transition into who and what this era will see as Dejon as I write more openly.
Why does that matter?
Well, it was May 22nd, 2024, and Steph had messaged me after he had hosted the first private screening of his newest film project.
I hadn't been to the first screening. I didn't expect to be.
Nothing malicious, it just is… and where I was.
But after one of my closest friends told me about the project, and Steph reached out, what might have been a missed invite became a catalyst, an intimate message, and a later conversation arriving right on time.
Ironically, it was just before I resurfaced on Bermuda Day, testing the waters to see if my heart was still there, and still in love with our culture, for whatever that means now—that's a longer conversation, for another time.
But the messages then were timely, I'd even say divine.
"Yooo, you wanna see our latest film project? I can send you a private link for your eyes only."
Of course, I wanted to.
Something in me knew this wasn't just another project.
I had only heard good things about the experience, and it exceeded my conditioned expectations of our artistic community and was nothing I was mentally prepared for.
By the time Steph messaged, it was evening, and after we briefly chatted, the night was setting in, and treefrogs outside began to sing.
I pulled up the private link on my phone, typed in the given password, and airplayed it to my living room TV to get a full view of the experience.
I hit the lights off, pulled up my chair in front of the TV like the young boy about to view his favorite Saturday morning show, yet the adult scholar was also present and ready to study.
From the opening rolling curtain, and those first words in a cadence I'm all too used to, the visuals, the music, that beat switch manifesting energy…
I felt my soul escape my chest, take flight from the body, then drop from the sky into the darkest blues of South shore.
But I wasn't drowning.
I was still breathing. The water was still breathable.
I was awakening. As though I were reemerging from the womb…
or from the mother's wound.
Every time I watch the film, it evokes a great spirit within me; in fact, I'm almost scared to, as the feeling it evokes from me is akin to the documentary they filmed of me. The one I've only seen a handful amount of times, because when I do, and when I emerge, it floods me to tears, I still cannot find words for.
Someone had found the words to articulate for me. Or found someone, something, whom I could relate to.
It is where I was, where I am, and where I will go, all in translation, transition, and motion.
I was lost for words, but it spoke for me.
And the tears brought to my face were not in sorrow, or pity, or pain, but creating this emergent joy— joy in knowing, first, that neither the body nor voice is lost. And second, our suffering isn't isolated. Only revised and made more palatable.
To be a reduced truth that is too convenient to question.
While immersed, and you will be, it gave my spirit everything I'd been needing—the very depth, challenge, and sustenance I often find myself begging for in conversation.
Not just intellectually, but spiritually. Wholeheartedly.
A subject that requires you to let go of who you are so you might see lineage, and so that you might see community.
It echoed the feeling I've found buried in my collected books, those quiet ancestral conversations that left us clues and footprints.
And strangely enough, it reminded me of something else too, if I can allow the nerd in me out for just a bit.
It shares a similar feeling to the legend of Joy Boy, Luffy's Gear 5, in One Piece, who invokes Nika, the Sun God, a legendary figure from the Void Century, a period of history erased from records, who has the ability to hear the Voice of All Things. And when he draws near, you hear the Drums of Liberation.
Something from an anime that feels all too close to the reality of Black world history, and ours, in Bermuda, where centuries of memory were recorded from one ruling voice.
Although seeing the episode list can be intimidating, One Piece is a very good long-form expression of Hegelian philosophy.
For those unfamiliar, Hegelian philosophy is rooted in the idea that truth emerges through contradiction, and what begins as conflict gives rise to something new. It isn't necessarily in the simple binary form about good vs evil, but more towards how opposing forces evolve each other.
One Piece, beneath all the chaos and color, moves like that, freedom wrestled from tyranny, identity formed through struggle, legacy forged in rebellion, etc..
So you can see the relationship. And why I enjoy it.
Anyway, focus, Dejon. Back to the short film.
There are two reasons I believe it hit me so hard:
First, my deeper relationship with history, specifically our history, and how I understand it.
And second, it is a presentation of a rite of passage, spiritual, visual, and ancestral.
When I sit with my elders…
When I sit with my peers like Steph…
And when I sit with the youth I am blessed to connect with, I often feel like the middle child of our community.
A bridge. A vessel. A tradition bearer.
And although unseen, I carry the gravity of what is being passed to me, by choice, and by divinity.
That understanding is both a gift and a burden.
It allows you to see all the subtleties most miss—the layers, the easter eggs, the oppression, and also spiritual blueprints. And as beautiful as presented, and as artists flourish, I find myself drawn to a sacred language being passed through their breath, color, and the beat of our people.
What haunts me is knowing how easily an entire record of history can disappear.
How quickly it can vanish in the blink of an elder's passing.
And that fear births spiritual urgency.
It tells me in between breaths that the work must continue,
and that the fire can't go out, and that their lives cannot be in vain.
So, when I witness this film, this team, and what it carries, even when left unspoken, I see a group of artists reclaiming a language.
Not only to leave behind myths of reference, or frameworks for study, but also to hold spaces for ancestral and spiritual return. A nucleus that is currently amiss in our community.
It is the language I understand most.
It is the language I have been trying to speak all along, and it feels like a dream I didn't know we all shared, until someone else dared to speak it aloud, even if he, or they, were unclear of how to in the beginning.
A vision unexpressed from peers in a community, I had thought, forgotten itself.
And so what I find now in lost language is a village in others.
A village that knows when it truly sings, it reclaims its tongue.
Thank you.
"Tomorrow. You're gonna be great. All your friends will be there. I'll be there, and your ancestors will be with you forever."