A Step In The Write Direction

An ARMY working toward World Peace exists. Right now, right here on planet Earth. It has plenty of soldiers. Specifically, musicians. Wally Pleasant, Eminem, Missy Elliot, Beyonce, Ani Difranco, Janet Jackson. The Peace Army also has the dead. Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Kobain. There are generals, captains, project leaders. P.O.D., Mudvanye, Type-O-Negative, Garbage, Hollywood Undead, No Doubt, Skunk Anasie, Pudd of Mudd. These individuals and groups have been working for a Higher Power their whole lives. They’re recognized as qualified for the roles of leadership because they are all on my playlist. Feel free to form your own army & playlists.

On days when generals are on television, in movies, mine are Oprah, Lee Daniels, John Singleton, Spike Lee, Steven Speilberg, Penny Marshall. When generals are in books, mine are Stephen King, Laurell K. Hamilton, Anne Bishop, Lilith Saintcrow, Jackie Collins, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Anne Rice, Mary Higgins Clarke, VC Andrews, Stephen Hawking. The soldiers are Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen Degenres, Kerry Washington, Andrew Lincoln, Terrance Howard, Melissa McCarthy, Keenan Ivory Waynes, Roseanne, Johnny Depp, Sylvester Stallone, just to name a few. You may be wondering how Sylvester Stallone made it onto my list. Have you every heard his viewpoints on gun control and violence? I have.

Celebrities have a huge responsibility placed upon their high profile heads. They are human beings who are elevated to a higher status in the public’s eyes, yet, they are still just people. They can and do make mistakes because they are human beings. The public can and does judge these mistakes, sometimes too harshly in my opinion. When you love what they do, their art, it is easier to forgive them their mistakes. The problem I find is society then says the art no longer has value because it’s creator made a mistake.

I feel the success of ‘black’ish’ is because the American public felt the void left in its television programming by pulling the reruns of Bill Cosby’s art off the air. Do I condon the actions Mr. Bill Cosby is accused of doing? No. Do I recognize he is an individual who has had a mistake he probably made multiple times publicized? Yes. Do I know his guilt or innocent in the case? No. I have no proof either way. I was not a victim of the crime he is accused of committing. I do empathize with the victims of such a crime. As a person who was molested as a child I can relate to their experience of being forced into a sexual act that they did not want to happen to them.

As to Bill Cosby, the comedian, the artist. My favorite joke growing up came from this man’s mouth to my ears in a comedy special. Then he did something for this black child that I’d never seen done before, he turned the black family into a respectable group, one to be immulated and admired for a half hour every single week on my television. At one time it was for an entire hour while ‘A Different World’ followed ‘The Cosby Show’ on the NBC’s Thursday night line up.

I laughed and learned that it was possible for me to attend college. I learned that I was not financially rich if my parent(s) were and that I would have to earn my own money if I wanted to be financially rich. Thanks to those shows and a contract my mother made me sign at eight years of age, I did attend college. Michigan State University. Go Green! Go White! Go Spartans! Also Lansing Community College when MSU proved too expensive to attend. Not only that, I graduated from both of these institutions of higher education. 

In my younger days I believed obtaining a piece of paper with some letters on it was the best way for me to achieve financial freedom. Do I value my education? Yes. Did having a degree lead to a pocket full of money for me? Well, yeah. Having a college education allowed me to apply for and achieve a lot of higher paying jobs after college. Were they jobs I loved? No, they were stupid day jobs even though I tried to love them despite this fact. They were the jobs I took while trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life to earn a living. They are what I did until my mental illness and my Higher Power pointed me in the WRITE direction.

My art form is writing. I’m trying to earn a living with it. My body-sharing twin, Simone Lisbon, wrote a book, Forced to Change. The rewrites are almost finished. When that’s done, I’m going to publish my art for profit with the hopes of it being a New York Times Best Seller. I hope people will buy it. I want people to love it. I hope that it will earn me a living.

If not, oh well, it wasn’t meant to be, yet. I’ll continue writing. Why? I love it and it is possible to earn a living from writing. So I fantasize about being the next Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephen King while I am Stephanie Monique, that’s an excellent person to be in my opinion. One day I hope someone will aspire to be like me...