In honor of the 13th anniversary of our sons’ birth and passing, I decided to do something different this year. Rather than stumble through another annual rumination, I’m undertaking something significantly more ambitious: Interviewing 10 people I admire – all writers of extremely varied disciplines – and asking them for their perspectives on death and grief.
I met Wallace Demarria about eight years ago when he was casting a short film he’d written and approached me about a role on the strength of my performance in a play he’d seen. Our respective stars didn’t align for that project, but we connected on social media and I’ve sort of fly-on-the-wall watched his career and development as a creator blossom over the years.
His biggest project to date has been COLORBLIND, an off-Broadway play which he wrote and performed concerning cultural systems of racial oppression. Wallace is a NAACP Award-winning artist and continues to create material across various types of media.
Jeremy: You’re one of the most driven people I know. You talk and write a lot about the experience of being black and the role of black-ness in American culture. Your show, COLORBLIND, talks a lot about that. It’s talks about a lot of other things too, but the experience of being black is a major point of discussion. Does your experience as an American black man affect your philosophies or attitudes toward death?
Wallace: I would say so. While I understand that we’re all human beings, I do understand cultural influences and different things, cultural norms, they all play a part. And unfortunately, I saw a lot of death growing up.
Mm.
I saw a man get murdered when I was six years old. And it wasn’t in a bad place. It was the most random of things. Some guy running down the street, someone stabs him to death. I saw a freakishly high amount of death. And I will be honest, I lived in a few very violent cities. So I got an early understanding that every day was a gift because the next day wasn’t promised. You can make all the plans you want.
That will break some people. That will just send some people into a lifetime of depression and fear of, you know, they’re scared to move. But I just feel like you never know when your number’s gonna get called. You could walk out your house and a tree falls [on you]. It’s like a million things. So I try to maximize the moments. I believe that life is to be lived. Being black in America, there were gang activities and this and that. And even if your parents get you away from it, you still have to go to school with it. You still have to go through this neighborhood with it. You know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
COLORBLIND deals with a lot of the police shootings and different things like that. So these are realities that happen. And so for me, I’ve always wanted to make sure the world was at least a little better because I was here. Some kind of mark, whether it’s inspiration, it’s this, it’s that, or whether I left the world with some incredible art, whatever it is… I understood that we don’t have forever.
These early experiences that you’re talking about, seeing death and being around it. Feeling like it’s closer than maybe most people have the experience of feeling that closeness of death… what I’m hearing is this is helping to shape who you are eventually as an artist.
Yes, it made me numb to it at first, but I’ve always made a point to be very self aware of my emotions, even if I’m blocking them out. One of the first things I ever wrote was What About Us? and I never even finished it. But it was about a group of kids growing up during the gang years of the 90s and what happens when you become numb to death. What happens when you lose the ability to be afraid. And that’s not a natural thing. Fear is an emotion as well. You know, that’s something you’re supposed to feel. And when you don’t feel it, you kind of live recklessly. And when I recognized I was doing that toward the end of my teenage years, I just, I didn’t care. And there’s a shooting over there; I don’t care. You know what I mean? I just kind of developed this numbness. Then I had to stop, reevaluate. I reset my life and just really had to go back to understanding, yes, [I’ve] seen a lot of it, but don’t become numb to it. Don’t become numb to life.
Yeah.
Do the opposite. Feel, love hard, laugh hard, write that script, play that role. There’s a million people who didn’t wake up today who had the same plans as you and they’re never going to get a chance. All the people who’ve lived in fear their whole life and never tried it, never did it. I’m going to do it for all of them.
“Be willing to feel it.” Whether it’s the good, the bad… I’ve been doing a number of these interviews with people over the last couple of weeks and a going theme has been ‘How different people handle grief.’ I wonder if you would talk about that a little. The experience of grief in your life: What is it for you? What do you do with it?
I’ve definitely experienced it. Whether it be from loss of an aunt who was like another mother to me or… [Speaking of] feeling it, what made me notice that I had lost that ability was one of my closest friends died of leukemia.
How young were you when this happened?
I was 19 years old. We had known each other since we were seven. I called his house to talk to him because somebody was like, “Hey, man, I think Doug died.” And I was like, “What?”
I called his house to see and his mom answered and said, “Doug is asleep.” And I was like, “OK. All right.” And I called him back later on. I was going to tell him, “Hey, people saying you died, dude. This is crazy.” And his mom answered the phone and she was crying. And she said, “Wallace, I’m so sorry. I know you called earlier. Doug passed and I’m not used to saying my son is gone yet.”
So I went to his funeral and I couldn’t cry. I didn’t cry the whole time. And I was just looking at him and I didn’t cry for six months and I was at a party six months later and went into the bathroom and all of a sudden I just broke down crying for like 30 seconds and it was there that I said, “Okay, something is wrong here. You’ve experienced a lot, but this isn’t natural. You’ll never see your friend again, at least on this side, and you can’t even cry.” And so that’s when I just kind of made it my mission to break down that wall. I’m a very strong person. I’ve been forced to be. And but sometimes you can be too strong. You can be so strong that you’re not human. And I didn’t want to be that. And so I’ve dealt with a lot of grief.
Grief is different, man. It feels different every time.
I’ve experienced a higher number of deaths than most people I know. When my friend’s mom died, I just pulled over and I wrote a song. I literally called the studio. Cause that’s how we met each other was in music. And so I got the text that his mom had died and I loved his mom and I pulled over and I pulled out a notepad and I started writing the lyrics to a song. I called my brother because he’s also a super talented musician and we recorded a song for him and his brother and that was how I dealt with it.
I tend to lean into art. This last year I lost my big brother. And his birthday was the 5th of July so that made it even more of a double whammy.
I’m so sorry.
Thank you. I leaned heavily into the COLORBLIND rehearsals. You know, I felt my feelings; I did the thing. But at the same time I also tried to remember what good or what lessons I learned from that person. Or even sometimes it’s just a feeling. In my brother’s funeral, you just felt love; you just felt, like, this peaceful thing. Yes, he was gone and yes, we were all gonna miss him but it felt more like peace than grief, if that makes any sense. So I just really tried to harness that and hold on to that. I let my emotions have their moment. I let them feel. If I’m going to cry, then I’m going to cry. I’m not a big public crier. I’m not a public person with my private life and my emotions, though I’m not dogging anyone who does that. I don’t get on social media and say a bunch of things. I’m very private because I like to be with my thoughts and my feelings and I don’t put on a mask.
Right. That does come across. I notice when you’re on social media, you tend to treat your public persona in a way where you’re sort of giving as opposed to taking. “I want to inspire you.”
Yeah, that’s it. If I didn’t do the job that I did, I probably wouldn’t have social media. But I’ve always said if you have a platform, you might as well say something.
Yeah. Yeah.
I do believe that part of my purpose of being here is to inspire, to tell people, “Man, you can do it. You can get whatever it is. You can do it.”
In COLORBLIND, you play a character named Muhammad, is that right?
Clinton Muhammad, yes.
And as you can imagine, I immediately wonder, “Is Wallace himself is a person of faith?”
Yeah, I’m definitely a person of faith. Very, very, very much so. It’s the foundation of everything that I do. I kind of comprise my own. Like I studied Christianity. I studied Islam. I studied Judaism. I’ve read the Torah, the Bible, the Koran. I said, “Well, if it’s true, if it’s real, it’s gonna be true if I research it.” But very much so. I don’t think I would make it without it because I have to have something, at least in my mind, bigger than me, bigger than all of us.
Again, I’ve seen a lot of things that would destroy people, would destroy the average person. I don’t, I’m not necessarily the most religious person, even though I know what I believe in. If you say, are you a believer? I’m going to say “Yes. But from my own research.”
It’s like my acting style. I’m a Meisner graduate and I also studied under Ivana Chebok and I took both of those methods and then I mashed them together and then created my own little things and I jokingly call it Functional Schizophrenia.
[Laughter]
Right? Like I let the characters come to life and be real and talk to me and I have to always say, “I have to meet [them].” I had to meet Clinton Muhammad. That’s kind of how my faith bank came about: I read this, I read this, I researched this, I understood this, then I broke down the translation and said, “Well hold on. If this was written in English, what did it say in the original? All right, let me figure [this] out.” So once I did that, I formulated my version of what I believe.
Yeah, that makes sense. In fact, the whole vibe that I get from you is you’re not a guy who shrugs a lot. You want to get in it, you want to understand it, you want to be inside it and you want to get through it. It’s a unique way to be.
That’s one of the things that I really admired about you and one of the reasons I said “Yes, I want to do this [interview].” It was just talking to you about wanting to really understand death. I understand that because if I’m going to do something I want to know about it. I want to look at it from all perspectives and really formulate my own opinions and thoughts on it… How to handle it and how to deal with it. That’s just me. And I see that in you as well.
Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.
I also wanted to ask you a little bit about fear. You strike me as somebody who almost treats fear like a fist fight or something like that. You have this sense of perseverance, so I wanted to ask you: What actually scares you?
Man, it’s funny you say it’s like a fist fight, because that’s how I look at it. I literally think of it like a fight, you know, there’s fight or flight. I don’t have flight. It’s not in there. I don’t know why it’s not in there. So when I have a problem, I’m going to face it. When something scares me, I’m going to face it.
Does death scare you?
Death? Yes, terrifies me. I know what I believe, but believing and knowing is different. I’ve never been over there. You know, what if it just goes black and that’s it? And I’m cognizant of it. Or what if it’s nothing? Or what if it’s everything I hope it is? I don’t know. It scares the crap out of me. So I try to live every moment. I believe there’s a God on the other side of this. I believe there is a transition, but I don’t know exactly what that looks like.
So what I do try to do is something you’ve probably heard as an actor: If you get a script and your character is supposed to die, my acting teacher said you have to ‘earn the right to die.’ You have to earn the right to die as a character.
Hm. Tell me about that a little bit.
Well, I’ll give you an example: So the first lead in a feature I was in, I died. And in the next script someone sent me, I was dying. I said, “What is this?” And it went like three in a row and somebody said, “‘Cause you die well.” And I said, “What the hell does that mean?” And they said, “It means that people care when your character dies. They’re hurt. They’re like, ‘No!'” And that tells me that I earned the right to die as that character.
Yes, okay, I see what you’re saying.
You get what I’m saying? So I try to live my life that way. It’s going to end. Every single one of us are going to check out of here at some point, all right? I hope I’m super old when it happens, because I have kids and I want to see my kids become grandparents, all right? But when my time comes, I don’t want to be bargaining and asking for more time and saying, “Man, I wish I had tried this.” When the angel shows up for me, I just want to be like, “All right, let’s go. I have worn this thing out. I have no regrets. I have no things I haven’t tried.” Only then will I have earned the right to die.
That’s very intriguing. Yeah.
You mentioned being a father a second ago. And we’re both fathers. When my children died 13 years ago, I made a tribute video about them and published it online (it’s since been removed), mostly for loved ones who were unable to attend the memorial. The video showed images of our childrens’ bodies/remains, which was surprising for some. But the video went briefly viral, which I never intended or predicted. I was contacted by various news outlets about it and found myself giving interviews to The Daily Beast, Good Morning America and BBC World Update to talk about the practice of publishing post mortem images of loved ones online.
At the time, I wasn’t sure why there was so much interest (and truthfully I’m still not), but a question occurred to me that I can’t shake: would this story have been a story if I wasn’t white? Does the idea of three non-white baby bodies hit different in our culture than the idea of my children’s bodies? I wondered if you might have a perspective on this.
It’s a great question. Unfortunately, I’m almost certain that it wouldn’t have had the same effect. It should. We’re all human beings. But [as] I said once: “Racism is so ingrained into the fabric of America that only God himself could actually remove it.”
Half of us walk around with perceptions and stereotypes without even knowing we’re doing it. And it works that way across the board. That’s one of the things that COLORBLIND is about. We were all pitted against each other, right? So [if] it’s white, it’s good and it’s holy. And if it’s [black], it’s bad and it’s savage. And these images are passed down for generations.
One of the hardest things in the world for a person of color to be is an individual because we get judged by the worst of us. So ‘black guy’ means ‘horrible crime’ or ‘gangbanger’ or whatever. Somebody might say, “Well, Obama,” you know, “[he’s] an exception.” No, he’s not an exception. He’s an individual too, right? But we’ll be judged by the worst of us. But it [isn’t] the same if you’re white, right? I asked the question, “Who commits the most mass murders in this country?” It’s white males.
It’s white males by a wide margin.
It’s a huge margin. But we don’t look at every white male and say, “Potential mass shooter.”
Like, I’m part Irish, right? Well, I can say that there have been people who treated me differently opposed to darker friends of mine. It was something that I noticed.
But I commend you for even asking that question because most people would not. And I want to say, I have the utmost respect for you. I know it was 13 years ago, but still my deepest condolences.
Thank you.
All the respect in the world for you. And equally for that question. Because it’s much easier for us to put blinders on and not look at the things. Or it’s easy to play victim. But we’re human beings. And that’s one of the things I try to do with my life and with my art is tear down some of these invisible walls. Let’s erase some of these lines. Because I don’t think you can actually deal with the problem if you aren’t willing to address it. Let’s have the conversations.
I thank you for all those words. Last thing I wanted to ask you is you already know that I’ve communicated to you that the reason that I’m doing all this is because I just I genuinely, deeply want to understand death and grief better than I do. This is why I’m going to people that I admire and saying, give me your perspective because I want to understand this better. Is there anything on these topics of death and grief, before we close, that you didn’t get a chance to say?
It’s going to happen. Every single person you know, you love, you care about, you meet, you admire, every single person is going to check out of here. It’s fine to grieve. Please do, don’t hold it in. I’ve seen that destroy someone that I cared a lot about. But continue living.
It’s been nonstop since my brother passed. At one point I was like, “Are you helping me out over there?” And it hurt, hurt like hell. It hurts right now to talk to you about it. Losing a sibling is like nothing I’ve ever felt of all the death I’ve ever experienced. Losing a sibling is different.
But keep living. That’ll be my advice to anyone.
Wallace’s revival of his stage play, Secrets, comes to Macon, Georgia’s Douglass Theatre later this month.
Wallace’s production company can be found at TheOutsideStudios.com.
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