This is a preview of Bongo The Film, a documentary by Jay Grandin, Leah Nelson, and Danya Fast and about Tanzanian street kids with big dreams of becoming hip-hop stars. Apparently, “Bongo” is Swahili for street-smarts, and the makers blogged about the making of it from the moment they arrived in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. The blog posts and pictures alone have a told a story that most of us would never have the imagination to think up, nevermind the empathy to understand.
Anyways, I think that these film-makers might have just set themselves up for a sequel down the line when. If meritocracy counts for anything, I can this doc getting some attention, and see these kids getting some exposure, and a chance to come state-side. Then, just like Justin Timberlake, one of them outshines the others and drops them to go solo. Of course, it’ll just be a matter of time before the fame corrupts, and the success overwhelms, and our rising hip-hop star burns our a little earlier than he’d hoped. And that’s when these film-makers have a chance to follow-up with a sequel, and juxtapose a fallen start against the friends he left behind in Africa in poverty and destitution…
I’m having an off day, today. Or maybe I’m not just off enough. Whatever it is, it got me thinking about four life lessons I had the luxury to learn when I was down and out on my luck and had nothing else to do with my time:
Some of us feel like we’re all grown up, some of us don’t (and might not want to). But none of us seem to be who we want to.
Not too many of us seem to have heroes these days. Maybe we’re to into ourselves to look up to anyone else. Maybe that’s the problem with the world today.
We’ve all been in love — at least once. Who hasn’t? It doesn’t look like any of us have ever gotten over it — or ever will.
It doesn’t seem like any of us have any regrets either. We’re too happy impressed with who we’ve become to want to undo anything that made us who we are.
I’ve always thought that we have too much knowledge but not enough wisdom, but shit like this makes me think that wisdom is just knowledge that you can’t really do anything with — other than find piece of mind.
Having been weened on Hollywood, MTV, and the American Dream, I’ve always been hung up on fame (first) and fortune (second). Well, being part of the Me Too Generation (which brings together generations X, Y, and Z) has pretty much put within reach of the fame, and possibly the fortune. But despite the personal branding potential of (anti-)social media, I’ve always held back on really pushing the envelope and striving for my own, personal ifame. There was always just something about it that didn’t sit right with me — that didn’t ring true.
Well, since it’s so useful to figure out what something is by looking at what it’s not, I started thinking about what A-list bloggers don’t have. It’s because these things are important to me that striving for the A-list doesn’t ring true to me, and these are the top 5. Read the rest of this entry »
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