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Description

“Untitled.” Written by Dee Davis. Performed by Jay Ellis. After losing loved ones to COVID this past year, Dee is now living in Vegas and finding meaning in teaching other writers of similarly troubled backgrounds.

 

“When you write, take the mask off – be you and just write.” – Dee Davis

 

Find Dee on Instagram at @dcddx821.

 

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Walter Thompson-Hernandez, Dee Davis, John Rodriguez, Jay Ellis

Jay Ellis  00:00

Hey everyone, it’s Jay Ellis, one of the executive producers of WRITTEN OFF. We love making this podcast for you and have a small favor to ask. If you also feel that the amplification upon heard voice is important, there are a few key ways to support this series. First, if you’re listening on Apple, please rate us five stars. That’s right 12345 then leave a review tell us what specifically moved you as you listen. Lastly, share written off with your friends, family and members of your community. Thank you. And now, back to the show.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

A quick warning. There is explicit language in today’s episode. If you prefer a clean version, you can find that on our website LemonadaMedia.com.

Jay Ellis 

A Great fight. Similar to a war two sides colliding. Both sides not really knowing the true fight but perhaps tomorrow the old me comes out roaring, foaming, at the mouth like a two headed monster. Perhaps the new me will stroll through, cool, calm, and collected. Like an old uncle Rick with the lower hunter. Perhaps tomorrow both will collide. Each one equally as important as the other perhaps tomorrow’s heartache, jail time and live in a constant life on the edge will diminish. And Love will prevail. Perhaps tomorrow, the good wolf will continuously feed the bad wolf. Nurturing it like a baby, feeding it in small increments, and comforting when it doesn’t understand why it can’t go play.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  02:12

I’m Walter Thompson Hernandez. And this is WRITTEN OFF. You just heard insecure star Jay Ellis read a piece by Dee Davis. Dee is only one of our writers on the outs who’s not in LA right now. He’s off doing the staying in Vegas. And reconnecting with family after COVID took the lives of two close relatives. For a second. He thought we were gonna livestream our conversation via Zoom. How do people tune in, he asked? Nah, we’re pre-recording this. At least we won’t have people talking shit in the comment section. They would have been ready; says he would clap back. I love that energy. Regardless of what’s happening in his life, Dee shows up. From what I hear. That’s been his story since day one. And he’s never found a reason yet to hold him back. What does it feel like hearing that person read what you wrote?

Dee Davis 

It definitely made me realize that I write a lot of deeper things, I think. And I have a slight personality issue maybe.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

With what?

Dee Davis 

The good wolf and the bad wolf, the bad one, he always likes to do things, but the good one tries to you know, help him out.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

So like you were processing sort of the internal tug and pull?

Dee Davis 

Yeah, I guess like from all lifestyle choices, or just being that person, you know, if you try to be when you start changing your life is harder to do you start having more issues, it seems they usually do, which may just be a seem, you know, you may just, it may seem like that not really be true. Or it could be true.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Yeah. Talk me through where you were when you wrote that?

Dee Davis  04:02

Well, I wrote that I just lost my sister, I believe. And I’m just kind of in a darker place as in realizing, like how hard it is to do good things every day. And yeah, I was in that space for sure. And just kind of like, really analyzing myself isn’t like, who was I even at that moment as I was thinking about the tools. I think loss really plays a huge part in an identity crisis. I think for me, because I was doing something for a long time. Then I abruptly stopped at a young age, but then also with my homie died when I was younger, I had an outlet, which was gang banging. And then when my sister passed, I didn’t really have an outlet of things to do. I felt like I didn’t have outlet for things to do.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Yeah. And was writing not an outlet yet?

Dee Davis

It was but I think I put it to the backburner and just wasn’t helping at the time. Or I didn’t want it to help. I think, psychologically, I just really didn’t want it to help.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

You remember the first moment you ever wrote something?

Dee Davis

Well wrote something for myself. Yeah, I don’t remember. Like when I wrote something like other people, but I wrote something myself. When I was in juvenile hall, Mr. Burton, I was my first ever insideOUT writers teacher, and she told me like, I used to come to class and not participate like that, or come for the snacks. And I used to always talk about how like therapy didn’t work. She say like, this is therapy don’t work. You have you write to yourself and read it out loud, you won’t judge yourself. So you won’t be scared, like what you put on the paper article. And that really helped me a lot. And that was my start writing and really writing deeper.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

And is that what happened to you that day?

Dee Davis 

Yeah, I started taking her class series. And then I was thankfully an insideOUT writer class where it was in the compound, which is like high-risk offenders was mostly everybody was like, in jail for like murder and different things. So they’re facing the rest of the life in jail. So we got like, really deeper classes when I was first there.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  06:04

Like for someone who wasn’t there? Like, could you paint that picture for me like that first day, like in that writing class?

Dee Davis 

Oh, I mean, so I would I did, she told me that at the end of class, and that night, I was in my room just kind of writing to myself. And I think it felt good, because I was able to release things that I thought or like, the hatred that I have for certain people or certain things. At that time, I was able to really get it out. Of course, I had to rip it up after but it made me feel good, because it was the first time I felt like I actually released something, I end up becoming the teacher for them. And ultimately, so I became a writing teacher myself, years later, last year, 2021. So 2019 was my first couple classes in 2019. And then at 2020, and they closed down for quarantine. But I became official writing teacher. And I feel so good. It’s like a dream of mine that I always wanted to do. And eventually, I really did it and so it was cool.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

That sounds incredible. And I’m curious, like what that process was like going from writer to writing teacher for you?

Dee Davis 

It was super dope, honestly, it was more like, okay, I wish I could have did it in the compound like, is that because we face a more time to go and listen more, you know, when they not facing as much time they don’t really listen as much. So that was kind of a challenge. But it feel good just to know how much how happy they was to see me one time a week, you know, whether it was for snacks, or just to get out the room. I made them participate. And it was really fun.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

Why is that though? Like, why is it that like folks who have more time, pay more attention. But like folks who have less time, pay less attention.

Dee Davis

I think because people have less time though they can go back to doing what they whatever they was doing quickly, when you face in the rest of your life in jail, kind of change your life and point where it’s like, life becomes more real. Like there’s no second chance. Like sometimes if you if you mess up right now, you probably won’t ever get a second chance. You know, people always say you get second chances like that you don’t really get second chances sometimes. So it was intense. And I think that the people who are sitting in there sometimes your life and literally are going before your eyes, and you thinking about 20 years from now we’ll still be in jail. I don’t want to live.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  08:38

Like in general, like what do you think writing has done for you?

Dee Davis

In general, it made me think more. Ultimately, I will usually say it gives me it gave me an outlet to like let out different things I didn’t want to say which I’m still think it does when I get back to a more. I think that I need to get back to a more nowadays because kind of lost. Usually when I write it helped me get new direction. It just ultimately makes you feel better. So like it’s like a like just this force that kind of takes over where you like no, let me just write write write, write, write and pencil start, and you cover the paper, you flip it over you do it again. Five pages in and you kind of figure out that like some things weren’t as big as other. There’s some things affected you more than what you thought.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

Absolutely. And what kind of practice Do you have today? Like I know you just mentioned that you aren’t writing it as much as you used to. But is there a reason for that?

Dee Davis

Just not feeling like myself? I’ve been in kind of a funk since my sister passed away. But I did start writing like I got a view over here kind of show you the whole Vegas. I’ll go over and write my journal because some days is harder than others I think. So you,  lot harder days I’ll write more and try to get that out. I never really see myself as a writer until now like you know; it was just like I’ve been doing it so long now is coming therapy?

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  10:02

And is that what it is like a sort of like therapeutic tool for you?

Dee Davis 

Yeah, for sure therapeutic tool, I would suggest to anyone, definitely someone who can’t seem to talk to people. That’s like me right now, I don’t really want to, like it is clear that there’s a problem. I don’t want to sit and talk about it all the time I have people see […] or whatever.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

When you were incarcerated, was there like a stigma associated with like writing? Like, was there like a sort of like, like version of you that that may be struggled to, like, express yourself? But like, didn’t struggle to express yourself through words?

Dee Davis

Yeah, no, I think, luckily enough, I’ve always had a comfortable class. Like really is what the class makes it if you don’t feel comfortable enough to share, like, your inner thoughts in the class, you won’t. And I think that was really what it was for us, we have a lot of people who weren’t leaving, we were there for I was there for two years. So people were here for two, three years. So we knew that we were saving that space, whatever we shared.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

I want to talk about your poem a little bit. In reading it, it seems like the word perhaps comes up a lot. Right? It comes up often. And to me, like it’s sort of like, potentially signifying, like, an amount of hope maybe, right? Like, you’re kind of like, thinking, oh, this might happen, it might not. And I was just wondering about that word for you, especially in this poem and what it meant.

Dee Davis 

I think I like to stay optimistic generally, I like to look for the best and worst things. And it’s always like, it’s two sides to every coin. There’s two sides to a dollar. Should there’s two sides of you. Just always kind of like always try to look at both, and not dwell on one more than the other. Even if I know the answer, that we’re in that and I think perhaps in that poem, just kind of like, signified the switching of roles in who I was talking about next.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

Is this a poem that you go back to often?

Dee Davis

Not really, but it is part of my wordsmith on my phone. So when people ask me about to like, open some up, I can pop that one out. I got a couple others.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  12:09

What are the other ones?

Dee Davis 

I write about my friend a lot. I think I wrote about that a lot up to a few years ago. And now I just write about like of good or bad. I think that specifically one I wrote about how, like different words how, like being a sailor resemble being a crypt to me, because that’s what I used to be. And I had so many different ideologies in each other to match, but two totally different vibes, you know?

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Wait, you were a sailor?

Dee Davis 

Yeah, I was a first mate. So I was more like the kind of did everything all the boat, for the most part. I was training on the boat to like teach the kids and I supposed to be like the leader of a sail team.

Dee Davis 

How has been the sailor, like being a crip?

Dee Davis 

When you like programs to protect people you program to be as a team, you know each other out by any cause, by any means necessary, really on that water. If you got to make it happen, you got to make it happen. The pride I took and being I was like the same pride I took me in that it gave me kind of like a family away from family. So those are like the key signifying things I think that really match.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

If there’s one thing you would tell that version of you that picked up writing, while you were incarcerated today, like what would you tell that person?

Dee Davis 

Never leave insideOUT writers, they’re the best, they will always keep you okay. And then just give you a sense of caring outside of your family and a right to answer some questions. Sometimes, you don’t get the answer by asking the question, you might have to write about it or feel it. When you write you feel. So if you write it out, my feeling a little better than if you told me.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  14:03

What happens when you write things and you don’t come up with an answer?

Dee Davis 

I think that’s the beautiful thing is like you’re not really looking for the answer. You don’t want to answer you just want to bounce ideas off yourself or put them out there. Because sometimes when you say thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, you miss certain thing when you write it down, you got to kind of funny. So for me, I just like I don’t necessarily look for the answer. I just think about it, to think about it in a positive way that could be constructive. Like I could do something with it, instead of just thinking Get lost.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

Talk me through like your actual writing process. Like, what does that look like? Like, what does it take for you to sit down and write like, I know you mentioned you had a view outside and but I’m also curious about like, what you actually need to start writing?

Dee Davis 

I think I need some forms; I feel some type of motion I need to feel what I’m doing like writing for myself, I need to add a lost feeling. I like to have usually my own notebook; I was in a weird place where I used to rip them out and give them to people. Because I didn’t want to keep them because I was really kind of like part of this like cleanse of mine. So I make sure it’s in a notebook that can be ripped out. I try to write legibly because you never know what’s gonna, like come out of it, or I don’t want to continue it or be writing or type it up. I want to be able to read it which one of the things I don’t ever do is write it. So I have like makeup, rewriting it.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

Right. So you would write things, and then give them to people as a release?

Dee Davis 

Yeah, there’s like, because I don’t talk about a lot of things. So in my way, like talking without talking, I should say.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  16:06

Outside of writing, who is Dee? How do you pass your time?

Dee Davis 

Personally, right now, I’m not myself. I’m usually a little different. But I’m usually funny, fun, like to talk. Right now I’m kind of like to be alone. I like to talk as much. I’m just kind of like, soaking in what’s going on. And then I had a couple of situations that pops up kind of randomly, too. So it’s just like, right now it’s kind of going through but usually funny. Definitely funny a lot of personality. I kind of live off my personality, which is a good one. So I’ve been told, people person like to help people nicer than usual. But if you kind of cross a line isn’t a nice thing at all. Yeah, go to 1000 type thing. I still kind of got that. I try to hold off for that. But some situations you can’t wish you live you learn. I love sports. I love kids, unlike anything that just uplifts kids, lifts their mind and try to help them just kind of not repeat the cycle.

Dee Davis

I’m definitely one of those who’s like y’all want to stop the cycle. I want to give people a new perspective. For like, young people, period, I’ve been through something my case is pretty big. So I like when people come across me I try to give them that, that hope there’s people that mess up can change, you know? And then see, I even think of it as a mess up sometimes think of it as a person’s situation. Like maybe there was an environment or maybe they did that because they had to like not every thief is a thief, you know?

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

You know, you like start his poem off by saying, the great fight similar to a war, two sides colliding. Both sides not really knowing. The true fight, but perhaps, and like in listening to you now, it almost seems like, like, is that something that that happens inside of you? It is different sides or maybe colliding at the same time? And is that something that’s happening right now?

Dee Davis  18:07

Yeah, like a fucking hurricane, you just never know sometimes. And then you got to be the one to like, kind of gauge it and see how far you want to go in a day. Like sometimes I just won’t go around people because I know I’m just not in that mood, anything would trigger. Like I said, I think for me, it’s a real huge fight like war, because it wasn’t something I literally, I chose to do it later on in life, but I was like, forced into it will go into jail and everything. So I never really, I chose my past to kind of chose themselves.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez 

There’s something that I didn’t ask that you want to share about your writing about the sort of aspects of it that you know, are therapeutic that are transformational, maybe?

Dee Davis

I mean, right, you can pick up and write anywhere. I used to do it on the bus, like you know, I usually say like, try to block like music usually works, you can block out sounds. Just when you write be really yourself like can you imagine writing the whole thing for like yourself, essentially, some people do. When you re take the mask off be you and just write and if you want a setting, hopefully you’re in a good setting, like IOW they always say no judgement. No one’s gonna laugh at you. No one’s gonna anything. I think our writing circles are deeper than a lot of writer circles because there’s so many different emotions within the topics we’re talking about.

Dee Davis

And we all are traumatized in a way where it’s like we are going to traumatic experiences and we don’t know how to really, we don’t know how to lead our aggression or lead our confusion, anything wrong. We always take it to the negative. I think sometimes you can also like look at the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s always something and I think I’m talking to myself willing because I’ve been so down with this. There’s kind of a golf me and like a bunch of shit I don’t even know how to figure it out.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez  20:03

Yeah, absolutely. That’s been great, Dee. I feel good about that. I think you know, and I thought the answer was good. No problem anytime.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

Thanks again to Dee. Who’s @dcdd821 on Instagram, and Dee Davis on Facebook. Moved by what you heard today? Want to do more? Follow and support InsideOUT Writers Workshop at insideoutwriters.org and click on ways. To get involved personally in the work to end mass incarceration in California. Check out the work of ARC, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition at antirecidiviesm.com. Next week on WRITTEN OFF, writer John Rodriguez.

John Rodriguez

It was like, like 80% there I was surprised. I was like, okay, I think they actually followed it and similar to the way I would have delivered it.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez

And other 20%?

John Rodriguez 

I think there was a misinterpretation. But yeah, overall, I mean, I know that once it’s out of my hands, it no longer belongs to me.

CREDITS

WRITTEN OFF is a co-production of Lemonada Media and Black Bar Mitzvah. Our producer is Claire Jones. supervising producers are Xorje Olivares and Kryssy Pease. Executive producers are Aaron Bergman, Jay Ellis, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. Music and sound design by Xander Singh. Mix and scoring by Matthew Simonson. Special thanks to all of our contributors, and InsideOUT Writers, you can learn more about them at insideoutwriters.org. If you like what you heard, help others find us by rating the show and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms. To support WRITTEN OFF and gain access to exclusive bonus material. Like additional conversations with the writers and producers of this show. Subscribe to Lemonada Premium, only on Apple podcasts. And for more of my work, visit my website wthdz.com. I’m Walter Thompson Hernandez. Thanks for listening.