Bryant Rozier

A few journal entries:

2/11/2001 (Sunday)

It's not that I don't understand where Jarrod is coming from... I really do. The narrative, wert, I wrote detailed my experience with coming into a mostly white high school, from a mostly black grade school, and assuming that everyone was against me. Because I judged from visuals alone, I walked in with a chip on my shoulder. I thought my white locker neighbor, Jennifer Ross, was a typical white girl who didnt see a lot of black people and that (this isnt in the poem) she might be interested in dating a brother because I sure was interested in dating a white girl, to turn her out so to speak. Yeah, that's right, I was a ruff neck. I thought drafting teacher Wert was a racisit because he never helped me when I had a problem with a drawing. It was only because this guy didn't help any of his students...he wanted them to come to the conclusion for themselves and we did. Why did I feel that way... because I let my schoolmates from grade school play with my head...they told me not to trust anyone from Concordia. I know whats that like for everyone to look at you when you walk into a room. But with a bald head before... back them I kept it short And they could have been looking at a black dude they didn't expect to see. I was ready to throw down...until they cooled me off. I needed to get to know them and vice-versa. Goiing to that private high school was great for me. The same with growing up with white, black, loation, mexican and iranian friends. I broke Andy Nichols' mom's wooden soft ball bat when I hit my first home run over their fence, all at the age of seven. I went on to play three years of Babe Ruth baseball with Sterling Mitchell, the cat I ate lunch next to on my first day of grade school. Loi Voung first taught me how to play Sonic the Hedgehog. Anthony used to sleep over and eat Frosted Flakes with me. And Shabaz Khaliq gave me directions to his house to play Nintendo; it took my Dad and I longer than we thought to find his house and arrived late. Sure I had those detractors in grade school, leading me wrong, but I had a stronger foundations with the above mentioned names. They were just peopple to me. I never went around calling Andy the white guy. Only when I was trying to be funny. One day, while we went to the store, I had an argument with Andy's sister and kidding around with the lady in front of us...I told her that I always have these kinds of fights with my sister.

Sketch Book One

The most imporant thing happened in between each plays. Jarrod sat next to me, curious as to why I only date white women. He said it was something he wanted to ask me about for awhile and I told him that I have dated a black girl before. I didn't get into any specifics of who she was: Sherronna, a girl who used to work at the Ball State Police Station. I met her the day I got permission to use a squad car in my cop film this summer; she had told her boss that I look cute and he hooked us up...the boss was Robert Fry but I was given the permission to call him Bob; he's the cop in the front of the paper almost every week, with his picture, talking about some disturbance over the week that his department had to look into. Sherronna...she didn't want to be associated with the song....was a Mulatto...those evil Mulattos (see the film Birth of a Nation)...but for me, she was the first black girl I dated in five years. She wasn't a white girl. We didn't last too long...I didn't press too hard for a relationship because she was transfering and we didn't have much in common, except the fact that she didn't feel close to her black brothers and sisters. She had talked about the black girls she knew wouldn't hang out with her because she was Mulatto and not as dark as they were. That's what we had in common...we both dated white people. I did relate to Jarrod that I've never felt any animosity towards my white brother. My best friend was white, his sister was white and they loved me like I was one of their own. I did have black friends and mexican friends. Everybody in the class knows about my experiences with those black girls who were suppose to be babysitting me....man, you tell one person, you tell everybody in this class, thanks a lot Brett. Jarrod did understand where I was coming from. His brother was just like me, he said; he just grew up in a different environment and culture. I spent the rest of the evening laughing with Jarrod and explaining to him how cool is was for the granddaughter to blow out the balloon and that sometimes, stories have no point. They are just there to share in the experience.

This is the short story/poem I wrote about above

wert

on graduation night from zion lutheran grade school,
angie graham looked right at me
as she closed the limosene door.
the car was pulling away for a trip around downtown fort wayne; she only invited half the class of sixteen.
james wyatt, duc voung and cousin brandi
would come with me to concordia, where i was told all year by the group in the limo,
that the white kids would drive cars,
their parents bought for them, passed my bus line.
i would have to wait for the same number eleven that first picked me up when i was in the sixth grade
and a kid named scotty kicked me in the back of both legs and ran (and it had nothing to do
with the snow ball i threw at him either).

the locker to my right already had a mirror affixed to its inside, belonging to a white girl who talked with friends
before she walked behind me.
“hi, i’m jennifer ross”; she gave me permission to kick her notebooks from under my feet
if i wanted. pulling my shoes back, standing my right foot straight up,
i wondered how long my neck would strech
hanging from a rope. as i turned the dial on my locker,
she asked me if i needed help finding my classes.
her brothers and sisters and parents attended Concordia.
my fingers kept turning; “no. thank you.”

standing in front of the door and looking at the class list, i read the number of my first class then the name of my
teacher: drafting with wert. when i walked into the empty classroom,with three rows of drafting tables holding up
three rows of chairs,the bald-headed wert took one look at the class roster. “you must be
rozier.” we had to turn in at least one drawing a week
and that if we had any questions, he would either be in his office or at his desk
which was to the right ofmine.
during my first drawing, i raised my head, sucked in my breath and asked the smiling wert where i should put the
compass; he told me a couple of ways to do it
and that when i found out which way was best,
to let him know (i would later tell my mom how he always wore a large white shirt with a small black tie).
another student, colin dasselor, raised his head;
a day later, his drawing received an A while i kept playing with the dial on my compass
until it got stuck and had to ask wert to loosen it.

two years later, wert, teacher and now advisor, laughed
when i requested information on mechanical engineering.
he could see me as an engineer, ever since january of my freshman year. on the first day back from christmas
break, i turned in fifteen drawings.

This is a review of a play we saw in Chicago.

The Water Engine by David Mamet

I dont ever want to be so big that my agent calls up and requests that my name be made bigger in the problem. When I make a film, it will be called A wm. bryant rozier FILM. This is the sort of thing I day dream about...how my name will appear at the first of my films. Again, films as personal as fingerprint...you will know things about me from seeing my film and I want to be humbled everytime out and never have my name that bigger than my film because....I am not bigger than the film. When Scorese makes a film, it is a MARTIN SCORESE film; his name is in caps. Now, I dont think his name overshadows Raging Bull or Taxi Driver, and I know from hearing him talk that he is a humble filmmaker. But, from someone who is visually anal; that bit about Mamet and his name rubbed a brother the wrong way. Now, to his story. THE WHOLE THING IS A SERIAL. This is an original take on what is theater, the same way The Limey questions your interpretation of what a film should be. The Limey jumps around with its narrative, a form of stream of conscious I have never seen shown in film...EVER. I love the use of sound in this film. However, serial are full of one-dimensional characters; this play is an exuse to have flat characters. There is the good guy, the innocent, an ah shucks teenager with his immigrant fatther, the villain and the love interest. We are suppose to support the guy who has found a way to make an engine run with water. And we do because his life is in danger but the corporation, by big brother, by a guy who might not be a lawyer but is someone who wants the Water Engine creator dead. He even kidnaps his sister. The whole time, we are enundated with adverstisements from various companies and news serials. This whole play is a serial...its even introduced to us with a Superman serial,setting us up. The entire Water Engine plot is a perfect, Superman-esque epic copy. Even the kid getting the blue prints of the Water Engine makes sense...the kids at home are suppose to have something positive to keep them, to stay tuned to the radio and wanted to be entertained. And we were.