Scenes from My Life | Michael K. Williams

This episode of Books for Men features Scenes from My Life by Michael K. Williams with Jon Sternfeld. It's a memoir from the actor who played some of modern TV's greatest roles—Omar Little (The Wire), Chalky White (Boardwalk Empire), and Freddy Knight (The Night Of.) It's a tragic and touching portrait of an artist's life. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So I think today's book is going to be the newest book that I've ever featured on the podcast. So the book actually came out last year, and it's also the first book I think I'm going to be featuring that I read in Kindle format. So I usually read the hardcover or paperback version of most books, but I'm trying to read more with the Kindle. I love the idea of it. I just have never been able to get into a good flow with it. I usually like to be able to flip back and forth. I always found it to be harder to do with a Kindle. With that being said, I'm starting to see some advantages utilizing the highlighting feature and being able to export your notes.

(01:00)

And I know I'm probably late to the game here because a lot of people use the e-reader as their primary reading mechanism. I guess I'm just a little bit of a traditionalist in that fashion, like feeling the book in my hands gives me a good sense of what I'm experiencing because I do believe there's interaction with a book. And when you use the e-reader, it distances you from the book more than when you're actually holding the physical tangible copy of the book. Now, the other reason why I've moved more towards Kindle and I'm trying to is my own neurosis. And this is probably the bigger reason why I'm not a hoarder at all. If you came into my apartment, I have a very, very minimal amount of stuff and I've streamlined that and kind of reduced that over the years. And I'm down to just the things that I use on a regular basis.

(01:57)

And some people might think that this is a crazy way of living, but the only thing that I have in excess is books, right? So I have a ton of books and it kind of drives me nuts. So I have ones that I love and that I value and that I'll never get rid of, but then I just have tons and tons of other books that I buy just to read the first chapter or see how an author is doing something. Or maybe I started it and I just didn't like it, or maybe I did like it and I just don't want to keep it in my apartment anymore because there are a lot of books that meet that grade for sure. One thing is for certain, I have too many of them and I get probably two to three every single week, so they just keep piling up.

(02:42)

And this is what has led me to read more on Kindle, which leads me perfectly back to today's book Scenes from My Life by Michael K. Williams, and I can surely confirm that it is a good book to read on the Kindle or your e-reader. It's a shorter book. I think it's only around 280 pages or so. And so it's not too long. The reason why I picked up this book particularly is for those of you who don't know, Michael K. Williams was an actor, and I say was because he's now deceased. Sadly, this book came out post-humorously last year. He had passed away earlier in the year from a drug overdose and battled addiction his entire life. And this book definitely covers some of that. But although that makes his story interesting, that's not the primary reason why I picked it up.

(03:33)

The primary reason why I picked it up is that he played probably some of my favorite roles of all time, whether it was Omar Little in The Wire or Chalky White in Boardwalk Empire, or even as of recently I saw The Night Of, which was a show that I can't believe I just watched this year, and it came out in 2016. I mean, it's written by Richard Price, another person who has been featured on Books for Men. And it also features the author of this book as an inmate in Rikers, a powerful and influential inmate who is very central to the storyline of the show. And he's amazing, just as good in my opinion, as those other two roles that I had mentioned earlier. And so I wanted to pick this book up because I wanted to understand more about the artist and more about the process and the story behind these classic characters.

(04:25)

And I was so floored and so taken back by this book, it hit me in such a deep and visceral way that I had to share it with you. It's really like the portrait of an artist's life. And when I say that, I mean it as the dichotomy between glory and struggle, and that when we see an artist on the screen, or when we see a musician or a famous author or what have you, we have this idea that it's all glorious. But in reality, there's so much struggle. It's hard to believe this, and maybe we don't want to believe this as a viewer or as a fan or as a consumer, but when you read accounts like this one, what you realize is that there is so much uncertainty and so much struggle and so much not knowing in an artist's life of what's going to happen next, what's going to come next.

(05:25)

You can't divorce it from who they are or who their performances are because if you do, you lose all of the substance because that goes hand in hand with the thing that they are delivering to you in a way. And so if you take the glory without the struggle, it's like having the peanut butter without the jelly or vice versa. You need them both to create those remarkable performances. Now, I'm not in the camp of you have to struggle to create good art, but there is something to be said for when you see remarkable performances. There's something that's coming from within that person. Where is it coming from? Why is it coming from them? And in this book, you definitely, definitely get that, and you understand why some of those performances are so powerful. And in the book, he actually talks about the struggle of being in character, coming out of character, getting lost in that character as you reenter society, and how people want that person from you when they see you.

(06:25)

And then you start believing that you potentially are that person. So you start acting like that person and you enjoy it because of the attention or because you're escaping from who you really are. And all of this leads to this really interesting predicament that you could find yourself in as an artist if you're not careful. And that only gets escalated if you have any sort of fame or any sort of notoriety. And although this is about an artist's life and it's a great portrait of an artist's life, I think that all of these examples and all of the stories and everything that this book discusses, it really sheds light on our own lives and will make you reflect on your own life in a way that is very down to earth and very, very heavy. I took so many notes while I was reading this book.

(07:12)

I highlighted so many quotes. I'll share a couple with you right now. And the first one that really hit me was this one, “Heavier than the blood in our veins are the stories we inherit about ourselves.” Man, that quote just hit me so hard because what it gets at and what that part of the book is actually talking about is where you're born and what you're born to, and the things that you're exposed to and told and shown as a young person runs deeper than the blood that's in your veins. Man, that's so freaking heavy. And then, of course, there were the segments when he started talking about his addiction, which is a large theme throughout the whole entire book, obviously. He says, “Addiction is my legacy as much as the darkness of my skin and the sound of my voice.” And so what he goes on to talk about there is how most people don't realize that addiction is in you before a drug even arrives.

(08:08)

It's a biological trait that is just as noticeable or just as real as the color of one's skin or the sound of one's voice. And in his case, both of those are two very distinct things, and that's kind of what he's comparing to. And I think that one of the more inspiring aspects of this book is when he talks about how he first got his big break. And for those of you who are unaware of Michael K. Williams's appearance, he has a huge scar that runs down the middle of his face. And before he got that scar, he was doing modeling and he got his first modeling job and they did the shooting for it, and it was going to be a campaign that went out all over New York City. And then in the subsequent weeks or months following, he got into this altercation in Queens or Brooklyn or one of the boroughs in New York. And this guy sliced his face with a razor.

(09:01)

Obviously, this was a horrifying experience, and he went on to get stitched up, and it changed the way he looked forever. But in the book, I highlighted this one excerpt, He says, “In a sick twist of cosmic fate, the Rock Embassy ad campaign came out that week and my face was in magazines on subway walls, on billboards all over the city, the smooth face that I would never have again. It was surreal. Everywhere I looked was my face, I'd finally made it, but it was no longer my face. It was someone else up there. When I looked in the mirror, it was this other person, this deformed stranger, a face that I didn't even want to look at.” Like there's so much that you could take away from that passage in context, out of context in your own life, in his life.

(09:52)

It's just one of those passages that hit you in such a heavy, heavy way. And then he only doubles down on that. And the story only gets more interesting in that the very reason why he got his first acting gig was because of the scar in the middle of his face. So he says, “As my dancing career began to take off, the strangest thing started to happen. The scar down the middle of my face, the thing that made me want to hide, started to get me noticed.” And so this just gave me chills because it's that classic example of embracing your imperfection because that's the thing that makes you different. So I once wrote this eBook called Pumpernickel & Peanut Butter. And in it, I shared the story of Michael Strahan and the gap between his teeth and how he embraced that gap between his teeth as opposed to trying to get cosmetic dental surgery to have this perfect smile.

(10:45):

And in many ways, this Michael K. Williams story is so similar. He outright says in the book, it's still crazy to think about it. My biggest mistake got me my first acting gig. And to me, this is just so inspiring and it's part of the uplifting aspect of this book that, and everything that he talks about towards the end of the book in his contributions back to the community and how making it out of the hood is the dream that everybody has. But it's not really about getting out. It's about going back in and being welcomed back so you could be a point of service and a guiding light for people that want a better life. And all of this is really, like I said, an inspiring aspect of this book. Although what makes it so powerful is the juxtaposition of struggle and glory, as I alluded to early on, and what really hit me and what I think will hit you as a reader.

(11:41)

All right, so I think I've talked long enough, and this episode is officially a wrap. I want to remind you that if you enjoyed it, to please share it with family, friends, and anyone else who you think might it, whether it's men or women, the more the merrier. We need everybody to spread the word inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do. And of course, if you want to double down on that support, you could do so by subscribing or rating or reviewing, following on whatever podcast platform you'll listen to this on. And lastly, I want to remind you that you can always get more information at BooksforMen.org, where you can also sign up for The Books for Men Newsletter, which is just a monthly roundup of all the books and authors that you hear on this podcast, including quotes and excerpts, and more information about those books, as well as other book recommendations that you don't get on the show. So it's definitely worth you checking out. And again, you could sign up for that at BooksforMen.org.