There’s something beautiful about getting to a point in life where you no longer need the script. Not because you’ve memorized it, but because you’ve lived it. OFF BOOK is a little series about the truths we carry so deeply, we don’t have to reach for them anymore. They’re just there, quietly shaping how we move through the world.
Colman Domingo and I go way back to Selma, when he embodied the spirit of Ralph Abernathy with so much grace and fire. But even more than his talent, it’s his heart that’s stayed with me all these years. He’s become chosen family. Someone who reminds me that the most meaningful art and the most meaningful life comes from the inside out.
In this first OFF BOOK, Colman sends us a reflection from the British Virgin Islands, where he’s surrounded by people outside his usual world. Folks like scientists, historians, architects, people trying to do some good. He speaks about what it means to step away, to grow, to be inspired by lives unlike your own.
And in just a few words, he reminds us: if we want to keep evolving, we have to keep cracking ourselves open. Again and again and again.
⁃Ava
My name is Colman Domingo, and this is OFF BOOK with Ava DuVernay. And you know what I'm off book ‘bout?
The fact that sometimes you have to go away and have discourse with people in other industries, people who don't do anything that you do or even know what you do. And learn from others.
Today you find me, I'm in the British Virgin Islands. And I've been invited to be around people who are trying to do some good in the world with whatever platforms they have. And I'm only here with one other storyteller, per se. But I'm here with people thinking differently. And I think that's the way you grow.
You always need to make time for that, especially as an artist. Don't just be around other artists. Be around people who, you know, are interested in the sciences or doing social work or historians or architects.
Learn from others. It will inspire other stories and other ways of doing things that it will just keep cracking your brain wide open.
I've been doing what I've been doing for 35 years, and I feel like I just cracked my brain open again. You want to keep doing that. Keep doing it and keep doing it.
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