Director's Statement

High school had its moments, but I will always remember the cold, quiet violence of isolation. I could not escape my own othering. I became the target of numerous racially insensitive comments made by acquaintances, strangers, and “friends”. My identity was reduced to a joke. I learned to associate my worth with how I could “sell” my blackness. My value was placed in how well I could assimilate rather than differentiate. I taught myself to deny my truth and deny my pain. I traded honesty for passivity. 

I feel no anger, no sadness, no bitterness–not anymore. I have forgiven everyone; myself, my past, my family. I have forgiven the ignorant and the blind. The passive and the overprotective. Those who failed and those who should have tried harder. In the tears I weep I realize I cannot forget that after feeling comes forgiveness. 

This is why I wrote Simmer. You cannot forgive until you feel. The world of our emotions is a murky sea and we all get stuck. This is when human language fails us and we turn to movies and poems and songs and other beautiful things. Deep down we all want to feel something and we all want to know what it is that we feel. I don’t know what I feel at times. Then I know, and I realize I do not know, and it is so humbling. There is no word in the English dictionary for what that feels like.

So I make Simmer. I hope it makes you feel something.