the rebirth of shia

                                      

                                                       Megan and Shia in Transformers, 2007. 

I was meandering around and found something called The Real Ones, a kind of podcast video series with Jon Bernthal ( a talented character actor ). The real ones are almost entirely interviews with men in popular culture or the incarcerated. I listened to one conversation Bernthal had with Shia Labeouf.

I've been fascinated with Shia since he was a kid in Transformers. Shia was just a kid to me; in a kind of fixed state, although now he's well into his 30s. I was amused with Shia as he went from everyboy actor to an unhinged rager-stoner performance artist in a Sia music video. With the internet, Shia elevated the meltdown to an art form shouting at the camera about art and life. He was also serious about his passion. Millennials tend to be serious about passion and having an impact. At this point. such things sound exhausting to me to try to attain and achieve.

Things fell apart when Shia started abusing people. Abusers can take a walk. Eventually Shia did - exiled to Utah for rehab. In the west, posh rehab is usually in Utah or Arizona. Shia is not very articulate, but he is intelligent. He speaks in heavy CA slang and idioms - bro, trippin, dude, and ' That cat's a G!' Listening to these two was like listening to the homies chop it up around a bonfire in Sonoma.

' I fucked up bad.’ he said. ‘ I fucked up real bad - like crash and burn type shit.'

I got into their conversation because the process of a person throwing a grenade on their life at any age, then transforming into a better, more self-aware person, is fascinating to me.

Shia then goes into AA-speak sharing the broverse modalities used to help get him straight ( I mean that in an 80s context when ‘straight’ or ‘straight edge’ meant sober, which is likely an unfashionable term today ). I imagine Shia’s sponsor as a kind of insufferable boot camp Fred Durst. My sense is that dudes like Durst are Shia’s tribe.

Shia continued: ‘ we're on the beach and he says, ' bro, stop the waves.' and i'm like ' what dude? stop the waves? what the fuck are you talking about? all i could think of to do was scream " STOP!' ' i had a giggle, but it was like, i don't know - kinda cool, kinda sexy. '

Attempting to stop waves is...sexy? I’ve been in therapy for years and never tried that myself. When he wasn't talking, Shia's expression was a trip; like someone who left and somehow found his way back and in a state of disbelief.

When asked about his infant child: 'It's a game changer, dawg.'

Dawg? Shia loves hip hop or has hip hop homies. He has nothing but love for his homie Kid Cudi! There was an aspect to Shia that struck me: the accidental teenage hero in Transformers, that kid, had become - a man. Was this a natural process or was this in relation to what he'd been through? Maybe both. Men do change between their teens to their 30s.

I've always had an affinity for men; a kind of inherent understanding. I treat them like people, as homies, and I don't flirt. I have never dated in a conventional sense or read self-help relationship rhetoric ( which is usually framed around romantic comedy theory, tired gender tropes, and Judeo-Christian values ). My relationships to men have always been somewhat radical and experiential. There is a different energy between them and among them. This isn't romanticism, just relating to one another as people. We destroy patriarchal constructs at the same time. We become equal because, in my mind, we always have been - yin to the yang or like the African deity Mawu-Lisa, who are interchangeably male and female in a single form.

I've been comfortable within those connections and it has been, more or less, harmonious except one friendship that ended in a fight after the peckerwood mafia took over the capital.

That’s fuckin it! We’re done! I’m masculine with the done. I’m feminine with the undone and animals.

Now, mannish Shia is in heavy duty trouble with one ex-girlfriend, the pop star-dancer FK twigs, who is taking him to court. He was abusive to her and for that he has a reckoning to face. During the conversation with Bernthal, Shia admits this and that by her coming forward saved his life. The person he abused saved his life?

That reminded me of Ear Hustle, an audio series out of San Quentin I listen to. It’s produced by Nigel Poor, a visual artist from the Bay Area, and Earlonne Woods, a former inmate. I get sucked in listening to Ear Hustle stories with inmates, spouses and partners, family, even the cops and prosecutors they’ve encountered. One young dude shot a cop twice, once in the neck, before he fled. They both agreed to meet through a restorative justice and reconciliation program.

The cop said that before he was shot, the job was breaking down his humanity. After spending nearly two years in recovery and physical therapy, he said his encounter with the young man forced him to change and that saved his life. Listening to this, the young man broke down, expressing not only regret, but how touched he was by the cop’s admission. The man he was determined to kill in one moment, into the future, had forgiven him in another.

Granted Shia lives a rarified life, not one of a regular person. We tend to forgive celebrities as though their gods - their transgressions, confessions, and redemption become amplified. I thought about the nature of redemption and forgiveness.

I snapped out of philosophical contemplation when Shia said something ridiculous: ‘ To me, masculine is like a mountain. It doesn’t do shit - it’s just there. ‘ ( Dude, what? Eyeballs roll ). Then back to interesting, he talked about working with Coppola, acknowledging how ‘The Conversation’ is a top 10 or that he doesn’t apply the Stanislavski method to acting, he’s more reactive.

It occurred to me that Shia and Bernthal are a new generation of young american men; masculine, sure, but into therapy and reconciling the busted parts of one’s emotional and mental landscape.

Pop’s generation was the complete opposite of that. My uncle once said to me, ‘ If you have a problem with your dad, then leave him alone! He’s a man! ‘

As if open communication with any man would not be tolerated. You have to be a certain age to remember how black men of their time could be stoic and impenetrable. They had to be to survive here, but it made them often unreachable to others. I tried my uncle’s strategy once and it didn’t work. There was no one else to come to the rescue again and go through the same shit with the old man - again. Pops has always been at war with himself; a victim of his own folly and fixations. Then i show up like a caring, yet rational superhero and he goes to war with me.

Maybe that’s why i have an affinity for and patience with the troubled man, having come through one into existence. Well, right on, Shia! it is far better to disastrously crash and burn and survive than unto death without ever knowing peace…...bro.