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| Will Richey |
On an extremely overcast Tuesday evening, I was sitting inside my car in the parking lot of Zaguan Latin Café & Bakery in Oak Lawn waiting to interview Will Richey. He advised via text he would be a few minutes late, which was great since that opened up a few additional moments of space and time for me to mentally and physically unwind. I have to admit I was nervous; something about covering Will made my stomach decide to compete in the Olympic Gymnastics Competition. Prior to our interview, I was writing commentary in my head at the speed of a cheetah on its prey. Not until we sat down and talked did my entire perspective change thus clearing the slate to begin anew.
The days following the interview with Will left me in a state of mental fog. You know, just like one of those mornings when you rush out the house, hop in your car, pull out the driveway and then suddenly realize you cannot see beyond ten feet in front of you. Yeah, that kind of fog. Will is on a journey, hence the name of his business - Journeyman Ink, a journey that drastically changed course due to a cultural awakening at twenty years old. Something about his journey moves me to the point where I must reflect on my own journey - digging inward, asking myself all the hard questions. The ones in which you want so desperately to be rhetorical, ending in a period or trail off in a series of dots... but know it is a question, one that ends with a question mark in a (BOLD) 72 point font… where a firm decisive answer is required.
Everyone’s journey is different… some are perpendicular, some parallel, and others go off on a tangent. Some contain forks in the road, some modulate, yet others are straight and narrow. Regardless of which journey you are on, there are hurdles to jump, obstacles to overcome and lessons to learn before you hit that straight away prior to crossing the finish line. Will Richey has prepared. Warmed up. Practiced. He is on a journey. Where it leads to is between him and the Universe. Just make sure you have your box seats, snacks and binoculars ready because the starting bell has already rung.
Who are you?
“My name is William Victor Richey. I was born in Natchez, Mississippi. My father (Dan) is from Ferriday, Louisiana, a small town in Northeast Louisiana not far from the Mississippi River and home to three renown cousins: Mickey Gilley (the country music star), Jerry Lee Lewis (the rock and roll legend) and the honorable Jimmy Swaggart (the international televangelist pioneer who was later found to be... uhh, not so honorable!).”
Wow!
“My father came from an overachieving family and ended up going to Law School in New Orleans where he met my mother – Jessie Theresa Valcarcel. She was born and raised in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, and came to America to study when she was 20. They dated and eventually got married on the island before coming back to live in Ferriday. I was their first child, born across the river in Natchez, where I actually went to elementary school from first through fifth grade.
We moved around a bit as my siblings and I were growing up. We were in the state of New Hampshire for a couple of years in three different places (during 6th and 7th grades), and then back down in Southwest Louisiana for a couple of years (8th and 9th) before settling in Baton Rouge for my last three of years in high school.
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| Reflective |
So… who I am [I always say] is directly reflective of that kind of upbringing because starting off it was in very small Louisiana towns with a singular, over-pronounced influence from my father’s side. The Puerto Rican side of my roots obviously did not have much room to breathe or be cultured, especially being that one of my mother’s first major sacrifices was her tongue; my father was like ‘I just want English in the house’. Then from there on it went from...”
Will trails off momentarily, I suppose, to consider the magnitude of her sacrifice.
“There wasn’t a lot of Latin Music in the house. Of course you had her cooking and her spirit and I’m sure she was speaking to me, as the oldest child, in Spanish. You can’t lose the essence of where you’re from, you know. No matter the stipulation. My mother was the first Latin Woman in that town…
My father came from a very over achieving family. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father worked for the Superintendent’s Office. There were four boys and one girl, and of those four boys, three of them became Doctors and my dad became a Lawyer and a Politian for some time, too. Him going to Law School in New Orleans and marrying this Puerto Rican Princess was a pretty big deal.
My sister came two years and nine months after me. She and I were extremely close growing up. Our first brother arrived six years later… and life seemed to be pretty normal before that first move to New Hampshire. A lot of things seemed to really change after that, though (we were 11, 8 and 2 at the time). It was a very, very hard move from the South to the state of New Hampshire. I mean, temperature, the food was so unflavorful up there, you know what I mean – like licking your forearm, after a shower, that’s what their food tasted like!”
We get a good laugh off his metaphor.
“We were very normal, I felt, growing up in Ferriday before that move. I remember having a Swatch Watch and a Coca Cola Shirt, and listening to Run DMC with my friends…”
Oh wow, you’re taking me back!
“But after that move up North, things really changed. My father had always lived by a very idealistic, right wing, political stance and in New Hampshire, he actually paralleled that with an even more conservative, religious angle as well [we were born and raised Catholic]. So that changed things a lot. It was just a weird time because we moved three times in two years up there before heading back South.
We started off in a Catholic School, then went to Home Schooling for a year and a half, and then came down to Southwest Louisiana and went to a public junior high for eighth grade. Went to a public ninth grade. Moved to Baton Rouge and started off in a Baptist tenth grade before transferring to a Catholic tenth grade after Thanksgiving that year. That was where I ended up finishing eleventh and twelfth grade, too. So, three different junior highs. Three different high schools. Five moves in four years and it really shook a lot of things up.”
I can imagine.
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| Focused |
“But my focus as a young child was basketball that was my passion as a kid. My father played with Pistol Pete Maravich at LSU and always wanted me to be a basketball player and that was kind of my saving grace. I had a really good time playing ball. We were first in the State as Juniors in High School and then I ended up going to the University of Dallas (UD). That’s what brought me to North Texas, to play ball actually and it was a Division III school so they didn’t give athletic scholarships, but I got a nice academic scholarship because I was the Valedictorian of my high school.
But traumatic and dramatic things started happening after I left home, after I left high school. Our family was rocked with an alcohol / addiction related situation and an acute mental illness issue as well during my first few years in Dallas…
Meanwhile, my time at the University of Dallas mirrored that whole junior high, high school transition in moving. My first year I was at UD playing basketball and going to school, I went from being Valedictorian to having like a 1.9 my first semester…”
Will pounds the table while he is reflecting on his academic history; I speculate that in doing so, somehow the sound or the feeling might change the outcome. He knows it is just a reflection but maybe, just maybe, with one additional pound the outcome might be different. We have all had those moments. If we could change something in our past, somehow right the wrong… [especially when family issues are occurring behind the scenes, yet are at the forefront of our minds.]
“…and like a 2.3 my second semester. A big part of the University of Dallas is studying abroad in Rome, Italy. So we traveled to Rome for the fall semester of my Sophomore year, but on the third day we were there we lost a classmate… he fell out of the… we had like a three floor dormitory… he fell off the Belvedere and died. He had been drinking quite a bit that night…”
Oh My God!
“Actually, I have a performance piece about him; it was through a commission from the Dallas Museum of Art and I share it with Alejandro [AP] in Drug and Alcohol presentations. So that was my first experience with the DEATH… of a peer.
Anyway… I made like a 1.7 in Rome, but I wrote my first poem of any real significance there. It was called, A Clown Unmasked. The purpose of the poem was that I… I was always the class clown. I always made people laugh and everything. We were having a Christmas talent show at the end of the semester and people always expected me to give them a pick up.
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| Unmasked |
I remember to this day that that was my true coming out party as far as what has evolved into me becoming an artist… because that piece, A Clown Unmasked, allowed me the opportunity to express to my classmates OUT LOUD before I even knew what spoken word was per se. But OUT LOUD… you know like… you guys see this [a lot of people can relate to the whole clown in a mask kind of theory] you guys see this person… but he’s not the same inside!
What I began to realize at that very moment was that growing up in a family like ours, my father is a Southern Politician, my mama is from Puerto Rico - mailing the most perfectly posed Kodak pictures back to the island... Image is so important. Fitting an idealism is so important. There’s not a whole lot of freedom for creative expression there. You’re trying to make mom and dad happy and you don’t realize… you don’t know your mom is from another culture… you don’t know she’s not being fed… you don’t know that she’s not being nourished here… you don’t really realize that she doesn’t have any friends… you know what I mean… you don’t really know what’s going on. Then you start moving around.
My father hit some hard times financially when he hit 40 and afterwards he left Politics and left being a Lawyer. We did our two years in New Hampshire and then were living with my Grandparents in their guesthouse back in Southwest Louisiana… and I mean our home was definitely smaller than this (restaurant) room right here. I had two pair of shoes – I had a basketball pair and a church pair. I had a purple shirt, I had a striped shirt and then I had this orange and black shirt and I wore the purple shirt on Mondays and Thursdays, the striped on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the orange one on Wednesdays.”
You had it down to a science.
“Yeah, but you don’t know, you are growing up. I didn’t know that it was weird or privileged to be riding an elephant on the Governor’s lawn when I was a kid and my dad was in Politics. And I didn’t know we didn’t have money when we’re living in my Grandparents’ guesthouse and I’ve only got three shirts that I wear to school. To be living and working in an enormous city, in a place like Dallas now, it’s just kind of like coming a long way, kind of a long way...
My mom was really particular about us not wearing clothes with holes in them. My dad made us tuck our shirts in but we never had anything extra. I never had a car, my mom and dad had cars, but my sis and I never had cars. We had a lot more than a lot the kids that I work with now. And I’m not trying to juxtapose that deal, but then again, my parents sacrificed for us to go to private school.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when my father made the move for us to go to a Catholic School there, there were actually more private school kids in Baton Rouge than public school kids because the public school system was so bad. But our school was like the main private school that had both white and black students, and we also had one of the top basketball programs in the state.
At the University of Dallas, I played basketball my Freshman year. I was the sixth or seventh man [which was really cool]. We had a senior laden team. There’s nothing like playing sports and having a group to identify with coming into a strange situation. Talking to mom and dad every other day on the phone. Being home sick yet at the same time being so happy to be free from home...”
Right.
“My third year of college was really interesting because I’m back in Irving for the entire year, first semester went pretty good. I make like a 2.4 or 2.5, nothing really high, but I had my best basketball year of my career, probably in my life. I was co-captain of the varsity team as a sophomore. We were maybe 13 and 12. We just had a lot of fun with those guys and I was also named Honorable Mention All-Conference which was a huge deal for me... and my father, of course.
But in my second semester of my third year in college, I had what I would describe looking back on it as my first serious bout with depression, serious bout with manic behavior, not accelerated manic but with darkness, definitely. I withdrew from three classes, only had two left… and in one of those two I walked out on the final, I didn’t even take it.”
Sounds familiar.
“It was crazy and the craziest thing right - at the time, see, I was very puritanical as a kid. I had a lot of fear in relation to religion and in relation to everything and I was a ‘by the book’ kind of guy. I’m in my third year of college, and I had never drank. I had never smoked. I had never slept around. I couldn’t put a finger on any particular source, and yet, I was caving… just caving. And few people really knew. It was a very dark and scary time. A real weird, lonely time...
Stepping back for a second, when I got back from Rome the Fall semester of my second year, I brought A Clown Unmasked and two other pieces and I remember reading it for my mom and my dad and they didn’t really register with them.”
I understand.
“Art and creativity is something my mother always moved me to pursue but the sports always got in the way and then the moves stopped certain opportunities. I was taking piano lessons at one time, then we moved, and there wasn’t a piano teacher in the country. I was in a really cool boy scout troop one time, and then we moved and there was no more boy scouts. So you know, the moving, all those kinds of things, you just latch on to your siblings, you latch on to each other as a family. You don’t know why mom and dad are going through all these things. It really helps me to relate to young people, who have a lot of movement from house to house, apartment to apartment, city to city, much less different schools...
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| Prepared |
You know AP and I are super close and I’m just always amazed at AP’s self-awareness from a very young age. I don’t feel like I had a whole lot of self-awareness until I got into college and really started writing, started traveling, studying abroad… but I do remember this feeling inside like ‘What are we doing?’ We are going from five years in a Catholic Elementary School, to New Hampshire, to Home Schooling, to a public school, to a Baptist School and I remember thinking, ‘All of this is preparing you for something… it’s preparing you for something… it’s preparing you for something.’ When I went to the University of Dallas, I just wanted to play basketball, that was my big deal and I couldn’t play at a big college so, ‘What’s this with Rome? What’s this about studying in Europe?’
After that third year when I got real depressed, one of those two classes I didn’t drop was Spanish and my professor was like, ‘You are pretty good at Elementary Spanish, why don’t you study abroad in Costa Rica?’ Costa Rica is what really changed my life; I was twenty-one years old. I got to learn the language and the culture and the dance and fell in love with a girl down there who didn’t speak English, just the whole experience. I remember calling my mom, and even though Costa Rica wasn’t Puerto Rico, I was like, ‘How did you leave the beaches and the mountains and the language and the culture?’
So that is really where I began to discover and nourish my creative side. Began to write more. I spent almost a year in Costa Rica and when I returned to UD, I decided to major in Education with a minor in Spanish. And by my fifth year I had really picked up my grades and become more creative while embracing that side of me. When I graduated, here I was a kid from small town Louisiana and I came to big Dallas, played college basketball, studied in Europe, studied and lived in Central America...
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| Seeker |
Wow, I know that was amazing!
“It was crazy, we started on September 8, 2001, and were in Pamplona for 9/11. Man. That was crazy. Watching the second tower fall on the TV in a friend of ours’ flat in Pamplona, Spain. From that moment on, we weren’t just two guys from Louisiana… or from the South… we were two AMERICANS… and experienced a number of interactions with people along the way who reacted quite emotionally to what happened in New York that day…
The trip had so many layers. It was a pretty phenomenal experience. And it’s interesting how so many connections are tied to today. This year marks the 10-year reunion of the Camino and my graduation from college. It marks my 15-year high school graduation in Baton Rouge. It’s been 15 years since Tupac died – a huge cross cultural influence to so many of us. There are so many things… so many things happening. 11-11-11 just passed. So much synergy taking place. And this spring will mark 10 years since my first poetry performance in Dallas which was really inspired by the pilgrimage and a documentary called Slam Nation that I fell in love with that features Saul Williams.”
I love Saul.
“Yeah, I was just blown away when I first saw him in that film. My other big inspiration was a guy named Xero Skidmore, a performance poet down in Baton Rouge.”
It is a natural progression to ponder your significance as a human being on a very basic level when life presents such synergistic things happening all at once.
“So, who am I, you asked?
I am a mixture of Louisiana and Puerto Rico. I am an introspective intellectual but I am also very much a people person. I am a writer and I am a connector. I’m so used to telling other peoples stories that it’s hard for me to talk about myself sometimes (like this). I think I’m an artist, but I never really looked at myself as an artist, I just always looked at myself as being different. Because when I look at myself as an artist, I don’t really think about, ‘This is how I’ve been making my living in Dallas, Texas.” What I think about is where I came from. My family. How I was raised to be Catholic and conservative, a basketball player and all those kinds of things that come with the territory from where I come.
I feel like just now I am coming to peace with myself and who I am as a person beyond all labels. I feel like I lived my first twenty years [actually I just shared this with my father recently] I feel like I lived my first twenty years for my dad mastering his blueprint for me as best I could. And then I spent the next ten years from Costa Rica till I turned thirty exploring and trying to make sense of my mom’s roots. During that time, on the Camino, my cousin and I came across a town called Vega de Valcarcel, which is my mother’s maiden name [Valcarcel], which sparked a very definitive connection with her and my grandfather. It was a very tangible moment on the journey. I was literally connecting with my roots.
Kind of like when I fell in love with the girl in Costa Rica who couldn’t speak any English. And I couldn’t dance, but she was a Dance Teacher. So I learned both, the language and the dance. And I found out later that my grandfather, Victor Valcarcel, was one of the top dancers in his home town… and I have a picture of him and my grandmother dancing at my house!”
See it was already in the genes.
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| Stubborn Seeker |
“I mean it was just crazy. I was in my first or second dance class when I was in Costa Rica and there was an older dance teacher there that day. I was twenty-one so she was probably thirty-five, and just by looking at my form on my first dance class, she was like ‘Are you Cuban?’ And I was like ‘No, ma’am, I’m white.’ And she was like, ‘No, you’ve got to be either Cuban or Puerto Rican. I can tell by how you stick out your butt when you do that turn.’ (ha!) And it was crazy cause I was like ‘Well, my mom’s Puerto Rican.’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, I can tell.’ And that was the first time I ever met anyone who could acknowledge my roots outside of a relative or a family member. Those are HUGE moments when you get to discover these kinds of things.”
So do you think you have found yourself now? Or are you still searching?
“I am in an incredible position in my life right now to be honest with you. I am definitely a seeker but I am as much at peace now as I’ve ever been in my life.”
Fantastic!
“I’m a stubborn seeker. I mentioned earlier, my family (immediate and extended) has had a lot of issues with alcohol abuse / addiction, bipolar / schizophrenia, depression and a whole bunch of undiagnosed stuff. And so a lot of my life, even knowing that God gifted me in so many ways, a lot of my life was preoccupied with trying to ‘save’ those I have loved the most… my family members.
One thing I’ve learned though is that we are family, but we also need our communities. I’ve learned there is a definitive difference there. The difference is you need family because everybody needs family, and in that realization you love and accept what you’ve got. But then you really need to have community because the community can at least be, especially when you are young, a community can be a pressure release from whatever goes on at home. As you well know sometimes communities are more like families and families are more like communities and vice versa.
But once you start moving, and I think this is an issue with a lot of young people, and a lot of people, especially ones who begin to reflect in their late teens, early twenties and older, once you start moving, all you’ve got is your family. And you don’t have anyone else to fall back on. So even as I got older in age, I could not really adjust to or invest fully in my community, much less my own relationships here in Dallas, friendships or romantic, because my family back in Louisiana was always first. And I think family should always come first, but at the same time, you’ve got to reach a point in your life where your significant other has got to go before your mom and your sister. And I didn’t really reach that place until I hit about thirty.
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| Will & Delilah |
But why am I at peace now?
I am at peace now because from the time I arrived in North Texas, from the time I wrote A Clown Unmasked, I was seeking PEACE! In my early twenties, as a good Catholic, I would seek advice from Priests. But I was in my early twenties when I had a third different priest say that I needed to find a psychologist or a psychiatrist to help me out. Now mind you, I’m still not a drinker, or doing drugs, or sleeping around, but it’s like the Priests couldn’t help me. So, my family couldn’t help me emotionally. My church couldn’t help me emotionally. And I’ve got to figure out what is going on. So I found my first serious therapist in ’03 and he diagnosed me depressed and put me on Zoloft the first day we met and I gained like 50lbs in 6 months! The drastic weight gain was an awful experience. I had always been in shape. Had always had 6-pack abs (ha). So I swore off medication at the end of that experiment and haven’t gone back…
But why am I more at peace now, because I have been walking the journey, both physically and metaphorically, whether it seems sane or not. And the Camino, the pilgrimage (which was actually just featured in a movie called The Way featuring Martin Sheen and directed by his son Emilio Estevez – a wonderful film!) became the metaphor of my life. From that experience onward, I have been more conscious of the fact that I am really on a journey.
When you grow up in a family that’s very, not only idealistic, but very image conscious, everything is cut and dry. It’s like product driven instead of process driven. So everything is about what does the family picture look like, did you say ‘Yes, Ma’am, Yes, Sir’ and you’re just avoiding issues because all the personal stuff gets stuffed under the rug… on top of just living in the old school South to begin with.
But, I had to discover that I was articulate, and I was emotional, and I had to go through and acknowledge and accept various experiences in my life that have molded me into who I have become. And it’s been through quite a bit of therapy, through true friendships, through learning how to be part of a community – not only one I can control per se but one that I can participate in that I’ve reached a point where I’m more okay now. I’m definitely not perfect, but certainly more okay.”
Working through the various layers of oneself can seem like a daunting task. However, taking the time to peel back those layers to expose you to yourself is a very liberating and life altering process.
"Delilah and I met when we were nineteen at the University of Dallas and we were on and off for a long time. We had our first child in 2006. And that was a very difficult time in our life. ‘05 was really tough. On top of some serious family issues, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit back home back to back… and I wanted to put the pregnancy in that category of all the heaviness, and yet as a mentor told me, being pregnant is what brought us light. Delilah giving birth to Siena delivered us from evil per se [pun, pun]; it delivered us from darkness. I wasn’t where I needed to be at that time… and because of family pressure, we began planning a marriage real quick, but it didn’t work out. We stayed together, though. As lost as I was, I fully devoted myself to healing and Delilah stayed by my side. Six years later and here we are. Our daughter is a Kindergartener, and we are expecting again.”
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| Delilah's expecting!!! |
Congratulations! Wow!
“Yeah!
I got to a point where my health and my search led me to do a 10-day silent meditation this past August and that proved to be the next major leg on the journey.”
Really? You said 10 days? Of Silence?
“10-days, yeah, of silence. It’s called a Vipassana Meditation. It’s a 2500 year old technique, a Buddhist practice. I was very attracted to it because it was not promoted as a religious deal but as something that ‘eradicates suffering.’ The idea had been introduced to me about 2 or 3 years ago and I was finally able to set aside time to do it in August. It’s been 12 weeks since then. The first 6 weeks were super raw, really raw and felt really kind of like I didn’t know if it was going to help me become more secure with myself or not. But the last 6 weeks have been incredibly peaceful. I mean, October 2011, was probably the most peaceful month I’ve ever experienced... ever.
I tell you what, it led me to get on a stool and go grab this engagement ring that’s been on the top of the shelf, in the sunroom for 5 years. Take it down and I got a little ring for Siena that said ‘Love’ on it and we went and got some yogurt, just this past Saturday night, and I gave both Delilah and Siena a ring and told them that we were going to be together forever!”
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| Real human moments |
That is so beautiful!
“And I mean it!
When you come from that kind of place it’s real hard to justify, it’s real hard to make sense of the real human moments – pregnancy without being married, or struggles in family, or losing a family member, or dropping out of school, or whatever it is. Such a perfectionist. Better yet, you know you’re smart, you know you are talented but you don’t fit in to a 9 to 5 world. You grow up playing basketball for 17 years and now you write poetry. You’re not teaching in a regular school, you’re developing your own curriculum to reach youth. You’re not in the Catholic School you graduated high school from, you’re in the inner city schools. You’re not going to a basketball game on Friday night, you’re going to DaVerse Lounge.
For me, am I at peace? Absolutely. Have I been at peace? Not a lot. But I am now, I am today in this moment, and I’ve learned to take it day by day.”
Tell me, I want to back track a little bit about your 10-day silent meditation. So you went off somewhere to do that? I’m just wondering how does that work?
“My first experience with any kind of meditation was when I was walking across Spain, 500 miles, me and my cousin. We didn’t even have a map. I was waiting tables that summer. This lady I waited on that worked at Delta Airlines gave me a free ticket. There were so many things that lined up for us to make that trip happen. My cousin had just gone through this born again experience. We’d wake up in the morning, we’d have to be out of the Albergues (the hostels where the Pilgrims slept) at 8 o’clock and we’d walk a couple of hours. Stop and take a break. Keep walking. Sometimes we’d talk and a lot of times we’d be separate. That was a movement meditation.
I found out about the Vipassana Meditation about 3 years ago, from a friend. I was telling her about my Camino and she was telling me, ‘You know what, I never walked 500 miles but I did this 10-day thing that was very journey oriented and I bet you would really dig it.’ It sounded intriguing to me and it came at a time when I began receiving signs from different people and different things about being quiet, being silent, being still. All things I couldn’t do. I always had to have music on. Now I can walk, to this day, I can walk, I’ll go walk for an hour and a half but sitting down, sitting silent, you know...” [Will groans while he says this.]
Will goes on to explain the series of events that prepared him for the Vipassana Meditation…
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| The blessing |
"In the last couple of years, I’ve gone through incredible health transformations. 2005 and 06 were really difficult. So in January of 2007, I committed to a therapist (my second) I was with really strong. I started going to Yoga, did Yoga for 3 or 4 years. I committed myself to my relationship with Delilah and my family with Siena. Delilah bought a house. All of this was a blessing in disguise. Then I was with a different therapist (my third) in 2009 who mentioned that I may have some head injuries, some head trauma kind of stuff which led me to see a chiropractor where the wife of a friend of mine worked.
So for about 15 months, I went three times a week, from Irving to Arlington, and he worked on restructuring my spine, he worked on healing some chronic injuries I had throughout my body. I hadn’t played basketball or ran since college. I had gotten hurt after the Camino. And he totally rejuvenated my physical body. Which was in accordance with the psychotherapy I was going through. Which was in accordance with a 12-step program I had become a part of. And everything was finally healing to the point where I wanted to change my diet. In January of 2011, I walked into the chiropractor’s office and he had been talking about this purification. It’s a vegetarian thing, taking a lot of vitamins and purifying your system. I jumped right into it.”
Because you were ready.
“Yeah. It was one of those 21-Day, real kind of strict program but it wasn’t a fast thing; I could eat as much veggies and as much fruit as I wanted, with my protein shake, and then a bunch of vitamins a day to clean out and rejuvenate my system. I lost 15lbs in 21-Days. After 10-Days you can incorporate chicken and salmon, but my head had released itself of so much anxiety and paranoia that I didn’t reincorporate chicken and salmon. I just stayed with the veggies and for much of this past year [11 months actually] I’ve gone without any meat… just some seafood here and there.
Now it’s time to be quiet. I’m ready to do the meditation.
I go to the Vipassana and I don’t do a whole lot of research just because I like to trust my intuition on things like this. What it does require, though, is noble silence. Noble silence means no talking, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, no gestures; nothing, for 10 whole days… and the catch is that the experience is free.”
If you make it.
“It’s free. Whether you make it or not. It’s free. Literally, for 2500 years, the practice has been funded by sheer reciprocity and volunteering. There are six locations in the US and there’s others in and around the world, the most being in Burma and in India. The current, modern day catalyst is a guy named S. N. Goenka, who is not a Buddha, is not enlightened per se, he’s just a layperson who began doing this and it changed his life and his family so much that he has helped spearhead the movement. Kaufman, Texas is where the location is that I attended.
You follow the five precepts very common for those who are familiar with Buddhism, I can’t remember them all. No lying. No killing. So that meant our diet was straight vegetarian (mostly vegan actually). No sexual misconduct and a couple of others.
I jumped into it head first. It has a very rigid schedule. The first three days are kind of like learning how to ride a bike. The fourth day is where the technique of Vipassana was delivered. The next four days was just super, duper intense, and the last three days ended up being very peaceful for me.
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| Peace has been delivered |
I had kind of convinced Delilah that I was going to get this superior, cut and dry answer about our lives and future. When I got out I was so grateful for her. I was so emotional and she could tell that something powerful had happened. But, and I don’t know if this had to do a lot with me being a contract worker, having my own business, with me not having a 9 to 5 to go to, but I wasn’t forced back into the culture when I got back home. So I had about six weeks where I was super raw even with the work that I did have at that time. And she was a little worried, you can tell, she was a little worried. And I really believe after about six weeks, again, the combination of my entire journey with that 10-Days of silence as the rawness kind of healed, peace has been delivered.
I made the comment earlier that my first child [I felt] delivered us from evil. I think our second child confirmed our love for one another. It’s just huge for me to be able to sit here and talk about it; it’s just incredible timing [the interview] because if you had caught me six months ago it would have been a completely different interview.”
Really?
“Seriously, yeah. I’ve been building momentum for a long time. It’s a beautiful thing to dust off that engagement ring from on top of that shelf in the sunroom. We’ve been together so long, we didn’t get some big expensive dinner the night I gave it to her. We just ate spaghetti at the house, went out for some yogurt and stopped by the Mustangs of Las Colinas. It was perfect!
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| Good times |
Tell me about what you do and have done in business as well as in the arts.
“Journeyman Ink is my company. Everything I’ve told you in the first part of this interview has to do with my journey. Again, it is all metaphorically connected to the pilgrimage. Before I walked that Camino, before I did that pilgrimage, my life was not a journey. My life was a hectic, move here to there. My life was a chameleonic, ’Who am I in front of you now?’ Are we at the Governor’s mansion? Are we in the country by the cattle guard? Are we in a basketball gym? Where do I have to acclimate myself? I can never be myself because I’m always acclimating myself to everyone else.
I began my performance career in 2002 and I came out the shoot running. I made the Dallas Slam Poetry Team that spring. After 3 or 4 months, went to nationals. Got some invites. I was on the Jenny Jones Show in Chicago. Worked with a group called APAA (the Association of Persons Affected by Addiction) as a writer, presenter and a lot of different things. I was on a national commercial that was on BET and MTV and stuff like that. But I went through a really tough time too in the Dallas Poetry community.
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| Will with the hands |
At the time, my moniker was Lyrical Evangelist [I always wanted to go by my name] but my website was LyricalEvangelist.com. I felt like I was coming into Deep Ellum with the torch, and Sankofa, and Reciprocity and all the old spots back in the day. I was different and people recognized that but I also felt like I was this evangelist type. Lyrical Evangelist was all about the lyrical side of Street Poetry and the evangelical side of Christian Poetry without being a Street Poet or a Christian Poet; I was like let me take both elements.
The comment made to me by a few people when I first started in ’02 is that I never had any harsh language. I wanted my pieces to be universal; I wanted my little brothers who were probably teenagers at the time to be able to hear my pieces and enjoy my pieces and not have to edit. So the comment to me was made, I could perform my pieces in Deep Ellum, Sankofa and Reciprocity, but I could also perform at Barnes and Noble and the colleges and at a house gathering. My first year we did this performance at the Texas Depository Building where JFK got shot."
The same spot where Erykah Badu filmed the now infamous ‘Window Seat’ video.
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| Soulful Poet |
"I met Erykah early on; this piece called Agape was my central piece at the time, she really liked it. I’ll never forget the day Erykah Badu called me to come perform on stage with them; Jill Scott had just won the Grammy. Erykah performed. Jay Electronica was there.
I totally felt that day I did the wrong piece too, which was a trip. I remember Erykah saw me, it was Jay Electronica, then she went up there, then she called me out the crowd. I got my girl Natasha Carrizosa on stage after me and then Jill came out and I think she wanted me to do Agape but I did Soulfood Poets, which is still a dope piece, but it wasn’t the Agape piece.
Were you there at Sankofa when Amiri Baraka was there?”
Never been to Sankofa [at that time].
“We opened up for Amiri Baraka… for Umar Bin Hassan. I just spent an hour telling you about my story. Very different from opening up for Amiri Baraka at Sankofa and Umar Bin Hassan and even with Erykah and Jill, my cultural awakening was very strong and very passionate. Once I caught wind of my creativity and the impact of my voice in relationship to different audiences, and my love for people, my love… love… love for culture and cultures there was just no turning back. There was NO turning back.
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| Will & Melody Memory |
That’s when me and AP really connected strong. I met AP at Reciprocity one night, he really didn’t come to Sankofa that much. But it was really at Artist Night Out, when he showed up and we connected much stronger. And I’m hosting this event and we’re getting really, really full. We’re getting this church group of artists coming in from Red Oak, Texas. We’re getting Solange and the Brazilian / Latin American connection of people coming in. We’re getting the Dallas Slam Poets coming in. We’re getting college professors coming in and here comes AP; I remember telling Delilah, ‘AP’s here’. And he starts… you know how AP does… he’s bringing his food, it was a potluck deal and Alejandro Perez is at our events.
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| Will & AP |
Artist Night Out was beautiful and it was the seed that was planted into DaVerse Lounge. My only two prerequisites for Artist Night Out were no political propaganda and no religious elitism. I’ll repeat that… no political propaganda and no religious elitism and that is a stance, as an artist, that I’ve taken my entire decade in Dallas, in my life really, that a lot of people have embraced and some people really don’t enjoy. Art is so political and art is so critical...”
But art is supposed to be free.
“That is the issue I had with Slam Poetry for example. I made the team in 2002. I felt like my writing got better in ’03 and ’04, and my scores got lower. I remember I wrote this piece about my mom, The Maternal Sacrifice, and it never scored well and I was told either you doctor the piece or just not use it.
The Agape piece, which is the same piece that Erykah enjoyed and that I used to open up with Maya Angelou and that I used with E. Lynn Harris, just everywhere, could not score. It was a 6 or 7-point piece. I’m like, well, I’m not going to edit or change my writing to fit that particular bar where ten people are deciding who’s going to represent Dallas on a national level.
Artist Night Out gave me an opportunity to connect with Visual Artists, so I could connect with Musicians, so we could connect with each other because the poet population wasn’t enough for me; it did not satiate.
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| Experience creativity |
The Dallas Theater Center had me do workshops the summer of ’05, and we invited them out to an Artist Night Out and they wanted to do an event for young people. So we came up with the name (DaVerse Lounge) and the concept. They were like, ‘Can you do Artist Night Out for us, can we pull in kids from all over the Metroplex.’ For four years, it was a phenomenal adventure. That really was a catalyst into the work with the youth and the work with everything because it’s like now we can actually have a very strong influence on setting up the ambiance for young people to experience creativity.
Young people didn’t have to go to Barnes and Noble in front of ten people for a quiet poetry reading. Young people didn’t have to wait till they were old enough to be bombarded by the explicit nature of a Slam Poetry reading. Young people didn’t have to just only hang out in the Revolutionary spot.
I always appreciated how Reciprocity would bring the workshop idea. They’d bring in the writers to perform and then follow up with a workshop for people of all ages. Just the building, the building of community. We learned to cross cultures, creeds and races through Artist Night Out and DaVerse Lounge. Some of our strongest relationships in the arts were formed through Artist Night Out… and of course, DaVerse Lounge is still going.
So who is Will Richey? Will Richey crosses cultures, creeds and races.
Alejandro Perez crosses cultures, creeds and races.
Journeyman Ink crosses cultures, creeds and races.
I’m not from Dallas so I didn’t realize how really big of a deal it was to occupy the Dallas Theater Center but that was huge. And that also meant that all those kids got an incredible experience and an incredible introduction to the arts instead of just that tooth and nail. Which you are going to get anyway as an artist or creative expresser.
The Theater Center moved to the big one over here downtown and we thought we were going to make that transition as well but it didn’t happen. Big Thought came in though and managed it [DaVerse Lounge]. It was at the Backbeat Café for a year - the fifth year. Last year was the sixth year, we switched over to Life in Deep Ellum, [and] a big part of my vision was fulfilled because we had the space at Life in Deep Ellum. I can’t say enough about the venue; it’s just an amazing place.”
I was just there this weekend the space is beautiful!
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| Cutting Edge |
“We finally had space to add visual art. We partnered with ArtLoveMagic, they provided the visual artists. Melody Memory is the house band. Here we are going into our 7th year now, Melody Memory with AP as the house band, under 21 poets perform, junior high and high school kids get bussed in for this event. ArtLoveMagic is going to have 12 to 14 visual artists. We are even going to have the big stage open to the possibility of a youth band or hip-hop group or something. And for that we believe it to be one of the most the cutting edge, creative events for the youth in the city.”
That is outstanding!
“One thing I’ve learned is… I used to live for the event. One thing I now understand, AP taught me a lot about this, not directly, very indirectly. Is that the life of an artist, the life of a creative person, the life of someone who does not necessarily conform to a 9 to 5 but is trying to live out his or her passion and calling, we cannot have those highs every single day.
Like a Circus tent, you got those dips that go in to the top, it dips again and another top, it dips again and another top and not that life is a dip, but the EVENTS are the tops. And what I love facilitating specifically for the youth… and the beautiful thing about the youth that I didn’t realize until we started doing it was the opportunity for their families to come. Because in the adult event, when you got adults but you don’t have youth or families, you may have couples, so we give them that opportunity to come to the top of that tent. And they go back to whatever they were doing, then they come back to the top of that tent. It’s a beautiful time. When we do workshops through Journeyman Ink or through Big Thought, we always culminate with some type of reading and celebration so we can have that top of the tent. The opportunity to get to that highlight. It’s that highlight.”
You are making your journey.
“Definitely making the journey.”
You mentioned earlier about some good news. Tell me about the good news.
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| MasterMind Finalist |
“I just found out yesterday that I’ve been named as one of the top ten finalists for the Dallas MasterMind Award for cultural innovation through the arts in North Texas. It’s very humbling. We are the joyful recipients of this nomination. Now, it’s listed as Will Richey, but at this point my relationship with Alejandro is pretty synonymous with Journeyman Ink. I obviously do some things by myself and he obviously is doing his thing by himself, he has the Village Child Development Center, but I wish Journeyman Ink would have been nominated. Just for the sake of Alejandro having an opportunity to be noticed also but I know that positivity will shine on him because of this nomination. It’s incredible.
AP calls me the gatekeeper, he’s like ‘You get into places that I haven’t been able to get into and I’ve been here my whole life.’ What I tell him is the fact that he’s from here, the fact that we’re doing big things in Dallas is a testament to his life, a testament to my life, a testament to connecting the way we’ve connected. I don’t want to say we need the validation of such a nomination but it’s a huge deal. It’s the Dallas Observer, it’s called the MasterMind Award. I’m a poet, I’m a writer, and MasterMind is a dope moniker, even if we don’t win the award… at least we get to start our bios now with 2011 MasterMind Finalist! It’s incredibly exciting. Hopefully, we have an opportunity to win but if not the nomination goes far.
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| Will & AP - ENGAGE Conference |
AP and I, also connect on that very communal level, that community level, in the trenches, in the grassroots, where we’ve sacrificed seeking entertainment or seeking individual success, per se, in order to be at home with our families, to incorporate our families into the work that we do and to invest in our communities.
Everything I’ve said from my family story to my health journey to the meditation to the pilgrimage to Journeyman Ink, going to Vegas to be able to have a national opportunity will be pretty huge for AP and me.
Those are the two big, beautiful developments.
Do what you are passionate about with the absences of credit that motivates you to get stuff done.
Do what you are passionate about with the absences of credit that motivates you to get stuff done.
May I say one last thing?”
Certainly!
“The pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the movie is called The Way starring Martin Sheen. The day the movie came out, Delilah and I and Siena, and actually my brother was in town, we were at the hospital getting the sonogram and found out we are having a Boy!”
Congratulations!
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| At Peace |
“And we are naming our son Santiago. I always said if I had a son I would name him Santiago in honor of that pilgrimage with hopes that giving him that name starts him off on a journey. That he doesn’t have to discover or uncover or start digging for twenty years into his life. So he starts off with an opportunity to understand who his father is and who his mother is. Who will appreciate what he comes from. That I can be at peace with myself to where I can honor my family, my parents, and my Louisiana side, and my mother’s side, too. Also with him having the opportunity to understand that he’s got a big sister who’s had that opportunity. Mom has had that opportunity. We can get married and be at peace. Life is a struggle without everything else. If we can refortify the foundation of what family means, not only in the Richey family tree, the Whisenhunt family tree – that’s Delilah’s family tree, the Valcarcel family tree is the Puerto Rican side, the Govea – Deliliah’s half Mexican, so the Govea side, so if we can unite that, that’s going to be a strong foundation for our future.”
At some point in everyone’s life, I believe we wear a mask, not to disguise ourselves from others but rather to disguise ourselves from ourselves. Do not be afraid to take off your mask. To stare at yourself in the mirror. To look beyond your external features right into the core of who you are as a human being. To discover that you are perfectly imperfect. That part of you is also a part of your family and a part of your family is also you. Strength lies in the knowing and understanding of why you are who you are and why you have experienced life as you know it. Life is journey. A journey that we take one-step at a time. Slowly unpeeling all the layers until we reach the core. Will Richey is on his journey. Ask yourself, are you on yours? Or are you a spectator, quietly observing from the box seats? Now that is something for you to ponder while beginning your travels off the grid...
Be Strong… Stay Strong… Live Strong… Love Strong… Asuecion
For more information about Will Richey and Journeyman Ink please visit:
Watch Will & AP perform When Fire Meets Glacier:
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