I have wanted to interview the hip-hop artist Common for years. I’ve listened to his music over and over, watched him in concert, and appreciated him as an actor. But no matter the pitch, he always declined — a TTBOOK theme would perfectly reflect some aspect of what he had been working on lately, and I’d send off an email to his PR person.
Two or three weeks later? “I’m sorry to inform you that…”
I kept trying. For years. Then I sent him an email about hope — specifically, that I thought his voice, his music, and his ideas would really soar as part of the Hope series.
Two days later I got a resounding "yes."
Why? Why, after all those years, did I finally get a yes? I think he knows what some know and what many more need to find out: that hope is essential is these times of despair. That hope is not a ticket to ride out of hard times, but a tool to help us survive them. During our conversation, <link to interview> he quoted Frederick Douglas. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Hope as a verb has been a common theme in this series. As Common put it, “God is in action. Meaning we can only experience God if we do.”
— Charles