When reading a good book it’s good to see a good show. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me stuns and glorifies me simultaneously. I’ll read and reread the book and then reread again…I don’t want to miss a tone, a moment, something hidden, each source is equally important.

I am in Brooklyn. I am at the museum. Waiting in lines at museums is only fun for an anthropologist. I stand on the coat line. In front of me a Black guy with a White women. Behind me a Black guy with a White baby. I am in the middle. Wondering. Wondering about Coates and the Mecca. Remembering he married straight from the Mecca.

I climb the steps to the exhibit instead of waiting for the elevator with the crowd. I didn’t want to be so close. I wanted to enjoy everything on a spectator status. For that, there need to be space between the World and me.

There are a lot of people but a lot people stayed home. It’s 17 degrees outside.

I walk into Spike Lee’s Creative Sources. His show is advertised all over the trains. I think of the Black Bodies from a Black male perspective. Coates is present. I think of Madeleine L’Engle too. “It’s not just the [World]…It’s the [World] on top of everything else. On top of me.”

I walk into the family gallery and see trail blazers within family and pioneers within.

I see firsthand of how Black legacy looks. I see how Black agency looks. How it looks when parents love each other and create more of themselves with joy. I see real life and it’s pretentiously wonderfully wonderful. It’s a life I am apart of, its a life that makes me smile and say, yes! Yet- its a life in which I am a spectator.

I linger in the family gallery longer than most. I am interested in family. I am thinking. How many shows have I gone to and how many artist dedicated a gallery to family? A Black man showing himself as a family man, his father as a family man. I linger and see other Blacks lingering too. Taking it all in.

I turn my camera to a mother and her son. She has to call him multiple times. He’s engaged in what he sees. She speaks to me of her family down south and her son asks me what school work at – but what kind of school is it? We speak of our World.

Spike Lee. Inspirational. Motivational. Powerful. Embolden. Hidden. Precious. Objects help put to life the World Coates speak of. Actual objects. Actual ownership. It imbues me. It does not dwell on sadness. Joy lies within and can be felt. The joy of an African American Experience.

Spike Lee. Conversational. Educational. The show showed me what to look for when purchasing art. Showed me how an original print should look. It reminded me of the speciality of time and how it is connected especially with money. Actual objects. Actual Ownership. Actual African American. Actually owned by African American.

Spike Lee even owns that popular Weegee image of the man with the tall black hat…and who would’ve thought that Margaret Bourke White was born in the Bronx like me?

I gasp a contented gasp when I come across the Augusta Savage Bust – Gamin. The Gordon Parks images I expected. The movie posters I expected but Gamin?! There it sits at the beginning of the show. Savage words of living on through the youth speaks volumes. My mind juxtaposes Gamin with the portraits of Spike Lee’s jumpman 23 images. I think of a question for my students after giving them the history of Gamin then looking at both images. What do we see? Who is this world on top of? Who is on top of the world?

Speaking of sports there is a whole gallery dedicated to sports memorabilia.

It is a great reminder of Between the World and Me. How much is the Black body is accepted and seen in society? It is a great reminder of Between the World and Me. The Black body has the power to own itself even if it moves about in chains. I thought of the New York Times article assigned to my fourth graders, Spike Lee and the Slavery of Blues.

”Musicians are low-priced slaves, whereas athletes and entertainers are high-priced slaves,” Mr. Lee said in a recent interview in Brooklyn, his home and the setting for most of his films. ”It’s their music, but it’s not their nightclub, it’s not their record company. They have an understanding only of the music, not of the business, so they get treated any old way. A lot of money can be made off black artists, and a lot of what racism is about is financial gain.”

Where is Spike Lee in all of this?

Is he Between the World in Me or of the World in Me or The World not me or Me?

I take a step back and see the Mecca. Celebrating. Laughing. Lovingly in the space Spike Lee created with time and money. I ask them randomly to pose with each other. A mother and daughter share the stoop with a group of friends celebrating a birthday. Couples….a symbol of Black Love…ownership…one posing the other discussing the World and Spike Lee.