death scene: denzel as malcolm x approaching the audubon

cue: Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”

play up to a loud, ear-splitting crescendo: the opening violins which slices every black American down his/her back.

***

i was told–once–as a little boy, “denzel was despondent when he shot that scene.” i’m adding despondent for effect; it’s a stronger word than sad. my mother, anyway, said this to me, or maybe to all of us as we watched X on vhs. it reaffirmed the myth that malcolm embodied ghostly-like the flesh of denzel throughout the film. “he transformed into malcolm,” they said–all the black people i knew–once–as a little boy–and they said it with twinkles in their eyes, tears i mistook as sunlight.

the myth was further entrenched during the death scene: denzel as malcolm x approaching the audubon. if one took the movie as fact, as i did–once–as a little boy, one can assume malcolm knew death awaited him. malcolm, in disguise as denzel, waved off security and made sure betty & the girls sat up front to listen to husband-father give a speech.

these days, i call myself an adult–so i don’t know if he knew, he being malcolm (the real version).

but i recall wanting to cry during the death scene. not the bullets. not the blood. not angela bassett as betty wailing and helplessly protecting the girls. before that. before

NIGGA GET YO’ HAND OUT MY POCKET

before denzel (as malcolm reincarnate) waved off security

before people strolled into the audubon and sat down on uncomfortable folding chairs (wooden, i think…or steel…one or the other).

rewind the vhs back to the opening violins which gutted me as a little boy–violins i never heard before–violins that make my eyes twinkle now–back to where malcolmdenzel walked down the sidewalk. his face was sad. despondent, perhaps. or knowing. i don’t know. but behind him, over his head and above the gray clouds, beneath the wrinkles of the little old black woman who tried to console malcolmdenzel, sam cooke sang for us all, whether we acknowledge it or not.

a change is gonna come bleeds despair. cooke cries through his soulful voice the sense that one accepts reality as it presents itself –the past, cursed present and blurred future–but the refrain (and title) a change is gonna come is hope.

change. hope. perverted words, today. lies, all lies.

sam cooke, even digitized and blared through overpriced headphones, saves these words now, long after his death, after malcolm’s death, from indifference: the bitch of a virus which infects all words and phrases heard and said and heard over and over again on television (especially during election season).

we all knew. we all knew in the movie theater and, later, in our living room, watching X. we knew it well; conversely, we didn’t know our family was doomed to die by divorce in two years. denzelmalcolm had to die. he had to die as MLK had to die, as Bob Marley had to die, as Miles Davis and Amy Winehouse and my best friend and my unborn children had to die–it was foretold.

it was life exacting its indifference upon malcolm, reenacted for our viewing pleasure (?) with, perhaps, the best musical choice one could select for a man walking to his own dirge. oh, oh god–we all knew–a change was about to come and maybe in my little boy heart, i wanted malcolm to live. i wanted X to continue for another forty years.

sam cooke’s seminal work, then, is a message from god–if you swing that way–or a masterpiece riding our earth’s winds surfer-style, sent shimmering in silver as a herald, to remind us, in Octavia’s voice, that change is the only god. malcolm never stood a chance–those fucking violins. they were, and remain, clairvoyant, and filled with…