Thank you, Madam President.
What do you call- I don't know the formality.
(laughter)
Faculty squad, thank you for having me.
(laughter)
Class of 2017, what up though?
(cheering)
I wish I knew the roots of these skinny digit splinters,
these protruding lips that chap in the winter,
this bulbous nose that makes me sniffle through prose,
I must be a dead ringer for someone's dead finger ring.
Fingering piano keys for the ease of a track by track
played back to the way back before
the back of the bus days of lore folk.
Wheels spinning, spokes straining the chain,
choke to revoke speech.
Preachers, single room schoolhouse teachers
before speech therapy.
Teach to reach parody.
Hilarity is a hairy peach pit or a barren beach.
With no blood loss to the belly of leech
how easy to reach lineage.
How skinny is the tree bearing fruit with root in the sands.
See, effortless connection.
But this texture is composed of
more complex erector set pieces.
Erected and speechless in the image of an image reflected
my mis-es is the visage I present and protect.
But of what?
Assuming I'm a dance, then the choreographer
must have these same skinny hands.
This is for anyone who has ever gone
to sleep hand outstretched, reaching
for something that hits deep.
This is for anyone who considers herself matter
too diffuse to be held and too bound to scatter.
This is for the nomads who thought they had it right,
now bartering with a snowman for his corncob pipe.
This is for the boys and girls kept in mint condition.
This is for anyone who will listen.
I wrote that piece here in 2003.
It's called Nomad and it's from a rap adaptation
of Jean Toomer's Cane called Sweeter Than,
that Elmo-Terry Morgan and Marsha Z. West,
may she rest in power, and all of the academic saints
at Rites and Reason Theater,
poured, what in hindsight, must have been ...
Yeah, give it up for Rites and Reason.
(cheering and applause)
They poured, what in hindsight, must have been
a truly massive amount of money
on the blind faith that a 21 year old
reluctant theater concentrator had any idea
how to transform one of the greatest
and most underappreciated works of American fiction
into fully realized play.
And reciting those words again now, it kind of sucks.
Right, I mean, like, a little bit.
(laughs)
A little bit that my me-sis is the visage that I present.
What the hell, dude?
(laughs)
you're, like, 21, what do you know about it?
(laughs)
Hitting the block like a hammer hitting the nail on the head
and came from a city where Hammer made hits
and kept people fed, and fighting for fet-ti
we hitting the block with hammers and headed
into the gritty and ready (…) they did
by committee decided whether to ride it
another (…) like it's early retirement.
I am who they admiring, which (…)
cue the violin.
I wrote that just to stunt.
There's not reason ...
(laughs)
(cheering)
Literally, no reason for that to be in this speech.
(laughs)
Daveed Diggs was born on January 20th.
(laughter)
January 20th, 2015, four days before his 33rd birthday
at approximately 9:40 p.m. when he strutted
down a fake staircase at the Public Theater in New York
singing a song his friend had written for him to sing,
playing a man who would have beat him savagely
for singing it, had he been born in similar circumstances
roughly 224 years prior.
(snapping)
That snapping is really weird to me.
(laughs)
I hear that's a thing here now, and do it if you must,
but you can also clap or cheer like a normal person.
(laughs)
(cheering)
(applause)
I ain't trying to, like, restrict your way of expreessing
yourself, or whatever.
(laughter)
About two years and four months later, he has done what
two years and four months ago would have felt to him
like a life's worth of things, two films,
two (…) on popular TV shows,
two tours, produced a pilot for a major network
that was picked up, appeared on late night shows
as a guest on a couch and as a performer,
attended countless red carpets and cocktail parties
and award shows, and probably too many speaking engagements,
and if he's being honest, he shouldn't be here right now
because he's in the last two days of pre-production
for another thing he is cramming into a life that feels
too short because it didn't start until he had already lived
nearly 33 years.
And then my eyes is peaking back out from the mirror
looking bloodshot, plus they carry baggage now.
The traveling, it don't stop,
wrapped in every venue from the White House
to the Dope Spot, old enough to know
all that experience don't show he know a (...) thing.
Got a hot damn singing that she love him,
he should probably find a rock but
she don't apply no pressure.
She a diamond, too.
We've been out here shining on these overstuffed times
like they wasn't the most violent, eyes open,
eye opine, something about how the world is blind
if that weren't the case, it would be just fine,
but I feel like I'm being watched most of the time.
These kids (…) Twitters who are suddenly
my fans and I do it to myself because I do it
for the Gram and the whole fans (…) push Grams
but I don't post those pics, I'd rather
keep their hands clean.
I don't see them often no more.
I got a doctor on tour saying not to talk anymore.
Mouthpiece the only piece that still
don't got a lock on the drawer.
I use it till only a whisper left
and then fall to the floor,
and I think it's this sentiment that there are only
so many words one has the opportunity to say that
has him here, taking an opportunity to say something
to what feels like a very expectant group of young people
(laughter)
about to enter a new phase in their lives.
But the problem is that he really doesn't have anything
useful to say, because he has only been around
for two years and four months.
(laughter)
So I will speak for him.
(laughter)
I don't think I'm the guy you invited to speak.
I don't think I'm the guy getting an
honorary doctorate tomorrow, although I did ask if I could
choose what department said doctorate was given in,
I asked if it could be in Engineering.
(laughter)
(cheering)
I was told it could not.
(laughter)
Pre-Hamilton, the only post-graduate interaction I had
with the University was in the form of laughable letters
and calls from the annual fund to donate money-
(laughter and cheering)
to donate money that I did not have.
By the way, I used to work for the calling center here.
Do we still call- yeah.
(cheering)
Do we still call dead people?
(laughter)
Is that a thing that we do?
Because this is the thing I remember most
from working there, is reading the little scripts
to whoever answered the phone, only to have that person
tell me that the man or woman I was calling for was dead.
(laughs)
In hindsight, this could have also been seen
as a good tactic to get us to stop calling.
(laughter)
Although, it never worked.
We always called again.
(laughter)
I'm not throwing shade, this is just how the game go.
(laughter)
People don't get asked to do these things,
list of accomplishments do, and then we sort of struggle
to give context or justification to these accomplishments
that mostly feel like accidents.
I'm much older and less interesting than Daveed Diggs.
I am far less sure of myself, although not according
to that article that ...
(laughter)
apparently I said I was really charismatic.
(laughter)
But I will tell you what I know and
maybe you'll find it useful.
I sat right over there in 2004.
(cheering)
I think.
(laughter)
Although, memory is a funny thing.
Daveed Diggs made this
very heartfelt speech at the Tonys and it was
broadcast to millions of people, and it was a speech
about his dad wearing rainbow tights.
And my Mom recently sent me a picture of the actual event
he was referencing, and Pops was for sure
wearing navy blue sweatpants
(laughter)
and I had on a rainbow tank top, so ...
(laughter)
Daveed Diggs is also a liar.
(laughter)
Anyway, in 2004 I sat somewhere here or someplace else
after either walking or not from a classroom or Green
or something, I'll be honest with you,
I don't remember Commencement.
(laughter)
Not because I was drunk, although I hope
at least some of you are,
(laughter)
because this talk is probably better.
(laughter)
Yeah?
Lit section, I heard you.
(laughs)
Just flasks in the robe.
(laughter)
I don't remember the Baccalaureate speech
or the performances.
I don't remember being handed my diploma.
Sidebar about the diplomas, though,
are they still in Latin?
- [Crowd] Yep.
- That's a thing, so do yourself a favor, and get an
official translation of your diploma, because I know
from experience that when applying for a job as
a substitute teacher, the clerk of the district office
is neither amused nor impressed with your framed gibberish.
(laughter)
That is so real, it took, like, four weeks
for me to get the little- anyway.
I don't remember these things, not because they were
unimportant, quite the contrary.
I was the first kid on my father's side of the family
to graduate from college.
I had accomplished a thing that-
(cheering and applause)
I had accomplished a thing that my mother had rearranged
and rededicated her whole life to facilitate.
In fact, I remember at some point after graduating,
my mother saying to me, "Well you made it.
"I'm done nagging you now."
(laughter)
She was not.
(laughter)
Daveed Diggs' mother is also a liar.
(laughter)
She's for sure gonna see this, and then nag me about that.
(laughter)
I had gotten to what I had always imagined was an endgame
in terms of my formal education.
I mean, I'd been in school as long as I could remember,
and it was done.
It was a big deal.
But it was another birth, and nobody actually
remembers the circumstances of their birth.
We have to be told them.
I'm told I was born in two hospitals,
that my Mom went into labor and went with my Dad
to Highland Hospital in Oakland as was the plan.
But when the doctors there refused to allow her to have
a natural childbirth, they picked up and drove
to Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley saying,
"You can give us a room, or we can
"have this baby right here in the lobby."
(laughter)
Daveed Diggs' parents are gangsters.
(laughter)
And so, here you all are, being born,
maybe with a little more agency than last time.
(laughter)
And I actually think it is imperative that you keep
alive the story and the circumstances of this birth.
That you were born into a time in our country
that feels different than any I have lived through.
I was on a boat with Sonia Sanchez the day
after our last election, and I'm gonna pause there
and repeat that, because that is the coldest name drop
you ever heard.
(laughter)
I was on a boat
(laughter)
with Sonia Sanchez.
(laughter)
That makes it sound like it was a two person sailboat
and we were just drinking mint juleps, and she's, like,
telling me about the Black Arts movement and the
Civil Rights Movement, and I'm talking to her about
clothes from Zara fit funny or whatever.
(laughter)
But we were actually on a massive cruise ship with, like,
thousands of people, and we were
about to do this performance.
And a bunch of artists my age were in the green room
having psychotic breaks about the fact that the trajectory
of our country had overnight gone from one of hope
to one of hate.
And finally, someone had the good sense to talk to the
living legend sitting calmly in the corner
about what she thought of the whole thing,
and Sonia shrugged and said that she had watched them
kill Martin and Malcolm and Kennedy,
that she'd lived through Reagan.
She said, "This is how it goes in America.
"Three steps forward and two steps back always."
She said, "You just put your head down and keep fighting."
And we all stopped whining.
You're being born into a time where our country is as
divided as it has ever been.
Where there are no easy answers,
where there is no certainty about how to get a job
or what constitutes a family, where the news is fake
but more real than the alternative facts,
where science is ignored but the globe warms anyway.
Where Mezcal may be the most popular alcohol
in the country, but we're building
a wall along our Mexican border.
(laughter)
Where gender is false, but women still earn
disproportionately less than men.
Where race is false, but black boys are still
disproportionately gunned down by police,
brown boys sitting on his knees with his eyes shut,
hands behind his head, fingers folded,
pinkies up saying he ain't even do nothing, what you want?
They through him on the ground when he
called them all punks, retro blue and white Jordan's tongues
out over the black jeans cuffed just the right amount
so that they bunch by the caves how he liked.
Just ran out of boxer briefs, so he wearing tighty whities
and the white t-shirt and the breeze catch it just so,
pushing it tight against his chest, and the red hole
is getting wider as the blood is seeping through the fabric
and pulling on the ground, he looks down automatic
and the dark pavement gets darker when it's wet.
He's losing balance slow, but his hands on his head
so his face hits first and his eyes go dead
and the air is sucked out of the world with his last breath.
Time has made a choice of what to keep and what
to throw away.
Everything ingrained comes to a point so sharp
could cut a piece of day and it bleeds on the ground,
keep your knees on the ground where they belong.
Keep your knees on the ground where they belong.
Just a couple weeks before I moved to New York
to start rehearsals for Hamilton, I was riding my bike
from my apartment in LA to pay rent.
My landlord wouldn't accept checks, so I had to take cash
to a nearby check cashing spot that did free money orders.
And a police car comes careening around the corner, and two
officers jumped out and pulled me off my bike and threw
me against a fence of my neighbor's house,
grabbing my hands and cuffing them behind my back.
One-twenty-seventh of a second between when the trigger
squeeze and the bullet hits my back, we are this close.
His breath is hot upon my neck.
My hands are folded on my head.
I'm doing everything he says.
I know how this goes.
My nonchalant demeanor is normally meaningless, but if I
live today, I know that this will be the reason why.
The badge he thinks gives him his power lets me know
that actually at this moment he is every bit as scared as I.
He's been trained that I'm his enemy in an institution
whose motto is to protect and serve.
If this is what I can expect for protection, then having
that as a motto seems a bit absurd.
He never questioned who he was in service to,
and let's be honest, man, a motto's really just some words.
I know the pen is mightier than the sword, but can it stop
a bullet, homey?
I'm just not sure.
It's just hot.
Los Angeles, summertime is a scandalous ripening
of desires and fires that we have bottled up.
It ain't no water, so cool our heads, (…)
my sweat is popping.
If there's a positive motto, what is it since
Rodney King on the TV, the LAPD is more a monster than man
and I managed with it.
My pride doesn't want to let me succumb.
I could die just a couple of steps where I reside,
and I am not the only one.
I exhale and keep my voice low.
"Yes, you can search me.
"No, I do not have any weapons you should know about.
"My backpack is gym clothes and rent money.
"Sir, may I go now?"
And another part dies in politeness, at least not the
part that can write this.
But it's only so many times I can bite this tongue,
and I'm not the only person who feels like this.
This is what you're being born into.
And honestly, thank God it is y'all.
These times, in many ways, defy explanation.
What these times really need are people who challenge
all explanations, who never thought
outside the box because they never accepted the premise
that there was a box.
And I know firsthand that the survival of things like
Spring Weekend or, like, the Interracial Dating Forum,
is that still a thing?
(laughter)
If you survive those things, then we are breeding
these kinds of people.
Our world desperately needs you now.
We need your new ideas, because our old ones
have made a big mess of things.
If you're like I was, you're a little nervous
in this moment.
You know that a lot of people sacrificed for you to get
to this point, and you feel like you owe
them a great success story.
But also, if you're like I was, you also have
no idea what you're going to do after tomorrow.
Maybe you have a timeline in your head,
some date by which you are supposed to be successful.
Let me tell you how that went for me.
(laughter)
I went to London for a week with the track team,
then I moved back home with my mom for longer
than I'd like to admit.
I did a bunch of plays you've never heard of.
I started substitute teaching.
I got a place in Fruitvale in Oakland with one of my
best friends from here at Brown who had moved
to the Bay area because he didn't fit in anywhere else.
I decided I needed to try to live in New York.
I couch surfed in New York for nine months,
often sleeping on the Subway.
I auditioned 10 to 12 times a week booking nothing.
I ran out of money.
I used my Mom's frequent flier miles to move back home.
I did a bunch more plays you've never heard of.
I designed rap curriculum for Bay area middle schools.
I feel in love several times.
One of those times prompted a move to Los Angeles.
I landed a commercial agent.
I auditioned for a lot of commercials.
I booked one.
It was a McDonald's commercial that I booked the same week
as I had also agreed to do a reading at a theater
in Berkeley and had said I would attend my best friend's
bachelor party in Vegas, which means I spent most of that
week riding overnight Greyhound buses, except for the seven
hours I spent in Vegas doing Molly.
(laughter)
(applause)
I started a band called Clipping that nobody liked.
I toured a lot.
I did a bunch of workshops and readings.
My friends, Lynne and Tommy, who I had met due
to a clerical error during a substitute teaching gig
asked me to be in a musical.
I went to New York to be in a musical, and Daveed Diggs
was born on January 20th, 2015, four days
before his 33rd birthday at approximately 9:40 p.m.
And I don't feel successful, and neither does he,
if he's being honest.
But we know he has trouble with honesty.
(laughter)
So the best advice that I can give to those of you who
are worried about the when of the rest of your life,
is stop tripping.
(laughter)
I'm sure you will all have long lists of accomplishments
and multiple rebirths.
Some of you will have accomplishments that are asked
to speak at colleges or other prestigious institutions.
(laughter)
Dope, do that.
(laughter)
They all add up to a pretty silly speech.
But the work for you and I and us, all, in this
is the day to day.
It's the stitching together of a nation divided.
It is in the honest effort to understand the circumstances
that the people around us were born into.
It is in the box-less thinking.
So remember the circumstances of your Commencement.
Take note of the world you were born into.
Tell and retell your birth story, and by all means,
forget this speech.
(laughter)
You are destined for much, much greater things,
and I am so excited to witness it.
Thank you so much for having me, class of 2017.
(applause)
(cheering)