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how did I not just let life run me over? I’m sorry, I don’t usually use this word, but it’s because fuck that. I believe in myself above all.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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I'd like to think that we couldn't help but get famous just because we were that good. I'd like to think that folks didn't have to end up destroyed for Opal and Nev to have made a name.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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Well, that’s all right, because trust me: It can be learned. You just have to copy the right people, and the rest falls in place.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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I felt pride, of course, but something more, something better: freedom. freedom to trust my tastes, take my own counsel, make bold moves.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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I got a better question for you. Why are you so deeply invested in proving I'm scared? Does a Black person showing they're scared make you feel safer? I suggest you sit back and interrogate that.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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Disclosure: My father, a drummer named Jimmy Curtis, fell in love with Opal Jewel in the summer of 1970.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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- I have no argument with faith, understand, so long as it helps one to cope with the slings and arrows of life while keeping its hands outside of my pockets -
Virgil LaFleur
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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That’s what the South was like for me. Sweet on the first taste, but something gone sour underneath. It’ll try to trick you, now—the sugarberries and the quiet and those lovely spread-out houses. But after that day with Auntie Rose, I could smell the rotten too.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.” That’s Proverbs 14:30,
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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The key is that you never take the piss out of them. You approach them with overwhelming respect, and then you do what you need to get done, and then you must be humble enough to say it was their brilliant idea all along. Understand: This has been half my talent, working with rock stars.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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I don't know if he ever understood what being different really means. That the regular people like to beat back what's different, because it scares them half to death.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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But my personal definition of success is that you don’t do a goddamn thing you don’t want to. If you ain’t feeling it, you ain’t gotta do it.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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I had an inner voice, and for a good portion of my life that voice was a lot smarter than me. It was more mature, and it was patient, and it was brave enough to tell me that despite what anybody else was saying, there was more for me out in the world and I deserved every single drop of it.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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Boys who had served their country even though it had never served them
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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That's when I decided it was time for me to start cooking up some luck - meeting that miracle halfway.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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You must speak to me please, or I won't remember where I am. Where we are, who we've been. They'll let me out, but I'll fall right back in.
Waiting, and so very sorry...
Once again, I am:
Your Nev
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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Howie was outside warming up the Camaro,
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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Do you remember “Black Coffee”? Do you realize I wrote that just for you? Not the lyrics—I know that you hated those—but the heavy sound, the big drums, and the bass. I’d hoped you’d love it. I hate I never told you.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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From this point on, I knew, I wanted to curate this story standing on the premise that the lives and legacies of Black men, like my father, cannot be reduced to the awful shit white men do to them. That the voices of Black women like Opal should not be discounted or diminished in deference to those who have hijacked our shine whenever it suits.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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But my personal definition of success is that you don't do a goddamn thing you don't want to. If you ain't feeling it you ain't gotta do it
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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And that right there is very typical of white people - won't do what's right till they're directly affected.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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See this is what I say about America - we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it into a box. Always dictating who's allowed to own what. But end of the day, that don't have anything to do with music, you dig? The music is fire and passions and soul and however you express it is how you express it.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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from the grit New York City must have shoved underneath his fingernails….
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)
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See, this is what I say about America—we always gotta be assigning shit, always labeling it and stuffing it in a box. Always dictating who’s allowed to own what.
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Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal & Nev)