Tamiko Dorris
Persistence
Part I: Biking in Bandages
Some people might think it was stupid of Tamiko Dorris to painfully hoist himself onto a twelve speed bike and go flying down a steep hill right toward cross-street traffic with his bandaged head full of quail shot, a steel plate freshly implanted under the skin of his temple, and his left hand partially paralyzed—especially considering the fact that, yes, he did crash. Well, Tamiko would have to disagree. At that moment, riding that bike was important. More important than the crash that followed.
One of Tamiko Dorris’ life philosophies says that persistence makes dreams come true. He defines persistence as a combination of "having hope and then moving on it.”
“Sure, people can have a lot of hope. But you’ve got to create the energy to get up and act on that hope to get that ball rolling. If you just sit on the couch and don’t go the way you’re supposed to go, you’ve lost all opportunity.”
In fact, just before Tamiko Dorris got on that bike, he had been literally sitting on his family’s couch for quite some time, his younger brother serving as his nursemaid. Tamiko was recovering from a head wound received from a shotgun blast at point-blank range.
It happened in Oakland when Tamiko was only 16 years old. He and his band were getting ready to make their first recording.
“I had moved to Santa Maria and started playing in this group with a couple of my brothers, some rappers and some dancers. In 1989 we went to East Oakland to get ready to record. The night before the session there was an altercation among some people. I didn’t have any involvement with it, but I was there. It eventually died down.
“The next morning we were supposed to go to the studio. I was standing at the back of our Cadillac trying to shove the last of the equipment, a chair, into the trunk. I was excited and not thinking at all about the occurrences that took place the night before.”
Tamiko, persistent as always, kept struggling to get that chair into the car. What he didn’t know was that all the noise he was creating banging metal against metal was “covering for all the gunshots that were coming up the street.”
They shot the apartment building, the first house, the second house, then stopped in front of the house where Tamiko stood.
“So I turn around and I see this shotgun. I think to myself this is like a recap of Boys In the Hood. But I’m the actor! I’m in it! I’m gonna get shot! . . . “
. . . this true story to be continued . . .
Tamiko Dorris appears in the role of Chance in Blue Train. The play was created and first performed at the California Men’s Colony in 2003 and includes cast and crew who have been incarcerated, from a night in jail to 38 years in prison.
