So I Spoke With Ezekiel Clare
“We are always living in the future. That’s why the past is so confusing.”
-Ezekiel Clare
For many people, art is a form of the human mind, a sense of expression and passion, and a way to critique society. For director Ezekiel Clare, (formerly known professionally as Ghost Nostalgia) art is life. It’s what fuels him to wake up each and every day and find something to create. Art is him, and he is art. This description is most prevalent in his latest film, Sow A Little Tenderness, or SALT for short. It is the story of a young man trying to find himself after he is put in a mental institution for a mysterious crime. The film stars Danté Crichlow and Siobahn Kiernan.
I had the privilege and the honor of talking to Clare on February 26th, a week after the release of the film. My first question to him was, in his own words, “who and what exactly are you?” His response could be summed up by three simple titles: Harlem native, Gemini, and artist. For context, Clare was born and raised in Harlem, New York. He found his love for filmmaking at the age of 10, when he discovered a camera that his mother kept in the house. In an interview with JP Morgan Chase’s Fellowship Initiative, he recalled “I was just like, ‘Ok Mom, this camera’s mine now.’”
Clare would later study theater at the Gramercy School of Arts in Manhattan before joining the Initiative, where he and other students were mentored and taught to find, prepare, and apply for colleges of their interests. That is how he found SUNY Purchase and graduated with a BFA in Film/Cinema/Video Studies. He would then go on to pursue his directorial dreams, inspired by directors such as Christopher Nolan, his biggest influence.
When talking about SALT, Clare revealed his inspiration for writing the film, which included his time at Purchase before, during, and after the pandemic. “Right before quarantine I was having a life crisis… so when the pandemic happened, I was able to focus on [regaining his mental health]. I was having cycles of finding myself.” Clare’s time at purchase, especially during the pandemic, was emotionally confusing.
The kind of confusion that leaves one wondering how long they can go on. When the answer to that is unclear, the person eventually realizes that they must decide how they will find it, whether on their own or with help. For Clare, he managed to find it on his own, but first, like the movie’s protagonist, he had to figure out who he was before he would fight back. That would bring his first sense of order within the chaos.
Upon asking about his inspiration for SALT, his response was interesting. “I’ve always had a hard time at Purchase,” he told me, “And so, with the pandemic, and the last semester, the anxiety of graduating, and like, like coming off the isolation of quarantine, and everything, was a lot.” He found himself asking the same questions I asked in the beginning, “What am I? Who am I? What does it mean to be here at Purchase?”
While searching for these answers in isolation at his college, Clare found himself falling in love with the place. In his own personal fight for his identity, the quiet, solitary atmosphere of Purchase College, along with the people he met and stayed in touch with down the road gave him space and influence to gather his questions and form an answer through the movie’s script, which he considers a “love letter to Purchase”.
This letter displays a complex love, however. The allegory for the school is a mental health center, where the patients are misguided, mistreated, and misunderstood. Many will see it as him despising Purchase, but Clare sees it as the perfect response. “It kinda just became an allegory for how I felt, and what it means to be a person in the institution.” He is merely detailing this conflicting experience of pain, pleasure, and self-discovery within his time in education, and Purchase helped emphasize these feelings with its community.
It’s not just the institution that built these thoughts, good or bad, but the people he met, and the joy he felt from them, helped secure his love for the school. Therefore, he finds more affection in the movie’s message. “Purchase as its own living thing is incredible, but Purchase as a system for education is not as great as it could be. It’s not the fault of Purchase, but like, the greater whole of society.”
Going back to the film, Clare is very selective when naming his characters, and the protagonist, Logan Koliah, is given a very interesting one. When his full name is announced, his friend Sage, played by Kiernan, is amazed and says the title, “Koliah the Misguided”. That was the first time I ever heard that name, and when I asked Clare how he found it, the answer was surprisingly simple. “Pretty much… everything is a symbol. I want their names to also symbolize something. With Koliah, I was looking up words that represented angst or misguidedness, and Koliah was one of the names… I just like how it sounds.”
We both agreed that Koliah had a biblical feel to it, which attracted Clare. Funnily enough, because he himself has a biblical name, Ezekiel, many older adults have emphasized the value in it. Such significance, I expect, provided a lot of curiosity in the names of others. Everything has to mean something to exist.
At one point in our conversation, I mentioned the lack of background music, which occurs throughout most of the film. If anything, it contributes to the intensity and emotions of the dialogue, narration, and even silence of the characters. In the words of Clare, “When there’s silence in the film, you as the viewer, you’re just kind of just hearing your own thoughts after just taking in a whole scene of dialogue.” That rings true, especially when the dialogue is over. With no music to distract or build adrenaline, the viewer is left thinking about what they just heard. Whether the speaker is wrong, or right is irrelevant. All that matters is the audience fully grasping the words said. Then, they have the utmost power.
Clare is fully aware of how powerful his characters and their decisions can be within the right circumstances. As a director, he’s made it his solemn duty to give each character the exposition needed, so not only are their personalities and mindsets fleshed out, but the actors are more enabled to exercise their creative muscle.
That is something Clare taught me when describing his relationship with Kiernan, who he’s worked with since his arrival at Purchase, “I see film as gifts. Like, all my films are specific to someone, and SALT was specifically to Siobahn. I wanted and I wanted me to really snap and show our full potential…Just for her, because she did so much for me.” It’s only fair for a director to want the best from his actors, and in this case, Clare was providing his collaborator and friend the opportunity to show all the viewers how talented and dedicated she really was, granting her greater recognition than before. A testament of his appreciation.
Towards the end, we talked about his organization, Oddbat Collective; his founding of it, its purpose, and his time spent within it. Founded in 2015, The collective is run by directors, actors, artists, and musicians who all want to provide the world with their own personal visions, just like Clare. I asked him if he saw Oddbat as an extension of himself, and he agreed. “It’s so weird that it became its own thing about myself, and as time passed, I had a hard time accepting that.”
Still, even before people joined, he found a purpose within the collective, “I had to let go of my ego and understand that this is something I wanted for the community that I would eventually build,” he said, “I can’t make it about me.” Looking at it now, it seems SALT, produced by the collective, demonstrated their creative prowess. Anyone viewing the film will see the dedication within each member, and Clare proudly stands by them and his work.
Looking at Clare and his journey to create and distribute SALT, I found myself inspired by his trials and tribulations, working to create his own personal love letter to a world he’s moved on from. Now that his past has been written, the future is for him to decide. Whatever happens next, I’d love to see a movie about it.