Marc Thevenin Jr.
Spotlight is a series featuring in-depth conversations with interviewees of various backgrounds and occupations. It provides a look into the planning and unique personal career journeys of each individual. It even offers small glimpses into their private lives. The finished product hopes to convey that every story matters, is worth hearing, and has a great deal of significance to the mosaic called humanity.
JACQUES REVIEW would like to welcome Dr. Marc Thevenin Jr. to the Scholar Edition of Spotlight. Marc received his doctorate in dentistry from Meharry Medical School. I first encountered Marc in my 20s. He was one of a few musicians that were regular players for my congregation and for conference youth programs. He was part of a skilled unit that was highly respected for musical prowess.
Marc is perhaps the only person I personally know that is a dentist. As such, I’m glad to have the opportunity to talk about his career and experiences. Marc was born in Queens, New York. “I was born a couple of blocks away from McDowell’s from Coming To America.” He grew up in Queens village. Like me, he is of Haitian descent.
Marc has one older brother. I asked him what it was like growing up with his brother.
“It was great and tough at times being the smaller brother. My brother left for Chicago for several years and Oakwood, it made me appreciate him when he wasn’t around. So I love my brother a lot.”
What is your favorite childhood memory?
I don’t have any particular childhood memory that stands out. I just know for sure that I felt appreciative of the childhood that I had and very fortunate and blessed to not have dealt with a lot of the trauma I’ve noticed other kids had to deal with. I felt like parents back in the day shielded kids better than they do now. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a kid in this era for sure.
Who would you say played a significant role in who you are today and why?
Aside from my parents, my uncle Wiler Cezil from Bethanie is the one person who’s had the most significant role in who I am today. He taught me how to drive and a lot of things that my dad did not have an opportunity to teach me. A lot of the life lessons I remember came from the words he uttered during all the times he had me drive him around.
You graduated from Atlantic Union College (AUC) with a degree in Biology. What was the goal at that point? Were you part of any groups during undergrad?
When I attended AUC, my life’s plan was to apply to medical school. At the time I wanted to be a Sports Medical Doctor, working for an NBA team preferentially. As far as my involvement at school, I was musically involved in playing for the Black Christian Union Choir. I also played drums for student church and Friday night musicals called Singspiration.
Singspiration? That’s catchy. AUC is currently closed. At the time that you attended, it was located in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Were you looking for a schooling experience away from NYC? Or was going there due to part of continuing a Christian Seventh-day Adventist education?
I was pretty tormented for a few months when I was applying to AUC. My initial plan was AUC to Loma Linda University, straight-line. My parents wanted me to benefit from the tuition support for Northeastern Conference employees. However, I didn’t want to leave NYC anymore. I started considering, City College, York College, and Stony Brook. I wanted to be close to my friends, I didn’t feel the education at AUC would’ve been any better.
Friends and educational comparisons would have made you stay in NY. You shared with me an encounter with a Haitian Orthopedist.
I went with my mom to a doctor’s appointment to her Orthopedist. He was a Haitian doctor whose practice was in Brooklyn. We pull up and we see a limousine parked on the curb. I’m in utter shock cause I’ve never seen a limousine outside of a doctor’s office. We go inside and after her appointment was done she turns to the doctor and say, “talk to my son, he wants to go to York College”. He pulls us into his office and reaches in the drawer and out comes an envelope that was stuffed to the brim like those cash envelopes you see drug dealers on tv have when paying off someone. He opens up the envelope and hands over the stack of pictures while he talks about how he lives in Dix Hills, LI. He gets driven in the limousine to work every day.
As I’m hearing his success stories picture after picture I see the look of his house and a party with Don King, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and others. He’s recounting these stories and one of his physician assistants walks by and he says, “you see that guy, he wanted to be a doctor too and then went to York College. He’s a great guy but the same thing that happened to him can happen to you too. I know plenty of doctors that went to AUC.”
He continues on to indicate that the real issue is focus. When you go away to school you understand more so the need to focus to reach your goal. But when you stay home, you can easily get distracted in spending time with friends, taking the train to school, and many other things that take away your focus. So at that point, I looked to him as a mentor and I was willing to listen to his advice. The many months that followed (every time we went) he reminded me what schools his employees went to.
You attended Loma Linda University’s (LLU) School of Public Health. You graduated with a degree in public health specializing in research epidemiology. To date, you are the only person I know that has studied that. How was it adjusting to having to move from one coast to another? Did you know anybody else studying there?
I would say that the biggest adjustment I’ve made in mentality, drive, and determination came from moving to California. I applied to Loma Linda and Andrews at the same time. I had a full ride to Andrews but I didn’t know. They just kept asking me for paperwork, and medical records but I hadn’t even received an acceptance letter. By the time I got accepted to Loma Linda, I had to weigh the difference between either a master’s in Biology. It was another degree that I personally felt took me in the wrong direction. I say that because I applied to medical school during my year off and had not gotten accepted. So I started applying to postbaccalaureate programs to get into medical school thru a backdoor.
I started applying to DO medical schools for the following year. I was trying anything, even the islands. I called up this school in Southern Illinois. I spoke to someone high up in the program, an African American man who mentioned to me that he recommends that I consider dentistry. Little did he know that at AUC I had attended a forum where Loma Linda’s School of Public Health and Dental school both did presentations on their programs. I started researching dentistry but saw it as a backup option. So upon this gentleman’s recommendation, he stated, that instead of doing the post-bacc, go to grad school to show that I can do graduate-level work. So I discussed things with my cousin Dr. Lesly Valbrun and he was excited about the plan so we both decided to attend Loma Linda University together.
In that plan, I discovered his girlfriend had gotten into Loma Linda’s MFT program. I had one of my big brothers, Herve Thomas, at Loma Linda School of Medicine at the time. So I felt comfortable and very excited to make the move to the west coast. I hadn’t ever visited but LLU was my dream school so might as well go now and get in with people in admissions and in the school of medicine. Build my relationships to make my goal happen.
Herve Thomas was the key figure during my stint as a choir member wherein I met Marc and a whole host of other musicians.
So, there was a unique goal behind the public health degree that isn’t what we would of expected.
The objective in attaining the degree in public health was for it to be a stepping stone. I had no intention in pursuing anything with it. However, it was specifically the program that translated in most applicants getting selected to go to medical school. When I actually attended, 90% of my classmates had the same objective.
90%? I’m surprised. Like you, I probably would have mapped it out differently. You were a graduate research assistant at LLU. Please give us a brief description of your responsibilities. Is there anything that can be done by universities to better the experience of graduate research assistants?
I was there in 2005, back then the only way to measure cardiac output was to run a line directly from the femoral artery into the heart. I worked for one of the attendings who ran the Emergency Department. His office was next door to The Snake Doctor. A doctor who at the time was notable and had a tv show displaying his dealings with emergency patients of snake bites. However, the department was heavily researching the USCOM machine which was the Ultra-Sound Cardiac Output Machine. So my job was to recruit emergency patients in the ER and measure their cardiac output using the ultrasound machine. His goal was to prove the efficiency of using a non-invasive methodology of accurately and rapidly recording this important metric. However, a couple of weeks into the research experiment, my winter break was up and I was back in class.
I was getting paged in the middle of lectures to go to the ER and try to recruit candidates for this research experiment. There were other times when I was working well beyond my shift (merely just standing around) talking to other doctors with him and his lead research assistant trying to devise new research protocols. Oftentimes, between classes, I had to run over to the internal research review to submit research protocols and try to make it back to class. The world of research so often times runs at a snail’s pace that one must carpe diem.
The urgency did not work well with my primary objective of education so I was soon let go.
My recommendation would be that when these departments engage in hiring research students that they intertwine their scholastic with their work training. Find a way to assimilate their knowledge in coursework with the research being done. Yes, it’s important to learn how to devise a research study, how it works, how to fill out grants, or how to recruit subjects. But, respect the class hours. A primary focus should be on assimilating the two major time requirements in ways that neither suffers.
After graduating from LLU, you went to Meharry Medical School. Preparing to interview someone else that went to Meharry, I learned that it is an HBCU. Why did you choose an HBCU? What would you say that you found there that was unique?
I didn’t choose Meharry. Meharry chose me. I had every intention to go LLU. I actually was still enrolled at LLU and left before my program was done to attend Meharry. I came back during the subsequent summers to continue my program.
I almost didn’t go to my interview. I received the call for the interview while I was running a car wash for The Testimony Club, a choir and social organization at LLU. I was the president and choir director. We were raising money to pay off the balance they had while raising funds to pay for a major event all at the same time.
I went to my LLU interview and I did my best of course. At the interview, they asked me did I interview anywhere else. I stated I had another interview the next day. He said to me honestly. He thought I was a good candidate but DAT scores had gotten really competitive that year being shy of the average interviewee by one point. So when I got to Meharry the next day for some reason the vibe was different.
It felt like a family right away and neither did I know that 5 people in that room were going to be connected to me for perpetuity. One of the Haitian upperclassmen was sent to find me and he took me on a whole separate tour from the rest of the group. It’s like I was already in. That feeling persisted throughout my time at Meharry. Small but family oriented. Your classmates either look out for you or just don’t like you. Secret super study materials find their way to you thru years of connections that people had. It made the very grueling scholastic experience feel like a breeze because we had each other’s back the whole way thru.
Omitted from the story here is Marc’s friend, Dare Odumosu, coming through with $550 for a plane ticket. Dare recognized Marc’s hesitancy in asking for assistance and stepped in to help and not wanting no repayment later. He jokingly stated that Marc can repay him with free cleaning one day.
During your time at Meharry, you were part of 100 Black Men. What is that group about? How did your time with them impact you? Why would you recommend joining groups while pursuing an education?
100 Black Men was a scholastic extension to a children’s organization called 100 Kingsmen. The children of affluent blacks across the country (mostly in the south) had their kids in this organization to help get them on the right path. That led us to be involved in some of their events, especially their annual banquets. However, this organization taught me the importance of service. We went to the Nashville Rescue mission to serve in the kitchen and feed the homeless men that came there. Joining these organizations, especially when pursuing higher education, reminds you of the importance of giving back and also not feeling too elevated and big-headed.
Marc credits his definitive shift to dentistry to Dr. Alan Woodson. Dr. Woodson was Director of Music at Mount Rubidoux, a local congregation in California that Marc attended during his time there. After seeing Dr. Woodson in action at the office, Marc knew that this was what he wanted to do. It only took one time.
What was your favorite class at Meharry and why? Who was the professor?
My favorite class was my Business class but I don’t remember the professor’s name. I liked that class because we got to discuss the business side at an early level. Building vs buying a practice, but looking at the numbers from a research standpoint.
Describe a tough day during your schooling. What did you do to get through?
I feel like schooling is tough overall. No one particular day stands out to me. The overall idea is learning to be humble, patient, and stoic. Dealing with getting dragged for making mistakes, you just gotta pick up and do better. Instead of being sensitive about being offended for falling short, you go read to fill in whatever information you’re missing. School is very self-directed. You have a lot of forces influencing you to do or not do what you need to do. Only you suffer the consequences of your choices. You don’t have to be incredibly brilliant to make it thru dental school. However, you need some valor of discipline. I actually felt like my master’s was harder information for me. Dentistry was like drinking water from a fire hydrant. It’s not the content it’s the quantity that makes it difficult.
I remember an upperclassman I used to see going for a smoke at the side entrance when I was a freshman (D1). He was a sophomore (D2). I didn’t see him that following school year. Sometimes you assume they transferred or got kicked out if they didn’t join your class the next year. Two years later I saw him working at a newly constructed Applebees in Nashville. I felt bad because I knew that was a harder way to pay back them student loans. So those moments of clarity help you get thru. I’m gonna get this done or else.
If you were to add one course to the school of dentistry curriculum, what would it be?
I would add a course on leadership and management. I think one of the number one things that dentists deal with is the reality that you come out of school and are a leader in almost every place of employment. You have to learn how to manage teams, and how to train. Also, I would suggest a course on sales. A lot of times people feel like just telling a patient what treatment they need is enough. I think that’s just the beginning.
What advice would you give to someone who wanted to become a Dentist?
Make sure you have the right motivation for becoming a dentist. It can be rewarding and sometimes it doesn’t feel rewarding at all.
If you were to give three short study tips, what would they be?
- Mnemonics: its a really easy way of remembering lists or categories of information
- Record yourself reviewing those mnemonics or other information that seems tedious to remember. Therefore on your free time in your car or waiting around, listen to them. Maybe make tiktoks teaching that content you’re learning as a way of reinforcing the knowledge and monetizing it.
- Find a study group you vibe with. I studied best in a group. It made it fun and others can share information you’ve missed. In teaching each other stuff or reviewing stuff together, your ability to recall some random fact someone mentioned in a study group might pop up on a test. You probably never saw it yourself but because someone said it, it would be in there somewhere.
There are a good deal of people with a fear of the dentist. Do you think that some dentists contribute to that fear? If so, how? What makes your patients keep coming back to you?
In my years practicing dentistry I’ve heard so many stories. I take everything with a grain of salt. People’s perceptions and reality are never aligned. Therefore as a dentist, you have to be cognizant of the fact that people come in with preconceived notions, whether they’ve been to the dentist or not. They’ve googled, and they’ve asked people their opinions. They have enough information making it debilitating to their desire to come.
Yesterday, while covering for a doctor, I literally had a female patient tell me she would rather have another c-section than get that tooth pulled. By the time the procedure was done she was shocked, and happy at how smooth it was. I believe these fears are highly predicated by many dentists certainly. Firstly, when a dentist gets unhappy in their career it can lead to indifference which inherently causes them to lose empathy. Patients at that point feel like a number rather than a person, which often leads to them feeling like the quality of the care was poor.
Truthfully its easy as a dentist to become unhappy in one’s career because its a snowball effect. Unhappy patients make an unhappy dentist, which further makes unhappier patients. I’ve had to alter my mindset during my career. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I’ve had times in the past where a patient disrespected me in one room and I go into the next room and look down. I read reviews and would see things like, “I heard so much about Dr. T, everyone tells me he’s so good but when I came in for my exam I felt like I didn’t get that same person, so I’m not going back”. When you hear things like that you realize that your energy has to be reset from whatever else you’re experiencing and you have to bring your best to every patient.
They are constantly looking for a reason to doubt their decision. Don’t give them one. Therefore to show every patient that you care about them, you also have to shake off the negative hits you receive from others all day. A patient needs you to be in a positive state so that you can truly show empathy and concern for what they’re experiencing. Yes a million people will come to us with the same problem but it’s almost always they’re first time dealing with it, you can’t show disinterest in what concerns them.
Skillset is another factor that makes people scared of the dentist.
I’ve heard so many stories of patients saying an extraction took 2hrs. The doctor climbed on the patients chest or put their knee on their chest or something of the sort. Tugging on someones head for two hours and they’re awake is a travesty and, believe you me, we’ve all been there. However, what made patients come back to me is that I choose extractions within my skillset. My skillset has also grown over the years from being up for a challenge and because of that experience, what may seem difficult to others presents itself as easy to me.
My assistant and I used to measure extractions by songs. I would ask how many songs for this full mouth extraction. She would say 2 or 3 songs. When I pull out all the teeth that fast, patients are in shock and awe because they’ve had a dentist struggle on one tooth.
The other factors that keep patients coming back outside of skillset and empathy is building rapport. People do business with those that they know, like and trust. I’m a private person so I don’t share too much about myself but I get the patients talking about themselves and find ways to connect with what they are saying. You crack jokes with them because this is a people business. You educate them so they feel that you are an authority in your area of expertise. Patients have had a substantial amount of doctors especially in the past where authority was assumed by position and therefore they trusted blindly. We don’t live in that era anymore. You have to earn trust.
What do you love about being a dentist? Can you see yourself doing anything else? If so, what would it be?
I do love being a dentist. I just recently quit my job and I took 2 months off from working and came back as a temp doc and it’s allowed me to feel re-invigorated about the work itself. The aspect of dentistry that I enjoy is making people feel better, look better and be happier. Anything outside of that can blur that focus. Also realizing that I am more than just a dentist, I’m a creative, an artist who expresses his artistry in science and outside of science. That allows me to see dentistry in a new lens. A lens where I’m not defined by only being this one thing. I have a talent or rather talents. Those talents allow me to be able to do dentistry, make film, play drums, sing, design clothes, branding, and be excited about entrepreneurship. Whatever your talents are, they can bring you joy and/or income. People like to label you and place you in a box. You have to live outside of whatever box people want to put you in. Sometimes career can be that box.
You co-founded a company by the name of Scripic. What is it about? How did that get started?
In 2011 after years of being disappointed with Christian content, my partner and I decided we wanted to have an impact on the Christian film community. We created ScriPic which signifies Scripture in Picture. Our goal was to change the world one frame at a time. We since shot a web series under that brand. We’ve since taken on two new partners and dissolved the ScriPic brand.
We are now known as The MARS Bros. Your audience can search for us on IG or on my page. I have links to our content on my linktree. We are a full production house. We shot a short film last year called Hero which was an inspired story of an attorney whose last chance to live is to rekindle a relationship with her estranged father. That short film was shot with 2 pastors playing lead characters. Pastors Damian Chandler and Rudolph Peters. They are currently using the film for evangelism.
MARS stands for Marc, Alex, Ron, & Stephen.
We were involved with Christian director Anthony Hackett in his full feature Hope Lives which you can watch on Amazon. I was a producer on that project and my business partner Ron was the Director of Photography. We shot and directed multiple music videos for bands and artists and we just finished post-production on a movie called Cameron that will be on Tubi.
You did your residency at Bronx Lebanon Hospital. NYC locals who don’t reside in the Bronx like to make jokes about it. How was your experience there? Did you live in there or were you commuting? What stayed with you from your time there?
I did my residency in NYC because in the state of NY you need to have a one-year residency to become a licensed dentist as opposed to all other states that only require an exam that you can successfully complete in school. It’s funny I never realized there was such a heavy joke on the Bronx because my dad pastored two churches in Harlem that had lots of members who lived there. I’ve spent a significant amount of time there. So I never looked at the Bronx differently.
When I was coming back to NYC for residency my cousin was looking for a roommate in Hamilton Heights in Manhattan which was a 20min train ride. However, as a resident, our objective on call was to deal with dental infections and facial lacerations. The amount of stuff I dealt with. Young teenagers fighting from Manhattan and Bronx came there for facial lacerations. A few robberies where people were stuck with blunt objects.
My first needle stick, second week in residency, was a guy who got hit in the head with a bottle on payday and robbed. A few of my non-NY’er friends learned the hard way what a buck-fifty was. One of my study buddies from dental school came to residency with me. Literally, her first case, she had over 120 stitches to do on a guy who was robbed. However, the volume of work that I had to do on subjects of violence or dental infections increased my skills drastically in such a short amount of time.
I concur with the Urban Dictionary’s definition of a buck-fifty being “A tear inflicted by a cutting instrument (e.g. a knife or a box cutter) in the skin of the cheek from one corner of the mouth toward the lateral ear.” Tears of that type today may not be referred to as such in younger parlance.
In the Bronx, there is a huge culture of patients coming in for emergency treatment but not really consistently finishing their treatment. So many patients become reinfected and had to come again. So daily we are inundated with all kinds of dental emergencies in the regular clinics. We would do extractions on the same day that we do the first step in root canals on patients with huge abscesses.
The worst abscess I ever dealt with. I was in the clinic on my oral surgery rotation and on-call that day. So I got a call from the hospital ER to come and check on a patient. The guy had such a large abscess. It was a pseudo Ludwig’s angina because it didn’t go over to both sides. It hadn’t gotten to the other side because it burst a 2cm hole on the side of his face. I had to call the OS department and they said to wait there. They came over with the OS residents from Montefiore and we immediately went to the OR scrubbed in and I assisted in a 5-6 hour surgery where they had to suction out the abscess from all the spaces between the muscles in his face. If he had not come in when he did he could’ve died that day.
Those kinds of experiences, often rare, prepare you for incidences in private practice. You can’t just give someone antibiotics for that. They need the hospital. The other thing is that school is a very controlled environment and the Bronx is NOT. In school, I think I did a total of 25 extractions to get my check to finish those requirements. I did 125 extractions in my first 2-3 weeks in residency in the Bronx. In school, we saw two patients on average a day. Appointments were 3hrs long because you had to get every single step checked before you can move on. In residency, on average, I was seeing 16-17 in my clinic and upwards of 40-50 on rotations. It got me easy to the point to manage the demands of private practice. My whole career, I’ve seen on average 25-30 patients a day on busy days. Rarely higher than 40. So you need that load of difficult patients to make it a breeze.
You also started your own dental practice after working 4 years for Oakdale Mall Dental. Your practice is now over 6 years old. What’s the toughest part about running a dental practice? Dealing with insurance? People?
Man, you did your research. I did work in Oakdale Mall for 4years, I also worked at their sister office in King Plaza Mall. I also worked for small stints at some other Medicaid offices. I felt like dentistry in NY wasn’t going to be a long-term game plan for me. I had intentions to move to Chicago and got into an office in Peoria, IL with Aspen that had an opportunity for purchase.
Earlier you asked about my favorite class in dental school. In that business class, we had an assignment that we had to research buying a practice versus building one. I felt that I was more interested in purchasing a practice. So Aspen provided me with a streamlined way to buy an office with them. However, the toughest parts of my experience as an owner have been that it’s their system and they really call the shots. They try to say they partner with you but you need their support to be at optimal. Turnover in leadership in and out of the office can be really damaging especially when splitting profits 50/50.
Managing people has been the most daunting part since covid especially. If you have great talent and you don’t want to let them go but they want to leave because of the organization, that can hit your bottom dollar trying to get the right person to fit into that system.
I think insurance is going to be the death of the profitably of the industry. Nowhere can someone buy a pair of Jordan’s for 56% of the cost but somehow in dentistry, our services are highly discounted. Yesterday I was talking to an Office Manager at a different practice who’s accepting Medicaid now. Crowns are reimbursed at a rate of $256. That is absolutely ridiculous because more than likely they are paying the lab anywhere from $75-125. The doctor working is getting 33% for his production. That’s $84. $256-84-75=$97 profit for the office with this case that took 2 appointments total time 1.5hrs. Whereas that office probably charges $700-900 for a crown straight out cash.
With private insurance, that same $256 at 56% jumps up to $392 to $504. So inherently, the lower the socioeconomic status, the lower the quality of care, the lower the empathy, and the furtherance of fear of dentistry in those communities.
Communities such as South Bronx inherently become disparaged with poor overall care because they are primarily Medicaid communities. I’ve worked at an office on Webster Ave in the Bronx where they do all the dental work in one appointment because they know patients are not coming back. There was a female Asian dentist who had a daily guarantee salary, but she did not want to do all the work on a patient in one visit. They told her she either has to switch to production only or quit. She did not return the next day.
I soon thereafter left that office. It was not a healthy environment to practice dentistry for both doctors and patients. Aspen didn’t take Medicaid and our fees are higher but inherently as time went on I noticed insurances were paying less and less. I since have sold that practice back to the company. Many dentists are not accepting a lot of insurance anymore. Selectivity in insurance is some of the ways that they can remain productive and profitable.
As mentioned at the onset, I’ve known you for years as a drummer. Generally, most boys gravitate towards the drums. When did you start playing? What motivated you? Do you still play today?
I started messing around with those hangers with the paper or wood in the middle when I was about 8 years old. At the time I was at Morija and they didn’t have drums. So on Friday nights, I used to go to Bethanie, my birth church, with my uncle who was the Youth Director. I used to watch the drummer there who was Ricardo and Claudie who was 11/12. So seeing another kid playing the drums made me excited about the drums and very motivated to play. I didn’t know how to play yet.
I was going to The Queens Conservatory of Music for Violin lessons and Music Theory. So when I got there from school, I had time between my theory class and my violin class. Afterward, I waited for my mom who worked for a company down the block. During that time I asked the drum teacher who also was the office assistant to teach me. He said he couldn’t give me free lessons, and I didn’t want to ask my mom to pay. So I said I can learn on my own if he just showed me how to set up the drums.
He said, “ok, I’ll do you one better. Help me out around the office and I’ll teach you some basics to get you on your way.” So after school on Wednesdays, I left Jackson Heights SDA school to quickly head over to Flushing by train to help him with whatever the assignment was that day so he can teach me something. So he would have work for me waiting when I got there. I would have to fold papers and put them in envelopes and stamp them, or open envelopes and organize mail. I would staple stacks of papers and cut up posters. Whatever he needed to have done.
Then he would take me to the big room where the drums were and he would teach me how to hold sticks, how to set up the drums, what they were called, and all that. For 4 years I did this from like 8-12 every Wednesday. My favorite rap songs that I played to were Mic Geronimo – Mast I.C back in 95, and Survival of the Fittest by Mobb Deep. Those two songs are the backbone of how I learned drums and of course everything Blackstreet.
I actually still play drums but I haven’t played drums out since 2019. I didn’t play for almost all of covid. I’ve only been back on drums for real since September of last year practicing at home. Drums is in my blood even when I don’t play for real, I still AirPlay. LOL!
Absolutely. At the level you’ve gotten to, drumming isn’t going anywhere. What is your favorite dish?
My favorite dish is black rice with sauce noix and macaroni-au-gratin.
Black rice, sauce noix, and macaroni-au-gratin are made in particular ways by Haitian cooks. Visit a reputable native or restaurant for an authentic experience.
What is the last book you read that you would recommend and why?
The last book I read was The Nutshell Technique by Jill Chamberlain. It’s a book about screenwriting. I recommend it because it helps to define what a story is and provides a good formula for writing engaging stories.
You can find out more about Jill by visiting jillchamberlain.com.
Are there any projects and/or organizations that you are involved with that you would like the community to be made aware of?
Not at the moment. I kind of been taking the last few months to realign my purpose and focus, so I’ve been focused on studying, learning and expanding my mindset.
Marc, pleasure to have you.