Who was I before they came?
A Poetic Cinema TestimonyBy Vernon Snell
Length43m
About this audiobook
Who Was I Before They Came? is a deeply personal Poetic Cinema testimony by Vernon Snell, born from a lifetime shaped by Washington Heights, street codes, danger, immigration, drug policies, survival, business, family, addiction, and loss. After decades of living in motion, psychological crisis turned his mind toward the past. Then COVID stripped away businesses, relationships, financial stability, and eventually his mother. In the silence that followed, Vernon began writing. His thoughts became poems.
Through questions about money, language, numbers, identity, desire, art, freedom, the brain, heart, and soul, he examines what the world places inside us and what remains underneath it all. “They” is not one enemy—it can be the street, system, screen, market, law, expectation, addiction, fear, or lessons we inherit.
The poems are followed by The Mind Looking Back, revealing the lived experiences behind them.
What part of us existed before the world told us who to be?
Audiobook details
GenreBiography and Memoir
Length43 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 22, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1A Poetic Cinema Testimony
24Where kindness spread like sunlight.
2ARCHIVE EDITION
25Beneath every skin
3DEDICATION
26Surviving.
4BEFORE THE POEMS
27Listen beyond the fear.
5HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
28Slaves to the Colonized
Show all chaptersShow less
6CONTENTS
29Yeast.
7A SHORT NOTE ON VERNON SNELL
30Who was I
8PROLOGUE
31The Stars on the Ground
9I Am Not They, I Am Me
32For communication.
10Numbers Versus My Soul
33They age.
11This place.
34Art Cannot Act
12Just Want to Breathe
35of something invisible
13I Wish I Could Eat My Art
36Perhaps the art lives
14Born into confusion.
37A signal.
15A place where souls bloom
38Patterns of Deceiving
16No formula.
39Dreams.
17Tax my numbers.
40The brain reacts.
18Above the labels.
41mixed with desire.
19The clouds sign no agreements.
42For whom?
20My Art Belongs to Me
43Was I simply a soul
21Not to markets.
44ABOUT VERNON SNELL
22But my art belongs to me.
45ABOUT POETIC CINEMA
23We Are All Each Other
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