Your fearless hero has just returned from The Big Apple. As much as I love Florida, part of me will always belong to New York. That is where my family had their start in this country and when I walk amongst the hills of Fort Tryon Park, where the stones themselves always seem to speak to me. There are so many layers of our nation’s history, my family’s history and, now, of my own personal history enfolded within the shadows of the old castle-like buildings that rise above the Hudson River.
Having grown up as a child with roots in different states, I’ve always felt that America is not so much one nation, as it is an alliance of separate countries. Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Texas, New York… each state has its own character. The people of each region have their own social mores, traditions and culture… and that’s ok. I don’t want to live in a United States where everyone is the same. I’m a little southern and I’m a little yankee. I’m a little Anglo and a little Latin and I feel that my art, my character and my life are richer because of the diversity of the traditions I draw from.
My cultural roots run deep into the soil of this land, this Turtle Island, the land of the Lakota Sioux and Lenape and Tequesta Indians. They stem from the misty isles of Britain and the vast plains of Scythia. I am inspired by the traditions of Mexico, Spain, Greece and Rome. All of these threads converge, for me, right here in the United States: In New York, In Miami, yea, even in this little village of Lake Worth, my funky little diamond in the rough, protected, perhaps, by its own checkered reputation from the kinds of development that destroy all that is unique and, therefore, precious.
And so, with roots spanning half the globe, I feel that I am a part of something greater than myself. I am a branch in this mighty tree that stands on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and all the wisdom, life and power that flows through those roots, flow through my very being as well, to burst forth through the words I write, the music I compose and the joy I feel every morning when I step outside and say to myself, “This is paradise!”