…I worked next to the very best buskers in London, at all the top spots, and I distinctly remember I lived in Chelsea in a flat with a few other artist types and the most memorable of all was the English girl. She was so beautiful, in so many ways – tall, brunette, short hair, skinny, beautiful blue eyes and an aura to die for. Just being in the same room was a high; I can’t remember her name but I do remember Mimi the Russian immigrant that I went to the Isle of White with. She was blonde and so full of life and joy it didn’t matter where we were. It was perfect to be there – I’m talking about the Isle of White festival of ’69! Dylan was the headliner and we were all in tents and in the woods playing Robin Hood or something. It’s funny how much more courageous a person is at 17.
Anyway, somehow I ended up in Ireland, in Belfast, going to see Rottersly in his castle on the western tip of Ireland. He is part of the Royal Family but of course I don’t remember the details of how he was connected. I do however remember the big f@#$@#)&K of a castle that he lived in and the huge breakfast table we all sat and were served at! AND I do remember the woods we hunted in and the entourage that he had and I remember that on my way to get there I somehow ended up going to the war-torn section of Ireland. Don’t ask me why or how but I distinctly remember the road blocks and barricades. Anyway, I made it out unscathed and returned to The States all the more wiser, for the wear. In The States, I formed part of many unknown bands ‘Home Cookin’’, ‘Part One’, ‘Rivers Edge’… too many to mention… ‘Parts and Labor’, ‘LA Blue Band’ etc… ending up in Vegas with ‘Ron Pearson and the Ron Dons’, playing every casino on the strip at that time.
After that I went to Alaska to make videos of Eskimo life. It was for a promotional incentive to the teachers to go up and educate a population of human beings that have been living in peace for over 100,000 years. What a joke! …but it was eye-opening to say the least. The Eskimos have no running water in winter and so the only way to keep clean is in steam baths. They don’t have what we call conversations… the oldest guy speaks and all the others listen. The language is so obscure that it was used in the war to relay messages between the troops; it’s called Yupik. They are not violent in any way, so the way they measure how strong you are is how long you can stand the heat of the sauna. I know!… WEIRD… but true! They don’t knock when they come into your house they just walk in. They don’t discipline their children, they cannot afford enemies at 99 years old in the dead of winter! They couldn’t understand me when I tried to explain we didn’t really give a damn about them and that we were just up there to rip-off their resources and exploit them as much as we could. It just wasn’t part of their ability to understand that culture or that type of subtle underhanded covert, sneaky, sly, clandestine activity. It was a blank stare that I got – not an acknowledgement of understanding. It was BIZZARRE to say the least. Sex is a totally different venue there; so different that I was at a complete total loss of how to connect with the girls. The only girls I was able to connect with were the girls/women from the lower 48 states. Their way of courting was so distant and foreign from my experience that it was as if I was on Mars, or I may as well have been because I had no real frame of reference to be able to connect with the opposite sex in a conventional western culture way. It’s weird and I really don’t know how to describe it well enough. Suffice to say I did not have many Eskimo girlfriends as we were from different planets. Don’t get me wrong… we got along, we liked each other… but something was not there. It was like I said, we were on different planets. So, anyway, the odd thing about the Eskimos is that, like I mentioned before, they really don’t have what we call conversations. Let me put it this way… say we are standing around in a room, eating and drinking and just hanging out… as soon as an elder walks in or comes near everyone comes to a subtle form of ATTENTION. It’s not military attention, it’s more like it all gets quite and everyone is waiting for the elder to say something. I’m telling you… it is bizarre… to us, anyway! So then I made the movies or videos and I saw the sun on the horizon at midnight and I crossed the frozen rivers with dog sleds and I fished in the hole in the ice and I made entire villages sing songs I wrote and march around in the village with happy faces. Then it was over…
…and I came back to earth and ended up in Costa Rica in a band called ‘Fly’ on the way to La Costa Del Sol in 1989/90 ending up in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti at the wrong time. It was in 1991 when they decided to throw out Aristide, the president, and things looked not so good for the only white guy in amongst 3 million black guys angry about something. So I lived in a resort of sorts called Labadi and then was moved to a plantation with a doctor by the name of Luc Sterlin who I wrote ‘Jumbo Say’ with and there I learned something else… a slave population never loses the trauma suffered at the hands of their oppressors. For instance, let us say there is something you (you being a Haitian) want to convince an entire population of a small island about… all you do (again YOU being a Haitian person)… is take a white guy with you to the meeting and immediately your credibility just shot through the roof; because you as a Haitian person only know subservience or obedience to the master which in this case would be a white male generally speaking. So it is actually built into your genes that white male equals “yes sir, no sir”. I saw it with my own eyes, I am not making anything up. Slavery leaves a stain on your person that even generations cannot erase. It was absolutely incredible to see the power of a white male figure in that culture. I knew I had to split but I didn’t know how. BUT I knew that whatever I said would be taken as law so I wrote a bogus check got on a plane with my wife and we got out of there in one piece. We landed in Florida and claimed political asylum so my wife (who is English) could enter the country.
And the rest is history as they say. We made it to Los Angeles by the grace of God and unbeknownst to us that is exactly what God was doing in our lives all along… He was bringing us to Los Angeles to my brother’s house to meet one of HIS domatas for this hour on earth. A guy named Dr. Gene Scott from who we have since learned two things… (1) God is not a figment of our imagination or something we invent in our minds that makes us able to co-exist with HIM because He isjust a creation of our own invention and imagination but rather God exists outside of our mind and His plan is very exact and precise and is documented in what we call the Bible the Old and New Testaments and in this document. He speaks to us about His situation as it relates to our situation. It is not HIS fault that we have manhandled His documents and distorted them beyond all recognition. That is just the way man is. That is how He made us… able to choose… and of course we choose what we want 99 percent of the time. So say you are a Calvinist – you will choose you Calvinist chose regardless of any pre-existing reality and so it is with all forms of organized religion. So that is why we know we were brought to LA to meet this guy who is not in any way partial to religion of any kind specially ORGANIZED religion. (Let me know if this gets too heavy and I’ll just move on to more placid or less controversial topics) … so the upshot of my entire life is that I was kept alive through all my trails and tribulations to arrive in LA in ’91 last weekend in November to be brought to the life changing reality that there is a God and I am very related to this God and His Son Jesus the Christ. Who was not an ordinary human being… and (2) the devil is also real and looking to see who he may devour as a roaring lion. Believe it or not, I am even more grateful that Dr. Gene Scott taught me that, as I am all that he taught me about God and His story because the most sure fired way to lose a war is to not know that one exists. AND the war is for our souls and it is a serious one. Ask any person who ever tried to do something for God they will tell you…
Anyway, there you have it. That is my story and I’m stickin’ to it!
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