hi welcome to confessions of the creative soul and i'm your host stephanie lynn wilson confessions of the creative soul is in a march to the beat next to that glorious time in new york city where creativity cosmologist of creativity with people that i call our teeth they are artists who are what they do they're not motivated by anything outside of themselves by fame of fortune but they on their ar and they are the ones i feel most qualified to speak about that very same serendipitous occurrence that happens once in a while we're creating and my guest this evening is the story is a taurus born in the city of buffalo by two immigrant parents from india and i'm in born the origin story is my dad was a physicist and that had a great influence on me he had a great influence on me my my father and steve cannane who are going to devote our talk today and then in the next show when i have other friends on with stephanie's been so nice to have this well my dad was a physicist and he believed in energy and then i have since become an energy worker i'm a reiki master i'm a healer i'm a writer i'm an activist or because all those things go together you know i mean you can't with your heart separate the child from his conditions from you know the  love that either they get or they don't go up where others are going to bring me back to earth i grew up mostly in pennsylvania and scranton pennsylvania but before or after buffalo we want back to india i spent five years there are six and then we came to alabama and my dad got a full tenure ship but he was a professor at but  psychology and then i went to france and i studied cultural anthropology but really i was studying like bohemia like ideas for themselves and i had this dream where the forests were being topped and turned into thesis is and that was mike skews to leave academia you know my sister says i should've stayed by me and i left it and i've never looked back so what school did you go to in the states i went to the i went to hunter college for of a minute but i was too green and new york scared the hell out of me so i went back to the university of scranton where my dad had you know full tuition remission for us and then i also studied at the university of delhi in india for a year it was kind of a hodgepodge thing which ended up with a now how did you finally make your way to new york city sense st you were afraid of it and how did it finally will you win was a little kid little kid like one thousand and eleven years old i remember being in a car with my parents and my family and we used to come to new york city to buy spices because there was no only i live  is like this and i'm over here so this is the north south west east so i'm like north east this isn't that paul here the himalayas that's that's where i that's where my dad was and so were  pradesh and i and dad was a physicist and he really wanted to go back that's why we went after my birth and i was i was anchor baby way before the term was hit and  didn't in buffalo new york and then we went back because dad always wanted to live in india again you know like so many immigrants he was torn because you know your whole world is one thing and then it becomes another thing twice with this guy who was living in our house and my dad thought i was in love with him but i wasn't because i'm a lesbian and i didn't even know that at the time anyway new york city so st i got an internship at the united nations and and i was like we're going there and i was living in the riverside drive at the international house and it was fun i've always been involved with the international with a mix of people which kind of ties in when i get home i don't you see when somebody becomes such a part of your life you can't really separate past present future that could be and i poem i'm a writer and so i'm your writer what does that mean that as a bit speculative fiction i have a book that's called a different kind of new kind of that phone i always stumble on that because i wanted to call it a different kind of ba k my partner girlfriend slash person in my life is the one who did it and she called it a new kind of backbone basically we want to talk about with all my people that i consider  and i consider you an r t s because if you knew and we will talk about steve cannane but if you knew him and if you were close to him i know you are true artists like your mark is what you do and who you are there with me i believe in dreams i believe in the power of dreams i believe in the subconscious i believe in  guzzles the house flooded with music all the time and him reciting and me david and i and plus the science the you know the physics you know laws of motion you know newton you know put are made of the material of stars you know that earth wind and fire song that is true that's reality distantly we are stardust and gold and all the other call it comes from the same thing we were frakt the same way as anything other material in the world and this idea of consciousness again then that brings me to into my hindu background a little bit because because i was always raise understanding that everything has consciousness rocks have consciousness animals have consciousness plants have consciousness now the direction of my life and how it got into our once i got to paris i had already  play did called staying alive with that song stella and it was kind of like all these stick figures on top and six figures on bottom and this big kind of wave kind of crashing through so it was this idea of how we struggle to stay alive and and i think that kind of no you know i never thought of this before this is like so great because really my whole life isn't calculated in that little painting that i did on the spur of the moment just to be part of this thing with a bunch of people because really that is kind of the crux of what i see in this world is this kind of struggle to to liberate on recall a moment of when i mean some people reaches zero on some people depending on what the art is or whatever spare and some people they make a mistake and then it turns out oh my god i don't mean to do that but it works i usually in my experience i do what can you recall to if anything to validate the cosmologist your creativity a moment that you've had a  there's myself i would say i remember when i got back to new york city from paris i lived for four years in paris for five years and then i came back and i was just in love with the lower east side of manhattan i fell in love i fell in love a top that's where park i met john and i met junior and i met you know diane burns and and wave of four anything jelled into any kind of organization the were reading is instead well this and i wrote a poem where this is what we're talking about that time in the village west and east village that creativity everybody was an artist almost you know whenever you walk down the street you were bound to bump into somebody to say ok come on we're doing this or whatever and that's what i miss about new york and a lot of a lot of the reason that that's dying almost dead like i said it's on life support it's because of the rent markets can't afford to live here and and and we keep bringing you know it's like you said we can hope bring up steve but he was like reminiscent reminiscent of that time he was fed last he was a big in and attracted all those true or teased you know and it's amazing and we'll talk about that later how so many people that know him i know and you can you know it's just amazing because he was like a light  my where am i in this what am i supposed to be talking about right now well we're talking about the cosmopolitan what like what you were writing of me you know of me is you know i am i don't believe that i can talk about me without talking th and six and that's where we took service here and there was a building once the th street so yeah so we would know it was oh my god it was just so rich and i talk about the beatniks and i was in the sixty's but it still it was still the east village you know i used to be the president of the th street block association so i'm not averse to organizational you know like administrate of stuff you know i kind of enjoy that i mean when the rodney king beating happened we had a huge turnout on a lot of the street people were people needed a place to go and i get back to stephen what that guy can i can't resist and he he was a space was well you can talk more about you know that in depth about his life but he was a man that was a treasure in the east village that everybody knew him and he  just he knew a lot of poets and you got people together and he he created a magazine for artists and his his life his his home was an open door for anyone who wanted to create and the way i steve i had escaped to boston because it was so much going on the crown heights of korean boycott i was freaking out and i said i got to get out of here and i rented a truck and i moved to boston and i can't wait to get back  but then one day i came down because i would always come back home to new york to visit and i went to new your rig and for the st time and i think the really i'm not i don't remember why i went there i think patricia smith was living in boston who was you know i think because she was doing something i don't i can't remember but now i'm sitting at the bar and steve you know he was but he was blind at the time and you know sunglasses he sitting at the edge of the bar heckling whe man oh man i'm so anyway to make a long story short man steve became friends and i wanted to do i was doing a documentary at the time and i wanted to run and he to do their poem misstep and that's what these bongos from that time is nine hundred and ninety three dollars or ninety four dollars and that's why i bought these bungalows because i wanted the theme to be kind of like big nick and so we had poets and stuff like that but it was below zero it was night zero so to turn out with a not good but these poets showed up and it's all because of steve he arranged that while i was living in boston and and i would come and visit him from time to time and then when i moved now africa and she was a beauty videographer then i cast her in a workshop production of one of my plays and then robin givens my play my doctor did screen plays it off off broadway and  thing steve was a spy like i said it's space as much as he was a human being he was an open door like you said and seven eleven got nothing on steve because you could walk into his house at three o'clock in the morning sometimes you know see it live down rd street between haven't you c and d he had the back garden he had his couch which was where what you would walk in on the kitchen in the bathroom on the side back room and then a room behind him which was the main studio a little office and my god i can see that place so space but in the connections that led to other things happening all over the place i mean you know know this this guy right now to day there is a woman i'm talking to in the netherlands who still doing a project that's steve related and when she talked to him about it it was a little poetry reading she wanted to do and he said well why don't you get into a drought that i am and spreading hammond's like that because he could he like he would like you know i knew him before he was blind i knew him when he could see but how did you meet him i met him until his career park that before he was behind most for he was born he was on his bicycle he was almost bicycle i was talking to my really good friend junior who has since passed and junior was a very good front to steve's to and junior was a painter i don't know junior's name other than junior but we called him the mayor sure would for us which was our name for tom could square park and we he had this bench in a lot and it was before they closed down the encampment when people actually lived in the park and he slept there junior did and other is a stall pope beautiful black pole a really tall guy name like more something very whatever but he used to come in at three o'clock in the morning and we would like throw rhymes and each other you know and what happened to the roof parties there were yourself you know and then you had to tell him about yourself and then he was a well oh and then he would like he would tell you what to do with what you just told him well you should write and you should go over there and you should read a poem over there and you should do this and you should do that and you're doing a painting ok well there's this thing that i think is such a resource so i'm in boston he's organizing my from raising and i don't know what four minutes and he's just generous with his time and his his mind and i'm not going to his knowledge yes exactly and his mind may i just say that he would remember details of a person's life that they might not remember and then he would say to them what's going on with such and such and then be like and then he would remind them that's the kind of person so glider whatever he's done life you know so and i miss him dearly but let me just say that his legacy is a community that he created and we are already talking amongst each other and we are not going to let his his  space that he created of multicultural multiethnic multiply media multilingual is a guy he didn't care oh yeah it was without but water yeah it was a real family i mean this is what he's the essence of what is dying in the order in new york city and the ghetto you know people come here like i said people come here to new york now but oh they want the arts and i know it's a skeleton of the for and steve would hamper his passing it's like he was the last i don't know who what can i say we're here i know when i'm there are you hearing yeah he still kept that that flame i was coming back from texas and i wanted to call him i wanted to call him but i decided not to stop at the rest area and to continue you know and it was just or all the time that he sell they told me and if i had just called it i mean you can't help i can't help it this is who i am i have to keep thinking about this if i had called him he would have sat he would have been on the couch he went out got his in turn this man had so many people go through tribes  like so many people go to his office he became blind but he created an organization and a magazine and brought all these people and people were always there to take care of him because they were being part of this is this other thing that was  really and so so at that day he got up he went to his bike to exercise because he's like well let me just go and get some exercise but he missed the pedal or the pedal was dog and he fell off and like many older people he hurt his hip and he went to the hospital it was a simple fracture it was easily repaired he was supposed to be out of there i remember the social worker coming in i was in his room i had come back from texas i was in his room so if you were comes in mr cannon mr cannon do you need long term or short term rehab mr cannon is there somebody at home yelling at my friend this this woman who and then i said excuse me he's eighty four years house and so he went there and the thing is that he had the hiccups and i was saying this is not right he should be having the hiccups for so long as a bit but i wasn't there on site all the time you know when you go to the hospital if you go to the hospital make sure you have an advocate make sure that they're two hundred and forty seven and make sure that there will following you from day one because that's what you need in america today ok because the fact of the matter is he went in he had hiccups he had pain they called we didn't recognize his pain because here's another fact of the matter black pain is not pain according to medicine often times there are twenty percent of the doctors today feel that black skin is thicker than other skin hello these are medically trained people and therefore they they think women's pain is not pain they think it's all in the head and if you're a black woman forget it by hearing it was blind and he was saying he was in pain and they were saying you just have to get up and do your exercises i never knew steve to be sick more than less than two handfuls of time in the thirty two years that i knew him thirty two years  are no longer care of the wounded care nurse came in and i understand i had just come back from texas and everything was happening very fast the hospital room is not a place of healing as a healer i could tell you this so his this leg left and then comes in and she reaches over here looks back here and she goes away and my mind was like wait a minute but i had no i was in the middle of a conversation with steve about something and he was you know like he would say telling lies to his in turn about how i used to take over his classes and that grabbers college never happened you know and so that's it then i didn't catch you know so basically it was it was negligence it was negligence and it was systemic racism so he and i it from septic what was a septic shock this shock because the abscess so his blood was poison and i'll tell you one thing about steve he always fought injustice he would always say well well well well why don't you do something what do you call margarita lopez when she was sitting  poetry and it don't whatever because that's basically what we're going to do i suggested that we give him a tribute because there's so many stories about him like i said i wasn't around him very  much because i actually i think i remember you coming you know i mean i you know i was there you know what the last time i saw him was nicky and then that child from the poet she did the poetry book the book signs of hair the last two years steve and i began to spend more time together going out to hear music at things like that it was he was very interested in jazz jazz was his heart being music wise he played the piano and he played it up toward the end and he and i were the last concert we went to was at the jazz gallery and the jazz gallery is made in the same spirit as tribes that is we don't care who you are we want to see what you do like just do something let's make something happen yeah you know it's not about are you a well known person oh we don't want the well known person we betty's played and there was a drummer there and he was slowly you know when he gets blown away i love when see because formally because he goes like this yeah he goes like this and you could just tell that he is trippin balls you know at that moment well i'm i'm very excited about you and the posse the family and the family because we're all a family when it comes to stevie gave birth to a lot people artistically and i can't wait to hear the stories and it goes to poems everything you know so much that i missed out on with him because i've been busy working on my own projects and you know i'm kind of a pricey some float and he  open mike which should be very exciting how many people you bring do you know there's melanie good rule i was my forget somebody but melanie best his his stepdaughter there's a car was the office manager and i've and it's a videographer and there's some somebody who is more recently in his life for the past five years lucy and most of the people that i'm talking about come from the ninety's i was happy to me jane fuentes again i've met her several times but you know after he died we got closer in a different way and i had a celebration for steve a four ever living tribute to him as a tree and on that tree we've hung beads because he always wore be and this is hopefully going to be a place where people can come not only to remember interesting yes i then sometimes just oil and water baby yeah yeah but that's the beauty and i hope you guys you know keep it moving keep it keep it going and i'm going to try and get more involved because i'm you know i like  my motto as an arc is a short while as we reel i've been i've been creating my producing my own projects with no budget i never had a budget i just we have many hats when i do it long as i can pay my  my my my talent and my crew and it's a struggle so you know when you're doing everything you don't really have time to reach out and network and and i mean i'm not good at like being aggressive group going on with steve and i all i popped in once a while i never forgot her thing will you won't you will you won't you will you join the dance well i always say i will and i won't which i find a dollar rehearsal to another and and also acting and one simultaneously yes i was trying to get in the guinness book of world records but they said it didn't because senator bennett considered to be simultaneous because it was it happened at the same time even though but i do it for love yeah that's what motivates me now other parts of my life for good i procrastinate i don't want to but when it comes to my art that's when the balls come out the big balls come out of i handle it i make it happen and it's a struggle and you know mary it's scary because you don't have what other people have that support those fundings don't grant stones cover to grants that only certain people can get we live in cruelty b you know like please take heart too many of us have left the planet you know recently i would like baby boomers and we're dying our friend now i don't know what's going to be you know i'm a little ones and the young ones they they don't have the