line was at the new york film on it and it ended on september th so i've been really busy and i didn't have time to interview anyone for a new good evening and welcome to confessions of the creative soul i'm your host and producer stephanie len wilson this talk show is an homage to those glory days in new york city when creativity flow through the tista who create for the love of it and because they have no choice like the beatniks as well their work is usually socially conscious or they have an activist spirit sunglasses and my backdrop and my bum is my way of paying respect to the beatnik era and thanks for tuning in my guests this evening is  really excited to honored wealth all of you so deserve it you are a real you have been around and you've done it and seen it all and you are truly a person i consider to be an artist because you do whatever you do i know for the love of it and you are multi talented so tell us about some of the things that you do i know you're an actor you are actually with the much and really met some wonderful people the cast was headed by the late rascally brown oh my tony of fargo this was a part of the ca esther role and several of the fascinating people so it was amazing to watch these people at their craft link to that was i had gone to audition for rod and he was preparing for a concert he says ok wait you know i waited i waited then he says you know dear it's just too much going on i can't deal with you right now he came to see the dreamer monkey luton oh my and invited me to join his company oh so how did you study dance before i oh yeah oh i said i was studying dance in my teens in jamaica where i'm from and i started studying when i was about and sixteen a friend of mine told me about this lady who was giving a free class once a week and i went and got so an armored with a dance after classes i remember i had to be going down the street and i would be dancing and practicing the moves that i'd done in class thank god the neighborhood at the time w started and then after a year of taking classes i just thought i would like to have more so what kind of dance were you studying well at the time when i started it was it was called study with ivy baxter who was a dance innovator in jamaica wonderful lady from vera she taught creative dancing also from there i went to study ballet oh wow and can you do point work where you don't know but while i was about to say  don't do point much less five act because in this day and age yeah so many boundaries and borders are being crossed exactly you see men doing point work today one of the companies i love to go to see is trocadero is a company of male dancers they do ballet and all the men do i went to work amazing and you are watching them and after a while you aren't even aware that these are males up there and so i go to see them every chance i get so when you study dance you said you were like a teenager was that the beginning of your creative journey it started out in was after i saw west side story  and i said that's it that's what i want to do i'm going to be a dancer and so eventually several used you know honored world probably you know get back to some of that in between but years and you know it's just dancing and music and what can you say it's just there's nothing that compares to that freedom and feeling was as a kid i went to see the circus every time they came to jamaica and i was just an amateur with the trapeze artists and  walk and i felt at the time oh i'm going to run away and join the circus well i didn't fly that high but i ended up flying anyway as a dancer but much closer but that i guess is where the artistic germ started you know which led me into actually learning how to so when did you come to new york i came to new york first in sixty eight and for years well my my parents were here and they're saying you know come to new york come to new york and i'm saying now oh i said no i i don't ever want to leave jamaica when you don't know you don't know so i came what's just floored by the number of dance schools because in jamaica and sixty eight yeah there were just about in kingston maybe but for dance schools at the time so there were so many schools so many you would like to do a bit part and so he wanted me to play a pimp and we were shooting on nd street and times as the mother so if you watch all those reruns that's who i stole and also driving miss daisy she was in that among many other things yeah anyhow she had met my parents so i look up the street and i see esther coming in s to sees me you know and i'm dressed in my bed and bottoms and stuff and my hat and she walked up to me she said what are you doing on here does your mother kno what color was just to do well and i had what do you call them platforms i had my st pair of platform shoes it was multi color and  were given you know besides our outfit the shoes and after the event we were told we could keep the shoes so yeah hide my my shoes on and had to learn to walk in them i don't know how you ladies do those sixty six inch or more still a lot of stuff because i had to learn to walk in them i tripped a coupl yourself you never know you're going to bump into early twenty's i got this urge to write and i wrote some pieces and i don't exactly remember what happened but i guess it was probably my st artistic kind from were temperament and something happened and i took them out into the yard and i set them a fire what a fire mark poetry and many times i wondered oh my goodness i would love to see what those were now a take a book to bed with you and if something comes up and insular started doing that again and i have not burned or thrown out anything since ok well let's  i am so glad you did that because you set me thinking and looking at my work from a different perspective yes the reason i want to investigate that and i think only true people i consider auti sed can do that because they're not motivated by any outside desire but they're just motivated because there's something within them so that's something that happens i know like when i write i sometimes it's an accident and people say that was great with it but some of it i'm just not responsible for this something that happened that was an accident but it made it it worked out absolutely and one time like i said i was i was i was on stage doing a matinee i had worked to the midnight to eight shift and i had to run home challenge change i was sick as a dog i was so sick i was a member of sidewalks theatre company a classical theater and i went i thought oh my god i'm so sick i can't there's no understudy there's what am i going to do how am i going to make through it as i was so sick and feverish and and i got on that stage i remember getting all i remember when i was off but anything in between i don't remember and i looked at my director who was very very strict thank you know that was a good thing because i really learned a lot and i looked at my colleagues to look at them that i did but nobody said anything was like nothing happened so i transit ended my illness on that stage i don't remember what talking about i think it was electro classical the what we were doing greek and i stand by that and i don't remember i don't know and these are things that's little things that you know that's what it's a little bit sometimes those little things if you really take a look when you're creating some magic happening there's something and if you think about the creative force that supernatural creativity is you know is this all connected oh yeah i have realized and come to true i started painting i don't know where it's going and after a while it speaks to me yeah it leads me yes have been aware from an early age in my early teens that there are certain spiritual forces around me that lead me guide me and speak to me i remember particularly one day sitting down to write something and just like what you have finished explaining it was just dimension of creativity is very real very powerful and that happens too with all aspects of the art because there are remember going on the stage i remember coming off but i don't remember exactly what happened in between and then there was this tremendous response from the audience which made me say but i was with a company called the oil nations company which was a wonderful company it was made up of dancers from different parts of the world and we would perform from our various cultures and teach each other some of this we were in residence at a university upstate and we were staying in the universit guesthouse and i remember it was a sunday morning and for some reason i woke up early the resolutely company were still asleep i walked out on the grounds and i was among the trees and shrubs shrubbery and i felt a force around me and the air was just vibrating and i so i stopped i became very still but strangely i did not feel afraid but there was this energy that was around me and that was palpitating and i stood there for i'm not sure and then i ran back inside and this was how i captured that moment that instant in this ye have died and not even the crickets chirping the very gods themselves seem to be waiting with bated breath the only movement now is that of the old tree at the end of the garden and not so much to creeks and groans but that sun quivers from her bare branches and even her whispers are growing fa connects us to the rest of the world and the message is that we are granted an opportunity to realize recognize make note and pass on is or connection to each other layperson or artist beautiful like music like drum is very resonate so much with us and we find it's part of our culture globally but when you hear a bell when that clock chimed even for a brief moment there is instant of stillness or being very aware of that moment it passes but it's like with you yeah yep times that are at work ok but this just goes along with the business of magic and it was a time when am a magical wizard how did the even the most wondrous wonder is improving on beauty and polishing the stars to a greater intensity but i have spent so many years giving my powers away making drop off out of my beautiful black self but no more i have you know i am again finding me and the you to do that to me because the rediscover is so overwhelming all those do's and don'ts should and should not they are all dead you hear me dead no more attempt at putting down or making note of creation and the creative process if you notice there are several human like figure is there are some figures that look like sperm swimming up the river  to be or not be energy if that is comes with creation is what i was capturing or trying to capture in piece those are two pieces the top one in genesis and the other one being birth of a star star this is number two and on the inside it says the road to heaven lies within you  we so many of us keep looking on the outside for for guidance for salvation and it's my personal conviction that all of  at can be found inside of us if we take the time to stop be still and listen we often end up giving or selves a way and not realizing the tremendous power vacs we have yeah and it's all over there but unfortunately so many people are caught up in the world of i must be doing something every minute or i must be talking every minute or i must be going somewhere every minute and we lose consciousness of ourselves and the beauty over so i think yeah  you know with the pressure of society and like a kindergarten now it's pre k so you're in school then you graduate high school then you got to go to college or you go to work and then you got to work st you can retire at school being in school or work and by the time we're free to explore where you know either on our way to death or our bodies that you can we can't do we can't really enjoy the fruits of said happily retired and there is nothing like having your time as your own to do whatever you wish with it or to do nothing at all if you don't feel like it yes genesis was another look at creation and the creative force and this is also note card so you have a website right yeah so we're going to put up that information but can you just let people know the name of your website the website w w that was the beginning of a piece they were actually three pieces and i had been working on these pieces for quite a while and i started go collages were something that i had always thought about doing because primarily my article i was you are it turned into a collage i have a point at that point it was just or oh my work has been mainly or on paper and canvas and some acrylic but i started exploring collages and those three pieces i ended up turning into collages because basically much of my artwork has been of a celestial nature but with these collages and what the theme of the exhibit was about i got a chance to explore my political artistic muscle and it really made me start to think about things in a different way and  in the universe just moving passing through space it's almost like watching the moon on an early morning rarely reflects my my root being a caribbean person i remember as a kid often go into the beach and i remember there was the beach and there were these coconut trees right by the beach and the satisfaction i get from that piece is people who have shown or true people would see looked and almost to a person they say the same exact words that i you were attracted to the arts or i had something to say well when i was in elementary school like my mother like i encourage my writing and my teachers encouraged me to write they saw something in me but like i six hundred and seventy eight years all you know no you know you just do it and i became a published poet at eight years old and the learning brain of parents magazine it was called went to wonderland i don't remember all of it but i remember the beginning it was a call day in january as you must know when the clouds opened up and it began to snow that's all i remember and then when i was in junior high school when i was in th grade graduating a junior high school my teacher wrote in my little what graph book to the future journalists and you know i wasn't even thinking about anything like that and i guess that's when i was just not conscious of it at the time that's when it all began is when the poetry and encouragement about writing and and things like that but ended up you know acting was really my release and then i ended up writing and stuff later on you know you do many things many things yourself is there one aspect it has quite a long history dance congo was recognized way back in the early th hundreds and it beauregard square where when the a slave got a day off they would meet on congo plains and you know meet and greet and practice their known dance katherine dunham who did a lot of research in haiti she brought back many dances and customs to america and largely change the face of bands in america by watch she brought back from her research before most dances even secular or religious would be done in an upright stance but then i'm came across a dance in haiti called young value which imitates the movement of a snake and the waves she brought that back and then that was incorporated in dance and really changed the face of dance you could see aspects of it when you see the ailey company doing revelations  another dance that that is of haitian tradition all of the dances in the haitian tradition in terms of folklore and vo or congo around which is often done in a circle where the man use one scarf if scarves are used and the ladies use to scar