Damon Ferrara: Why I'm a Traveling Poet in a Postmodern Land
By: Damon Ferrara
Tags: Culture, Introduction, Life, Self, About Me

A traveling poet in a postmodern land

Reading Game of Thrones while watching on the Wall. (Photo credit: Author)

I don’t know why I sound British.

Father was the first to notice and I lacked a good response. I ‘d lived in the same New York town all my life, and was 10, an age little heralded for clever retorts. Best guess: Harry Potter and Doctor Who. Homeschooled in a countryside absent sidewalks and people, pop culture proved a fitting substitute.

Not that I felt any loneliness, until I tragically enjoyed a summer camp. Upon discovering friends exist, I fancied having a few. Since then, this irritating desire has often complicated my life. I don’t recommend it.

The Call to Adventure and/or College

Before leaving home, I declared to myself I would not be weird. I failed but became sociable.

I do not, for instance, drink, but in a room of drinkers, sobriety makes you the most intriguing person in the room. First, dance the hardest. Then, when they celebrate your apparent inebriation, unveil the teetotalism. After explaining I’ve had 58 sips of alcohol in my life, plus an alcoholic gelato and an ambiguous Peruvian incident, I am deemed as interesting as Dos Equis.

Gelato and Peru are both important here, traveling made possible by my educational strategy. I skipped high school and started college online at 12. At 17, I finished my bachelor’s degree, studying in Italy: One semester in Tuscania, Lazio, a town so small most Italians thought I was mispronouncing Tuscany; another in Florence, Tuscany, which did not help matters. I started using Instagram to prove small towns exist, passing 10,000 followers on my account, wayfaringwit.

Tuscania, not Tuscany. (Photo credit: Author)

True Fiction

My bachelor’s degree was in history and politics. I like them for the same reason I like stories and traveling: I want to know. Exploration comes with meeting new people, times, and places. From that exploration we learn shards of truth about mankind and ourselves.

History and politics both grapple with that truth; fiction and travel are the best means to uncover it, because they both bring us closer to people who are different from us. If we cannot understand the world without bias, I would like to understand it with empathy.

We learn everything from others. We learn to speak from our parents, culture come from our friends and family, our education from teachers using textbooks written by experts. Computers exist because a caveperson invented fire — and told the story.

I am incredibly grateful I could travel and study, hearing stories worldwide. Others must explore primarily by watching and reading.

For all of us, most people we “meet” are fictional characters. When we care about them, we grow from the encounter. I found some of my deepest beliefs watching fiction as a child. A good tale still changes me, can change all of us. And that makes fiction vital to society.

My favorite painting: A Connemara Girl; Augustus Nicholas Burke (1870s); National Gallery of Ireland. How many stories can you imagine, just by looking at this? How many will we one day find? (Photo credit: Author)

The Big Islands

I always wanted to write stories. I did choose marketing for a master’s degree, a kind of storytelling that I hoped would pay. Marketing is also about finding truth, but in its case, the destination depends on the product.

I went directly into that degree after my bachelor’s. It might have been wiser to wait.

I like marketing. I’m damn good at it. In hindsight, software development can also be used to tell stories and has $65k-a-year entry level jobs.

That said, finishing college at 18 becomes daunting at 19, as if great things were expected from a dog that caught its tail. And it’s easier to be a young person in college than on Indeed.com, no matter how capable you are. So, like with all major life decisions, I took an educated guess and then retroactively fit it into my personal narrative.

Of course, I knew where I wanted to live (everywhere) a bit better than what I wanted to do. I enrolled in a degree program run jointly by two foreign schools: The University of Sheffield in England, and Hong Kong Baptist University in… well, you can figure it out.

Responsible travel teaches humility and makes friends jealous; in this, Hong Kong was apt. My classmates and professors were Chinese. Arguing for democracy with educated people who disagree makes it your own belief, not a birthright assumption.

Hong Kong. (Photo credit: Author)

For some, I was their first personal impression of Americans. Asked to explain Rome, Shakespeare, homosexuality, 9/11, and US Tibetan policies, I had to represent the West, not just myself. I talked in English at a school there and one kindergartener asked, “Donald Trump?”

Then I graduated. This is the worst part of university.

I got a marketing internship in Manhattan. Soon I got promoted to the highest position you could get while not being paid. Senior executive intern, I assume. The company did not have a lot of money. After six months working unpaid in Manhattan, neither did I.

I loved that job, aside from not being paid. I’d be happy to take on future salaried marketing positions.

But I did discover that marketing does not necessarily, you know, pay. Then I realized that, while marketing might be enjoyable in the short term, it’s not my final passion.

I am a storyteller, a traveling poet in a postmodern land.

Milan. (Photo credit: Author)

Finding Ithaca

My next home was already familiar: Milan, Italy. At 20, I studied screenwriting there; like America, doing the right thing after trying everything else.

Once at a bar, employing my usual tricks, there was a noxious man, whom, by only the logic of bars, I asked, “Why are you in Italy?”

“I killed a man.”

I laughed; he did not. He was a doctor but never wanted to be. And, regretting his life’s choices, he drank, even before a surgery. He was fired after it happened, his license revoked, his savings withdrawn, just to wander the world searching for bottles.

I do not know what happened to him. I wish I did.

But I know what he told me.

And know what I want: To write stories, like those that inspire me, that inspire others, that remind us all of our common human spirit.

Recently, we’ve all been trapped indoors during a regrettably historic time. Isolating in New York again, I took my chance to publish the first of those tales: A novel, And One Day My Stars Will Burn. It’s the story of a man who never follows his dreams, and instead watches them slowly drip away.

I want my works to be of me, of my fears and flaws and insecurities, but also of my dreams, talents, and everything I’ve learned in my journey so far.

I will always want to know more, but at least I know a few truths. I would like to keep exploring them with the world, on pages and on screen — one day.

I’m beginning my journey on Medium, but plan to write regularly about culture, pop or otherwise. Please give me a follow if you’re interested, and feel free to contact me, even if it’s just to talk about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Or The Mandalorian. Or Taylor Swift. Or the modern DuckTales show. There’s got to be other fans out there.

I do still have that irritating desire to talk to people.

And if you ever need a storyteller, I’m actively looking for opportunities.

My email’s damonvincentferrara@gmail.com.

Grazie.

-Damon