Artistic Authenticity
This lifestyle is simultaneously exhilarating and maddening. Sharing a moment with an engaged audience is pure energy- The feeling obtained when writing a song, or performing is nothing short of magical, when in commune with oneself and the intangible the feeling is inexplicable, it’s something like meditation I think. The utter beauty of creating something where once there was nothing… At the same time, the attempt to create something of profound value, to speak truth with originality. The constant work on improving technique, on pushing oneself forever further. Disheartening and entrancing. Frustrating and joyous. Yin and yang.
Photo Credit Konstantin Tosunyan
It is unreal the number of people who have told us how much we look alike. Though I’d love to be as handsome as he, we just don’t see it. People seem to love the idea of siblings sharing the stage and here in Italia family is, well- FAMILY. Though our bond is deep, and I think that’s what people are really responding to, familial resemblance has nothing to do with it. That would be down to our shared childhood. You know how going away to camp as a child draws children together so quickly? How fighting side by side in a war or as a volunteer in the wake of a natural disaster creates a sort of instant bonding? People who go through life altering or traumatic events together develop an impenetrable solidarity. 
But what are you going to do? Five minutes after meeting them stress the importance of the extra responsibility these parents must face having adopted a child of color? Encourage them in a few seconds to be vigilant in helping that beautiful baby to know, to really know that she is beautiful? Prevail upon them to celebrate her color and compel them to help her to install a fierce, strong, stable, sense of self? Warn them of the arduous road ahead raising a black girl in a predominately white society???
September's my favorite month. Autumn leaves and freshly sharpened pencils. School supplies and new school clothes. Don’t you find it of lasting merit, the unending quest for growth, for improvement? Ensuring one does not create future regret for today’s mistakes, which is unavoidable only by doing one’s best at all times. Even if one doesn’t get where one thinks one’s supposed to be. What peace in the knowledge that one has done all one can. Like packing as many ones into a paragraph as one can! September in sum, time to learn stuff like why does the impersonal pronoun "one" sound simultaneously pretentious and soothing?? More essentially- how to sustain the enthusiasm that September seems to inspire? 
