As the last-born child of two immigrants from Jamaica, I was the first born on American shores. It is understandable then that when I changed my major from biology to music as a 3rd year collegiate student their disappointment was hard to quantify.  When my confident, perhaps overly so, move to Los Angeles to pursue a creative life found me homeless on the street within the first year. The worst fears of my parents had been realized and yet it was just the beginning of my story.

Those months playing music for tips at Union station, on Venice Beach and the Santa Monica promenade gave me a view of the world and of people that I carry through to this day.   Now that I’ve seen 3 continents, carried by those same creative passions, it was still this start at the ultimate bottom that made all the rest possible.

          Finding myself in a position to perform as if my life depended on it, because whether I would eat that night or possibly afford the luxury of a cheap motel room, depended on the tips received, allowed me to approach all my undertakings with a life or death urgency.  This was not something that caused me to become unduly stressful, but precisely the opposite, allowing me to find an inner calm, a timeless confidence that comes from that identity inside that transcends the car you drive or the roof you do or don’t have over your head.

           From the halls of Johns Hopkins University interning as a teenager, through days working what seemed like a 1000 odd jobs after the nights homeless on the streets of L.A., through crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to perform my original compositions. I have been shown how the journey of life carries us towards the truth.  In the Hero’s Journey and bringing it to the screen to inspire others on their own, I’ve found my destiny as a screenwriter; the feeling is like breathing to me.

           This journey of mine, taken as a black man in America has brought it’s own unique challenges. These have been the kinds of things that make one stronger through trial, like iron forged in the fires of this life, I am grateful for the path I’ve had to climb.  This also allows me to embrace the challenges that lie before me to bring my perspective to Hollywood and contribute to the canon of film and television created by the many talented writers who have come before me. I savor each and every opportunity to learn from others while allowing my unique point of view to inform my choices, scene by scene, action by action, and word by word, hoping to make two brave Jamaican immigrants proud, along the a way.