Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on.

Back in 2007 my son and I sat down, me with my acoustic guitar and he with an electronic keyboard plugged in to his computer. Before this we had  worked on songs for Church and sometimes at community and family events. 2007 marked a new pathway. We began writing songs,  the first named “Hello”. This song explored human fear of darkness when in fact darkness is the environment out of which human existence is said to have come.

What is ambitious about making music with your son? Well, when you keep at it for 19 years turning out 19 albums, many of them with more than 15 songs songs, do it yourself music studio may seem  like ambition on steroids, but it is passion and talent harnessed to touch the world.

List five things you do for fun.

• I cook for my family.
• I create eye-opening songs,
• I read the Bible like a scientist tracking DNA for clues how lift people higher.

In the background, mentally and spiritually:

• I keep a youthful outlook on life,
• I keep my sanity by letting a day go by just to see what would happen, and
• I call up my personal mantra often, “light up the world with love”  (I have several versions of my mantra, but this one is the most satisfying)

What book are you reading right now?

Selected Speeches of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I is a book that helped launch me decades ago into sober reflection of the essentials of African identity and helped me in my personal quest for spiritual guidance.  The book sparked my interest in international relations and saved me from going down the typical Rastafarian rabbit holes.

If you think that today’s leaders are  not much more than animals of partisan politics, you are right.  The United Nations and all the regional and other alliances are failing on account of the reasons suggested by the late emperor.

You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?

• The emancipation of all the people colonized over the last millennium
• The end of gratuitous marriages
• The return of honesty to politics and religion

Let the genie be the combined energy, willpower and courage of one generation!

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

A trip to the moon would have interested me when Armstrong stepped on the moon’s surface and announced that he was pioneering a human journey. However, going to an uninhabitable place is the stuff of fantasy and extreme adventurism. Even to a mind brimming with creative energy, the vast sums spent of a single mission to the moon has to be reprehensible as long as hunger and poverty are still ravaging any part of the earth.

There are many humans who can easily spend the money for many trips to the moon, and that fact highlights the priorities of humanity. May the moon and earth that have supported life as we know it never become terminals in a one-way traffic industry for anyone.

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

In my early teens, discovering ancestral heritage and the possibilities of romance, I felt I had arrived.  I have spent the decades since then clinging to the glow of what should have been a speedy transition. I realize I have missed some of the essentials of growing up, but do not expect me to carry any guilt when a large number of my peers have also been clinging to priorities of the transition into adulthood.

What could you do more of?

I could be more of a conduit for the love that never falls down on the job.  This means that for all the people to whom I have said “I love you” more would be ways to make that love felt, that is perceptible, not necessarily felt like food, clothing, presence and money. Very often just knowing that someone cares is a grand booster to a good day. I just want to elevate my loving.

What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?

In conversation, people who talk incessantly then expect you to do the same.

Questions being answered which were not asked. Deaf listeners.

Physicians who do not heal themselves, i.e. are not examples of healthy living or fitness.

Plutocrat heads of state who keep their people impoverished and enslaved and unlearned. Uncaring shepherds.

People fixing things that are in perfect working order.