CURRENT MISSION

To be present, to fulfill my purpose here, to create, to inspire, to love love love.

ABOUT ME

I'm doing this profile for my partner Samia and I so that we can travel together at an affordable price. I'm a young professor (theatre and performance) and she's a burgeoning social entrepreneur. We're both musicians and we have a band together. Our best friends would say we are loyal, dependable, give great advice and hilarious impressions. That we inspire them to be better people (as they do us). That we have a deep sense of groundedness, of spirituality that infuses our lives, our relationship, and our work. They'd say we're soul mates, if such a thing exists. And most frequently, they'd say that we're busy workaholics.

PHILOSOPHY

Life is a process of initiation. Live it well--justly, honestly, productively, lovingly. Pay attention to why you are here. Don't be afraid of the dark, of silence, of the unknown.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Brand New!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Brand New!

Interests

My creative work--playwriting, creative non-fiction, music, and even academic work-- is what makes my life engaging. I live to be inspired, to create, to learn, grow, and transition. To bring to light what has been shrouded. To shift people's perceptions on anything from Haitian vodou to the usurpation of indigenous lands here in the U.S. and the world over. I am a passionate teacher, creator, and life-long learner.

• arts
• performing arts
• festivals
• walking
• traveling
• music
• teaching
• entrepreneurship
• medicine

Music, Movies, and Books

Too many to count. A few formatives: Books: A Wrinkle in Time, Loving in the War Years, Borderlands, Temple of My Familiar, Parable of the Sower, Beloved, The Hungry Woman, the bull jean stories

Music: Lhasa de Sela, Yasmin Levy, Soulstice, Jose Gonzalez, Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Mary J. Blige, Fairuz, Oum Kul Thum

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

1. medicine ceremony with South Central Farmers in a dried-up riverbed in California's central valley after their exile from L.A. by the city government, praying for justice and water returned as a part of the project, La Semilla Caminante/The Traveling Seed.

2. After the opening of my play The Messiah Complex at the National Queer Arts Festivals when audience members and actors could not stop crying. Crying in a way that was beyond anything I had witnessed in my life. I was awestruck that something I wrote had that much of an effect on other human beings. Amazed at how connected everything and everyone was. Amazed at the power of community, and how it shone through in theatre.

3. My parents walking up to me on the stage of Stanford's Black Graduation, and hooding me with Kinte cloth as I was awarded my PhD.

4. Watching Hurricane Irene eat our house in Shelburne Falls, MA after an evening of uncanny but intuitive escape.

Teach, Learn, Share

see above.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, France, Germany, Lebanon, Mexico, Switzerland, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Dominican Republic, United States