Grateful to Love!

Birthdays like holidays can be loaded with emotion at times.
To share a little of what that statement means to me...
my childhood best friend since Montessori school was an amazing light of being that went by the name of Andy Morgan, that's him up top.

Whether it was building forts in the woods and telling our parents we were moving out into our new dwelling to become monks or pestering my dad to buy us a zima after working all day in texas heat cleaning up a former hell's angel abode, all of my memories with Andy are treasured.
Growing up we spent most of our birthdays together, as they fell on the same day, and we always found a way to get into just enough trouble to be entertaining but not enough to get arrested.
My earliest communions with music were in his inspiring and passionate presence as well as the first conversations i can remember speculating about the nature of the universe.

In high school he got an early 70's hunter green cadillac as his first car and we would drive to lakes and local swimming holes listening to James Brown and laughing our asses off. The tune that often served as our soundtrack was the "the payback", a gem of a track that we'd blare into the streets singing, "i don't know karate but i know crazy" with smiles as wide as those caddy doors.

After high school Andy left Austin first and continued to inspire me with how he lived so courageously, like each day could be his last. Riding his bike from Washington state back to Texas one summer, backpacking through Europe, Patagonia and Tibet and eventually moving to NYC, he was always moving, laughing and loving.

After a visit to NYC in mid May of '05, he called me and said how much he loved hanging out and that he wanted me to make one promise, that i'd never stop dancing and freestyling. I said "of course brother" and thanked him for being in my life. He was hit on his bike on June 26 2005 at the corner of Houston and Elizabeth and left his body later that day.
I'm so grateful to of had that last conversation and I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to love him as I did and as I still do.

Tonight a friend took me to dinner and when my mind wandered to Andy, as it's his birthday too, James Brown sang us a little song that i want to share with you.

James Brown - The Payback


Grateful to Love this much,
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