It All Belongs To Me

A number of years ago, I was watching an interview with Ruth Simmons, current President of Brown University in Providence, on "60 Minutes."   Ed Bradley was asking her about her childhood as daughter of a sharecropper in Texas, and then asked about her field of study at Harvard.  "17th Century French Literature," she replied.  "How does the daughter of a sharecropper in the rural, segregated South even know that there is such a thing as 17th Century French Literature?!?"   "Because, Ed," she said smiling sweetly, "it all belongs to me!"

It all belongs to me.

Because I'm interested in it, passionate about it, love it -- it belongs to me.  Even if there is no external reason for it -- nothing in my family history, nothing in what I was taught in school, nothing in my class, race, upbringing -- it still belongs to me.

Why do I have a specific love of Brazilian Music?  I've never been to Brazil.  Growing up I didn't know any Brazilians (not many to know in suburban Boston).  Why am I so passionate about Classical Music and French cooking?  Why am I making a career as a portrait artist?  My parents weren't particularly interested in any of it -- so why?  I grew up in a working class family 20 miles south of Boston.  My dad was a machinist and my mom was a homemaker.  My dad liked music so I was exposed to a bit of classical music as a child.  There were no artists in my family, in fact I would often look at my family (cousins, aunts, uncles etc.) and think, "There is no one I can point to and say, 'I'm like them.'"

So here I am, a working portrait artist, a great lover of all kinds of music, a sometime choral singer, a "foodie," a junky for culture, an urban internationalist and Europhile.  Why?  Because it all belongs to me.