Thorns and roses

In the course of doing my column recently, I remembered a time in 2008, when I was living in Cayman, and a close Guyanese friend, living in America, had sent me a couple emails complaining about the rot in Guyana. I rarely keep emails, but for some reason I kept my reply to him, and in light of another griping letter in the local press, I attach it here.

George

I don’t ordinarily go down this road with people, but you and I go back solid, therefore… the essential core of me, not spiritually or mentally, but psychologically is “we can make it work; we can get it together.”  That is fundamentally how I run.  Where it came from I don’t know and I don’t care – it’s me. It was there when I decided to go into music full time in Toronto in 1962.  Several people raised eyebrows, but my mother didn’t.  She said, “Try it and see. It might make you happy. If not, look for something else.” It was there in 1967 when I decided to record four songs and take the Tradewinds band, on pure speculation,