I will travel. I have traveled.

The first time I lived in Europe was back when I was 15 on an exchange program in southern Germany. I had the great pleasure of visiting Berlin on that trip, just after the Wall fell. It was incredible! We drove right through Check Point Charlie without stopping, into East Berlin where the scene was utterly different from the West side. Old cars were carcasses on the side of the road, buildings were in disrepair, and in the middle of all this sitting like a diamond in a trash heap was a government palace which we visited. We left our shoes at the door and were provided little booty socks, which were quite fun for sliding inconspicuously from large chamber to large chamber on slick marble floors, as if the kings of Communism could eat well right from their glistening surfaces. I was 15. But I saw how unfair it was that the rest of Easter Berlin be so destitute while this place was obviously ravishing the wealth of the country.

We then visited parts of the Berlin Wall that were still standing. I still have a piece of it. Somewhere in someones collection of history might be a chunk of the wall with my own name scribbled upon it in Sharpie, having resided there since 1990. But on all chunks are the blood of so many who failed at their escape from tyranny.

The next time I lived in Europe was in 1993 when I lived in a small apartment in Milan, in the middle of a bustling city, where beggars begged for heroin money and where models pranced in couture, skin to bones, as if they, like the heroin addicts, hadn't eaten in decades. I was 18.

Since then I have spent a great deal of time assimilating myself into the Italian and into the European culture in general. I don't walk the streets with a backpack on my shoulders and a camera around my neck, speaking English loudly above the crowd, sliding around on booty socks in palaces. Rather, I have learned the languages, studied the behaviors, and learned the proper ways to eat, drink, and be a part of their lives there. I have lived with a family of left-wingers in Rome, who owned a restaurant that allowed people to pay what they were able. Yes! People would come to eat delicious foods and pay would they were able to pay! Beautiful artwork hung on the walls, people from everywhere (Africa, Italy, South America, England) worked in the kitchen, in the restaurant, tending the bar. There were the wealthy, there were the artists, there were the poor, doctors, film-makers, police officers, struggling immigrants; all enjoying the flavor of humanity and community drawn together by social pleasures and something of a sense of basic human bonding.

While living with them, I also studied Italian Language, Italian Film and Theater with a group of young American students from the University of Texas. Our classes were conducted from a small theater built into the backside of a massive fountain over-looking all of Rome from the top of Gianicolo - one of Rome's 7 great hills. To get to class, I took multiple buses from one side of the ancient sprawl to the other. I was 20.

I spent more time in Italy after I graduated from the University, upon decided to take my music to the old continent. We based ourselves in Italy, where we knew the culture and language well. I had an apartment in Flornence with former singing-partner, Sarah Dashew, where we hardly stayed, as we were typically on the road in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy. We were there for many months at a time, which also lent itself to our having to utilize all the national services, such as Emergency Rooms, Post Offices, Banks, Doctors, Dentists, Mechanics, Pharmacists, Mass Transit, you name it. I have lived in their system.

I also stayed for a number of months in a small town in Umbria called Umbertide. I had the pleasure of staying in a castle on top of a hill there, which overlooked kilometers and kilometers of sunflower fields which would bend like an army toward the sun as it rose on one side of the horizon and sunk on the other. Staying in a small room settled high up inside the castle was somewhat scary, actually. This place had been built in the 900's and spirits wandered the halls; at least it felt that way. After watching the sunflowers bow their pretty little uniform heads to the sleeping sun, it always felt as if the old family who settled that castle came out of rest and lived on inside those walls, wishing I would go away.

This castle was being used by a foundation set up by one of the members of the Corning family (as in Corning ware cooking goods). It was a highly-esteemed international program for the arts. Basically, artists of all mediums were invited, hand-selected, to apply for the program. A jury of highly-critical judges would then decide who would win this opportunity to stay at the castle, fully paid for, for a number of weeks, where they could isolate themselves and work on their art. Every night for dinner, we would settle at a large outdoor table under a canopy of grape vines, where the cooking staff would bring the most delicious meals and bottles-and-bottles of local wine to the table and some of the most fascinating conversations would ensue. I was hardly equipped to join in, but I did my best by asking questions when I needed and by inserting only my thoughts and opinions where I felt most confident. I could hardly keep up with this collection of eccentric talent. "I'm not so sure how this came to be. This big big world and little ol' me...."

Just before I stayed at the Castle, I had spent 2 weeks in Paris, where I played at a venue called The Chesterfield Cafe, which hosted American bands for a stretch of 10 shows. I had arrived early to Paris in order to catch Madonna in concert. Yes, the great American Icon was to be putting on quite a show in Paris, two days before my shows were to begin in a small, but well-attended venue off the Champs Elise. Prior to the beginning of my residency at the Chesterfield, I was hosted by a stranger I knew through a friend who I knew through a friend. His house was on the outskirts of Paris, which meant I had to travel by many buses to get to the center of town.

One night when I waited at a busy bus-stop in the suburbs, I sat alone with my bag to me chest, ignoring people around me, avoiding eye-contact. An Arab man took me by surprise by suddenly throwing his face, like a fast ball at mine. He spewed hatred at me in his language, so close to my nose, almost as if he were going to kiss me violently. He was yelling at me, spitting on my cheeks through his hissing. I hadn't said a word. I hadn't provoked anything. I was just sitting peacefully, waiting for the bus. I was shocked! What was I to do? I looked to the others around me to see if anyone would intervene. The people stood still as if nothing were happening. As a matter of fact, most of them stepped outside of the little glass bus-stop box. Fight or flight entered my body. I stared him down without a word. I stared him right in the eyes, never showing an ounce of fear. He took his cigarette and placed it a centimeter from my cheek and I stared him down, peacefully, calmly, without shame, without provocation, without violence. Inside, however, my heart was racing. I scanned the area and noticed a glass bottle near my feet. I planned in my head that if I had to, I would grab it and hit him over the head. AS IF! I am not sure if I could have, but I had to think quickly. Instead, I just stared him in his dark eyes and didn't move, didn't utter a word. I was saved by my patience AND the bus. It arrived, I swooped my head down below the burning cigarette butt, beneath his arm near my shoulder and got on the bus, leaving him and all of his anger behind. I finally took a breath and when I arrived at the stranger's house, I locked the doors behind me as if I had to imprison myself from the strange big world outside. I was 26.

Madonna's show was fascinating! I ended up going twice, just me, by myself in a crowd of thousands of screaming fans. Didn't they all know that she was MY pop star? Ha...Without jealousy, we all adored her innovative performance with admiration and excitement. All one people, cheering at the dazzle of lights, dancers, costumes, thumping bass and energy. Yes, I thought, unity!

A few weeks later after I had played my shows at the Chesterfield, I went to Italy by train, having hidden my earned cash in a pouch strapped to my pelvis, zipped up tightly. I still have a photograph that we took on self-timer showing where we hid the goods!

We went directly to the castle. Phew. Safety. Isolation. Peace and conversation.

Later that month we took an extended weekend vacation to Barcelona, Spain. It was early September; beautiful weather, long strolls in Gaudi's wonderland park, night-jaunts down Las Ramblas, eating tapas at 6 and dinner at midnight. We rented a car and drove up the Costa Brava to a tiny fishing village where we stayed in a simple, but luxurious boutique hotel. One morning I woke early to get a massage. When I left the massage, I saw two burning World Trade Center towers on the television screen and a small crowd of Spaniards in a daze as they watched the flames take lives. I ran upstairs, woke up Sarah, turning on the BBC. The rest of that day is all of our own personal history.

We flew the next day back to Italy and went to the castle, where all the artists from all over the world sat, like the rest of the world, in front of a television as it flashed scenes of dismay and projections. Should we return home? Should we stay put? Suddenly the conversations amongst the eccentric at the table beneath the grape vines shifted dramatically. I think the spirits also joined hands and bowed their heads along with us.

The world was with us. I was there, in the world, outside of the US. Since 2001, I have continued to travel despite the two wars (one precedented, one not). I have seen the attitudes change. I have traveled in the south Pacific and I have lived in Europe under Bush Senior and the first Gulf War, through Clinton, through Bush Jr and his wars. I have watched the western world embrace us, as individual Americans, and I have watched them drop their heads in sorrow and shame at America's current administration. I have personally encountered some sort of hatred more than once in Paris specifically from Arabic men. I have been close friends with Arabic people. Iranians, Iraqis, Africans. I have loved and been loved by Italians, Germans, French, British, Austrians, Swiss, Spaniards. I have walked the streets of Rome, Milan, Paris, Barcelona. I have eaten at countless dinner tables in homes, in restaurants, in plazas and piazzas.

I am nothing special for that. Many people have been to many places far beyond my experience. But when considering that out of 300 million Americans, only 14% of them have a passport (Sarah Palin just got her very first passport), I think that being a person who has been so close to other cultures, I can say that the following article has great meaning. I have only shared with you a small sliver of my travel experiences; good and bad. I have seen compassion in people's eyes in a small fishing village in Spain on September 11th, 2001 and beyond. But following the invasion of Iraq, things changed from compassion to disbelief. Read the following article from the Guardian in England. Spread the word about this very important part of the big equation. Believe me, it's true:

An article that offers a British/European view of the election.


Excellent piece from the British publication Guardian:

"If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that says elections are determined by the top of the ticket, and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction? Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again, feeling estranged in its own country. A generation of young Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn cynical, concluding that politics doesn't work after all. And, most depressing, many African-Americans will decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany , France , Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America . If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world's population, opposed the Iraq war.. McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11. Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies. McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was "Drill, baby, drill!", as if the solution to global warming were not a radical rethink of the US's entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that "the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race".

Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign manager boasts that this election is "not about the issues."

Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the "candidate of Europe " and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today's America , that the world's esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it."