wfwbr----------Let me try one last attempt at a serious post. to you. I dunno' why but I'm a glutton for punishment..............

You are not English.....You were simply born there. Do you have any real memory of the short time you lived in England after your birth? No, you don't. The two things that shape us are genetics and environment, most often called nature and nurture. No one questions your English genes, if you indeed have a mother and father of English descent. But that doesn't make you English. Your entire life was spent in Oz. Australian not by birth but by history, not bu nature but by nurture. Your life was spent living the good Australian culture and probably some sub-culture as in Western Australian or whatever.

Step back and tell me that is all meaningless to you. If you can you're an ass. We are who we were reared and are products of that environment. Try as you might you cannot become a Yorkshireman any more than I can.   You can't be a Londoner or a Frenchman or a New Yorker either and believe me, you stand out for your difference where you are as much as if you were trying to be Japanese in Kokura. You're an Aussie.

I grew up in eastern Ohio in the United States. In my young adulthood I moved here and there and my job took me to various places to live and I loved them all I think. I lived in Chicago and Chattanooga, Charlotte and eastern Kentucky, Atlanta, and Nashville. I had very short stays (3-4 months) in New Orleans, New York, and Los Angeles, when my company had me troubleshooting lower performance regions. I loved something or another about all those places and did my best to sort of fit in as best I could but I could never be a Tennessean anymore than you could. Its a great place and I wish I'd grown up in Nashville but I didn't and though I loved the place and tried to be a good citizen of Nashville, I was an Ohioan. Then one day after much soul searching I decided to "move home."

I now live about 75 miles from where I was born. Same place, different name.........eastern/central Ohio is always eastern/central Ohio. Its not the greatest place in the world to live......but its the place I know best and where I can be honest......and be me. Now you don't have to move back home to be honest, but that, young man, is what life is about......honesty.   The first person you need to be honest with and about is yourself.

You can live wherever you want and enjoy it but you need to be honest about who you are. You can't sing as though you are someone you're not. Don Firth lives in the northwest USA and I have no idea if he was born there but Don is honest about who he is and can sing about places and people far away from himself and his history because he sings with honesty. Will Fly sings with honesty. Most of those who have tried hard to help you out a bit are probably much the same. Ruth Archer has taken a giant plunge into English traditions and culture but I can tell simply by reading her words that she knows well the person she is.

There are others on this thread like Hawk and myself who continually question ourselves about who we are and are we being honest to that person within......if we could just figure out who is within. But even that makes Hawk honest about himself and with hinself except for a minor complication related to Winona Ryder.

You come off as phony in everything. Whether it is in your poems or in your music or even (and especially) the character you present here, you are a liar. You can't sing the songs of anyone or anywhere as a liar because liars present only the mechanics and generally even that badly. Watching, reading, and listening, to your pathetic affectations gives your "audience" here the distinct impression you haven't anything at all inside. You are a shell without real substance and you are trying to wear the clothes of another, not your own culture and they don't fit. Its obvious to one and all..........except for you.


Spaw