Danny Antonelli

The first years of my childhood were spent in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. By the time I left, five languages had entered my life.

I attended a French kindergarten. I spoke Croatian with the boys in the street. My nanny spoke German. My mother's friends spoke English. My mother spoke Italian. Before I was five years old I understood that language is not a wall — it is a door. Each one opens into a different room. I have been opening doors into new rooms ever since.

"Five languages before the age of five. The gift of Babel."

At the age of five, my mother and I sailed across the Atlantic to the USA. She had been transferred to Los Angeles, where English became my dominant language.

I attended Beverly Hills Catholic School (Good Shepherd) and Beverly Hills High School. I fell in love with baseball and played in Little League and PONY League and in high school. In my teenage years, I surfed at Malibu on weekends. We lived in 14 different apartments in Beverly Hills during the 11 years I was there—my restless mother needed constant change. I learned to adapt.

[NOTE: this was my first time in LA and ended in August of 1963]

"America tried, but could not sever me from my European roots. I adapted but did not convert."

We flew from Los Angeles to Antananarivo, Madagascar via Athens and Cairo.

During the 6 months my mother was stationed there, French returned to my life. Everyone around me cried when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. I was filmed for the news while attending a memorial mass at the cathedral. It rained a lot.

"Nowhere was truly safe from history's violent turns."

In Nairobi I went to St. Mary's School and fell in love with Shakespeare and The Beatles.

Suddenly new sports were made available: I played rugby for the first XI, was the school team goalie for soccer and grass-hockey. Our school teams won more times than they lost. Despite my American accent, I placed second in an elocution competition, reciting Dowson's Cynara. My first guitar came to me in Nairobi. I played in a rock band and wrote for the St Mary’s yearbook. My first 45rpm single — Harcourt / Year of Discontent — was released on the Equator International label. I discovered song writing was another kind of poetry.

"I fell in love with Shakespeare and The Beatles at the same time."

After I finished school in Nairobi, I wanted to get back to surfing, so I flew to Durban, South Africa.

It was during apartheid. I enrolled in Natal University, discovered John Lee Hooker, found out that there was a multi-racial jazz club I could go to after midnight, was introduced to cane liquor and dagga, both local products used to blur or enhance the senses. The Third Eye, a popular local band, took a couple of my songs and played them in front of a massive live audience. The Village Green wanted to record some of my songs. I wrote non-stop poetry because I had fallen under the spell of the Beat Generation. My story In The Garden, explains the rest.

"I wrote non-stop poetry because I had fallen under the spell of the Beat Generation."

I sailed to Bombay with the British India Line and spent two-and-a-half long dusty years in India.

I lived in New Delhi and travelled as far as Benares and Goa. In Allahabad — the city of confluences where the Ganges meets the Yamuna — my first book found life: conversations with my dog. Poems written in cheap notebooks in cheaper hotel rooms, fueled by chai and the particular freedom of not belonging anywhere. Before the Indo-Pakistani war broke out I began the overland journey westward — Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, all the way through Europe. Then I retraced my steps back to New Delhi. Every border crossing is a small death and rebirth.

"Each border crossing is a small death and a rebirth."

I left India again after the Indo-Pakistani war, but this time on an Italian passenger ship, from Bombay (Mumbai).

We were supposed to sail through the Suez Canal, but Israel and the Egyptians decided to have a war and the canal was closed. So we sailed around Africa. 35 days. Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Beira, Durban, Cape Town. Then ten long days at sea until we landed in Las Palmas, Gran Canary island. Then we sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain and eventually to Genoa. A few months later, I sailed on another ocean liner, this time from Naples to New York.

"Every border crossing is a small death and rebirth."

From Philadelphia, where I lived for a few months to get my bearings and worked as an usher in a cinema, to Baltimore, where I worked as a dishwasher, a painter, a construction worker, and a maintenance man...

...while gathering life experience and love experience, all of which was eventually transferred to paper in songs and poems and stories after I got to Los Angeles again. I learned how to drive a car, got a license and enrolled in university. I met creative people, musicians, artists, actors and some criminals. Hollywood is a town where everyone gets thrown into the blender.

"Hollywood is a town where everyone gets thrown into the blender."

On board a Polish passenger ship, the Stefan Batori, this time with my car in the hold, I sailed across the Atlantic once more, to Rotterdam.

After a long drive south to Lisbon — a city of faded glory and persistent beauty—I wrote Shoot the Albatross, an episodic novel. I ghosted a book for a Syrian businessman. And then: O Rapaz do Cubo Magico — The Boy with the Magic Cube — sung by Lara Li, became a number one record in Portugal in 1982. A song I wrote, in a country not my own, came out in a language not my mother tongue, for a singer I met once before she recorded the song. It’s nice to be on top of the heap.

"O Rapaz do Cubo Magico — #1 in Portugal. It’s nice to be on top of the heap."

In October 1982, I took a train from Lisbon to Hamburg. I have lived here ever since. It is not an ending — my life has been a metamorphosis, from nymph to caterpillar to pupa, and finally to butterfly.

Another number one hit, this time for the lyrics of La Valle Dell'Eden, which I wrote for Nino de Angelo, then a libretto for a chamber opera diamond way which premiered at the Kleine Szene of the Semperoper in Dresden as well as in the Oper Kiel. FREE WHEEL came to life on FSK in Hamburg. I played in a band called Mustang Ranch at the famous Indra nightclub where The Beatles started their career, then founded Atman, my own record label, with over 15 albums released so far. Over 80 of my radio plays have been broadcast on the radio, and the poetry, novels, librettos, and short stories have only gotten better. Hamburg — a city of bridges — became the place where all the wandering finally cohered into something called a life.

"Hamburg is a city of bridges. I crossed over into a new life."