ARTIST STATEMENT: The City Odes Project is a passion project in which my composer and I collaborate with a poet and an actor to create a humanist, emotional, and visual story amidst the backdrop of a particularly city. “In Between Words” is the first of many to come, and kicks off this series in the city I currently reside in — New York City. The narrative was birthed out of an eagerness to collaborate with the actress, Achiaa, who now lives in New York and is originally from Ghana. In speaking with her, I decided to pursue a story about someone searching for home; a woman who is figuring out if NYC is the place for her, who is coming to terms with the fact that she is 5,000 miles away from her original home in West Africa, and thus easing out tensions with her mother, who wants her to return. The final result here features the work of Lilian Mehrel — a fellow filmmaker and classmate of mine back at NYU Grad Film school — who captures these feelings through her words, and my frequent collaborator John Corlis — an LA-based musician and composer — who complements the poetry with his mixture of piano and strings. Please, enjoy this short poetry video and my ode to New York City.