#idrisgoodwin

A CONVERSATION | IDRIS GOODWIN & FLOYD D. TUNSON

Recorded on November 27, 2017, at Floyd D. Tunson’s studio in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Published by the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art (2018).

Floyd D. Tunson is one of Colorado's most important contemporary artists. Over the past 50 years he has prodigiously, fearlessly and innovatively created art from his keen cultural perspective, taking on identity, race, and history in a number of series and across a range of art media. www.tunsonart.com Idris Goodwin is an award winning playwright, poet, performer and essayist. Currently an assistant professor in The Department of Theatre and Dance at Colorado College, Goodwin moved to Colorado in 2010. Read more about him here: http://www.idrisgoodwin.com 

Goodwin and Tunson sat down for a conversation at the invitation of UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art Director and exhibition curator Daisy McGowan - an excerpt of which is printed in the publication accompanying Floyd D. Tunson: Janus, the inaugural exhibition at the new Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery of Contemporary Art space, at the Ent Center for the Arts in Colorado Springs, on view February 1 - April 15, 2018.

The following is the uncut version of their conversation.

Idris Goodwin:       So I was wondering if we could start by just talking about space. I think this is something similar for both of us – for me in the performing arts and for you in the visual arts - is the need for space to present but also to work. And as somebody who is from here - what’s your relationship to having space, needing space and moving around the Pikes Peak region?

Floyd Tunson:  Space is hard to come by because they just don’t have the buildings here …that’s why I came to Manitou because I could afford this space and I have the space. In August, it will be 41 years…

Idris:                      And what kept here for so long? I’m sure I’m not the first one to ask you that. 

Floyd:                    Probably because I can work. If you can’t get any work done here I don’t know where you’re going to get any work done, because there are no distractions. And I’m kind of a nocturnal person, and so when everything dies down I’m working.

I thought when I first moved here I was going to be here about five years and I was going to move to New York and do my thing. It just didn’t work out like that. Being a teacher you just didn’t make that much money. But I had enough materials to keep me going and I had this space and basically some compelling work. That’s my passion and so that’s why I’m still here.

Idris:                      And where did you grow up originally?

Floyd:                    I was born and raised in Denver.

Idris:                      And so you came to the Springs to teach art?

Floyd:                    Yeah, I came to the Springs after I was in the Army. I mean, that was the most despondent period of my life being in the military thinking that I’m going to Vietnam and die. I’ve seen a lot of my buddies come back from Vietnam when I was in Denver all banged and wounded. And some didn’t return. It was a terrible time. But then I came here. I got a leave of absence and came for an interview at Palmer High School.

Idris:                      And what did teaching do for you? You know, I teach as well… [T]alk a little bit about that about being an artist, a teacher of art and the places and times where it collides.

Floyd:                    I had a friend of mine that’s kind of like my father. He gave me my first studio in his garage and helped me through everything. He … conveyed to me, ‘Floyd, you might be the greatest artist in the world but you might want to get something to fall back on.’ And that’s why I got my teaching degree. Most artists that I knew or most people that were doing art were artists and teachers from college…so I did get my teaching degree and I was glad I got that because that allowed me to do this. 

I think I was probably just as prolific when I was teaching as I am now because of that time element. You know I would [keep] on a schedule. I’d get out of school about 2:30, get home about 3:00, take a nap until about 7:00, wake up and work until about 2:00 a.m. and do that cycle. I did that cycle for years.

Idris:                      And so you’re pretty disciplined…

Floyd:                    Yeah. I mean this is my legacy. This is all I have. This is my reputation and what I do. This is all I have and I want to leave with a mark. New York is still that art capital of the world. [When] we’d go to New York we’d go to galleries, they’d look at my portfolio and say that’s wonderful work but where are you located? That ain’t going to work. You’ve got to be in this area for people to come out to your studio. I understand that.

Idris:                      Isn’t it interesting and kind of a paradox because I go through the similar thing as a playwright because New York is also the theater capital where LA is employing lots of playwrights now. But in order to make the work consistently and at the level that I’ve been creating, where I live allows [me] to do that.

Floyd:                    That allows you to be difficult.

Idris:                      Right. Exactly. And so there is this question of the reach of the work and how far will the work reach. I find that to be a paradox that I come back to all the time, because I do go to New York and kind of miss here when I go other places. I have fun for a couple of days but then I kind of want my space back. I like the quiet at night. And the older I get the harder it gets for me to think about [living in New York].

Floyd:                    I think those first five years I was here I was thinking about how was I going to leave here… Eventually I didn’t care because I just wanted to work. So like you say, the older you get the harder it gets because you’re more critical and it doesn’t get easier. But – it’s my passion to be an artist and work.

Idris:                      Speaking of that … I remember the first time I [saw your work]. I had been living here maybe two years when I took my class [at Colorado College] to see “Son of Pop” when it was at the [Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center]. I brought my writing class over there to do some ekphrastic type work - writing based on images. And so I had read about the show and the image [used to advertise the show] was really striking to me, and so I was like we need to go check this out and see what it is.  And the thing I was really curious about was the journey between styles which is to say like –

Floyd:                    Why am I so eclectic?

Idris:                      Not so much that but more like, the journey where you get an idea and you get a spark and you go on this journey that determines how you’re going to execute that concept …

Floyd:                    I don’t want to get stuck doing the same things over and over because that’s not of interest to me. It’s been hard though – it took me a long time to [get] represent[ation] by Robischon Gallery and later Sandy Carson [Gallery] in Denver, because they [other galleries] thought I was too eclectic. They couldn’t pinpoint “that’s a Floyd Tunson”, and next it might be something else. That doesn’t work for business.

Idris:                      Right.

Floyd:                    That works for me and I have been true to myself for doing that. Whatever I think that best executes that concept is what I’m going to use. It might be painting. It might be sculpture. It might be photography. It might be mixed media, but whatever I think works best for executing that concept at that particular time [is what I will choose]. And a lot of my work is difficult because I come back to it at another time I’m a different person with different experiences and dealing with the same problem with the painting.

So I might be dealing with the same thing with three different images or three different genres. But that’s kind of the way I’ve always operated. Because I didn’t think of my art as a commodity when I was doing it. I didn’t think about it as that but that’s what most people think when they ask you are you successful in this life. How much do you sell your paintings for or how much have you made off of your art and this and that. I tell them very little and so I’m not successful and –

Idris:                      But you’ve made all of this art. Look what have you made. Look at all of this!

Floyd:                    This is the tip of the iceberg.

Idris:                      So talk to me about the [exhibit coming up at GOCA].

Floyd:                    That's going to be nothing but painting--large abstracts. [There’s] one painting that's going to cover one of those [50’] walls. It's just going to be abstract paintings … and mixed media, but the mixed media is abstract too.

I said it wasn't going to be political, it's not true because I just did a piece...it's called "Gentrification". Now I want to do two more pieces that deal with gentrification. [T]hey’ll be abstract, but still dealing with gentrification. That's a subject right now that is really touchy.

Idris:                      Do you think that there’s any truth to this idea that if you as an artist, or any kind of artist that is from a marginalized community, that if you are creating truthfully – if you are expressing truthfully from all of the corners of yourself  - that inevitably the work, whether it’s figurative or it’s abstract, is going to have some social political level to it?

Floyd:                    Can't help it. That's why I say that's not my intent but subconsciously when you [create art], you've done that anyway. You're drawing from all your experiences and exposure and what you've seen visually and heard and read and you can't shake that. That's you, that's part of you, everything you see is part of you as an artist, you know. If you're a visual artist you can't shake that. So that's going to come out. I think abstracts can be political just as well as figurative work or anything else but, you don't think so when you're in the process of doing it.

Idris:                      You’re just telling your story, right?

Floyd:                    Right. I’m just conveying something, you know. I’m drawing from something and trying to convey something. And when I know I’m finished with that, that’s what I end up with. You know, everybody else brings their own perspective to the work … my perception is somewhat important, because I execute the work, but it's really more important [what] the viewer brings.

Idris:                      And in this this town, I find that people are very appreciative of art here - I was very surprised by that - but I do find that there is a bit of a tepidness to engaging with anything that is outside of a normal, you know, white mainstream Christian patriotic kind of point of view. As someone who's been here as long as you've been here, making the work that you're making … your work is so aware of itself in the sense that, it's not apologizing for what it is, it's not necessarily like shock stuff. You know like [Andres Serrano's] "Piss Christ" or anything like that, but it is what it is. And so how has that been for you? Because I think we're in a different moment right now in terms of the discourse than we were even 10 years ago.

Floyd:                    You always feel as an artist, I don't know about you, but you're always that many years ahead of your audience anyway. When you execute your concepts .. like now a lot of the stuff seems so precedented .. but at that particular time no one gave a rat piss about what it is that you were doing, you had no significance. Let's talk about race. Haitian Dream Boats, that's a relevant piece now and it's become relevant again just because they've trying to deport 60,000 more, 30,000 are children in 2019 - that becomes relevant again.

Let's talk about [my series called] "Endangered". We're always endangered as black males in this society. But I do those because I feel compelled, I must do that. You know, there's a part of an artist I think that always feels compelled to say what must be said about whatever situation it is that they are associated with. There's that part where I thought [painting] abstracts would had to be a release from that. Allow me to just do line, shape, color, form, but not really. The title can change all that. If I don't put the title in there - gentrification - it won't mean anything.   

Idris:                      So a title is everything?

Floyd:                    Sometimes ... I’ve got so many untitled works because I don’t like to force titles. But also sometimes you have titles before the work is done. It works like that. Sometimes you already know what the title is going to be. Other times when you’re done it’s just “Untitled # 118”, and maybe in parentheses you might put something that could be a title or something relevant to that particular piece or something.

I think in abstract it takes people where you try to guide them, and you give them a hint or something, but that’s not why I give it a title. I give it a title because that’s what it means to me first. How they perceive it I have no control over.

Idris:                      So with the gentrification pieces, what came first with those, the title or images?

Floyd:                    Both happened at the same time, because when I first started the abstract, it was just a black and white abstract. Then, after contemplation it was very much in the ilk of what’s happen[ing] now …witnessing what's happening in Denver. I grew up in Denver, and I have friends that live down by Five Points and on 23rd street .. Now it's all people with baby carriages, with the people drinking their lattes walking everywhere

Idris:                      Well have you heard about this thing –

Floyd:                    At the Five Points? 

Idris:                      Yeah, with Ink Coffee [shop]?

Floyd:                    Yeah, I heard about that! Come have coffee, and oh "Happily Gentrifying since 2015". Man! That is a punch in the tummy! Because that's the Five Points! They have no idea of the history of the place. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitz, anyone who ever came to Denver was there at the Points! When I was growing up there, going to East High School, we'd take white people there and their eyes would be looking like two fried eggs at the Points back in the day .. now they done took over the place.

It's sad, because those houses around there are the best houses. You know Denver's got great homes, because it used to be the Denver brick yards over there. That's what they gave up. Moving out to the burbs, most moved out to Aurora. Aurora is the most diversified place now, but most of those people that owned all those houses are now out that way. They gave up some serious property that I know their parents struggled to get and maintain. The money talks you know, they can go get a bigger house.

Idris:                       A McMansion .. yeah, we went through that whole thing, you know in Detroit, the same thing. We were part of that wave too in the late 80s, when crack was starting to really tear neighborhoods up. We were in a really nice part of Detroit, an area called Grandmont Rosedale, but in the late 80s it started getting a little hairy, and then my dad was an auto executive, and so that was the trend. We moved out to the burbs, but did not like it. Now my sister lives downtown. All these people are coming back now and want to live downtown…

Floyd:                    That’s the thing with gentrification - if you're not going to include the people who are already there, you're basically just displacing them. Manitou is the only town in El Paso County [that] legalized recreational weed. I never had to have security doors and all that when I first lived here. [It’s been] the last couple years that I had to do that because they broke into my place. Stole all my basses and guitars, just a violation. I mean I never had that happen before. Manitou is different now, there's some real characters out there. That's new though, that's has not always been. Mostly you had, you know, witches and hippies and people who just wanted to keep Manitou weird like they say here.

Idris:                      So you play music then?

Floyd:                    I used to try to. There used to be another black guy who lived here, Ray Stuart, that moved to Boulder. I was so upset when he left. He played flute, drums, all that. I played the bass. But the police--we'd be cutting up up here and we'd look around and the police would be standing in my doorway. Because, you know, the neighbors downstairs called the police on us for making noise and stuff.

When I first moved here, first five years of me living in Manitou, I got stopped every time I came to Manitou and every time I left by the police. Every time. They used to just harass me for the first five years I moved here and eventually they changed the chief in the force and it stopped. But I was harassed all the time.

Idris:                      Wow.

Floyd:                    I hated the Manitou police. I really did. They just would always tell me to get new tires and shit like that. "Your tires are a little bald there, next time I see, you need to have some new tires on there." "Yeah," I says, "Next time you see me, you'll probably be seeing the same tires. If you're going to give me a ticket for that, you might as well write up two, because I don't see where I'm going to be buying some new tires real soon." Oh they just used to just harass me all the time. I hated it. And just walk in your place and stuff like that, you know, it's like, "Hey, man, I didn't hear y'all knocking or anything." They didn't care. They were just really rude.

Idris:                      And did you feel like staying here was your form of protest?

Floyd:                    I wasn't going to let them run me out of here! You're not going to run me out of here. I'll persevere. That's what you do. Endure, put up with the mess for a while, and hope it gets better, and it did. But I thought very seriously, "I got to get out of here." Manitou wasn't that ideal place I thought it was at first, but it changed. I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I didn't leave.

Idris:                      Did you reflect on of that [experience] with the “Force/Resistance” show with you and Dareece Walker [at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center]? Was that in the periphery at all like while you were creating that body of work, or was that existing?

Floyd:                    That was an existing body of work - “Endangered”. [It was about a]ll of the young black males that were getting wiped out in the mid ‘80s. But Dareece is doing the kind of work I would have done if I was Dareece’s age. Really, it’s like I would have done that work at the same time but probably around his same age that I used to do when I was in Denver and here.

Idris:                      Interesting. Okay.

Floyd:                    But it was relevant to what Dareece was doing. I really loved that work. It had a lot of guts in it.

Idris:                      So the soundtrack in the background here is making me think a lot about what you’re saying …and so I’m wondering, how much does improvisation play into your process?

Floyd:                    Oh, a great deal. That’s my favorite part because that’s the part that you don’t have a lot of control over initially. That’s the part where the process becomes exciting because you’re embarking upon something where you don’t know where it’s going to end. If I know how it’s going to end I don’t want to do it. If I know how the painting is going to look when I’m done I don’t want to do it. Like this piece here, that’s going up to Fort Collins and to Magic Rat, which is a music venue at the Elizabeth Hotel. That’s a commission piece that’s going to leave tomorrow. The thing about it is I don’t know how to separate my guts from my work. It can’t just be a commodity. 

Idris:                      Right. No, of course not.

Floyd:                    It still has to have some soul in it. It has to be something that I haven’t embarked upon. I like the challenge. That painting in there is kicking my ass. It’s killing me physically and mentally. Physically I’ve got to pull out a ten-foot ladder and go up and I’m doing two-foot-by-fourteen-feet. And so you’ve got to go up and down the ladder and so forth and so on. That’s physical. I stay in shape and ride my bike, but it’s physical.

Idris:                      Well, I tell my students is that for me it's about, like, you got to get to that place where you're going to do it anyway -

Floyd:                    Right.

Idris:                      - and it's, like -

Floyd:                    Right.

Idris:                      - yes, needing to make a living is a part of it -

Floyd:                    Right. 

Idris:                      - of the equation -

Floyd:                    Right.

Idris:                      - but this is about something bigger -

Floyd:                    It is.

Idris:                      - which people from the outside might look at as insanity or whatever, but what do most people do with their day, you know what I mean?  What do most people do?  [laughing]

Floyd:                    Right. [laughing]

Idris:                      - go out and consume things?  It's, like, well, you know, we want to make things -

Floyd:                    Right.

Idris:                      - and you become -

Floyd:                    Compelled to do it.

Idris:                      Yeah.  Yeah.

Floyd:                    You know, we crossed the line a long time ago.  You cross that line and it's over.  You're in or you're not.  It ain't no wishy-washy kind of thing.  You present yourself as an artist, and the critics come out the woodwork, you know.   Soon as you say I'm an artist, boy, they show up, whether they got experience or not. The critics - you got your lay critics and your scholars and everybody else, but they all come out the woodwork if you say you're an artist, so -

Idris:                      Has there ever been anyone who's written about you that you actually were surprised?  You know, did they show you something about yourself or your work that you hadn't thought about before?

Floyd:                    Oh, yeah.  Everybody that writes about me. Do you know Yusef Komunyakaa?

Idris:                      Oh, yeah, of course.  Yeah. 

Floyd:                    Yusef, his essay in [the “Son of Pop”] catalogue is really great. Kyle McMillan with Art Forum - he wrote a really good review I thought that was very germane to really who I think I am, but everybody that writes [about my work], everybody who writes something has an insight to things that I just take for granted or I'm not even aware of myself, you know, so I think anybody who takes the time to observe and be able to connotate that into some kind of language is beyond me.

Idris:                      And on the flip, are there notions that get espoused regularly that you think are way off the mark?

Floyd:                    Of course, all the time.  They always think, like, I'm always angry and sometimes I am angry, but I'm not always angry. But an intelligent black man will be angry if he lives in this society.  Like, I just tell people that if you put two and two together with what's going on with us you'd be upset, you'd be mad, you'd be angry, but -

Idris:                      Yeah.

Floyd:                    - that anger is not directed in all the work.  Some of the work is -

Idris:                      That hasn't been my experience with it, you know, if I could - you know, just my experience with your work is I don't ever see rage.  I don't see it.  I mean, I see pain and I see accuracy and I see melancholy and I see a lot of humor, but I definitely - 

Floyd:                    That's what most people miss -

Idris:                      Yeah.

Floyd:                    - is the humor because I put humor in the work because I'm - that's just me. That's just my character, you know. You know, I'm not trying to speak for - I can't speak for every black person. You know, it's just me, this African male that was born in 1947 in Denver - grew up in that particular environment and all my experiences..  We have a culture that likes humor, and so we have humor, too.  It's not all about, you know, who wronged us.  It's about a myriad of things.  It's about us. 

Idris:                      I just had a play of mine that they did at UCCS called “Blackademics”, and it's a big kind of really personal and heady, kind of crazy play. And it's funny, though, it's really funny.  So I flew back in town and I caught the very last show, and we had this talkback afterwards. It was very somber and very heavy and, dah, dah, dah, and then, like, as I'm leaving somebody was talking to me and boom they turned around and were, like, oh, I just also want to tell you it was really funny. And it was like a relief when they said it.  They were, like, is it okay for me just say it was like a funny play? I was, like, yes, yes, please!

That was the intent, you know what I mean. Because I think that's always there with black expression. With everything, you hear in the music, you hear it in the painting, and writing - it's either deeply baked in there or it's on the surface or at the surface. But it's always it's always in there. 

Floyd:                    Right.  Because that's our essence. ]

Idris:                    I mean, what were you bringing in when you were teaching art? 

Floyd:                    I turned them on to Basquiat - I showed [the film] Basquiat many times and they loved it, I loved it.  Everything I would try to bring in, I would always try to bring in somebody on that level that was of color or something doing the same things.  I was not taking the white canon and throwing down their throat. I'm not delivering that.  I'm bringing in the message of what I know as art - my influences.

My oldest brother was an artist.  They say who's your biggest influence?  Him, first.  He was my mentor.  I mean, I watched him - he's the one that gave me the idea that I could do all these things. I said when I was five I wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but do you think I really knew what I was talking about?  You think I really knew what an artist was?  There were some people making art in the community … there was a black sign painter, there were other people carving wood.

Then there's my brother.  He's painting, he's doing architectural renderings, he's doing sculpture.  He did everything.  That's what I wanted to do because he was my idol.  So I was already exposed very early on that there's a lot of things you can do as an artist. And so by the time I hit high school and then got hip to Andy Warhol, [Robert] Rauschenberg and all those people, pop art…  I think it was my senior year when I was first introduced to acrylics and then from there things started opening up.

And then going to the library. - Ms. Robinson was always - she knew I wanted to know something about art.  She turned me on to all the things she had in her library, you know, all the [African American] artists she could expose me to .. it was just looking for black artists, knowing that they could do that, you know, and once you realize that there's somebody out there doing it, then you're cool.

I was lucky - I had support from my family and parents. Because of my brother, they had already been exposed to one [artist] in the family, you know.  It was [ten] of us - four brothers and six sisters.  [My mom] used to take me in the summers to try to find an art program, because I begged her to do that ..We would get on the bus and go all over Denver in the summer looking for a place for me to take art lessons.  Wasn't no place to be found.  It was all crafts.  They was putting Popsicle sticks together and shit -

Idris:                      Macaroni.

Floyd:                    Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. And I knew - I had enough sense to know that that's not what I wanted to do and she was very upset, you know, because she couldn't find a place for her little Floyd to do his art, because I said I don't want to do that. I said I want art lessons, I want some real art, you know.  I want to learn how to draw and paint and the works…but it didn't happen until probably about the seventh grade when I really started getting some real lessons. Cole Junior High School - I had a great art teacher there. Did my first big oil painting and from there on, I basically cut my teeth on typing paper and watercolors …

Idris:                      Oh, wow.

Floyd:                    My sister worked and would bring reams of typing paper home and that's basically how I cut my teeth.  You know, started getting my own oils and that guy I told you about when I got in high school he gave me this garage for a studio.  That's because I really messed up my mother's curtains in the dining room with my little easel in the corner …

Idris:                      Did you splatter?

Floyd:                    Oh, yeah. And you know, you didn't replace your curtains every day … in those days when you got some new curtains, those would be around a while.  But I was in the corner doing my thing.  Paint was going off the edge and splattering on them curtains …

Idris:                      She said you got to go.

Floyd:                    You got to go.  I love you, little friend, I understand what you're trying to do, but I cannot -

Idris:                      Can't do it here.

Floyd:                    - replace the curtains, so you won't be doing it in here and that's when I went to Mitch and said, Mitch, I need a place, you know.  He gave me that garage for my studio and, boy, I was always going to my studio, you know.  It was a getaway, you know - I'm going to my studio, you know, I’ll be in there.

Idris:                      Yeah, the lab.

Floyd:                    It was great.  

Idris:                      So what are the key elements that must be there, you know, for you to work in a space?  Like, what has to - what are the essentials?

Floyd:                    For me to work in a space? Every apartment I ever had, I’d get a two-bedroom apartment.  One bedroom is going to be a studio.  I would put down paper all over the room and stuff. That would be my studio and I would do the painting as big as I could do in that space.

Idris:                      So your space would determine the size [of the work]..

Floyd:                    Exactly.

Idris:                      But what else, you know, do you need to have music?

Floyd:                    My daughter calls me and she'll hear Miles Davis [in the background] and say “you're in the studio”,  because mostly Miles is my favorite to get started, but I got a big repertoire [of music] I'll work with.  I love me some Miles, you know, and that usually initiates when I first get started, but by the time I get into the process I'll have everybody else on…

Idris:                      Why him?  Why Miles? 

Floyd:                    Just love Miles.  I don't know why - just one of my favorites.

Idris:                      He's kind of perfection.  I mean, his music is kind of … close to perfect.

Floyd:                    I can't pretend like I understood everything that he was doing initially, but I have an affinity for him that for some reason has stuck with me.

It's like art.  Your initial response is one thing, but if you sit there and contemplate the work over and over it's very different because you're going to discover other things visually or something … is going to come to heads and then you'll just say, wow, I didn't notice that or I didn't think about that or, you know, it's something that has to be absorbed over a period of time.  

[In the process of painting], the painting is sometimes painting you, you know?  I mean, you're just a conduit and once you start and put those marks down and start working it takes you places that you couldn't contemplate, but you have to deal. You run into visual problems that you have to solve.  That's what keeps you up until 3:30 in the morning and then you go to bed and wake up the next day and know that you got to go in there and eradicate something else and change something because it ain't working, you know, and I like that whole challenge of visually something is not working for me and I got to figure out how to make this work.  That's the process for me. 

If you're not receptive nothing comes to you.  When you have already decided, narrowed things down to where you think you know what you're doing nothing else comes to you.  You got to be open and receptive. 

Idris:                      So, I keep going back to “Son of Pop” [at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center], but it just had such an impact on me -

Floyd:                    I'm glad that it did!

Idris:                      - it really did, man.  It was exactly what - I'll be honest with you. I'll say it, I'll tweet it, I'll put it on the record - it was a moment where I was, like, I can live here. I was, like, if this guy lives here, and if this is the work and the conversation that can exist here, I can stay here.

                             Well, sir, this was great.

Floyd:                    Excellent. Thank you!