I’ve been searching for truth since I was a youngster.  I had thoughts and inklings and premonitions about things like love, and God and kindness, but they were typically corrected or overrun by the group-think powers surrounding me.

I grew up in an era where black people were not only laughingly referred to by other names, but so were Hispanics, and Asians, and anyone else that was not white.

Mine was a time when it was completely natural to refer to a homosexual as a fag, a lesbian as a dyke, and a disabled person as a gimp or retard.

What amazes me most is that while I, the individual, was secretly entertaining other thoughts toward these people groups who were different than me – thoughts of kindness and acceptance – 

the religion my parents had embraced, which promoted itself as “the only true church on the face of the earth” and its male leaders who were in charge of me, encouraged the rhetoric that I was secretly concerned about.

In time their promotion of hate took root in my soul and I fully embraced all the elements of being a misogynistic, narcissistic, racist, homophobic fascist jerk – ironically known also as a returned Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Looking back, however, I can see the winds and waves of change at work on my soul.  Sometimes they would arrive in one giant swell and never leave – like when Jesus came to my heart in 1997. 

But at other times truth and my ability to receive it came in waves stretched out over spans of time  . . . without my realizing that each wave was part of the same storm.

Having three older siblings I cut my teeth on music – on a wide arraignment of types and styles.  

But sometime in the midst of my teens – around 1977  - I had become a fan of a form of music that I could really resonate with - punk.  

Along with my best friend and next door neighbor Steve (who is now an LDS Stake President in Los Angeles), we discovered the Sex Pistols and dove headlong into what I felt was a “raw garage-like honesty” as compared to the fabricated sounds of corporate rock, studio bands, disco and of course, the prefabricated ideals and ideas of the only true Church on the face of the earth.

What I mean to say is that in very short order I learned to trust the authentic expressions of punk over the ersatz group think messages of all of the former.

One week around that time Steve and I learned that the Sex Pistols (our first exposure to punk and the first punk album I ever owned) were going to be on Saturday Night life and, like many of you, we anxiously passed the hours of that week waiting to hear, “Live from New York, Its Saturday Night.”  We could hardly wait to see them live.

We were disappointed however when the Pistols were replaced (for some unknown reason) by a guy named Elvis Costello (of whom we knew nothing about).

Nevertheless, because we were seeking for more authentic expressions in music we watched on – from our respective family dens.

Evil Costello took to the stage that night looking cool enough, and he and his band launched into a song that seemed original and honest enough but then all of a sudden I watched with both shock and delight as Elvis manically jerked himself from the microphone, spastically stopped the music, apologized to the audience, and turning to his band, told them to play something different – a song called, “Radio Radio.”

I suppose it was what I was longing to see someone do in my life all along – to step forward in teachers quorum and spastically stop a homophobic joke, or to tell us kids that it was okay to love people who were of the world with all of our heart – and I was mesmerized by the courage of this wirey little bespeckled Brit for doing whatever he was doing.

What was this?  I said to myself, fascinated by the spectacle.  What is this guy actually doing?  Why did he stop the first song?  Why sing this second song instead?  

I was tempted to call Steve next door on the telephone but remained transfixed as Elvis Costello sang, “Radio, Radio” angrily.  Passionately, as if in defiance of a some Totalitarian power f which I was totally unaware.

I didn’t know how to react, where to put my hands, and I remember looking around the room to say something to somebody about this . . . but nobody was there.

By the time song ended, which I later learned was an indictment against the powers that run the radio waves, I knew a couple of things as much as I knew that the Boom of Mormon was true - I knew I I wanted what Elvis Costello had – that devotion, and passion - THAT willingness to do what he did NOT appear to have the permission to do – and I knew that Elvis Costello, more than my young mens’ advisor, more than my Bishop, more than my own parents, could be trusted.

This was my Montgomery Pop festival.  My Woodstock.  My Tieniman square.  And it all took place in my heart and head in the glow of an agitated man named Elvis Costello and his band the Attractions.

As the next week rolled around, two female friends at school (who were artists and real music aficianatos) told me the inside scoop to the SNL event:

Elvis had not only been told to sing the song they opened with by NBC and Lorne Michaels, but he was expressly prohibited to sing “Radio Radio” – which he did anyway – which resulted in a great debacle at the time.  

Elvis Costello would pay the price for his disobedience and would not be invited back to SNL for over a decade thereafter but in the least, he gained the trust of one idiot southern California teenager through his act of defiance in the face of artistic authenticity.

Several week later I heard a knock at my door and found a new silkscreened tee- shirt of Elvis Costello and the attractions laying on my parents front porch – an unsolicited gift of love from my two female friends at school.

That sort of amazed me – that two girls who were not members of the only true Church on the face of the earth had enough love and care for me to gift me with something that they knew I would love.

I wore that shirt out as I continued forward in search of unvarnished, authentic truth in art, life, music and ultimately, even spiritual matters.

Nearly twenty years later, after a full time mission and marriage in the LA temple and while still outwardly an active Latter day Saint but one totally immersed in years of seeking for unvarnished spiritual authenticity, I was invited to go to Sri Lanka (for a month or so) and to develop a line of clothing from warehouses of fabric owned by the largest cutter and sewer of clothing in South East Asia, Kumar Deapura.

I was not a traveler then (or now) and had never been outside the United States with the exception of Tijuana a couple of times and Canada in college so I knew that this was going to be a new experience for me.

After all the shots and paperwork I embarked on the 21 hour flight to Sri Lanka where I would actually live with Kumar in his home and work out of his offices to create this line of clothes.

Remember now, I had – since returning home from my LDS mission – been seeking “authenticity” in my life.  Ever since the SNL event I had been seeking to be authentic – though I usually failed.

For years prior to this long journey to a completely foreign land, I had spent years seeking truth in music and in film, which bra...