dominicambrose.com  

 I grew up in Brooklyn when the Dodgers were playing at Ebbetts Field and subway “straphangers” read the Brooklyn Eagle. I grew up quickly in some ways, becoming a regular visitor to Greenwich Village at the age of twelve, but through it all I tried to keep the naive side of my personality intact, as I want to never lose the feeling of wonder for the world.          

In the turbulent atmosphere of the late 1960s, I entered college with no clear idea what to do, except to avoid fighting a foolish and brutal war in Vietnam. I went to college on Staten Island, but soon drifted away from my studies in the rush of hippie culture. I moved on a few years later to Boston for one year, and then on to Europe where I spent a lot of time in Berlin and Milan. However, New York remained my home, and I ended the decade living on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, studying languages and music at Hunter College.

Two photos from Berlin, mid 1970s 

In Italy, two of my best friends were Mario Mieli and his cousin and mentor, Francesco Santini, two great thinkers that died way too young.

Mario Mieli, as painted by David Hill. 

Read about Mario Mieli here

Read about HAW here (auf Deutsch)

 During the early 1980s the AIDS virus was spreading undetected all around us in the Village, and suddenly exploded into an epidemic around 1982. It was profoundly frightful, not only because of the cruel agony of the disease, but also because it was totally mysterious. During those first years the exact nature of the disease and the transmission was subject to much speculation and little real knowledge. I decided to get out of its way, and in 1983 I returned to Italy, but not to the heated politicized world of Milan. I went to translators' school at the University of Trieste, about as far off as one could get, on the very edge of Western Europe. I stayed there for two years, and improved my language skills, and began to see Europe from a more eastern perspective.

Upon my return to New York in late 1985, I began working as a teacher, while studying the methodology of language teaching. I lived in Brooklyn and taught in two high schools there, and had to learn everything the hard way. I was not used to discipline in my own life, and found it hard to enforce it in the lives of others. I loved the experience, however, and made my progress, eventually getting a master's degree in English teaching at Hunter College.

By 1992 I became restless again, however, and obtained a position training teachers in Romania. I stayed there for three years, traveling across the country, working with many fascinating Romanian teachers. It was inspiring to see how they had been able to keep their intellectual lives vibrant through the years of dictatorship. It was also amazing to see how well the high school students learned languages despite the outdated methods in use. During that decade I also taught for short periods of time in the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Ecuador, always learning at least as much as I was teaching.

By the end of the millenium I was tired of travel and wanted to be somewhere, to collect my thoughts and actions. I moved to a seaside community in New Jersey where I taught in the school system and at the community college. The area was beautiful, the natural seashore an astounding marvel, so close to the metropolis, and the teaching environment less stressful than in New York City. However, the drawbacks were insurmountable: the general culture of the community seemed to be one of refusal: in their headlong rush to escape from the uncertainties of big city life (where a majority of the population had come from) so many of my neighbors seemed to take a perverse pride in their narrow mindedness and ungenerous political beliefs. I felt isolated and suffocated. Although I loved the area, and enjoyed my work, I had to leave.

In 2005 I moved to Paris. To my mind, big cities with all their problems and faults are the greatest achievement of human civilization, and I feel that I must be right there in the middle of one. Although this move has caused a lot of financial uncertainty in my life, I have never regretted it for one moment, the city has rejuvenated me and inspired me to put my projects together in a more coherent way. I look to the future with an entirely new perspective. Paris is not my spiritual home, which will always remain New York and Italy, but this city has always been a gracious host to spiritual refugees from around the world, comfortably sheltering them while exposing them to her own amazing cultural heritage. Right now, I don't need to go anywhere else, I have my ideas, my friends at the touch of the telephone, and I have Paris.   

in the world of teaching

 As a language teacher I have taught in city high schools, community colleges and in adult education. I have trained teachers in Eastern Europe and in South America. This work has been a great source of experience for me, it has taught me so much about human character, about success and failure and about how we all communicate.

in the world of Arts