Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Music. It fills the air, fills your ears, and when the narrative is right, it paints vivid imagery in your mind — pulling on two senses at once. If the music is loud enough, the vibrations hit you in the chest and become a third sense. When done thoughtfully, music becomes the most provoking and complete form of art I know. It doesn’t just speak to you. It surrounds you, moves through you, and stays with you long after the last note.

Where do you find inspiration?

Inspiration finds me in the pain I still can’t fully process. It’s the act of emptying the darkness inside me onto the page, the canvas, or through sound — then stepping back and seeing what I’ve created. In that moment the darkness turns into light. To me, that is the closest thing humanity has to real alchemy.

What would you do with $25,000?

With $25,000 I’d strike the first spark, build Compass Law Group where the light meets the dark. We take the deep pain of separation and war, turn it to canvas, to words, and to score. Like alchemists pulling the black into gold, we walk with the lost till their story is told. For veterans, for families, for hearts torn apart, art and the law become bridges back to the heart.