In
terms of looks, you can see for yourself. I occasionally bleach
my hair platinum when I get a sudden jolt of vanity, usually after having been
rejected for a project, and when I don't, it's white and light to medium blonde,
depending on the season. I also sometimes grow a short, clipped beard when
I feel the need for change.
Warning: While I'm much more comfortable
writing about culture and the arts than I am about myself, I'm just going to
chat myself up to whatever degree you can stomach. And not pretend to tell
it
other than exactly the way it is. So, consider yourself warned. I am
not as self-absorbed as the above and the following is sure to sound. I just
want to try to give you an accurate picture.|
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Fortunately, things change. On the west coast, where I've lived since 1996, first in La Jolla, surrounded by gardens, and now in West Hollywood, in a small cottage behind a tacky bungalow, life is very different. I have made surprisingly strong and honest friendships in a town that values anything but. My creative work has actually accelerated, and I've learned to program and code to a degree that surprises even me. My proudest moment was making the bar at IBM, where I was brought in as Executive Creative Director for the Innovation Center in Santa Monica. It felt like I had finally hit the majors. And had, until they shut us all down. Such is life. Speaking of which, there were the 5 years I spent in Birmingham, Alabama, before moving out here, where I took care of my Mother. I had to file for bankruptcy as a result, and lost everything in New York. A hard turn of events, which left me understandably bitter for a while, but one which turned out to be surprisingly rewarding. Seeing my Mother through to the end was probably the single most important thing I have ever done. She died with her hand in mine and a smile as wide and sunlit as the white sand beach at Gulf Shores, which she loved. There were two services for her, one private and the other at Arlington National, where she was to be buried with my Father, who had been an Air Force fighter pilot. When a Navy cortège was assembled, I hurried to the director and told him that my Father was in the Air Force, not the Navy. He replied, "Yes, I know, son, but your Mother served with honors in the Navy." None of us knew a thing about it, and the entire family was there. We discovered that she had worked on the Manhattan Project -- the bomb -- and had been ordered to never tell anyone about it. So she hadn't. She was buried with more honors than my dad, and when I was handed the triangulated flag which had draped her coffin moments before, I took it with a pride that can still bring me to tears. I think that was the day I finally matured and began to change the way I saw and related to others: secrets have their place, but not everything needs to be hidden. The goods, when they arrive, need to be faced full front. Perhaps as a result, clients and business associates know I will level with them, no matter how bad the news. Some like it. Some don't and move on. Friends know I'll always be there, regardless, because everybody goes through the roughs from time to time and needs honest, straight-forward support. Tough love with a bear hug to get the tears and sadness out. Lovers discover they always have a best friend, no matter how bitter the breakup. I mention these things, which don't sound exactly humble -- you were warned -- because I've grown proud of them, and because I have great respect and admiration for the same qualities in others. the gig's up, babe Of the many websites I've created over the last several years, this has been the most difficult. How to express a life that's been as deep and well lived as mine without sounding off-putting? How to be honest about who I am and what I've done without sounding arrogant? How to just say it like it is and now worry about the results? How to use the abstractions of electronics to create the impression of a living thing? Time, guts and DreamWeaver will tell. Ultimately, this site will become a portfolio of photos, clippings, writings, productions -- even tv commercials -- from the periods of my life that have been the most impactful. All the way from the white trash kid in the South who adored his fighter pilot father and starlet-pretty mother, to the sophisticate who nibbled caviar on the Concorde and chatted it up with luminaries and tycoons. Then there are the periods of despair and loneliness, brute survival and growth. Oy. But I feel fortunate to have been through it all, from the best to the worst. I've experienced love and passion so extraordinary that it's left me sweating for weeks, and I've been beaten up by drunken marines and left for dead, bleeding all over my first car. I've enjoyed wonderfully deep friendships, usually with wackos and Europeans, and I've been betrayed on levels I didn't even know existed, usually by people from the midwest. But those are the things that make life interesting. If you live through them. Still, nothing puzzles me now so much as people who run away from the opportunities that life presents. Maybe because I was one of the swiftest runners of them all? Entirely possible. I do know is that true wisdom always comes from the knowledge that gets knocked into us, like a sudden gust into a mainsail, so unexpected and powerful that it almost flips the boat. I know it will sound alarmingly uncynical, but I think life really is a voyage, and we are judged, if we are judged at all, other than by ourselves, by the way and manner in which we manage the trip. So there. "If comfort is what you seek," someone once said, "life is not the place to be." Naturally, this has been a test Did you spot the ironic -- if not deeply profound -- typo on this page? If so, let me know where and what it was by clicking here. ‹back to top›  ‹close
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an OLD head
shot ...
pensive
at the Mondrian ...
looking
for what's next ...