How I Became Me Maybe

Product of a WW 2 on-shore leave and an out-of-tune rhythm system, a sybaritic soul in a Catholic body, a weed,  a flower growing in the wrong place, a sonnet full of chaos, I grew up in a suburb of New York City where WASPs had station wagons, big was vulgar, loud was unthinkable and no one talked of money.

Through an inexplicable error, a misunderstanding involving a double negative and too many martinis, I went to a boarding school that did the best it could with the dumbest sons of wealthy Long Island families who could not get into St. Grottlesex. The main lessons taught were genteel anti-semitism, Nativism and masturbation, all flavored with the teachings of St. Paul, Augustine and the Puritan Divines.  

Being well connected to the Admissions Department, I was admitted to Harvard College. My academic activities, usually conducted through the haze of alcohol, focused on  English Literature and  Fine Arts.  

Outside activities included an interest in aberrant political groups like the John Birch Society, the American Nazi Party and the Communist Party. All were active in the Boston area where they had rallies that I often attended. They sometimes turned violent. and offered insights into the underbelly of politics that, with the exception of some research on the authoritarian personality, was not a subject much dealt with in the iyy covered halls. The underbelly, whether in music, art, literature, etc. is where the truth lives. This continues to be a major interest,

 I subsequently got married and had four children which are all highly original and productive contributors to diverse parts of society. 

At various times they have been dancer, purveyor to the horse trade, fashionista, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, real estate developer, novelist, free lance reporter, documentary producer, political operative and fisherman. 

I worked for various financial organizations and began to paint, sculpt and write. Slowly these activities took over most of my life and I worked only enough to pay the bills.

 I have been involved with various arts organizations including A Gathering of the Tribes (www.tribes.org/) and, more recently, Millennium Film Workshop (millenniumfilm.org/) where i was, at various times, Treasurer, President and Director. I sold the Millennium Archives to MoMA (www.moma.org) in 2015.

I used to live in Soho, once an arts community, now a flourishing hot house of upper-end consumerism. I now live in Bushwich, which is the Northern most part of Brooklyn. Once a thriving industrial area, it is  a mixture of light industry and artists lofts, galleries, bars and enormous walls covered with graffiti. 

I am writing a fictional biography, painting, sculpting and working on various still photography and video works.