It's Like This
It’s been half a lifetime since I took my first tentative steps toward forming a voice for storytelling. I’ve spent the last thirty years pursuing the craft in various forms, from songwriting, to nonfiction, journalism and even a little children’s fiction. No event has had a greater impact on my writing career than my discovery and research on the life and career of the astronomer Milton Humason; a subject that has resulted in two books and many articles on different aspects of the history of modern cosmology.
But in reality I’ve been telling stories in one way or another since I can remember. As a boy I created and acted out skits with my younger brothers at family gatherings. I directed and filmed my first movie around the age of ten or eleven; a cops and robbers shoot-em-up filmed in my family's manufacturing plant in the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois,
where I grew up. I played the guitar and began writing songs in the eighth grade, some of which I performed for family and friends. In high school I formed a musical duo with my best friend writing mawkish love songs dripping with pubescent angst. I even played the lead in the play Harold and Maude my senior year.
So, it should come as no surprise that I have bachelor’s degrees in both music and literature from the University of Denver, where I studied opera voice and composition and creative writing. Out of college, I played in a rock band, which had the customary ten or twelve breakups and reformations, during the 1990s before my move to New York City where I now reside.
I come by all of this honestly. My mom was an aspiring song and dance girl and my dad a dixieland jazz drummer before they both found Cupid and made a baby as teenagers. I’m not an outwardly ambitious performer. Living in New York and knowing so many theater and dance performers I am constantly amazed at their ability, and in fact their desire, to perform at the drop of hat. A good friend of mine, himself a playwright and director, once condemned musical theater arguing that nobody walks down the street brooding about life and then just suddenly breaks into song. To which I replied, “Oh really, Patrick, have you never met anyone, anyone at all, in musical theater?”
All kidding aside, the bulk of my time these days is spent researching, writing and producing in the worlds of nonfiction, documentary, television (streaming) and film. Along the way I’ve worked with some pretty cool people. No, I’m not going to divulge any names. I do enjoy co-writing and/or ghostwriting memoir with others and mentoring young creatives in the fine art of living and working as an artist in a world that seems to be increasingly turning its back on the arts and humanities.
Despite this rather bleak observation, I remain optimistic that humankind will reconsider and reacquaint itself with the art and the craft of storytelling, which is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization.
On that more optimistic note, I wish you a rich and happy life devoid of patterned baldness.
Clear skies,
Ron