I find it hard to introduce myself effectively, or write my autobiography faithfully.  Ultimately, all of us are all the sum of our decisions and the “I” is constantly moving and changing. Hermann Hesse wrote:

“Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form.  He is much more an experiment and a transition.  He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit.  His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit.  His innermost longing draws him back to nature.  Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute.  ‘Man,' whatever people think of him, is never anything more than a temporary compromise.”

Similarly, I don't think I'm solely comprised of one thing and nothing else.  There is no direct line of how I arrived here or became who I am.  There are no easy slots, no lines in the sand.  Everything is up to interpretation.  I believe that to cookie cut someone's life into digestible pieces removes what the actual experience of living is.  There is a lot of open space between the facts where people develop, change and hopefully grow.  I find it hard to quantify the exact moments when I changed completely, had an epiphany or a complete about face. Plus, those moments might just be too intimate or revealing to share.  An autobiography does not accurately describe who we are, but is instead a reflection of what we want to be perceived as.  For most, it seems, the change is a gradual process that involves many factors that may or may not have great importance.  Nevertheless, I will try to shed some light on what I am trying to accomplish and why.

I grew up in Southern New Jersey, near Philadelphia.  I couldn't wait to leave.  My emotional home was in Western Pennsylvania.  All of my extended family was still living in my parents' hometown near Pittsburgh.  Throughout my school years, I felt for the most part that I was just biding time, until I left for college. Growing up, I was on the younger side of an older family.  I was encouraged to comprehend their subjects and conversations.  I would not say that I was forced to mature too early but I never felt that my family was condescending. My grandfathers taught me to be observant of people and of people's interactions. I learned to feel comfortable with adults. I think ultimately this put me out of synch with both my peers and with many of my teachers.  I was never completely sold on the educators' authority.  

Due to my father and many of my older cousins, I was exposed to the university environment at an early age.  Not only was my father a professor, many of my cousins were at college.  I was able to see first hand the environment and the approach to learning.  I was jealous that they could pursue their interests where I felt locked into a staid curriculum.  My grades were fine, but most of my interests were in things outside of school. I always found the books I read, the music I listened to, and the movies I watched far more interesting and challenging than anything in the syllabus.  Plus, my family created an atmosphere where a school curriculum was only a small part of the learning process.  I found the suburban atmosphere and most of its authority figures to be stifling and constraining.  I had a hard time reconciling the honesty and hard working values of my family with the phoniness of many of the kids and people I was exposed to as a kid.  By my teenage years I had a pronounced inclination towards rebellion, an intense dislike of repression and exploitation and a strong identification with the underdog.

Growing up and through high school I was devoted to freestyle wrestling.  I lost just about as much as I won.   I enjoyed the solitary aspects of the sport as well as the mental and physical challenges.  Before my senior year in high school I was able to go to a wrestling camp with a gold medal Olympian, John Smith. Watching Smith prepare for the '92 Barcelona games, I learned about a whole different aspect of wrestling, an approach that was completely unfamiliar.  The Olympians and people training along side Smith went beyond worrying about winning or losing.   They wrestled with everything they had at all times.  Their concept and approach towards not only athletics, but also life, was radical.  There was a confidence in their abilities to achieve results, and a complete surrender to the moment. They did their best at that time and then moved on to the next challenge. I tried to adopt a similar mindset and approach my senior year of high school, but as I learned, having the mindset and the ability are two different things. The results didn't really show until I made it to college, and at that point I was unable to wrestle on the team.  In my gut, I understood the wrestlers actions immediately.  But it took me a while before I could really put my comprehension of it into words.  The Olympians were almost like jazz musicians; not only was wrestling an athletic event, a competition or exertion, it was a creative high.   The level they achieved mentally was beyond athletics; it was a way of life.

            I went to school at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.  I initially believed that school was merely a stop over on my way to what I thought would be a financially rewarding business career.  I viewed college as a place to make a better product of myself, so I could get the ‘ace' job with a huge salary.  Quickly, I was overwhelmed by how many people there had the same notions of school. The classes held no weight, no substance and no interest.  I lost fascination in the competitive environment.  I began to believe that college was just like high school, trapped in its regimen and indifferent to me.  I argued with professors over their method of education, and was bewildered by the desires and competitiveness of my classmates. After a while, I felt disconnected to the dry approach towards education within the business school.  I felt disembodied, and that I was being transformed into software to be used by a greater machine. To add to my frustrations, I wasn't as good at taking tests as I originally believed.  I was disheartened to the idea that I was going to be defined by my grade point average.  If a GPA was the main criteria to compare myself to my classmates, then I had put myself in a miserable position.  I did not want to believe that my future would already be discarded before it even began.  I really felt that whether my GPA was high or low it had no reflection on who I was, what I had to offer or where I was going.  The classification had lost all credibility.  College, I believed, was supposed to be a foundation, a beginning, not an ending. I began to search elsewhere within the college for a real education.

Luckily, I had enough room in my schedule to take elective classes outside of my major.  If I was going to be in school, I at least wanted to say I was exposed to various ideas and was able to meet some highly intelligent people.  I started taking philosophy classes just because I had seen a professor from school on Letterman's show introduced as a genius, in a sketch titled “The Genius, The Fool, and Dave.”  For a while, I was satisfied to be merely in the same room with smart people.  Gaining a foothold on the history and debates took me a long time.  I had to literally learn a new language, before I could begin thinking.  But as my interest grew, along with my comprehension, I became fascinated with their method to learning.  Both the professors and the students had a completely different attitude.  The environment was still competitive, yet the atmosphere was healthier.  The professors not only encouraged, but demanded free thought, dissidence and personal challenges.  Where in the business school, having an opinion or a point of view was frowned upon; in philosophy merely having an opinion was not enough.  The opinion had to be backed up by structured arguments with a firm foundation.  Watching the philosophy professors debate among themselves in seminars, in conferences and reading the long history of discussion set the precedence for the students.  The method wasn't intimidation but encouragement through example.  In many ways I saw similarities between the athletes training for the Olympics and the professors debating metaphysics.  Their methodology was not only an approach towards education, but also a way of life.   Where the wrestlers were training themselves for an athletic competition and a medal, the philosophers were using their minds to debate the meaning of existence.  However, both groups were completely secure in their abilities to not only accomplish their immediate goals but to push past them.  Both the Olympians and philosophers absorbed the world around them in their own way to gain insight and definition to their reality.  

            I came to acting as a bit of a lark.  Philosophy had shown me that there was more to learn at school.  My schedule couldn't accommodate all the subjects I wanted to study before graduation.  I was trying to absorb as much as I could in the little time I had.  Unsatisfied with my core business classes, I was still searching for other possibilities of what life could be.  I began an internal search for the source of my identity.  I crammed more philosophy, added music theory, audited American studies and sat in the back of art history classes.  The drama course was just the next extension I was covering within the arts department.  At that time, there was no desire to make a career out of performing.  Before I registered for the class I had always assumed that people other than me did acting.  As I grew up, I perceived the drama department as something separate from the mainstream, a place kids went in search of an identity, much like how kids found acceptance and identity through joining athletic teams.  I had a passing interest in acting with little working knowledge.  Old movies and actors always fascinated me. Late in college, I figured that acting could broaden my search for the new and different. More importantly, the class was not in the business school.

My acting professor was a bit of an outsider.  Her unique approach mirrored her free, upbeat, inquisitive and supportive personality.  A departure from most of my business professors, she was knowledgeable and professional without being condescending or bitter.  From the beginning she held my attention and curiosity.  She encouraged the students' passions and discovery.  The class not only synthesized all the other courses I had been taking, but also provided possibilities.  Instead of taking a class that told me what should be, I was taking a class that asked what could be. The approach was to absorb, reflect and relate, everything at all times.  There were no wrong answers in the sense that there was only one proper way to do things.  Everything was a possibility and the only wrong way to do something was to not take the chance; to not try. Instead of going over what had come before, the process thrived on what was going to come next.

When I learned to shed my ego, and to focus on the purpose and the experience, I found that became my reality.  The sense of purpose and positive intentions became the story that I was enacting.  In telling lies, I was in a way, revealing the truth, the truth of the moment. The acting classes were the first time where I could say that not only could acting be a way of life, it could be my way of life. Or maybe in general, I felt like I was not going to live up to my potential.  During this class, something clicked inside of me.  The acting class was, for me, the moment where I said that this is not only what I want to do with my life, but it's the only thing I ultimately want to do with my life.  Acting was the only thing that truly made sense.

            I moved to New York City after college to carve out a career.  I believed that I could continue the education and path that I had begun late in school. New York City was the cultural Mecca, containing everything that had fascinated me at school. Similar to college where I thought it would be enough to merely be in the room of smart people, I assumed that by moving to New York it would be enough to merely be around creative people.  New York City, I believed, would provide an umbrella where I could not only pursue my career, but also broaden my horizons.  Plus, many of the people that I admired as actors had started out on the New York stage.  I had friends in the city, I had room to fail, I was fairly close to home and I wouldn't need a car.  The city was a new frontier to be explored.  Living, surviving, and attempting to start a career in a field where I knew next to no one and had no classical training or background was not only the challenge but the adventure. 

The reality of living in New York was different from what I expected. Once again, my idealized version of what struggling and success would be had no connection to the reality of the situation.  In a sense, I felt like some one had dropped me in the middle of the shark-infested ocean with a faith that there was land someplace; just pick a direction and start swimming.  Innocently I imagined easily sliding into an artistic community, with an atmosphere of support and encouragement similar to what I experienced in college.  I spent about three years looking for this only to realize that it no longer survived.  The theater environment that I had read about, where Brando, Newman, and others had once begun, no longer existed.  For one, New York City is very expensive. The high standard of living makes it difficult for small standalone theaters to subsist and independent artists to produce their work. 

I also discovered an ancillary business that insists that there is only one way to be successful, only one way to get noticed and that those actions should be the same for all trying to succeed.  This side business feeds off of young actors, artists, musicians, etc. and their insecurities, uncertainties and naiveties.  There is an overwhelming sense of desperation that permeates through this business.  Instead of being encouraged to explore, grow and seek a more substantial body of work people are encouraged to spend endless amounts of money and energy on the image within the system.  I was sucked into this approach and quickly became frustrated by its narrow mindedness and strict limitations.  The notions I had about a way of life and measuring success from within, which provided the foundations of my career and how it should proceed, were challenged.  The ideas of absorbing and relating to the world around me and trying to be my best at that moment were instead replaced by constant comparisons, to other people and pipe dreams of others' successes which had no bearing on me.  I had let my acting career become everything I had originally hated about the business school.  As T.S. Eliot said in The Waste Land, “ Who are those hooded hordes swarming / over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth?”  There was so much conformity and very little room for discovery or growth.  I was disappointed in some of the new friends I had met, some of the experiences I had and the pace of my career.  But mostly I was disappointed with myself.  I began to feel as if I was wasting a great opportunity.  I had succumbed to peer pressure and allowed my desire and ambition to be co-opted by what other people thought I should be. 

Very slowly, and gradually, I was able to gain perspective on the experience.  Also, I tried to separate myself from what I believed to be phony and desperate.  I still wanted to act and to perform but I never wanted to compromise who I was to get there.  As I was pulling away from this mindset I seemed to make some headway in my career.  I had done some interesting work and met a bunch of people.  Yet, the momentum still wasn't breaking my way.  I ran into another catch-22 that I wasn't originally prepared for.  To get the good work you need a good agent, but to get the good agent you need to have done the good work.  Again, I found myself on the outside of the circle.  For all my progress, all I had been paid was lip service. 

Frustration doesn't begin to express the emotions of how I felt. However, as I began to feel the failures, setbacks and dead ends amassing, I could never figure out anything else I wanted to do.  The fascination and enjoyment from acting was still there and the intoxication never disappeared.  I just had to figure some way around the system that would work for me and also provide satisfaction.  I tried to keep myself diverted by being a museum rat, and reading as much as I could, but the waiting for my moment and waiting for someone else's approval became tiresome.  I got to the point where I just found other people's approval irrelevant to the work I wanted to do.  Simply, I believed that I am an actor and that I chose this life.  Whether anyone else feels the same way was irrelevant.  I decided to keep searching for meaning and fulfillment.

I decided to start taking all the ideas and opinions I had and create my own work.  I have made a determined move away from the conventional categories that I have too often subscribed to better reflect my own perceptions. My output has yet to match my desire, but I'm learning something new everyday.  There have been many setbacks and even more frustrations, as I try to figure out how to make movies, and more importantly pay for them. I have not yet even found a way to get paid.  Despite the drawbacks, I'm enjoying the process.  A little bit of independent success has fueled more desire and ambitions.  I'm beginning to feel connected to my original aspiration of an independent and productive life where I actually feel connected to the work.  I always wanted to feel like I was moving onto the next level, striving towards and past my potential, the way the Olympic wrestlers were searching for that perfect move, jazz players that perfect sound and the philosophers enlightenment.  I'm still searching for that connection to the higher self, yet I feel like I'm on a better path to get there.   At the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in art, or science or business, or athletics, the thought process comes from the same place.  The trick to living a life well lived is to have that engagement and fulfillment.

 

“I must create a system, or be enslaved by

another man's;

  I will not reason and compare, my business

            is to create.”

                        - William Blake