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WHY THIS STORY?
So why am I going to tell you the story of my life? There certainly could be many answers to this. It would be undeniable that there are many people with tales much more interesting than mine, (I don't ever expect a movie to be made from this), and there is also no doubt that there are gazillions who would have no interest in telling their stories at all or, for that matter, listening to the stories of others. If you're one of those you probably won't want to read on. You can pack up your reading glasses and head back to the home page. There are also many people that will only share their lives as if putting together a resume, hitting a couple high spots, major accomplishments, educational backgrounds, celebrity roasts and such. I could do that, but it would be pretty shortsighted even if it did get me a job somewhere (not that I need one.) I think the major relevance to an extended "autobiography" like this is to allow me to review my own life, memories, and experiences, and to reflect and learn from them, especially since I probably didn't learn anything the first time. Another reason might be to give you some insight into the workings of a creative individual, whether that person's creative output was high quality work or otherwise (that's up to you to decide). After all, without creative people there would be no one to entertain those who wish to be entertained, and so to those that seek entertainment this kind of story becomes unique. But maybe the best reason of all... why not?
Anna Hlapcik was born in 1905 in or around Kenosha, Wisconsin, to parents that immigrated from Bohemia and Germany/Poland at the turn of the 20th century. Born in the St. Louis area, also in 1905, Fred Huntman was an engineer of sorts. How the two, from different parts of the midwest, met is unknown to this storyteller, but despite the mystery Fred and Anna married in 1925. One of his primary jobs was to adjust and calibrate compasses on various water-going vessels. On August 31, 1951, Fred was on board a boat moored in a Chicago harbor on Lake Michigan, doing what he did best, when an explosion occurred, knocking him unconscious and into the water. Fred drowned that day. He was my mother's father. Three days later, on September 3, I was born in suburban Chicago, the first of Fred's 16 grandchildren. To hear the stories, it was more than bittersweet. My mother (Shirley Huntman) had to endure losing her father, but then gave birth to the first child of many in her family, me, something her father was not there to see. My mother's family was always very strong and I always felt close to my aunts Marilyn, (my Godmother), Janette, and Judy, and my uncle Phillip. In my youth we attended many family gatherings and reunions both in the Chicago area and in downstate Illinois, where most of the family on her father's side had originated. Visits to Kenosha to visit grandmother's side were also not unheard of. William Taylor (Sr.) was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1897. Miriam Delaney was born in 1901, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The Delaney's moved to Collingswood, NJ and it was there that William and Miriam met and in 1920, married. William worked in industrial sales for a couple of different companies over the years. Miriam was a housewife, which was pretty much standard procedure in the early 20th century. While Miriam's story was fairly unassuming (at least insofar as I know), the family did have some interesting connections. Miriam's sister, Marguerite (Aunt Peggy), married Henry Lofft (Uncle Harry), whose sister was noted award-winning children's book author Margerite di Angeli. To progress a little farther, di Angeli's daughter Nina, married the son of the great American composer, pianist, and educator, Vincent Persichetti. I was not aware of the Persichetti connection until I read Margerite di Angeli's autobiography "Butter at the Old Price", and unfortunately, only had minimal communication with this aunt-in-law, though I do have and have read a number of her books. William Taylor Jr. was born in Collingswood in 1922. The Taylors eventually moved to Elmhurst, Illinois, in the Chicago area, and it was there, during college, that William Jr. met Shirley. While Dad had pretty much declared when he met Mom, that this was the woman he was going to marry, the progress was interrupted by World War II. He joined the army and ended up fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, where he suffered a severe leg wound in the process of taking out a German machine gun nest, which hospitalized him for a year. I honestly do not know the exact series of events during this period, but Mom and Dad married in 1950, and I came along late the next year. Unfortunately, much as Mom wanted it Dad refused to ever go to France again, or even Europe. Mom and Dad were pretty amazing. The best words I could use to describe them would be "incredibly benign." While there were, on very rare occasions, differences of opinion between them, I never, in my entire life of experiences with them, heard them raise their voices at each other or hurl any sort of harsh word. While we did, as kids, manage to push them now and again, even when they were angry they were totally reasonable. If you wanted to tell a story of emotional upheaval you would not want to choose my parents as protagonists, but if you wanted the best possible parents you could ever ask for, mine would be the ones you'd select. IN THE BEGINNING I was born in Elmhurst, Illinois, suburban Chicago, in 1951, a Virgo... which only means anything when I want it to. Harry Truman was president, the Korean War had not yet reached its halfway point, Stalin announced the Soviet Union had the "bomb", penicillin reached a new level of mass production, and color television was first introduced. My unremembered childhood was pretty unremarkable unless you want to count the ten days I spent in an iron lung with pneumonia at about age 2 1/2. Apparently it didn't mean a whole lot to me, though I understand my parents were more than a little concerned. Like his father, Dad was an industrial valve salesman in Chicago, but apparently hadn't yet finally decided where he should pursue his career. About the same time as my illness Dad changed jobs and we moved to Wadsworth, Ohio for a year or so. Somehow the house we had previously occupied in Lombard was still available when he decided to return and go to work for his dad at Powell Valves, and so we moved back into it. My first brother came along about four years after me at about which time my folks decided to add a room onto the back of the house. I don't remember Mom's piano before then, but it was moved there where I have since always remembered it. During our period in that house, which lasted until I was about 7, the events I remember, while not necessarily major, were probably most significant in developing my approach to life. Among the physical traumas like scraping up a knee while trying to learn to ride a bicyle and landing on a nail jumping out of a tree in the park down the street, there was the indelible image of being "trapped" in a tunnel built by neighborhood boys. This tunnel was actually no more than a shallow ditch covered with a few sheets of plywood and sprinkled over with dirt. I was the first one ushered into it and had I been cognizant of how easily I could have escaped by pushing up on the wooden cover I might not have been so freaked out. It also would not have been so disconcerting if the other end of the "tunnel" actually opened to the other side, but it had only the one entrance, a poor example of civil engineering if you were to ask me. I did manage to convince the others that my preference would be to allow me to extricate myself from the confinement, though I'm sure I was forever labeled as the chicken who didn't want to be buried alive! I suppose later I might have found retribution at a birthday party in the same house, though it also proved to be rather a matter of moral education. The party was in the basement of the afore-mentioned offending house. Numerous games were set up for play, but it was pin-the-tail-on-the-whatever that would suffuse me with an early sense of fairness that I would thenceforth feel obligated to nurture. The game is traditionally inaugurated by placing a blindfold on the player, spinning him around several times, then handing him the tail to attempt to accurately pin. On my turn the blindfold was tied around my head and over my eyes and I was asked if I could see anything. I said I could not. That was a lie. I actually was able to see just enough under the mask that I could recognize the world around me. I was spun around numerous times and pointed in the general direction of the target. While I may have given the appearance of randomly reaching out, the dead giveaway should have been, if in fact it wasn't, my successful placement of the tail exactly where it was supposed to be. I won. But I really didn't. I never felt good about that episode, despite my struggles in the tunnel. It had to be that early signal in life that there was a thing called morality, even if I did not yet know the word existed. In one manner or another I have been a musician all my life. Both my parents were fine musicians in the Chicago area. Dad, William Russell Taylor, though a valve salesman by day, was also a trumpet player who ran the Bill Russell Orchestra from his high school days until he was nearly 80 and no longer had the strength to lug equipment around or lung capacity or lip to make much noise on any of his horns; and Mom, Shirley Ann Huntman, a trained classical pianist who, at age 14, performed the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Chicago Youth Symphony, and eventually expanded her musical world playing jazz and big band when she married Dad and took over as pianist in his orchestra. At 5, Mom started teaching me piano, which I pursued for about a year, then gave up because I didn't want to work on scales and exercises, I wanted to play "real" music. (Silly me.) Nevertheless, it was the musical foundation on which everything else was built. At seven, Dad handed me an Olds trumpet and started teaching me to play it. Having gone through the piano escapade, the frustration of being taught by a parent led me to lessons with Stewart Liechti, but at least this new frustration was not enough to overcome the love for music that was growing within me. I continued playing trumpet until about the 6th grade, age 11, when braces on my teeth forced me to find an instrument that had a mouthpiece large enough that would not cause me pain and suffering as I played... this would logically be the tuba. But that's a little later. Kindergarten 1956, was full of new experiences. Finger painting was one that tended to stick out, and maybe "stick" is the operative word. Seems to me I used my fingers to make stick figures and stick houses, stick sun and stick sky, not really anything you'd want to hang on your refrigerator. Certainly I, as forever my own worst critic, was never happy with much of it. I developed my first crush that year on a girl who lived a couple houses up and across the street from us, Karen Bailey. For my 6th birthday I wanted to invite her to the party my parents were hosting, but was told she couldn't come because her grandmother had just died. I don't think I really understood that at the time, but I suppose it eventually sunk in. Still, it was a big disappointment for me. If you look at the class picture that year I sat in front of her with a very sheepish look on my face... the result of mixed emotions from being close to her and not knowing how to act being close to her. This is what they call awkward. By first grade I was walking back and forth to school on my own, though usually with friends. In that school year I remember the cigar box filled with valentine hearts I'd spent hours cutting out and decorating and that I never gave to another classmate, another Karen (Kirstling) on whom I had another crush. Walking home with her one afternoon, as I left her at her door she planted a kiss on my cheek. This was my first kiss and both exhilirating and stupyfying. (Do you get the impression that my experiences with girls was always going to be peppered by emotional dualities?) Third grade, 1959, happened at a new school, Edgewood and was the only grade to happen there. After that it was back to Westmore where my first classes had occurred. Certainly by this year many things that would stick with me for life were beginning to appear, especially music, art, and morality. By this time, age 8, I was well-versed in reading and playing music. Our class was provided with tonettes, small recorder-type instruments, to introduce us to the performance of music. I really never thought about it at the time, but I expect relatively few classmates had ever had the exposure the music that I was fortunate to have and so didn't really understand why everyone was having so much difficulty playing these cute little instruments. I was frequently called upon to demonstrate for the class just what the thing and the tunes were supposed to sound like. By this time we were all (insofar as I know) reading, and math and the multiplication tables became imprinted in our young little heads. Creative assignments were given and I relished them. 1959 was the year that both Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union. I wrote two reports that year, with one state each as subject. They included somewhat crude illustrations I'd made. For Hawaii I even wrote a poem. I'm not sure if there was one for Alaska as well. Then came morality with a hint of ethics. As I'd reflected earlier in my pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey story, morality was finding a home in me, but not always as ratioinally as it should. During this year in school we had a small assembly in which a puppet show was presented. In order to attend we were asked to bring in ten cents to pay the entry price. Whether or not I kept forgetting to ask my parents for the money or simply forgot to bring it in on the day of the show, I had not paid it when the time came. It was something of a trauma for me, but I felt it only fair that I not attend because I had not paid the price. I remained in the classroom while all my classmates filed out to see it. It was possibly halfway through that my teacher, apparently noticing my absence, came in and found me sitting at a desk in some tears. She insisted that I come out and see the remainder of the show. Fairness has always been part of my value system and I have never wanted to cheat in order to get something, but I also will defer to others if I feel it is their place to make the judgement call. I remember getting my first camera, a Brownie Instamatic, and trying to learn to take pictures not only for the record, but for their beauty and structure. In late grade school and high school I would spend many hours building model ships, from 6" long brigs to 3' long cutters, all meticulously painted and rigged, and then there were all the pencil drawings of those ships. But high school was the true awakening of the artist in me. So how did grade school happen and what happened in grade school? I started playing in the grade school band in 4th grade. By junior high, despite the braces, I was playing in the orchestra as well, (and even singing in the chorus.) I began to experience the classical side of music even more than I ever had. It was something that just inexplicably connected with me, and I suppose had done so all my life to that point, from hearing my mother practice Chopin on the piano to my father's limited collection of classical LPs. I remember asking my father once, when I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 years old, about a particular album he had on his shelf. He said, "Oh, that's some of that 'new' music. You wouldn't like it." It was Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and I totally fell in love with it. HIGH SCHOOL Tuba playing carried into high school, and actually so did trumpet playing once I discovered that by covering the braces with beeswax I could play pain-free with very little adjustment to my embouchure. But tuba was growing on me and was the direction in which I chose to concentrate. By sophomore year I was playing first chair in the concert band and remained there for the rest of my high school days. So many things during that time were the greatest joys of my young life: playing in both the band and orchestra and touring with both groups, touring and performing with the brass quintet, participating in the Allerton Wind Symposium,
In the Chicago area at that time, and maybe even in the world, the premiere teacher for tuba was the long-time tubist with the Chicago Symphony, Arnold Jacobs. Unfortunately, and for whatever reason, despite my many visits to Orchestra Hall to hear this great orchestra, I never knew who Jacobs was, much less had any idea how accessible he might have been. One of my tuba cohorts at that time, Gary Ofenloch, did, in fact, study with "Jake" and ultimately became, until his retirement in 2018, principal tubist with the Utah Symphony, doing summers with the Boston Esplanade Orchestra. But I studied with David McCormick. David, I discovered may years later, was a member of a brass quintet that included Stew Leichti, my early trumpet teacher, and Richard Kamm, my high school band director. This ensemble was one of the best quintets in the area at the time, and David was certainly a more-than capable teacher, but there was no one on the level of Jacobs and David was probably not the one that might have taken me into a career in music. Another possible missed opportunity was Interlochen, a summer arts camp in northern lower penninsula Michigan at the least, and a full-time boarding high school for the arts at the most. Once again I really did not know what this place was at the time, but since then have gotten a much better understanding from several people I now know who attended. Among those that I DID know at the time was Jane Marvine, who went on to be principal English horn with the Baltimore Symphony, so I know great talent has come out of there. I'm not sure if my parents were aware of the opportunities that existed and chose not to take them, or if they were just as unaware as I was. I certainly don't remember and I'm sure will never know (at least not in this life), but I'm also sure this oversight would be the bain that would lead me in a very different and somewhat disappointing direction in college and perhaps in life... at least for awhile. COLLEGE Before heading to or even deciding on a college, discussions with parents and counselor led to the conclusion that one couldn't make a living at music and that I should be finding another career to study for. (Dad always posed the question, "Do you want to end up being a ditchdigger?" Of course I eventually found out how much ditchdiggers can make which ultimately put it all in an entirely different perspective. He made his living selling valves to engineers and constructors and only did his music as a sideline, albeit professionally.) It was determined that with my expertise in math and talent in art (other than music), architecture would be a good direction to go. In addition, throughout high school I'd spent much of my time on the gymnastics team, and with a significant number of gymnasts from my school attending the University of Iowa where they'd won the NCAA championship the year before I graduated, I decided I wanted to be involved in this great bunch and chose that college as my destination. In very clear retrospect this was not a good decision. From a gymnastics perspective, I was not really good enough to compete with the gymnasts already there, and in the newly evolving area of all-around competitors the fact that I was a pommel horse specialist did not allow me much room to grow. As for architecture, I came to find out after the fact that Iowa had no school for architecture, so I had to settle for a general engineering program, not having any idea at the time which discipline I might find most tolerable. Despite graduating in the top 10% of my high school class, my college engineering studies did not go well. Between TA's that didn't know how to present difficult subject matter, classes that were too early in the morning for a night person like myself, lack of enthusiasm for the courses required, and a constant distraction with all things musical, my school days would ultimately be numbered, and the numbers would be smaller than they should be to accomplish this new goal. I tried to study engineering for three semesters. This was 1969-1971. Disruptions at the end of each of my school years due to Vietnam protests and riots did not help my results at all, but still were no real excuse for the poor showing I presented. While in engineering I would spend my summers working for an engineering firm in downtown Chicago as a drafter, getting more familiar with the actual processes within the field and with the understanding and expectation that I would continue my engineering studies. When the end of my third semester came around, however, I could no longer tolerate the curriculum, and I decided, rather too belatedly I would come to find out, and at a less than ideal time in the school year, to transfer into music. As a second semester student in classes for which I really needed first semester prerequisites, the results there were not much better than they had been in engineering despite the fact that I felt so much more comfortable in the new surroundings. Theory was difficult for me to grasp without the basics of the first semester information, and after analyzing my skills on both tuba and trumpet, opted to continue tuba studies despite having only a CC tuba available and even having only limited access to that. (I'd been playing BBb all along and didn't have any idea what the different keys were for tubas, but having never owned an instrument I was stuck with what was there and soon came to find out that I would need to relearn everything I'd already learned over the years.) I should note, however, that all was not a total loss. Studies in composition with Richard Hervig gave me good pointers in how to make the best, most interesting music possible, and the class in Contemporary Music was an eye-opener into the limitations, or lack thereof, of music that could be created. In any case, one semester of music and the conclusion of my second year in school would prove to be the last of my formal accredited education. Ironically, after leaving school, a friend of my dad's was looking for a drafter for his engineering company. Being in need of a job and having already familiarized myself with the requirements through my earlier summer experiences, I would leave the school-owned tubas behind and begin what would be an almost continuous 50+ year career in engineering, despite my many objections to it and lack of objectives within it. THE ARTIST [MOVE EARLIER]I remember kindergarten and how much I enjoyed painting even though I also remember never being very happy with what I'd created. (Of course, using fingers as brushes limits one's technique.) I remember first grade and the cigar box filled with valentine hearts I'd spent hours cutting out and decorating and that I never gave to a classmate on whom I had a crush. I remember getting my first camera, a Brownie Instamatic, and trying to learn to take pictures not only for the record, but for their beauty and structure. In late grade school and high school I would spend many hours building model ships, from 6" long brigs to 3' long cutters, all meticulously painted and rigged, and then there were all the pencil drawings of those ships. But high school was the true awakening of the artist in me.
During high school I began to paint, taking over my dad's oil set. At first it was one or two paint-by-numbers, then I got hold of my first blank canvas panelboard and proceeded to use the oils to populate it with a pair of macaws. This time, unlike my kindergarten experience, I was actually pretty happy with the results. I tried my hand at watercolors and made my mom wonder what the heck it was I saw in a telephone pole that made me want to paint it. I found some loose canvas and went into the basement to build a couple of stretchers. On these surfaces I began the oddly imagined shapes that would eventually become what I would call "neo-surrealism." My senior year I joined the Art Staff, run by Anita Owens, one of the nicest and most wonderful teachers I'd ever known. In Art Staff I had the opportunity to play with different media and different ideas. I began to do a lot of shape drawings, studying and applying the effects of light and shadow. One of my good friends, Tom DeForest, fellow gymnast and Art Staffer, whose father ran a commercial art studio, taught me the rudiments of silk-screening, which would come into great play later in life.
Soon the job came along and after a month or two of commuting from Powers Lake to northwest Suburban Chicago I moved into an apartment in Mount Prospect, Illinois. With little furniture to speak of, except what I proceeded to build, there was a lot of room to play. I purchased a used (and rather poorly functioning) electric keboard (2 octaves short on the top, one short on the bottom) and could work on some piano skills with my headphones plugged in. I also set up a drafting table and began doing some pen and ink wildlife drawing. Over the next two years and three jobs, I got restless to leave Chicago and try to sell myself as an artist. Music, while still my greatest love and always somewhat active, was nevertheless pushed aside for awhile. But it was finally time to leave for good. On my birthday in 1974, I packed everything I could into my Datsun 1200 and a rented U-Haul trailer and headed west. A job that was supposed to be waiting for me in Colorado Springs, never materialized, so I moved into a little cabin in the mountains west of there and began again to paint, write, and, at least marginally, compose. It was an absolutely lovely location in Green Mountain Falls at the northern foot of Pike's Peak, where I had my first experience with the gorgeous autumns of Colorado. I completed a number of drawings and paintings and as the weather turned toward winter, dragged them into the galleries of Colorado Springs and ultimately up to Denver, where I was told that my work was a little too far ahead of the art scene there. Disappointed, and now out of money, I found myself again returning to engineering. I took a job in Denver and did the long commute again for a couple months from Green Mountain Falls. But the winter snows made it a risky venture and I soon moved into a rental house in Denver. During the first of my six years in that house, and despite a period of depression when the engineering business and a disparaging social life left me questioning my path, I met quite a few people and did a few things that would prove to keep me level. When I first moved into the house, I reserved one wall for a piano, this time a real one, and before that year was up had refinanced my car in order to purchase a $700 Mehlin and Sons upright grand. It was (and still is) a beautiful instrument with a great heavy harp that even the movers groused about. This would be the beginning of some serious piano learning. It was not unusual for me to sit at the piano for five or six hours straight on a weekend trying to learn to play, and ultimately making me ask myself what I intended to do with it. Around the same time, I met an artist working at Stearns on the same project, Bill Landing, who ended up teaching me a lot about painting and the use of materials and tools. I admired the easel he had which put my little folding stand to shame. Another friend, Tim Lucero, had a saw in his garage and one day I brought over a few pieces of red oak and we cut them per the design I had devised for an easel of my own. It took a little time, but the end result was not only a true piece of ultimate antique workmanship, a piece of art in itself, but a tremendous stimulous to energize my painting again.[PHOTO OF EASEL] Bill Landing bears a little extra mention here before moving on. As artists, whether visual, audio, or otherwise, I think we tend to be more sensitive to the world around us, maybe even to the universe around us, then the average person. And sensitivity to the universe provides a little more spiritual enlightenment or, at least, curiosity, than average. The time I spent in Green Mountain Falls was not only one of artistic development, but of a certain spiritual consciousness through the process of searching. I'd been raised Lutheran, though I really had no idea what that meant with reference to any other Christian sect, but I was never satisfied with teachings that were expected to be believed simply because they were in the Bible and I was not ready to believe something based strictly on faith, especially if there was no logical sense to the argument. Through various other readings I had come to visualize a universe of spiraling growth from our lowly origins to some pinnacle of truth well beyond our understanding, but it was still a raw concept. Bill was not much different in his search for spiritual fulfilment. We had frequently talked about it and one day he brought in a book that he thought I might find interesting called The Urantia Book. Bill didn't particularly believe in it though he recognized some reasonable foundations through some incomplete reading he'd done, but I did find it quite remarkable and after reading only a few papers in his copy had to go out and purchase one for myself. Bill, as far as I know, never got further into it, but I did, in fact, continue to read the book from cover to cover over the next year. Many years later, when I visited with Bill briefly in Sedona, we again approached the subject of faith and truth. He'd found a rather unusual (and perhaps questionable) method of divining the strength of belief someone might have in a subject. While I might not have accepted the validity of his test method, his determination of the strength of my belief in the Urantia Book was neverthess quite accurate. [CHICAGO] Several works happened in that Denver rental house, including a couple of Chicago "portraits", one of which was never finished. In 1981, I finally purchased a house, where a converted garage made a large and comfortable studio. I started making attempts to exhibit and sell a few things. Several wildlife charcoals were placed on consignment in a small local gallery, and two neo-surrealism works were chosen to be part of the Celebrate 125 exhibition in Denver in 1983, but no sales were ever generated from either enterprise. Still, I did not stop the creative process. In addition to the neo-surrealism oils, I played with many different media and many different artforms. More wildlife pieces, and now some landscape painting developed, mostly barns owing to some inspiration from my grandmother. The new drafting table I built during that time was a great assist in doing logo and other graphic design. I turned my old drafting table into a light table, which I still use today. Art Products Ltd. was officially born and later on in the mid 80s I expanded into T-shirt printing. I built a screen press, cut my own frames and stretched the fabric, and using exclusively emulsion-based screen preparation, began to make all sorts of designs for the shirts.
The late 80s were not particularly good in Denver. Downturns in the oil industry left it, along with some big Texas towns, hanging by a thread. My last couple of years there were difficult financially. Jobs came and went. During one of the long dry spells and partially as a result of a mutual decision with a close lady friend, I purchased a styling salon, which we ran for a year and a half before finally having to let it go for lack of profit. (That lady friend and I also parted during this time, though during our early relationship she provided enough inspiration for eight or ten pop songs, the longest and most intense period of involvement in that particular genre. More on that later.) The salon and art businesses were actually running concurrently and no doubt the stress of having two enterprises, neither of which was providing workable income, simply added to the pessimism. There were short jobs that gave me the chance to travel as well as learn new aspects of the overall engineering business-- roof and pavement inspections in Atlanta, San Antonio, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and boiler flue gas sampling in Italy. I continued to paint and write music, but between the economy and the parting of ways with that special lady, it was all getting very disconcerting. Increased frustration was thinning my output. Finally, in January of 1988, as I stood on the edge of losing my house to forclosure, I decided to take to the road for contract work. It was a good decision as it rapidly brought me back from the brink, but it would also mean the last of my extended time in Denver. With the Zebras I put away my silk screening press. I painted my last barns for that special, but now alienated ladyfriend, and stowed my easel. And so this intense period of art, from 1981 to 1988, would be my last for a long while. Though the book would not be finished, this would close one big chapter of it. THE COMPOSER As I got to know music through the process of playing it and listening to the classical albums I would purchase, and even some of the pop and folk music on the radio, I developed an extremely strong desire to write music of my own. In grade school and high school I learned playing technique, including scales and some basic harmony, but I did not know theory, and it would not be for MANY years that I would finally gain that knowledge and put it to good use, but this did not stop me from trying. One of the first things I attempted, probably about 1967, was a duet for tuba and 'cello. It was never finished because of too many things to ennumerate here, not the least of which was the simple fact that I didn't like it at all. But before high school was out, I would write and perform a brief piece for brass quintet, written with an attempt at "contemporariness" through the use of odd meters, but little else unusual. And to demonstrate my lack of knowledge at the time I had even managed to transpose the horn part into the wrong key. Thankfully the horn player was not able to get out of his class that day to play it! That would have been disaster. When I got into college I would spend time writing music (when I should have been studying engineering), but again, my lack of knowledge held me back. I would get pieces started, establish themes and even roadmaps for works, but could never really take them where I wanted to go. That fourth semester, after I'd transferred into music, the composition class I took required a couple of works and it is then that I finally did complete something a little more substantial and worthwhile. While the two pieces, Two Movements for Solo Clarinet, and the Woodwind Trio, were nothing to write home about (I really didn't need to write home as I'd written much of the Trio at the kitchen table there), these things really did serve to solidify my interest in the craft and encourage further efforts to create more music. Until I moved to Denver and acquired the piano, I did very little music writing of any sort. I did a little song-writing and tried my hand at a couple of piano arrangements of Schubert taken from some orchestral recordings I had, but that was about it. When the piano finally moved into its rightful place in my living room, things began to change. Obviously the first thing to happen was an open floodgate of practicing the music of others that I loved so much: Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy, Schubert... and that whole crowd. But gradually I began to perceive a foggy process that led me to write a few things down. The house I'd been living in from 1975, was a rental. In 1981, I finally purchased a house, stretching both my budget and sanity to their limits, but making it a little easier to get the composition projects going. The three Piano Preludes date from this period, though they would ultimately be significantly revised. In 1984, I met Dawn (that special lady I'd mentioned earlier), and the shifting, uncertain, tumultuous relationship we had turned me back into a songwriter for awhile, probably more as an emotional outlet than a creative one, which would also explain why women in general, not just she, led me to put my thoughts and words into such creations. We permanently parted ways at the beginning of 1987, after which there would only be a few more songs before turning back to "classical". Interesting sidenote, women and songs... the songs "Lullaby for You", "You Are the One", "The Wind at Our Backs", "Heartbeat", "Trust in Me", and "Mariner of Souls" were, along with a few others, written for Dawn. Some were positive and happy ("You Are the One", "The Wind at Our Backs") and some were full of anquish ("Lullaby for You", "Heartbeat"). The situation with her and my consequent mood shifted wildly throughout our limited time together and the songs really demonstrated this. There were other women that also germinated a few songs. A woman I met briefly while working a job in Golden, Colorado, and who worked on the other side of the cubicle wall from me, but with whom I never really interacted, prompted the song "Don't Let It Slip Away". Another song was born in anticipation of meeting a woman through a dating service ("I Can't Believe") and though it turned out we would not hit it off for dating, it did result in a good friendship. While working for Boeing in Wichita, Kansas, one of a pair of twins really piqued my interest. I never had much opportunity to talk to her, but when I would see her there was something about her eyes that drew me in. It was especially unusual since she and her identical twin both worked there, but the twin did not have the same spark. This one brought out the song "Magic Eyes". While I was in Pampa, Texas, I wrote the last song to date, "Butterfly", an instrumental, and though I tried to relate it back to Dawn again, it really was more the result of inspiration from purchasing a couple of sequencing synthesizers that just made the writing fun. That tune is probably one of the few that cannot be directly attributed to a woman. So certainly from a creative point of view, there is a lot of value to relationships, both good and bad. Well, back to our story. In 1987, the classical writing re-emerged in earnest. Before permanently leaving Denver in 1989, I managed to complete the first movement and about half the Finale of the First String Quartet. The first movement was based on a motif written during my college occupation. When I left Colorado and began a new relationship with Mimi (whom I'd met during a weekend trip to Arkansas while working in Texas) it was unfortunately neccessary to store the piano away. Between the relationship, which was very enjoyable particularly because of our mutual love for travel and golf, but time-consuming, and a long period of apartment living, all music, except listening, was indefinitely put on hold. When I finally bought my first music software I began to write again... this was about 1996. The learning I gained from this initiated a real change from what would be acceptable composition to that which I finally considered at least somewhat accomplished. The String Quartets were not the greatest, but the Piano Etude and slow movement of the String Symphony, both of which happened without much concern for the result, i.e. just for fun, are still very satisfying to me today. MUSICIAN AND COMPOSER - THE LATER YEARS Early in 1989, the poor economy in Denver drove me to the brink of foreclosure on my house. I was quite literally within a matter of days of that happening. As a means to recovery and while still officially a resident of Colorado, I took jobs on the road, first at Boeing in Wichita, Kansas (until May that year), then the Texas panhandle. These successfully turned the tides on my finances, but also significantly changed my direction for awhile. During a trip to the Ozarks in the fall of '89, I met Mimi, who was making preparations to move to Olympia, Washington, where her parents lived. She and a friend stopped for an overnight on their way west and our subsequent conversations ultimately led me to follow her to the Northwest, where I first found a job in Portland, Oregon, until December of that year, then another in Bellingham, Washington, until I decided to leave in August of 1990, head back to Denver briefly to prepare my house for rental, and make efforts to get permanent work in Seattle. That finally happened in December. I took up residence with Mimi in her small apartment for a couple months until we found a full-size place together on the Eastside of the Seattle area. Mimi and I had been living together since late in 1990. By the fall of 1997, we were both antsy to make some changes. We had earlier looked at the possibility of buying a house together, but could never agree on what or where. We'd talked about it once or twice and determined that if each of us had our 'druthers she'd like to be central to town and I'd like to have a house with a yard. Ultimately we went our separate ways, acquired what each of us wanted, and managed to remain friends. I purchased the house in West Seattle at the beginning of 1998. Within a few months I returned to Denver to empty out the storage space I'd had there and drag everything, including the piano, to Seattle. While there was little or no music writing for the next two years, music definitely became the focus again. After eight years it was wonderful to have the piano back home, and I now took advantage of the private walls, practicing long and hard once more. Then at the end of 2000, things changed again. For many years I'd thought about buying a tuba, but could never justify the $2000-3000 I expected it would cost, on the chance that I might get truly serious about playing it again. While visiting my folks in Florida that Christmas holiday, they told me about a member of their church choir who was wanting to sell a 3/4 size BBb Yamaha tuba for $850. We cruised over to his house where I tried it out. For the price I couldn't pass it up. The flight back to Seattle proved to be both entertaining and successful and I immediately began my brass rehabilitation after some 30 years. [See the Holiday 2001 Newsletter for the story of the trip home with tuba in tow.] I'd never had reason to investigate the community bands and orchestras in the area and so never had reason to expect there to be a lot of quality to them. While in Chicago so many years earlier, I'd played some with the Wheaton Municipal Band (which was already a great group but would become the premiere community ensemble in the whole Chicago area) and the Belleview Concert Band (not so good) and had only these references to guide me. As I started to play again I began to look around for places that might work. The first orchestra I contacted was the Federal Way Symphony, a group that appeared to be as much for fun as anything else. When they asked me to send over a resume I knew I'd bitten off more than I could chew. That put things in a little clearer perspective. During the next eight months of practice, I also managed to complete the Piano Preludes, begin a Sonata for Tuba and Piano, and write a series of etudes for the tuba in order to improve skills in the upper range. While several other pieces were also started around this time they never really progressed very far. But I felt my practice did, and I was ready to get out and play again. The husband of one of my co-workers happened to run the stage for a local group, the Highline Community Symphonic Band. They were most pleased to welcome another tubist to the fold and that September, 2001, I started to play with a band again. Then came September 11. Within a week after the terrorist attacks of 2001, I began work on In Memoriam 911. Only four weeks later it was complete except for final orchestration. Since I now had a band to play with it was my intention to orchestrate it for and play it with that band, but after telling our director what it was and handing him the short score along with a MIDI recording, I never heard another word about it. I suppose it was just as well as other things would come up. I continued to play with the Highline Band and was especially excited when I discovered that heading up the tuba section was the recently retired Seattle Symphony tubist, Michael Russell. He was one of many students of Arnold Jacobs in Chicago and realizing this I urged him to give me a couple of lessons. Mike gave me some very good advice, especially considering I almost felt like a beginner again, and admittedly the last time there when he effectively told me he couldn't help me anymore and almost advising me against having any lofty goals on the instrument, probably did more to push me to accomplish as much as I possibly could, though I seriously doubt that was his intention. Nevertheless, this established our musical relationship, and a good personal one as well. In December of that year, Mike and his wife decided to take a three or four week vacation out of town. He'd been playing tuba with the newly formed Black Diamond Brass Quintet and it turned out the quintet was in a bit of a lurch needing rehearsal time but having no tuba player. They asked Mike if there was anyone he knew that could sub for him, and apparently mine was the only name he could think of. (Could have been some of that long-term memory loss that musicians get... who knows.) So Mike called me up and asked if I'd be interested in filling in while he was gone. Of course this brought back all my fond memories of the high school brass quintet and other small ensembles so I naturally jumped at the chance. Rehearsals were at the first trumpet player, Al's house and Mike told me to be there at seven in the evening. I got there that first night and chatted with Al for awhile, especially as no one else had arrived yet. This went on for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't help wondering why I was always the first to arrive. Finally one evening I asked. Al answered, "Well, if we told Mike to get here at 7:30, when we actually start, he wouldn't show up until 8 o'clock. As long as we told him 7 he'd be here by 7:30." Naturally, when Mike finally did figure this out he started showing up at 8 and after I eventually became the permanent tubist for the group I came to understand that while my playing may not have been as good as Mike's at least I was there. That's my story about Mike and my early first experience with Black Diamond Brass. I was always amazed at how little I knew of the local amateur music scene before getting involved with the Highline Band, but even more amazed at what I found on the other side of that door once I passed through it. During the first season with Black Diamond, a not-too-unusual state of affairs occurred, the need for a substitute in that group, in this case on second trumpet. Denny Schreffler sat in with us in early January, and as the evening progressed eventually asked me if I wanted to play in a brass band. I'd already had one request which I determined was too far away to be worthwhile, but this one, being a little closer in particular, made me want to give it a try. That was the beginning of my association with Brass Band Northwest. Once in that group I got to know Kevin, who in turn turned me onto the Pontiac Bay Symphony, a mentoring orchestra which concentrated on film music. It was pretty much all downhill from there. Along came various other subbing gigs, which have ulimately included most of the many community bands and orchestras in the Seattle area (including the Federal Way Symphony, not only on tuba, but bass trombone as well). Get your foot in the door, play well, and you never know what can happen. With In Memoriam 911, a truly renewed interest and enthusiasm for composition arose. While time was always a limiting factor, I still managed to squeeze in enough composition to finish a few decent pieces, though there were a couple of years that passed getting back into performing before it would really settle in. Up until 2005, I had filled in the composition lane with more arranging than composing, particularly music for the brass quintet, including a rather dismal attempt at converting one of my tuba etudes into an "etude" for brass quintet. But in 2005, things started to move forward again. That year would see the creation of the Concertino for Tuba and Symphonic Band as well as one movement of a Woodwind Quintet. 2006 saw a number of pieces for various brass combinations, including the Expressions for Trombone and Piano, and two new brass quintets, Blues Town and the Blue Moon Variations, both of which would finally get published in 2011. The significant compositional event of 2006, however, would be the summer intensive courses with the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program. This was a two-week introduction to film scoring presented by Emmy-award-winning composer Hummie Mann, (whom I'd met when he conducted the innaugural concert of the Pontiac Bay Symphony), and which presented the first two of five levels of classes in this two-week period. The courses would ordinarily meet once a week for ten weeks (or more), and it was, in fact, intense doing each of two ten-week programs in one week each. While the classes did not immediately result in any new pieces they certainly aided in finishing one or two of them that year. The following January, I retook the theory class (full-length this time) and then proceded to finish the program over the next year and a half, including being on the team to write music for the student film "A Fistful of Mud". This was immediately followed by my first piece for the brass band, March Maligned, and shortly thereafter by another tuba solo, this one also with the brass band called Incantations. The premiere of March Maligned at the 2009 Northwest Brass Band Festival also turned out to be my first public conducting effort since those long-gone days of high school, and Incantations provided me a rare (though gradually less-rare as time went by) opportunity to play a tuba solo in concert in June of that year. In fact, soloing became more frequent. Following a couple performances during the 2009 holiday season of Frosty the Snowman with Brass Band Northwest, the Highline Band accompanied me for the premiere performance of the Concertino for Tuba. TRAVELS I always enjoyed traveling. No doubt from that first ride home from the hospital after being born I savored the journey. Whether it was a two-day trek to a vacation destination or a quick trip across town to Grandma's, I always found it exciting and filled with education and experience. There were never any "major" trips when I was young, but the term was relative. In my youngest of days we would drive from our Chicago area home to the lakes of Wisconsin and Minnesota, first to Wild Rose, Wisconsin, then Brainerd, Minnesota, and finally Bemidji/Cass Lake even farther north. These were major trips to me. Side trips to Lake Itasca State Park (headwaters of the Mississippi) and the iron mines of the Mesabi Range near Duluth were totally fascinating. Finding a piece of limonite on the side of the road after driving into one of the open pit mines, was a thrill, especially when we returned home and I could actually identify it. The drives themselves may have been the most enlightening of all. As we rolled across the hills and rivers, stopping for fuel where I could always pick up FREE (those were the days) maps of the states and cities we visited, I was frequently engaged in determining our exact location at any time and knowing what geographic sites might be nearby. After a weekend or two at the Wisconsin Dells, that location established itself as one of the milestones I always held dear as we traversed the newly-completed (and in many cases still under construction) interstate highways to the northlands. Some of my most enjoyable memories included a visit or two to Great-Grandpa Hlapcik's in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the little knick-knacks they had all over the house kept me searching for clues as to what they were. Being just up the steet from the Nash automobile factory also made it seem special for some reason. During our travels to Minnesota we would occasionally stop in Minneapolis for an overnight rest. The Foshay Tower, now dwarfed by many other higher structures, and taking in a Twins game at the stadium long before the dome was ever built, were cherished highlights. Years later I would also learn to appreciate the locally brewed beers but that would be another story. Late in high school, probably the summer following my junior year, I stayed behind for the first week of the family vacation, then flew to Bemidji to join them for the second week. The journey to get there ended up being one of the most memorable flying adventures I've probably had to this day. The flight was to be from O'Hare Airport in Chicago, to Minneapolis with a layover of about an hour, then on to Bemidji... total travel time about five or six hours. The plane in Chicago had some sort of mechanical problem with the ventilation that delayed our departure by about two and a half hours, (in fact I believe we were actually forced to change planes, but don't remember for certain,) so I already knew up front that I would be missing my flight out of Minneapolis. When I arrived there I was quickly assigned a seat on another flight, but of course, there aren't many headed for Bemidji in any given day. That flight wouldn't be for another eight hours. Well, those days were long before computers, cell phones, or even very many televisions in the terminal. For a sixteen-year-old kid this made for a pretty boring wait, but eventually the time passed and I got on the plane heading farther north. As we began to approach the general vicinity of our destination, a number of thunderstorms developed. One in particular became so large and so severe that the pilot announced we would be forced to go around it. This was expected to bring us into Benidji from the back side, the north instead of the south, but as we began to slide westward along the southern edge of the storm, watching near-continuous lightning embedded in it and pretty much directly over Bemidji, and never making the turn north, it quickly became obvious that the plan would have to be altered. As we continued to travel west we finally got the announcement that it was just not going to be possible to get us into Bemidji that night. We would continue on to Thief River Falls, Minnesota, some 40 miles east of Grand Forks, North Dakota, and take a bus approximately 70 miles from there into Bemidji. As the day (and night) dragged on the bus finally made its way into the empty 1AM streets of the city, where, unbeknownst to me, it would be making two stops... first at the airport, then at the bus station/hotel in town. Since no one had bothered to tell me what information had been passed on to others I assumed that my folks would pick me up at the original location, the airport. But, of course, they'd been told to find me in town and when I didn't get off the bus there they went into the same panic that I did when I was left at the airport (which by this time was closed) and no one around to pick me up. Fortunately my folks were told about the second stop, and that a youngster might have gotten off there, and came out to check, which finally resulted in our meeting and the end of the saga. The question has often come up, what did people do before cell phones? Well I'd say they took a lot longer to do things, relied on intuition, and sometimes made some big mistakes. There were certainly other travel experiences that occurred before I left home. A couple of visits to my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Harry Lofft were luscious excursions into the hills and mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee. Beyond the simple pleasures of their hometown of Knoxville, there were so many other "side trips." My uncle had been an engineer with the Tennesee Valley Authority and project engineer for the Fort Lowden dam. During one visit he took us on a private tour of the dam and powerhouse. Ironically, while I did find standing over the huge turbines as they spun electricity from that tremendous flow of water completely fascinating, the thing I probably remember most about that tour was him standing outside on the grounds before we went in and pointing up to a tree 100 feet away to tell us there was a Brown Thrasher up there. I suppose under normal circumstances this wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but my uncle was monochromatic -- black and white colorblind. I was always amazed how he could be a birder with that limitation. Driving through the Smokey Mountains was another great adventure, especially the year we chose Cade's Cove on the North Carolina side as our destination, where we spent several hours on easy horseback through the woods and hills of this beautiful parkland. And I suppose I will also always remember that day when we arrived at the Lofft house to the sounds of classical music on the phonograph. My uncle asked me if I knew the piece. I said I'd never heard it before but it sounded like Rimsky-Korsakov. It turned out to be his Russian Easter Overture... one of my favorites to this day. Uncle Harry was one of the most remarkable people I knew growing up. In his spare time and after retirement his engineering acumen was directed toward the building and collecting of clocks. The house was filled with them, some that he'd built from scratch. When trying to sleep in their house it was probably best to go to bed either just after ten or to wait until past midnight as the plethora of chimes on the hour could be a real dream crusher. I should mention, too, his sister, Marquerite de Angeli, with whom he always maintained contact and introduced us, at least through long distance communications. She was an illustrator and award-winning author of numerous childrens' books. College days finally allowed me a little freedom of my own to travel, though my mode of transport often varied. During my first year at Iowa traveling was limited as I had no vehicle. Among the travel experiences that year was taking the train back home to Chicago after being dropped off in the Quad Cities. It was my first real train trip, even preceding the commuter runs I would eventually take to work every day during my subsequent summer breaks. There was also a trip to Miami during the Christmas holidays to engage in a gymnastics clinic being held there. Considering my grades were already beginning to suggest difficulties, the trip was definitely against the wishes of my parents as well as my own better judgement, but I was young, adventurous, and a bit stubborn. And ultimately there was nothing particularly spectacular about it except a welcome respite from the brutal Midwestern winter. At the beginning of my second year, 1970, my folks had allowed me to borrow the Volkswagon bug for a week in order to move a few smaller items to school. During that week, I and a couple school friends decided to take a road trip to Lawrence, Kansas, with an overnight in Des Moines. One of our crazy stops was at the gates of Leavenworth Penitentiary to inquire about tours. Needless to say, we were pretty much sent packing. (Ironically, I would eventually get involved in project H.O.P.E., an Iowa City group that worked toward reducing recitivicy of ex-convicts, and which did entail visits to the Jefferson County Jail, Anamosa State Penetentiary, and the Rockwell Women's Reformatory.) Later that school year I decided to spend a weekend visiting friends in Bloomington, Illinois. This time the travel method was by bus. The ride was fine from Iowa City to the Quad Cities where the bus stopped in each town. By the time we reached Rock Island, our last stop, there were only two seats left on the bus, one next to me and one on the opposite aisle about three rows back. Two ladies got on the bus. One, I would estimate, weighed in the neighborhood of 250-300 lbs. Naturally she sat next to me. And as it turned out these ladies had been trying to get to Peoria by first taking the train from Chicago to Rock Island, then picking up the bus, but the train had arrived some eight hours earlier and they'd spent the interceding time at the bar. The whole trip from there to Peoria they spent laughing and giggling, and of course, every time Miss Heavy laughed the seat shook. The nap I had hoped to get was actually spent with my head regularly knocking against the window. I swore I'd never take another cross-country bus again after that (and still haven't). Late in the summer of 1971, I purchased a 1961 Corvair Greenbriar van (for $125). This was my first vehicle (unless you want to consider bicycles) and it was a real thrill. As a burgeoning hippy-child I was quick to outfit it with window curtains, a red carpet, and a mattress covered with imitation leopard skin. I had even managed to put in a couple of non-functional but aesthetically pleasing oak beams in the ceiling. I now owned transportation and was happy to use it for several trips back and forth to school, although I was not enrolled at the time. Unfortunately, while the van was wonderful to sleep in, mechanically it was not worth more than the $125 I paid for it. Having to hang onto the stickshift for half the distance from Chicago to Iowa City to keep it from falling out of gear was not the most fun I've ever had driving. In fact, the new tires I'd purchased for it were probably worth more than the van itself. After ultimately junking the vehicle, my final exodus from Iowa City was a hitchhiking venture ultimately leading me to Purdue in Lafayette, Indiana. I suppose at this point it might be appropriate to ask if I'd ever inhaled. Yeah, you know what I mean. And I would certainly have to answer that I had, (even if this prevents me from ever getting elected to a Senate seat). So let me talk about that for a moment, especially since I know there will be a lot of you out there, just wanting to be entertained, keeping tabs on all the gossip from movieland and looking for something juicy, that just want to hear one more off-color story that might make you feel like life is all worth living. OK. Here you go. After a very straight-laced and boring, if not quite troubling, freshman year in college, the beginning of my sophomore year opened my eyes and lungs to the experience of marijuana. Before the school year actually began, and before that colorful trip to Kansas, a friend asked me 1) had I ever tried grass, and 2) would I like to. We popped into that borrowed '68 Volkswagen and headed out of town to the north of Iowa City. Once we'd left the city behind for the wide open farmscape we found a rural road that led us into the late-summer cornfields of the midwest. On an unnamed gravel road, surrounded by 8-foot tall walls of corn stalks, we pulled over. After igniting this oddly shaped cigarette and taking a couple puffs from it, my friend handed it over to me and urged me to try a few, quickly training me in the courtesy of not 'bogarting' the joint. We passed the smoking treasure around the three of us, savoring the pungent aromas, and analyzing our conditions. I was asked, did I feel anything? No, I couldn't say I did. Well, often one didn't react to the first experience with marijuana. We might have to try it again another time, but let's try this second joint anyway. I think it was probably about halfway through that second stick that a phenomenal rush began somewhere at the top of my head and rapidly proceeded to the ends of my toes. I could no longer, at this point, deny that I was feeling the effect of the cannabis. Somehow, despite it being my first experience with the drug, I managed to drive us back to the dormitory, where the first thing I proceeded to do was write a poem. Alan Ginsberg, look out. This would no doubt be one of the greater influences of my second year in school. This is a good time to interject that the earlier drive we took to Kansas, by way of Des Moines, was laced with occasional stops to stone up. Driving through Leavenworth, when it just happened that a cop was behind us, was one of my first real experiences with the paranoia of possibly being caught. Nevertheless, my college days did see a fair amount of marijuana use, but despite the frequent "toke-ins" it never grabbed me like it did many others, though I did have some involvement in the drug culture for perhaps another six years after leaving school. After the plunge into pot, there was something of a natural experimentation with other psychadelics, including mescalin, mushrooms, and the many flavors of LSD. In that period of time, and indeed in my life, I had perhaps a dozen trips on these various transports. Some of them were relatively insignificant, amounting to little more than watching "trails" while listening intently to Firesign Theatre albums, but there were a few quite remarkable experiences as well as something of a grand conclusion when it was all over and behind me. Here are some of the most notable highlights. Drive to Cedar Rapids Airport - herd of cows OTHER COLLEGE THE URANTIA BOOK
Growing up: (horseback riding with Buck) |
