Architecture

I was hunting for a home in 1988 in rural Massachusetts.  The region was in a recession, and a surge in real estate prices had made even undeveloped, remote, wooded acreage beyond my reach.  I began to wonder how little space a small family could live in, if it was designed well enough.  I'd been fascinated by architecture as a teen, but never produced any significant amount drawings of my own.  Then I began sketching ideas for "tiny" homes at the time.  It became an ongoing puzzle for me.  Anytime I had spare time, I'd doodle variations on compact homes.  Anytime a new innovation would occur to me, I had to draw it out.  My friends eventually bought me a thick, illustrated manual on residential construction, and I was hooked.
     After reading the manual a dozen times, I found myself drawn to construction sites.  I'd wander around, studying the materials, methods, order of construction.  When I would visit friends and relatives, I'd sometimes ask to crawl around under their homes to study the foundation, subfloors and plumbing.  Ten years later I had probably drawn a thousand homes (both tiny and palatial).  As a graphic artist, I had software that could make precise scale drawings, hundreds of which reside on my personal computers, but technology doesn't prevent me from designing on notepads, graph paper, napkins at restaurants, even on the backs of grocery receipts.
     When my grandmother died, my mother wished to build a home in her honor (my mother is an artist/writer/builder type).  She handed me a floor plan that she wanted to expand, and after thirteen revisions, most of them expansions, we had a set of working drawings that were nothing like the original.  I personally worked on the project, clearing the lot, staking the perimeter, and manually digging the foundation (mostly with pick axes), directing a crew of local workers.  After the foundation was poured, the builder arrived and commented that it was the most perfect, square, mathematically precise foundation he'd ever had at the start of a project.  When he saw the working drawings, however, he almost quit in disgust.  "These aren't blueprints!"  He exclaimed, and refused to work from amateur drawings.

The builder got his crew started, attempting to complete the first floor platform without drawings.  I would find my plans (which were printed on white 11" x 17" paper) discarded in the mud each day, and would go home, print out another set and present them again to the builder (sometimes twice a day).  After a week of reluctantly consulting my plans, the builder changed his tone.  "These are actually really good!"  He said.  He assumed that because they were printed out by a young man from his home computer, that they would be imprecise and that the designs would not be up to code.  But once he started studying them, he discovered otherwise.  The more the builder followed the designs, the more excited about them he became.  By the end of the framing process, he told me he preferred my drawings to traditional blueprints.  I was even offered a job with his company, but declined, having already started another business.
		Miss Beulah, College Street, Madison, Georgia
		I created the working drawings for this house, and played a key role in the excavation, foundation, framing, and multiple finished surfaces, including the arched doorways and the mosaic tile floor in the dining room.

     In the year 2000 the house, Miss Beulah, was completed.  It stands today on College Street in Madison Georgia, one block from the historic district.
     In the years 2007-08 I again had the pleasure of designing and building, as I did extensive renovations for my landlord's apartment, which encompassed walls, ceilings, doors, closets, cabinetry, counters, electrical and floors.  Though the before/after results were dramatic, I will spare you the read and pictures.  I also built custom furniture for myself, son and business while living there.


Music

As involved as I've been in the publishing industry, most people are surprised to learn that in college I had a double major in theology and music.  I had lessons in piano, saxophone, guitar, violin, and a brief stint with the accordion as a child.  Nothing really stuck.  But when I arrived at my first full-time college just after turning 17, I saw this unbelievable, 30-foot-high, hand-built instrument, which was the Anton Heiller Memorial Organ by John Brombaugh and Associates.  It was still under construction, about nine months from completion.  In my teenage years I had developed a passion for early Baroque music, and even dabbled in replicating the compositions of Bach on a computer (which few people ever got to do in the early 1980s).  The university didn't offer majors in architecture, but had a fantastic music program.  On the spot I was determined to study music--not to become a performer, but a composer.
     As the years passed and I threw myself into the study of music, I found that while I excelled at music theory, music analysis and music history, I had substantial difficulty with performance.  The university didn't offer a composition degree--it was either performance or music education--both of which required a senior recital, which I was sure to fail.  After two and a half years I changed universities, attempting to complete a composition program at Georgia State University.  The teachers, however, were lackluster and often absent (at least the ones I encountered), and living and commuting in Atlanta was unbearable.  I never completed my music degree, but continued passionately studying music ever since.  I must admit, though, that it has taken a back seat to architecture, archaeology, publishing, writing, and not least of all, parenting.
     What may have fascinated me most in college music study was alternate methods of music notations.  I became adept at the figured bass method of transcription, but also learned of the various types of musical shorthand employed by Baroque and Renaissance composers, called tablature.  In-between architectural sketches, I've spent the last two decades playing with concepts, trying to formulate my own notation system.  I figured that if a system is designed properly, it can actually aid composition far more than the standard musical notation used today.  I have also toyed with alternate modalities and amodal harmony.  While I have had fun with these experiments, learned much, and completed a few compositions, I'm not crazy about much of what I've produced thus far.
     One realization I have made, though, is that music itself--often referred to, correctly, as logarithmic--is actually helical, like DNA.  On a flat plane, every octave equals a doubling of vibration frequency--middle C is one sixteenth the frequency of a high C four octaves above--in which case you have a logarithmic matrix.  However, in our perception, and in harmonic theory, a C is a C and an F is an F no matter which octave it is, which gives us a circular structure (every doubling or halving of frequency brings you back to the "same" place on a circle).  Chord structures can thus be mapped out on a circle, and if chord inversions are relevant, the circle can be replaced with a helix (in a 3D model) or a spiral (for a 2D model).  Western music relies heavily on 12-step octaves, so chord geometrics can be mapped out in the familiar "clock" arrangement, whether on a circle or spiral.
     Notating music on circles, spirals or helixes is in most cases very impractical.  However, composing music or teaching harmonic structure and chord progression using circular diagrams is nothing short of revolutionary.  When chord progressions are mapped on a chromatic circle, a complete musical beginner can grasp the mechanics in a matter of hours, whereas it used to take two semesters of college to scratch the surface of traditional tonal harmonic theory.  A circle or spiral gives almost immediate understanding of chord progressions, even when dealing with more exotic scales, such as modes and chromatic music built on 18- and 24-note scales.



For my personal tastes, I enjoy a wide variety of music:

• early modern music (Hindemith, Schoenberg, Reger);
• recent modern music (Langlais, Naji Hakim, Heiller);
• Renaissance (primarily secular and madrigals);
• early Baroque (Orlando de Lassus, Sweelinck, John Bull, Froberger, Buxtehude, Monteverdi);
• late Baroque (J.S. and C.P.E. Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi);
• some Romantic and Classical period (Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin);
• plus and a number of jazz and rock innovators.

I love challenging music that requires many hearings to understand, and I love elaborate harmonics and rhythms.  I have a very hard time appreciating anything that is structurally simple, droning, or with repetitious dance beats.  I appreciate music that is culturally specific (traditional Indian, Persian, Mediterranean, European, African), but frown on lyrical content that is nationalistic or otherwise hostile to "outside" cultures.  I cringe when music is appropriated for divisive or exclusionary purposes.  Exclusion is antithetical to creativity.

Art

My mother is a very creative, artistic person.  While I never had formal art training, I grew up watching her paint, sculpt, make pottery, embroider, build, upholster, and draw.  She seemed to work in any medium--oils, pastels, charcoal, chalk, ink, pencil, clay, plaster, tile, glass and ceramics.  It was she who painted the ornate floors, made the stained glass windows, and hand-cast the crown moldings in Miss Beulah, the house we designed and built together.  I learned a lot from watching her, and also received a great boost in artistic ability from reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain when I was nineteen years old.
     My publishing career actually began in my early teens, as a typist for my mother's word processing company.  Once I was off to college, I began working as the university's graphic artist, and after college I tried my hand at computerized graphic art and found I was a natural (the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker and FreeHand were new, hot items).  My mother had always struggled as an artist.  I managed to make a decent living in graphic arts, but the art I was creating had more of a practical essence to it (forms, magazine layouts, advertisements) and not the aesthetic, organic brilliance of my mother's art.  I wished I could pursue fine art, but managed only to dabble a little, mostly in my twenties.

On my own I studied modern art, both online and at museums, and for several years enjoyed subscriptions to Art in America.  I experimented with painting, and in the 1980s and early 90s produced about 60 finished works, mostly acrylics.  I started off with whimsical, comic-like themes, which flowed into surreal, followed by realism.  I was starting to attempt portraiture at the end of my painting period, when life and self-employment became too hectic to devote the time and energy necessary to create art.  Perhaps my brother still has some of my earliest paintings (I gave him 4 or 5 when I went off to college), but the bulk of what I produced was in the care of my first wife when we separated, and were reportedly thrown away or sold.  It didn't occur to me in the 80s to photograph my works, but two that I created in 1987 were captured by my pocket camera, and are shown above.  Surviving are just a handful of portraits I made, and I've produced three others (all unfinished) since 1995.
 

Final Thoughts

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with my skills and interests in art, music and architecture in the future.  I pictured myself as an artist or composer until I was in my late 20s.  It seems those are actually fringe talents.  It wasn't until I had been writing and publishing for over twenty years that I realized writing was my true expressive passion.  Writing is my foremost interest, especially in the areas of history, anthropology, science and short fiction.  I would like to think that after another decade of working in publishing and writing, that I can accumulate a respectable royalty income, and then devote a greater share of my time studying and producing art and music, among other pursuits, such as family, activism and philanthropy.  It's my opinion that human civilization would be far more virtuous and sustainable if we devoted more time and energy to aesthetics, family and community and considerably less time working, expanding and consuming.  I believe we need to downsize and decentralize economies, governments and agriculture.  We need to rediscover craftsmanship, face time, integrity, and our stewardship (rather than exploitation) of nature and people.  Art, music, architecture and literature can all be tools to work toward (or against) such ends.