Some Elementary Years
“Stories have been a part of my life since I was a child.
“As have my mistrust of ‘authority’ and my hatred of bullies.
“I have been a native lucid dreamer all my life and was a sleepwalker until my mid-twenties.
“Tiny me sleepwalked into my grandparents’ bedroom and said bizarre things to them, sometimes frightening them, before returning to bed; sometimes with no memory of non-dream events, but some memory of walking through a surreal story, complete with a recognizable arc, and expressing myself through dialogue.
“I remember when I was very young, five or six, and I told my uncle Louis about a snake as tall as a house and as long as a highway, chasing me near the canal. He scolded me for ‘lying’, though I believe he later recognized his error as he gave me stacks of magazines to read, mostly Popular Science and National Geographic.
“Being scolded for using my imagination inspired me to consider grownups to be idiots. Being more well-read than most adults—at age five—made me question the integrity of our entire civilization. How badly designed could it be that the majority of people are taught to ignore their imaginative powers and lack the curiosity to read about things they don’t yet (and might never) understand?
“I became an obsessed autodidact and set about integrating my own imaginative powers into my life so that no one could dissuade me from using them.
“Immediately, I began writing stage plays that no one would read or perform (though my friends and I made weird ‘music’, improvised skits, and played acting games), puppet shows that I somehow harangued my schools into letting me perform for the student body, countless short stories, and attempts at novels. My art teachers loved me because I wouldn’t color within the lines and experimented with color and form freely and wildly.
“Understanding mathematics at a high school level and reading at a college level seemed more than enough ammunition for bullies to bother me, though I was a little too large and too athletic for all but the craziest to dare. Sadly, they dared often and I was too gentle to defend myself but not too slow to run away.
“Elementary school me split time between ‘normal class’ (they had to put me somewhere for a chunk of the day), ‘gifted class’ (it was only a couple of hours), and ‘special ed’ (because I hated the poorly designed structure of the school system, had ’emotional outbursts’ and ‘an overactive imagination’, couldn’t relate to most of the other kids outside of play, and special ed gave me hours of time for studying whatever I wanted to with unlimited library privileges).
“My mother told me that I was ‘a dreamer’ and that dreamers were losers. We were desperately poor (my first family home was a broken down car), so I didn’t have to worry too much about being ‘supervised’ (i.e. forced to behave ‘normally’) and I had to develop a work ethic.
“Despite running a few small ‘kid businesses’ (mowing lawns, selling candy, etc.), I spent days at a time in the woods, often sleeping under the stars by myself, and feverishly imagining dimension-traveling characters, their dialogues, and their adventures together.
“And when the weather was ‘bad’, I watched Star Trek, Get Smart, Tales from the Darkside, and David Lynch movies. I was the only eight year old that I knew of who had seen Eraserhead. At first, I didn’t know it was in Black & White because I saw it on an old Black & White TV that I repaired myself.
“And then…
“I feel pretty certain that the decision to devote my life to the Arts (rather than the Sciences or Sports) came in 5th or 6th grade.
“I asked myself where I could have the most positive impact and it occurred to me that technology had already outstripped humanity’s ethical capacity and our civilization wasn’t equipped to nurture the imagination it would require to survive (or possibly thrive with) the coming technological revolutions.
“The Arts offered me opportunities to positively impact both, so I made my decision and hardly looked back.
“What child me wildly underestimated was how long it would take.
“I do find it interesting that I still spend quite a lot of time inhabiting characters, playing with color and form, writing, and dreaming. Though I desperately miss spending nights under the stars whenever the storm spirits would allow.”