About Me

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Los Angeles, CA, United States
I am a writer, photographer and musician living in Los Angeles. In the last few years, new written work--numerous plays, screenplays, and two novels--have demonstrated this to be the most productive period of my life. The journal I have also kept for thirty-five years has, of late, become a personal sounding board for my thoughts on peace and the state of the world...about which I remain hopelessly optimistic! My writing here will be in tandem to video "Peace Talks" I have recorded, and which will be released throughout 2011. You're welcome to visit my website, the "Studio 5" link, to see my photographs. As a classically-trained pianist, I have been composing music all my life. Two guitar re-mixes of piano music are attached here, as well as several music videos, including "Consider Peace" the title track of an up-coming CD. Balancing writing, photography and music has been a long and challenging path...not to be recommended! Yet this very Aries diversity reflects an enthusiasm for the modern world of which I feel very much a part.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Big Surprise: They want the same things we do!

Through the entire month of April, 2010, I was in China with my friends Andy and Xavier. We visited five cities, and spent time out in some small towns way off the gleaming highways of the new China. It was my first time in Asia, and all in all, a great adventure. Honk Kong, in particular, I found truly exhilarating. And if you want picturesque, Hangzhou is sheer delight.

We saw a lot of "the real China" you don’t hear about in western media—the human side—and mainly what struck me was how kindred to myself everyone was. Chinese people want the same things for their children as we do: health, love, prosperity and happiness. I may be going out on a limb here, but my guess is that everyone wants those things.

Of course, there are crazy people everywhere. But even for the oppressed and downtrodden, the individual's dream is always for more love, more freedom, more happiness. And why? Because that is what we’re made of. I believe we’re wired for caring and compassion; for the raising-up of the other...our long, sad history of war and small-mindedness notwithstanding.

Yet as we look around at a world in such great need of healing, why is it we can’t seem to find, on a societal level, that for which we are so ready to strive at the level of the individual?

What are we missing?

I suggest that much of our problems come from a sense of disconnectedness to each other. We have forgotten, somehow, that who we are includes each and every living thing of which we are a part...and from which no one is excluded.

The healing we seek as a race will not come from new systems, or yet another religion to divide us even further. It will only be found by embracing our innate Oneness. The world of peace we’ve always dreamed of will come—naturally—when we first recognize the literal fact that we are all One. This can start now if we consider peace...at least consider it!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hello out there!

Well, here I go, stepping up onto my cyber soap box at long last, taking my invitation from the Conversation with God books to talk about Peace and Oneness...the invitation that asks "If not now, when; if not me, who?"

I'm certainly no more special than anyone else. I've got a camera and some free Internet accounts, so why not start making myself useful? Join me, please! There's room here for all of us!

If you recognize that the world is in dire need of healing; if you know in your heart that there's a better way to go about things here on planet Earth this early 21st Century; if you want to do something...well, join me. Let's start to "Consider Peace"...just consider it. Let's dare to believe that the world really could be a wonderful place instead of the painful "vale of tears" that it currently is for billions of people.

If you're reading this, you already know you're one of the lucky ones. At least we can make our voices heard, even if it seems, as it does to me now, at four in the morning, that I'm all alone crying into the silent night.

But the fact is, I am not alone. We are not alone. And someone's got to do something, right? I may not be able to change the world, but I can change things in my little orbit. Except now with the Internet, one's orbit, the ripples one can send, can go further than we ever imagined, or may ever know.

So, I'm about to make my life even more of an open book by speaking here, on this blog, the way, for several years now, I've only written in my journal. I'm throwing the stone of my ideas, my passion, into the brilliant cyber lake, and perhaps my words will reach you, dear blogger/reader, and together our voices can be healing ones...a shelter of sorts to dream together; to consider Peace...just consider it...the ramifications of a peaceful world. So that maybe one day, declaring Peace won't sound like such a radical idea.