#### What is my life story? #### How do I want to tell my life story? #### Who are the people I know who are really good at telling their life stories and why do I compare myself to them? #### Who should I tell my life story? #### Why should I tell my life story? ## Sunnyvale 1985-1995 Day care - Early Horizons Benjamin, Elizabeth, Jessica Sweeney, the four of us pretending to be Disney Cartoon characters, Robin Hood Playing on the playground. Doing flips off the swings. Running as fast as possible across the field, being one of the fastest kids. Benjamin Sex-Game First really big loss Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the zeitgeist Twisters Gym - Gymnastics - Tae Kwon Do Also, I think I had some sense of the AIDS epidemic going on. I remember knowing about Magic Johnson, I wonder if that’s cause he was HIV positive? I also remember Loraina Bobbit cutting off her husband’s penis and throwing it out her car window Playing sonic the hedgehog. Playing NBA Jam. Smashing a game controller I had in a fit of rage. Tree House platforms. Rope to climb and swing on, that was hours of fun. Riding bikes and jumping them off curbs and little ramps. Climbing the pine tree in our front yard and getting sap on my hands. Guy Zicklick Bryan Troyer My parents are always working, except my dad does TKD with me. Video Games, Educational Computer Games Great America - Roller Coasters Very Unhappy in Elementary School - don’t remember any teachers, the only thing I remember is learning the difference between translucent, transparent and opaque. Walkathons, winning prizes. Going skiing in Colorado every spring with the wises. ## Boulder 1995-2003 ##### Elementary Neighborhood friends Trombone I was the lead in the school play, based on Voyage of the Mimi? Neither of my parents were working, so that was really different We had no fences Deer in our backyard all the time I remember sleeping in the guest room to be near my parents. ##### Middle School Skateboarding Girlfriends Seeing how long we could French kiss before leaving school. Katherine Whitney telling me how to feel for her clit at that party at Andrea Chunn’s house. School was easy, and the teachers were good. Charter School, with pre-IB classes, and all my friends were really smart, so academic stuff was just the norm. ##### High School Alcohol Poisoning Hip Hop All State Jazz Band IB and AP classes, not struggling, but doing well in English and History Jazz Band but no marching band? Skateboarding a LOT. Dad built me a half pipe eventually. Not really into drugs, but we did a lot of drinking at Colin’s house. Also went snowboarding a bunch up in Breckenridge, at Colin’s condo. Fell super hard and stopped snowboarding. I got obsessed with Hailey Walker junior year. First lovesick, obsessed unrequited love. Wrote a song about her, etc. Summer trip to Europe with Colin Jones. Senior year, I got into Madrigals and was in Festival. I started hanging out a lot with Nathan Cooper, and I was friends with a bunch of junior girls in Madrigals. Erika Halaand, Paula Creevy. Indra was more of a friend senior year, and then she and I both ended up going to Oberlin. Went on a trip to California over spring break senior year with Colin, just cause we wanted to. That’s when we were finding out about getting into colleges. I wanted to go somewhere I could skateboard, like LA or New York City. I want interested in music, too, so New York seemed cool. I didn’t get into those, but I got into Oberlin, which my mom had suggested because they had technology in music and related arts, plus Robin Eubanks was a professor there… ## Oberlin 2003-2007 ##### 2003-2004 Freshman Cinema Studies was my major because I got placed in a freshman seminar with Geoff Pingree, “Media and Meaning.” Then Pat Day, Jeff Pence Dance at the very end, which I wish I’d started sooner, but it happened how it was supposed to happen. - Holly Handman-Lopez - Assume the Mantle: Cocked - Man Dance - Deborah Vogel Somatic Studies with Mara Poliak who was with Emile at the time A huge part of college was making friends. Scott Melamed - we bonded over music, Happy Apple, kind of at the end of freshman year. He was friends with Indra cause they lived in the same dorm, the freshman dorm, Dascomb. I knew Indra from high school. Glenny was part of that crew. Glenny and I were kind of together at the end of freshman year. I remember watching her swing on the swing south of the conservatory, how straight and skinny her legs looked, seemed funny to me. I remember snuggling with her, actually sleeping over in her dorm room at the end of freshman year. “What do you want to do?” She asked. “I want to go where no man has gone before.” (I was thinking about myself, where *I* haven’t gone before). “Well unless you mean my ass, that’s not going to happen. I’ve had sex before.” We didn’t have sex then. ##### Summer 1 - Spirituality I don’t know how I got there, but I took 1 or 2 meditation lessons with Satananda. My mom was peripherally involved in the Alandi Ashram, probably through her friend Dawn. I went over to the ashram and I sat with Satandanda in the meditation room there, in front of a shrine with pictures of his teachers. Smell of incense. Word wooden floors. He told me about Ram Dass Be Here Now and Joseph Goldstein and Insight Meditation. I went and bought those books at the bookstore. And I think I did some meditation at home, but I’m sure I read those books. I think I liked that these were ideas, like I was studying in school, but then there was also a practice. I remember going for a walk in the woods near my house and having a really clear perception of that moment in time, like, here I am right now. Something special about that, but I don’t know what. Over the Summer between freshman and sophomore year, I went to Shelter Cove to try to work with Jason. Shorter trip, like 3 weeks? ##### 2004-2005 Sophomore - Marisa + Quitting Trombone? - Living in Burton Sophomore year I got together with Marisa Beltramini. I was a sophomore, she was a freshman. We took showers together in Burton where we lived. I remember she was super hot and I had a boner in the shower, pressing it up against her and stuff. I wanted to have sex with her, mostly cause I wanted to get past losing my virginity but then when I was in bed with her in her dorm room, I was impotent, couldn’t get it up. Shame. Then I ruined the relationship by getting cold feet about her coming to Boulder with me on winter term. Did I lose my virginity to Carlen Altman in the spring? She lived in a single in Talcott. I think she was two years ahead of me? We met in a video production course. I remember she told me about Arthur Russell. She was graduating, so it seemed like really low stakes to me, somehow. At the end of the year I was making out with Indra and Helen at a party. Scott got all mad, like I shouldn’t be doing that to Carlen? ##### Summer 2 - Broke My Hand, Spent the Summer reading and journaling Was this the summer I got really into journaling? I was reading On the Road, got into the beats, etc. Boulder, Naropa, etc. ##### 2005-2006 - Sikkim in the Fall, Talcott with Scott in the spring Sikkim was amazing, my favorite semester of college, by far. Meditation + Feeling like an artist, making a video Spring back in Oberlin was fun, living in Talcott with Scott. He was getting really depressed though. But this is when I was fooling around with Rachel Kelly. I remember she snuck into our room one night and slipped into bed with me and then gave me a handjob and I came all over my sheets. Scott was over there, sleeping. I guess that was early exposure to my naughtiness thing? ##### Summer 3 - Shelter Cove, for longer Garuda, Garouse More connection with Steph. Feeling the “love” and being immersed in their whole world. I remember masturbating and coming outside the little trailer I was living in. I think this was the summer when Scott and I drove from Minneapolis to Santa Fe? ##### 2006-2007 - Senior Year, living at 20 East Lorain with David, Scott and Ben Reitz Honors Project - Oberlin Bachelor Machine Friends with Ian Page who is with Lucy. I think Ian was in a bunch of cinema studies classes with me? Peter Nowogrodzki was in cinema studies stuff with me too? He had an unrequited love for Marisa, I think. Me and Ian and Scott Grogan are all in Holly’s dance piece, second semester. This is the year I get into dance, cause I have enough time and space in my schedule. Over one of the breaks, spring break (?) I go to New York. I meet up with Ian Page who’s living in bushwick, hang out with him a little bit. Then I take the bus back to Tully to meet up with Glenny. We have sex in her house and it’s like I’m losing my virginity sort of, like it feels really really good and I cum inside her. It’s super early in the morning and then we’re awake so we just drive back to Oberlin. I think I meet Lena soon after that. She’s filming “Hooker on Campus” and that’s how we meet. ##### Oberlin +1 with Lena 2008 I stay at Oberlin for an extra year, working in the cinema studies department as a “production coordinator,” which is kind of a bullshit job, but I am getting paid super well and then I have my own efficiency. I’m with Lena, who has an apartment above the hardware store. First love. Sex. In the spring, I notice I have a really strange wart, like right at the tip of my urethra. Bad news. I assume it was from Lena? Or she assumes because she had sex with someone with HPV? We go to Boulder over spring break and visit my parents and for me to have a surgery to have the wart removed. When we get back to Oberlin, I have a complete emotional breakthrough or breakdown or something super deep which was, “I am so lonely.” It’s like Lena coming into my family world with me unleashes something, let’s all that loneliness break through for the first time. Maybe I was saying, “I am alone.” Or I just feel so alone. Exposure to New York art world through her and her parents. KT Neihoff is visiting artist in the dance department. I take “spontaneous composition” course and realize, Holy Shit, you can improvise without instruments, just as yourself. Mind blowing. I’m in Lucy’s senior piece, getting more interested in dance. I’m like, “I want to be a dancer. I want to move to New York to be a dancer.” ##### Summer - first time in New York Go to Tulum with Lena. Meet Wouter Hannegraaf at our hotel, talking about Ayahuasca. Tom Arsenault got me into Terence McKenna, I think? Lena’s dad was also into Terrence McKenna. Cat sitting for Lena’s choir teacher in Brooklyn Heights. I’m allergic to cats, so that kind of sucks. I’m Spending all my time making really crazy art in sketch up, all flat color fields and geometry. I can’t hang, don’t know what to do, get freaked out. Lena knows people, this is her home town, but I don’t know what to do. Decide to move back to Boulder. I sign up for an ayahuasca ceremony the night before I leave. Don’t understand that I’m breaking up with Lena. ## NYC 2008-2010 Lucy and Tatyana were my best friends. Tatyana was so focused on her work, and she took me to my first contact jam. Lucy was still friends with a bunch of people from our college, so she was kind of my bridge to those folks, Jolie + Gabe. Peter lived with Lucy. Lucy was with Nick, but I kind of had a crush on her and we were close through dance stuff. Scott Grogan was my roommate. I moved in with him after Gabe Morden Snipper moved out… Then Carolyn Deuschle moved in with me after Scott moved out. I worked at Streamline Films, 4 days a week, 10 hour days. Listened to a lot of Bach on YouTube while I was working. I got into Feldenkrais! Summer of 2009. Must have done the free introduction in the spring of 2009. I met Zoe Schieber through the feldenkrais institute and then also saw her at dance stuff. I met Matthew Rogers through the contact jams. He was a dancer for Tere O’Connor who was like the coolest choreographer I could imagine, so Matthew was Older and established. He and Zoe were actually the same age, 31. I messed around with Matthew which was super exciting, first and only guy I ever played around with. I was also messing around with Zoe at the same time. I kind of “picked” Zoe at some point. I wish I had picked Matthew instead, but I think I was afraid. I remember thinking, I won’t be able to have a family if I’m gay. But right after I hooked up with Matthew, that’s when we did our residency at the Silo in Pennsylvania. I remember feeling all potent and excited. And we were all snuggling in bed together, and it just felt like an amazing time to be together. I felt virile, like I could just be myself and be liked and be close with other people. Young. Bought clothes at Uniqlo, sweats… I went to the Saturday jam at Eden’s expressway. I went to the Monday night shows at Judson church, then whatever that jam was called that was at Children’s Aid Society on Monday nights. Did some dance workshops, one or two, at the armory. Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser. Jungwoon Kim and Marion. But mostly I was just jamming. I LOVED contact. I was obsessed with Steve Paxton. Tatyana was making work with me and Lucy and Michael Beharie, a piece called the Near(ness), and she got us a residency at Silo in Pennsylvania. Showings at Chez Bushwick and St. Mark’s Church. And a really fucking cool show in the basement of an old church in Brooklyn, and cuddle magic played after us. I think my parents were there for that. Aunts was the really cool dance thing going on then, big sprawling group shows in bushwick. June 9th 2010, I did a performance of “Contract Improvisation” at Movement Research showing thing… My parents were there, I think? Left just after my 25th birthday. ## Oakland 2010-2013 Feldenkrais Training with Dennis PPP - Salta - Big Fat Circle Chella, a love. I remember telling her I thought I was bi, and she was like, “me too.” All the Lena stuff starts happening, like Tiny Furniture leads to an HBO deal, so Girls is out. I meet up with her in Oakland when she’s on tour for Tiny Furniture, she tells me she slept with Peter. I’m living in a flea infested apartment… I graduated from FRTI basically on my 28th birthday. My parents came to see me graduate, then I drove back to Boulder with them cause my dad had melanoma. ## Boulder 2013-Now ##### North Haven Flood in 2013. Dad was sick, but then got better during the first few months I was there. I moved into North Haven co-op. Best friends were Daniel Thorson and Ben Seidman. Failure Festival! Finally “getting over” Lena in a cathartic telling of my own side of the story. Worked at Naropa for a year, with Tiffany, for the president Chuck Leif. I was teaching some Feldenkrais classes too. ##### Care Work - Manny Work 2014-2018 Then got a job as a manny working for Mariah Quish. I LOVED being a manny. I loved spending time with kids. Worked for Salem and Kelly, mostly with Sky but also with Stella. Worked for the Frischkorn’s, mostly with Huxley but also with Holden and Treker. Dated Lisa Debassio Dated Bernadette St. George Dated Maya Golan Dated Julie Goldberg At the end of that era, I met Rishona, kind of wanting to graduate somehow… Had a couple more care jobs, taking care of Michael Matthieu and also the guy who lived up in Niwot with ALS. ##### Relationship with Rishona from 2017-2018 (dates ?) When she got the house on Sylvan in Coal Creek, I was working on building Alicia’s house with IO. June 9th, 2017 (when I turned 32), I was in Chicago doing a Narrative Therapy training when I had a weird thing happen where all of a sudden, after hearing Rob, this really gay Canadian guy, tell a story about himself or his life, I remember a patterned couch, then somehow I started seeing men as sexualized. Like something about my gayness came out of the woodwork, HARD. I couldn’t stop sexualizing men, like looking at them on the train to the airport, I remember. It felt compulsive and scary to me. I told Rishona about it when I got back to Colorado, and our interactions about it didn’t go well. We were both wanting to have a family. In January, 2018 she got pregnant but then miscarried at the end of the month, I think? Or in February. We tried going to couples therapy, during the spring. I moved out of the house cause things were too weird or, why? I moved in with Granny at the Academy. Rishona broke up with me on June 9th, 2018 - when I turned 33. ##### Fed Ex part 1 - spring 2018-spring 2019 ##### Hack Reactor Galvanize Coding - COVID - summer 2019 ##### Living at Barbara’s July 2018 - when did we move to Broomfield? ##### Fed Ex Part 2 - Spring 2021-Spring 2023 Stopped when my dad went into hospice, June 2023 ## Life with Irene - July 2019 - Now ##### Blue House - I was at Barbara’s - We went to Mexico together while I was doing hack reactor prelim stuff, that’s right when COVID started, January 2020 ##### House Sitting Keith and Mia’s when the big breakdown happened with Viv, December 2020 - I was working on the Feldencast - Must have been working for Synchronicity, doing Wordpress stuff - Right around Viv’s 11th birthday ##### Eventually she and Viv moved in with me, partly cause I was so worried about her and her dissociations - she was working at Common Threads, and it was not healthy - I also wanted her to be farther away from work, like she had some really bad habits related to working to numb out then dissociating at work ##### We moved to Broomfield to live with Arrow and Xavier - I wanted to have a family with Irene, I thought we could do it if we had more support. - Pretty soon after we moved there, she got her DUI, so she couldn’t drive for a while - She stopped working at Common Threads - Started taking care of Pax - Had to go to a bunch of meetings, like all the time for a while - The thing that she credits with really changing things is the Amino Acid Protocols she got into, specifically the pyroluria protocol ##### 2023 my dad died, 10 years after I moved back to Boulder - this was kind of crazy timing - right when things finally stablized for Irene - Then I decided to do the work with kids, life is too short not to - Quit FedEx ##### 2024 we moved to Boulder, to live with my mom and so Viv could be closer to New Vista - living on savings - By the end of 2024, I did my first trip to Denmark and my first trip to Phoenix to work with Erin --- ## Another Pass at a Life Story Skeleton [[2025-06-11]] I came up with a list of critical pivot points as part of doing the [[Give Your Gift Notes]] program from Tasshin. Life Defining Moments - Pivots related to telling a story about my Vow 1. Birth Story 2. Early Horizons - Parents are working all the time, but I’m kind of insulated from that, in early, idyllic day care. I loved it. 3. Sex Game - first "growing up" - 5 or 6, graduating pre-school and going to elementary school, losing my innocence, first tastes of depression being at the mercy of my parents doing their grinds... 4. Move to Colorado - parents stop grinding for a couple years, I make new friends - music and skateboarding - PLAY is possible again, Improvisation, Jazz, Hip Hop, Sampling 5. Grew Up - went to college, wanting to play music 6. Cinema Studies was a pivot - watched Movies for 4 years is the sarcastic way of painting the picture, more generous thing would be MEDIA and MEANING - apparatus, electracy, really on the brink of the internet 7. Bigger historical media perspectives, philosophy - we used to be oral cultures, then we were literate cultures, now we are becoming an electrate culture... Do I want to go on a more serious Academic/Intellectual Quest? Graduate School? 8. My foundational myth is the Peter Pan Story, the permanent child... 9. Dance 10. Somatic Studies 11. Improvisation - you can do improvisation *without* instruments! Just yourself... mind blown 12. I'm a Dancer 13. NYC 14. Oh even professional dancers have side hustles 15. Feldenkrais conversion experience - opened my eyes 16. Bay Area Pivot - made during a week at Earth Dance with Steve Paxton 17. At the end of my time in the bay area, graduate from program then Dad sickness - cancer diagnosis 18. Wanted to be with him for the end of his life, which turned out to be 10 years long... 19. Hard to get clients doing "Feldenkrais" - I knew Feldenkrais was a big deal for me, but I didn't know how to sell it. 20. Nanny job 21. I LOVE KIDS - I worked with kids for 4 or 5 years, really enjoyed it. 22. Want to start my own family - with Rishona - but miscarriage - god has other plans... 23. Try to GROW UP - join FedEx because Kids aren't enough money - trying to grow up... 24. Try a coding Job 25. COVID :( 26. Dad Dying 27. Pivot back to Feldenkrais with Kids 28. Now I'm getting clients - looking for a vow, maybe empowering kids?