Go Blue

• 

• 

A long long time ago, six year old boy sat down at the piano, and played some music. All his own.

That same boy liked to draw, too.

Now quite some time ago I graduated from the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance and the School of Art & Design, with two BFA degrees.

It wasn’t so long ago that I don’t remember the struggle of it all. The uncertainty of being surrounded by so many other talented musicians. I walked in as a piano performance major. I walked out something else.

I took creative writing and argumentative writing courses. I took drawing classes and learned how to program in C, LISP, Lingo, and Java. I hung theater lights, ran light boards and sound board, manned video cameras and microphones, created multimedia spaces and floating music boats, took piano lessons, ceramics, metalsmithing, sculpted a bust of my own head, and managed to survive music theory, art & music history, statistics, and all the critiques of five years of Graphic Design.

It’s been a long and convoluted path to the point, but it’s funny to see how it all somehow came together. I studied piano for 20 years. I did not become a concert pianist as I once thought, but I certainly got better for it and now I’ve come back to where I started – playing because I love it. All the art and design courses were the foundation of my illustrations and book design. The sound engineering gave me the means to record and design my audiobooks. Video courses were the foundation for making and animating book trailers…

It was exhausting at the time, though as I look back on it I’d do that part of it all over again. However confusing it all was, it all led to what I’m doing now.

All of that started with a six-year old boy, leaning over the keys of a piano, plinking out the tunes I heard in the Legend of Zelda.

My six-year-old self wouldn’t have known that so many years later, I’d be making a real book, and that it would be shown on the University’s site.

My six year old self wouldn’t have believed it. Really? I did that?

I think I get lost sometimes in the wrong ideas. Someone else’s dream. But there’s still that six year old inside, still fascinated with the world, who just wants to make something neat.