Edges of my Life.

Chapter 5.  The Tahiti Yacht Club Ball. On the road again and the feeling was intoxicating. I rented my small house in inner Melbourne.  I had money in the bank. A fistful of traveler’s checks. My cameras. A documentary film proposal.  And a reel of film to show potential backers.  I felt ready for another adventure. I was flying away, escaping, rising into the clouds fortunate and relieved to be flying solo. Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport faded into the hazy distance and the blue Pacific Ocean glinted in the harsh Australian light as I headed for America.  I wondered when I might return. My plans were open ended, to travel to San Francisco, then south to Los Angeles, keep traveling into Mexico and South America and then make my way back to New York City. Somewhere along the way I trusted my next project would materialize. I was taking a leap of faith and felt exhilarated by the challenge.  It’s a long flight to America from the other side of the world, al...

How far away does one have to go to find one’s self? Probably no further than the front fence and I’ve come to the other side of the world. I landed in San Francisco with my balls on fire. I had a nasty infection that itched and suppurated and when I booked into the Hotel Virginia on Mason in the Tenderloin, I immediately inquired where I might find a doctor. I had contracted a vicious gonorrhea, probably a side affect of rest and recreation from the Vietnam war. San Francisco shone white in the sun with red roofs, dry hills and eucalyptus, the blue Pacific Ocean, the Bay and the Golden Gate . But it was a cold city, the west wind whipped across the Bay at night. The tram cars trundled up the hills. The people huddle in clumps waiting. I felt emotionally wrung out and not ready for the rough and tumble of America. I knew nobody. I had a bad case of the clap. It was not a pretty picture.  I wondered if I should have found a  beach hut like the  French couple I’d meet in Ta...

I wasn’t sure how long I’d be staying so I lived in hotels, preferring cheap and sleazy which led me to the Chelsea on Twenty-Third Street. Many aspiring artists lived there over the years: Arthur Miller, Arthur C. Clarke, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Jackson Pollock, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, Virgil Thompson and original art hung  all over the walls. I was in the company of ghosts. But I only lasted three nights.  I found hypodermic needles in the bureau and wondered if this was the room Sid Viscous stabbed  and murdered Nancy. I checked out and walked uptown and found Rosoff’s Hotel on the west side on Forty-third near Times Square.  I rented a small room, up the threadbare stairs on the first floor. It was dark and cramped but adequate and fitted the image of the struggling writer. I was on the road half the month with Australian Television and I wasn’t planning staying. My rent was thirteen dollars a day and I paid a month up front. It was a small classy...

Back in Hell’s Kitchen after three months on the road in Tennessee I heard about a meeting Downtown at the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers discussing film distribution. A tall, middle aged man across the room stood addressing the audience.  “I’m on the board of WBAI, the community radio station programmed essentially by volunteers  here in New York City”. He spoke with authority, the air of a New Englander flavored his voice, “Now we, WBAI, have a fifty-thousand watt transmitter and an FM signal and we  broadcast from the top of the Empire State Building, that’s where the transmitter is and it goes out sixty miles,” and he looked around the audience pointing a finger to the ceiling, “that’s millions of people. If you have something to say why not think about WBAI, it’s another way of spreading your message,” and I felt he was speaking to me. A light went off in my head.  Radio!  Filmmaking is fear, paranoia and anxiety. And it takes so long. And ...