CURRENT MISSION

My wife and I are planning on moving from Austin, Texas to Milan or somewhere else in northern Italy. We are both artists with day jobs, I wouldn't say we struggle but we rarely make a living from our artistic endeavors.

ABOUT ME

I have lived in Austin, TX nearly my whole life. My mother is a psychologist and my father was a very good jazz musician who worked at the post office to make ends meet. As a result I am a musician who is interested in analysis. I don't read nearly as much as I want to, I watch movies voraciously (both fluff and serious art in the same day if possible). I love red wine and listening to William Burroughs talk, Monty Python or Marx Bros as well as a Bergman film or discussing anthropology. I am extremely opinionated and happy to be defeated in an argument. A dilletante in the best sense, I hope.

PHILOSOPHY

Uh, I hope I already have stated that (didn't scroll down to see how many questions there were!)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

For now I co-own a nice older property in Austin, which means while I'm away (or not) there would be a place for anyone to stay if they want to come visit the (currently) hippest city in the US. It's my home town so I know it as well as anyone.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

None so far, but looking forward.

Interests

Our main goal (my wife Drea & I) is to establish an ongoing artistic cross-pollination between serious art and plain fun. Ideally we want to take advantage of the state of global communication and establish an exchange across geographical, ideological, and formal differences that would potentially allow all participants to benefit in all ways possible. You know? the way things seemed to be going in the '70s until Reagan and Thatcher and 1984 killed all funding for anything actually creative.

• arts
• wine
• red wine
• running
• movies
• music
• jazz
• anthropology
• psychology
• religion

Music, Movies, and Books

Let's just say authors in general - Peter Greenaway, David Cronenberg, Howard Hawks, Stanley Kubrick, Shohei Imamura, Jan Svankmajer, Ornette Coleman, Funkadelic, Teiji Ito, Prince, gagaku, Thelonious Monk, William Burroughs, Michael Ende, John Crowley, Douglas Adams, Philip K. Dick, Amos Tutuola...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I don't know what to say here-- I've met some famous people and successfully engaged them not as celebrities but as real human beings with normal lives. I've seen a black bear in the wild and didn't run. As a kid I picked up any snake that I saw and never got bitten. I won the "Log Lady Relay Race" at the first annual Twin Peaks Fest in 1992, and I was in Munich for the 2000 new year celebration.

Teach, Learn, Share

I guess the main thing is that I truly believe in the honor's system. That and the golden rule, for which I don't think any religion should take responsibility.