CURRENT MISSION

Chasing the muse

ABOUT ME

I am your standard-issue tortured-artist musician. I wander the globe with my guitar, busking, studying, and writing as much as possible. You can be sure that if allowed, I will play you lots and lots of music.

Usually when I'm not musicating, I'm either cooking, programming, break dancing, or reading Wikipedia. Mainly, I just love to learn things, so my interests are pretty varied, and very focal to my daily life.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

In college, I started to hitch-hike all over the US during term breaks from USC. Just sort of walked out the door with a backpack full of food and no real money or gear. Along the way I met a kid who taught me the ropes of urban survival, and pretty soon I didn't feel so dependant on money or material objects anymore.

Since then I started traveling more abroad. During my recent year-long hobo-tour of Europe, I walked the Camino de Santiago, busked for a living in Madrid, homesteaded a cave in the mountains above Granada. During grape picking season, I went to a tiny village in the south of France, where I was out-cooked daily by the locals. A new friend there lent me a little cottage with no electricity or water but an amazing view and a fireplace. Figs, almonds, walnuts, sage, grapes, and baguettes grow abundantly there, so every day I wold walk the mile or so from my cottage into this town of about 700 people, collecting food along the way. After a day of socializing with people through a nearly complete language barrier, and hanging out in the library trying to learn French from a dictionary, I dragged firewood back to the cabin, where I would read Laurie Lee by candle light until i fell asleep. From there, I hitchhiked to Poland, and then returned to the U.K. to visit old friends and new ones.

Upon my return, i moved into an artists' community, where I live with my new favourite songwriter, Mike Miller, and a bunch of filmmakers. I've been working on an album of my music with the help of our resident producer Michael Mazochi, and working from home as a programmer.

Interests

I'm pretty serious about songwriting, recreational study of all sorts, break dancing, programming, culinary art, and world travel. In past lives, I was closely involved with film production, acting, and improv.

• arts
• writing
• acting
• dancing
• flamenco
• break dancing
• dining
• cooking
• recipes
• fitness
• yoga
• meditation
• chess
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• magic
• survival
• music
• guitar
• piano
• hiking
• backpacking
• martial arts
• gymnastics
• racquetball
• astronomy
• biology
• computer science
• engineering
• mathematics
• physics
• psychology
• science
• software
• hitchhiking
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Soul Coughing, The Mamas and the Papas, Mike Doughty, Air, Cake, Of Montreal, Tony Phillips, Owen Kortz, Weezer, Rufus Waynright, Coldplay, Iron &; Wine, Dave Matthews, Songs Ohia, Quasi, Michael Jackson, Fountains Of Wayne, Semisonic, Eminem, Lisa Loeb, Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Jack Johnson, Zero 7

Movies: Leon, Fight Club, Shakespeare In Love, Memento, Run Lola Run, The Big Lebowski, Secretary, The House of Yes, The Princess Bride, Real Men, The Saint, Roger &; Me, Good Will Hunting, Monty Python, Facade, Napoleon Dynamite, Ricky Gervais Live, Eddie Izzard Live

Television: I genreally detest the television, but the exceptions are The Office (BBC), Extras, Conan O'Brien, Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, The State, Creature Comforts, Curb Your Enthusiasm, any Discovery special

Books: all Kurt Vonnegut, all Oscar Wilde, the Socrates-related Plato, The Princess Bride (the original version by S. Morgenstern), The Chronicles of Narnia

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Jackson Browne picked me up one time hitch-hiking. I didnt know who he was until later.

Teach, Learn, Share

I enjoy sharing the various things I've learned over the years, and I can get you started on break dance, computer science, the science of nutrition & fitness, some culinary art concepts and recipes, martial arts and self defense, and many different aspects of music.

I especially welcome expert input about these subjects and my other existing interests, but I'd also love to know more about...

...any foreign language, psychology, biology,

...flamenco guitar, piano, percussion, music production & engineering,

...artificial intelligence, computer graphics, cryptography & electronic security,

...chess, math, quantum physics and quantum computing, any physics & astronomy,

...racquetball, parkour, gymnastics, yoga,

...philosophy, taoism, meditation, lucid dreaming,

...green construction and organic farming, navigation and woodland survival, pencil sketch, card magic,

...and the thing you love most.

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