Personal Summary

Scott loved brains, but they had him leading a double life. At night he would shed the tight second skin of corporate work, uncover the rusty buckets adorning his desk, and, with his small pink digit, prod and poke at the soft gray that filled them to the metal brims. He wanted to see how they worked, particularly when poked where they had not been poked previously. He poked the folds that held the dark and infinite alleys. He poked the clocks that stretched in time. He poked the beastly human borders. But mostly, he poked the abandoned playgrounds of possibility until the swings again swung and the unreal became real. These buckets were his own playground, and all the moments away just fed his mind with more places to poke. The nights were a wonderful time. But in the day things were different. In the day, he used math.

On one such day Scott lifted his own wet brain out of its latest bucket and, picking up at the beginning of the second paragraph, turned the narration over to the mighty "I".

I am not a left or right brain thinker. I am both, equally, which has been a rather mixed blessing. Few careers cater to dual-brain thinking, making it tricky to figure out which bucket my own brain should be in to receive its due poking. Though I enjoy sustained creative work much more than technical work, the careers I have previously chosen have leaned the other way. Without a proper bucket to call my home, I’ve been jumping between different sizes and shapes, only to realize recently that I had been carrying the right fit around all along. Sometimes it takes a new question to see the original problem in a new light, one that illuminates the past as it brightens the future.

I began at the University of Virginia in a pre-medical path focusing on neuroscience.  I also used the various liberal arts to feed my lust for the mysteries of the mind with as many different flavors as possible. I studied literature, philosophy and religion while shifting my career goal from doctor to veterinarian to neurosurgeon to research scientist, interning at each along the way. After graduating "with distinction" and a major in Neurobiology, I was prepared to begin an MD/PHD program but was bothered by the isolation and myopia I saw in research labs while enamored with the big picture of human thought. My creative side was fidgety so I gave myself a year off to decide what the next academic step would be and moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I wrote music in the evenings and worked in a laboratory by day. The lab I was hired into didn’t actually have a laboratory yet though – a fact I discovered the first week – so my time was spent on the computer performing various "mind-numbing" functions. Bored and inquisitive, I befriended the company’s designer and garnered the beginnings of an education in graphic and web design. I had stumbled upon a creative career with huge growth potential and mobility – and I was developing useful skills to promote and distribute my own brain fodder. I fed my graduate school applications to the trashcan and after two months teaching myself interactive design, I fashioned a portfolio. Thus began a seven year career in web design and eLearning while I chased my own creativity in the evenings. Sleep was for the dead, and I would die every weekend day.

The next six years were a blur of drama as music became my focus. I was writing for, playing with, and managing Blackcat Revival, a regionally touring dark theatrical rock band.  Blackcat Revival released three national albums and received its share of accolades, awards, and licensing victories. Many of these songs were crafted from stories and characters that had evolved from high school poetry and incomplete film scripts. Marionette, my first cross-media venture, became a movement-based short play with no dialogue where the actors’ performance was accompanied by a live band. It was underground theatre at its purest and achieved good reviews and modest success.

At the same time, I was also freelancing for artists and musicians under the partnership Quan Productions LLC, a design business which we later dissolved with many lessons learned, not the least of which was realizing that I did not want to waste my slim creative time freelancing in web design. At work I had evolved into the central interactive designer/developer for Mindleaders’ courseware, a role which was becoming less satisfying as I learned more programming languages.

Dichotomy re-established, I started collaborating with some artists in my spare time outside of the band and work. We put together five themed shows in two years as the 614 art collective. I was taking half-written stories and telling them strictly through visual media, most likely as a way of feeling like I was writing without creating the time yet to actually do so. This piqued my interest in working with artists even as it confirmed that I was more skilled at and fulfilled by writing. As the collective dissolved, a couple of us began publishing OLOGY, a full-color print zine which we funded by trading advertising with a printer supply company. OLOGY started as a way to cross-promote a few art & writing projects we were working on. One of these, "Brainchild, a collection of artifacts," was a refined collection of “undead” art & writing which grew into an international collaboration. The edition of 250 hand-printed books sold out within a year and received much praise through word-of-mouth publicity.

My partner and I created the moniker Omnibucket LLC to house these publishing projects which, being a literary endeavor having its seeds in an art collective, matured into a way to find and collaborate with some of our favorite talent. In the two years since its birth, Omnibucket has published three elegant books that merge literature with a multimedia, art-centric sensibility, as well as 16 issues of the online, monthly OLOGY magazine. At this point, writing became even more fun because I was working with wonderful artists and musicians, which gave a multi-dimensional quality to both the magazine and books. For a brief period I even thought about running Omnibucket as a formal publishing company. I abandoned this thought  for the same recurring reason – a reason which became apparent in preparing for the Berkeley business plan competition -. I don’t want to waste my creative time learning how to run a publishing company.  Omnibucket is now acquiescing into a more comfortable niche, repositioning itself as creative incubator; an online community servicing both creative talent and publishers.  All of this allows me to continue to focus on the creative.

In September 2006 my fiancée and I left the way station that is Columbus, Ohio and drove to the bay area, a decision our brains high-five each other for every day. The whistle of the open highway was a dirge for the band which decided not to continue on its own. I continued in interactive design working for A.S.K. Learning where I’m creative lead on high profile corporate projects. In the evenings we’ve been hard at work. Our recent book, God’s Acre’s The Ravens & the Rhyme, is in local bookstores and distributed by Last Gasp, was featured on Flavorpill and the TTA Press blog, and was the focus of a multimedia event at Swarm gallery featuring a 90-minute soundtrack. Stewing in the joy of words the ol’ brainium – my pet name for that curious organ – also finished the narrative for our next book, "The Book of CLAV", outlined the full arc of the twelve-book "God’s Acre" series, and will be hosting a 3-day creative writing workshop at 826 Valencia at the end of July.

Then, like a whistle signaling the end of its nine-month shift, the ol’ brainium shouted out in protest. "Hey! Slow down! What’re we aiming at here?" Despite all these hard-fought victories I timidly struggled for a response. After having spent the last two years working towards my goal of moving to the west coast, I was now working without a clear goal and had to take a step back. I did not want to live a double life anymore, chasing software skills and choking on tiny screen resolutions by day while relegating what I love to the fresh California evenings. That’s when I realized that the question isn’t the oversimplification of a singular proficiency, nor the short-sighted ideal of what you enjoy doing most. The right question is this: "What do you want to devote yourself to for life?"  Only through devotion to a craft whose horizon is an appealing lifestyle can I achieve sustained, contented direction. For me, this is writing. Through writing I believe I can merge my double life into a single craft where the work I get paid for and the work I hope to get paid for serve each other directly. Through the flexibility afforded by a mind, a pen, a notebook, and a computer I can establish a career aimed at exploration and a lifestyle of thought instead of a paycheck for skills.

Once this silver hammer came down upon my head, the rest of my goals came easily. I want to spend my time creating work, sharing that work with others, and teaching others to do the same. Even my past seems to make more sense as my inclinations thread through my seemingly disparate past into a unified future. Writing is the one thing I have always done and always loved, with a small notebook and a wandering eye, exploring the mind via the macabre. I’ve just always pushed those stories into other mediums.

Thus, my principle interest in pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing is to permanently shed the second skin of my dual nature and redirect my path towards a post-graduate career in writing. The most immediate benefits to this program are the opportunities to continue honing my craft through formal education and to be immersed in a literary network. However, it is just as important to me to use this program as an opportunity to shift my career from that of an interactive designer to that of a writer and thinker by learning how to stay afloat as a writer, both before and after graduation. Such prospects include producing work and getting it published, teaching, speaking at conferences, and collaborating with other talents. In the short term I’m extremely interested in work-study opportunities and, if possible, finding a surrogate use for my extensive experience in the eLearning industry. Regardless what transition or overlap takes place, I am confident that my own brain has finally found its home and my opening protagonist has found a way to bring his buckets out of the dark evenings and into the daylight.

Now follows an informal description of my own writing and reading. My first fond memories of literature are Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Dr. Seuss, and Beatles lyrics, beginning a lifelong love of the macabre, the absurd, and the musical. In grade school I gravitated towards dystopias: Huxley and Orwell, Lord of the Flies and Fahrenheit 451. The Fountainhead was a subject of essays in countless subjects. At home Poe’s grasp of the dark poetry of fear was coupled with X-Men and Batman comic books which fascinated with the realism imparted by science, and the dark psychology of the characters. Later, while basking in French and Russian existentialism, I was enthralled by Hesse’s Magister Ludi, Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, and Dante’s Inferno. Towards the end of college I discovered Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, and Roald Dahl – all of whom meld absurdity into truth, using humor and chaos to question our preconceptions. While focusing on music I was idolizing the lyricism of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Roger Waters while being amazed by Neil Gaimen’s Sandman. Since moving to California I’ve been catching up on scientific non-fiction through books, TED talks, and my Scientific American subscription. Nothing sparks my imagination like science. I generally vacillate nowadays between non-fiction and literature that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Attached is a graphical representation of all of this.

By coupling my literary and professional histories you can probably get a feel for my writing. For me, to write is to study thought, to search for humanity in the subjective associations that comprise a character. We humans cannot hope to understand anything without understanding the ways we gain understanding in the first place. It is how we turn the unreal into the real, both on paper and in our minds, using a system of simple symbols to talk not only with each other, but with ourselves. Such a flawed and beautiful medium! Absurdity and the macabre are perfect tools for studying psychology through the wonders and fears which make our humanity swell and shrink. By questioning what we think we know through enveloping characters we can see how our knowledge of our own minds is faulty and fragile. If this frailty can be accepted, then our imaginations expand and fighting our own fears becomes easier. A small shift in perspective can go a long way.

Stylistically I strive for lyricism, honesty, courage, and immediacy. I relish the ability to capture fear as much as playfulness where every word and phrase is both an isolated poem and a piece of the grand puzzle. I love pointing words where they don’t seem to belong to evoke imagery and rhythm, and I savor the fun of setting it all to music and watching it dance. My art and design background appreciates if it can look pretty too. Multimedia also offers ways to create unique storytelling experiences, using multiple tools to inspire the mind on multiple levels. Words can be coupled with other media forms, in conjunction or separately, to engage more senses and tap into more associations. For the moment however I am interested in taking a step back to focus on the writing itself.