Personas
Like most children, I wanted to be many things — magician, detective, museum curator, artist, and writer,
among others — and I played at being each. I grew up to be all of them and more, becoming (as one source dubbed me)
“a man with a hundred faces.” I followed Thoreau’s advice: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Live the life you’ve imagined.” Others who influenced me were George Plimpton, the participatory journalist, and Ferdinand Waldo Demara,
“the Great Imposter.”
I thought of myself primarily as a writer (which helped keep me from having an identity crisis!). It made sense to try on different
costumes, so to speak (sometimes quite literally), in order to learn about people and the world. I have been able to view life from different windows,
different perspectives, and so to learn more about myself as well. Living many lives in one, I have, in a sense, also cheated death.
Here is a selection of many of my personas — from the serious to the occasionally whimsical. I think of these displays as “scrapbook pages;”
like my life, they are a work in progress.
Choose a persona by clicking on its name below: