This place is a haven for the telling of tales, wrought from life and filtered through the toolkit of time and the craftsmanship gained from the University of Michigan’s MFA Program. My early years of adult life were spent in the music industry as a professional keyboardist and singer — a recording contract with Elektra/Asylum in the late ’70s produced a single album with the band ‘Boulder’ — and my relationship with the creative way was shaped during those times, for starters. I worked in the film industry as a player and sound designer for a number of the earliest feature films of composer Thomas Newman, and on dozens of television and radio spots with film and commercial composer Alan Reeves, before leaving California for my home state of Michigan in hopes of a geographic cure for personal challenges.
After renewing my undergraduate education at U-M I was diverted from earlier intentions of a law degree and a potential return to the entertainment industry when the sheer joy of writing fiction showed me that I need not be connected to a musical instrument in order to express myself. Early writing classes led to the U-M MFA Program, a Hopwood Award, and graduation.
Time passed … whole sections of life were dedicated to maintaining an income, raising children, and most everything except fulfilling my storytelling mandate.
Now, in the three-quarter turn, I have retired to the work of recollection and presentation of my decades of life in music and the challenges of alcoholism and addiction as I filter and finesse the meaning of this particular life.
These stories are concocted from excerpts of my struggles and triumphs. There’s something true in every paragraph, though I have squeezed and shaped the materials to better craft stories worth sharing.
Thank you for your entrance and participation.
-T