The first seven years of my school days were spent in an all-boys Catholic school with two thousand Catholics and six Jewish kids. I was one of the Jewish boys. Nevertheless it did not excuse me from Mass or morning assembly saying Our Father, crossing myself, reading the New Testament and numerous other rituals. Then every Fridays and Saturday — Shabbat — I attended synagogue with my father and younger brother, who in turn became a pupil at St. David’s Marist Brothers College. Marist Brothers was all brick. and heavy, steel framed windows all the way to the ceiling, the glass greenish at the edge of each pane. Worn and scarred wooden and steel desks and benches, each a single unit aligned in rows, each individually gouged by decades of bored kids. Uniforms, the entire school model, was British, each day the identical navy blazer with tramline canary yellow pinstripe, short grey wool pants, even in winter, grey wool socks topped by the dual yellow stripe, and polished, black round-toed lace-up shoes. Shirts were white, and our ties matched our jackets. No variation was permitted. Haircuts were short back and sides. We were a bunch of kids who had to depend on the smallest of differences between us the school could not kill. Fear was the daily battle. We followed the rules and everything was ruled. I was told Marist Brothers laid out the best education in South Africa, and there the discussion opened and shut. My father had attended, as had my grandfather. There was no debate or discussion. It’s where my brother and I went to school. Nothing weird about it. So it is rather strange to recall that it took my mother years to notice I was wearing five pairs of underwear to school each day. Because three days out of five I was subjected to a thorough caning. One of the ‘brothers’, balding, weak-jawed delicate men in cassocks, would point a finger at me and curl it in a command. Come Here! Talking in line! Cuts! he’d announce, pointing to the large communal bathroom. Cuts meant a caning. The whippy bamboo cane was drawn slowly, lethally from a deep pocket specially sewn into the cassocks. Four or five of us were marched to the bathrooms. Ordered to put our heads under the porcelain sinks. When one is lashed, the cane is raised, then whipped forcefully down toward the floor shearing one’s bottom sharply on it’s way down. The technique is effective, and relished by these “masters”. The pain is searing, intense, and lingers for up to an hour. One’s instant reaction when that lash strikes is to abruptly straighten up.

And there is the reason for the sink.

As we reared up hands grabbing for our backsides, the back of our heads would smash against the underside of the heavy porcelain sink. After four or six cuts it was over. We all fought tears, exiting those bathrooms,  our chins high, cheeks flushed, hair mussed, the triumphant “brother” bringing up the rear [sic]. It was not uncommon for blood to be drawn during these normal daily events. All this in the bricks, dark blood red brick and polished blood red concrete floors. light from those high bathroom windows with their subtle green tinge somehow barely illuminated that dark room with its row of sinks, its stony witnessing of sickness against boys, boys who did boy things like shove each other when standing in line, pull ties, twist ears, knot shoelaces, yank shirt tails. These were offenses and punishment that would not raise a british eyebrow today. To this day, something like a small jet of acid passes through my stomach when I pass a brick school building. Those years ended when I was transferred out and allowed to finish my schooling at a sane institution where teachers were beaten up by students. The memories though, are sharp, sharp as the sensation the second before that cane whipped my ass and then sharp once more  when suddenly the news was filled with stories of priests abusing young boys. I spent years very close to that, I know these people, and whatever the promises of reform in the clergy, I’ll remember those bricks, the way they kept rooms dark, damp, and shielded twisted men in black coats from the outside, those bricks are still there, bricks chosen for their strength and authority in keeping up the walls.

My friend and itinerant blogger designer, Barbara De Vries  wrote a post called Womentor on her Barbidoesmiami blog that got me thinking about mentors, preachers and teachers. Preachers have been left on bookshelves in my long vacated houses. Mentors, in my case is a vacated position. Can’t think of a single one. My father died as I was busy lining up my life’s journey when I needed his guidance in what I thought were serious matters. He was in turn father, mentor, teacher, guide.  Now, some thirty five years and countless questions later I still ask the empty room I’m in from time to time, what he might advise when baffled in this complex life. There is no shortage of people ready to assume the role of advisor — offering conclusions about what I should do, where I should go and judgements about my doings — obviously individuals who have not seen enough pain.  My teachers now show up for a eureka moment, for half a day, a weekly email, a TED talk, or they sit on my night table buddha-like, words from the ancients, insistently relevant forever. I read a few sentences and stare at the wall in admiration. They don’t provide answers as much as reframe my questions. I am profoundly grateful to every one of them. I am also incredibly grateful to so many friends, a circle expanded by technology’s touch, as after decades we burst into laughter and throw a ring of support around one another. Preachers, charlatans, spiritual pitchmen, and old new agers, I have learned to spot ‘em before they say a word. They are the hoodwinkers.  Keeping one’s guidance takes practice like anything else. The actual subjects keep shifting. A schoolroom in a shoe. Each viral step leaves me flapping looking for a place to land this soul I own. There are guides for this too, but chosen with even greater care. There are no experts. At all. Anymore.  Knowing now that I don’t know anything, a mentor might appear.

I founded DOON to be a place for this living looking, making, selling, however it manifested.

That act, the noticing framing and capturing is ninety percent of working with a camera. It often ends there. The next stage is the quick viewing of the images and the pausing to decide — does this one go further or not? This looking is instinctive, confident, decisive. It is an operation.  It is careful only in that if I go further with an image I could be in for hours of work. I tread water a little.  Usually a selection of images  go through simple processing in Lightroom and Photoshop, nothing fancy, just making the picture. I am simultaneously looking for another level of activity which is making an illustration using the picture. These are expensive skills I have that separate me from other photographers. I can draw. I trained for years.  I take time. Seen from here, photography is relatively easy. Correct that: Taking pictures is easy. Making good photographs less so. My decision-making in choosing color,detail, texture, then drawing that —  and turning it into something completely new — this is my niche and my nickel. Nobody else does exactly what I do. This act of looking, slowing everything down, photographing, looking again later on my screen, selecting, looking, beginning to draw with absolute attention and care, I own this it seems, whether I like it or not. And I love it passionately. I improve it continually. And  something in me drives me to do it again and again. I cannot explain my process much more than just this. It is an insistent asking, for the act of looking.

I have lived anywhere. The first anywhere place I lived after New York City was lonely but it took me five years to realize how lonely it was. I’d been hooked on the quiet and the beauty. I relished the silence of night. I began to hate it during the day. “Will somebody please make some bloody noise!” I would yell at the office window. In five years of twice a day dog walking I made two or three acquaintances. And I am quite gregarious, interested in people.  The place was Bedford , New York. What made Bedford manageable was frequent trips into New York City to break up the beauty and mix with humans.

The next place I lived was chosen hurriedly in an effort to change to a design-supportive community. It was populated with aging hippies. This is fine if things like productivity, ambition, hard work, curiosity, living on the edge, are not high on your agenda. To be fair, we were told that hidden in the hills, were beings of some significant accomplishment, whom we could look forward to getting to know. We got out of there too fast perhaps, to meet them, ensconced as they were, apparently, behind the deep foliage. That was Woodstock, home to excellent dog walking trails. And the most delicious tap water.

We had not had time to do an assessment of the town before moving in and were now hurriedly leaving. Where to go? A lifer in the area recommended a town to the south of us, closer to New York City. Another friend confirmed what a “pretty cool town” town it was. If you are not going to listen to the opinions of others, you need time. Why, I now ask myself, did I think, a town half an hour south would make my world a better place?  We landed in New Paltz and cannot get out of here fast enough and get closer to the city. But you can hike, some protest. I don’t want to hike, I want to work! A one year tour of two Anywhere places and due to force of circumstance we made bad decisions. This is no reflection on these towns per se. It is about place and the factors that make place very different from space. There is space everywhere. Anywhere. Lots of it. With little sense of place. Which is why the great tourist destinations tend to be places which are inseparable from their spaces. It is noticeable. It is not Anywhere. What is important to each of us? Space or Place. New York has power in it’s place and that power is due in part to the lack of space. They also work at different speeds. Place is immediate, you feel it, you know it. Space is slow, spend half your life on that ranch before falling in love with the dust and scrub.

I do admire those who have a home in a beautiful spot on this planet. A place chosen, a place that has congruency with its space. I’ve had that in my past. Although at times I feel as if I am walking backwards now, the view is one of some hard won lessons.  Perhaps when one is fully engaged with work and those dear to us, place becomes those relationships and the physical location, the structure, even the land begins to disappear. In living in my own most beautiful areas, I was so absorbed in my work, the surroundings earned only passing interest. Without work that provides essentials for living and no close knit friends or family, we look to the place itself as that which needs to be changed.  When life is out of balance I look at the heaviest object as the one that might need to be moved

“It may seem sometimes like we don’t know what we’re doing. And it’s true: we don’t. That’s a bit scary, but you can take comfort in knowing that nobody else knows how to do what we’re doing either… so there are no experts in what we’re doing. Except for us: we are becoming experts as we do this.” Tony Hsieh of Zappo’s

From there I go to a tiny scale. Business card scale. Networking cards for anyone who has not joined a company that strips their name on to the standard company card everyone else has. Or simply want a card completely their own. These are custom cards, designed differently for each individual. They carry all kinds of networking data that would never appear on a company card. I call them DOONCARDS. Anyone can use them but adults have an understanding of the intimate interaction when cards are exchanged. Young people generally don’t know the game. I have to create opportunities for kids to demonstrate to themselves how smoothly these cards can factor in their relationships. Great project. Kids live in a virtual cloud and here is one tiny physical item that one carries and gives away and it has all one’s information on it. One buys a piece of personal artwork and gets a thousand cards for free. Carving the marketing to be a fish through water is a slippery process.  DOONCARDS have yet to make money.

To fill in blanks, what else can I offer? I looked at my illustration skills, waiting for me to pick them up and dance again. I started doing portraits. Narrow focus once more. There is a wide application base here. From execs in annual reports to magazine features, every person is a portrait. I bring a fresh flat graphic style to it, mix it with some of my photography and I call the venture DOONFACE.

This posits a classic dilemma. When you take a direction and work at it, no matter what your field, and it does not yield income what do you do? How long do you keep at it. Persist or turn away? I’m squarely in the persistence camp. My gut is my guide. Throw in some common sense to stack the odds in my favor. Work hard. I’ll write further about these ventures but right now the point is there is no income from this work. My frustration is that this effort appears  commercially viable and yet no commerce going on. I see viability because it is visible in the market. It exists throughout print and electronic media daily. (See Tony Hsieh’s comment in the above post). So I spread my images out to potential clients. Calls and emails. Voicemails. The dark cage on the ocean floor, that’s what I think of voicemail.

Financially we sit on an ocean floor as well. This is serious instability. How we get through this, is what this blog is about. Negotiating with myself now takes strange turns. Should I stack shelves in a supermarket? I already got passed over at Kinkos. You had better honor your education, I told myself. More thought about change and persistence. This time I have no chips to bring to the table. Nada. Flat broke. We used up our resources getting this house and moving in. We sold a great old Land Rover three months ago. And now we are below sea level it seems, and it’s scary. We will be forced out of here in a few weeks and if this is point A, we don’t have a clue how to get to point B.  It’s the middle of a long cold winter.

Something nags at me. Instability runs through this like a river. Right now I can’t see light. Hard to make sense. There is work out there and I have to bring it home. Move closer to where there is a density of the stuff. The first time I went to New York was for raw excitement and I stayed and worked commercially for fifteen years. In New York there is always another possibility. The rhythm of projects and being paid is needed. I want my work in bedrooms and backpacks and the back seat of the car. Design inside life. Putting into play, at this late stage, the business of being a designer and illustrator, but with real, not imaginary clients.

Making sure that internet bill is paid is a monthly scramble. But we have learned how to do a fresh home cooked dinner for five dollars. Lessons are burning.