About This Site

If you haven’t checked here in a while you’ll discover many things have changed, including this page. There is new material here and even old content has been renewed. For example, if you search around you’ll find some pictures etc have been changed.

Welcome to some fragments of my life… it goes without saying that such peculiar delicacies will not be to everyone’s taste. However, this site is not for them; it is dedicated to the few among my friends, kin and coetaneans who will find at least some bits of interest.

The various areas of this site deal with very different aspect of my life. They are diverse in their focus and point of view but have a couple of things in common; for example, everything here has been posted in order to share tid-bits which I find interesting and/or important with those of like mind.

What’s here:
On occasion friends have encouraged me to write in some depth regarding my understanding of various aspects of Silo’s teaching. You won’t find much of that here, not that such commentaries are without their interest; I for one think there should be more of them. However, I wanted to do something more limited in scope and, to be candid, something less onerous.

Here then are fragments, and anecdotes of all sorts. From my perspective, most importantly anecdotes about my late friend and guide, Silo. Leaving aside the question of the value (aesthetic, practical, etc.) of my writings and films. I think there is something of real value and even urgency in the sharing of anecdotes about Silo by those of us lucky enough to have interacted with him. I hope others, whether they knew him well, or only at a distance, will record theirs as well.

What else you’ll find on this site:
Here, among other things, are anecdotes, fictions, semi-fictions, photos, videos, associative meanderings, reflections, memories, etc. As I said the most interesting of all of this – from my point of view – is the stuff that has to do directly with Silo. However, there are also other themes, fragmented though they may be: biographical fragments (my biography, not his), things about filmmaking, recipes, reviews, and whatever else takes my fancy. You’ll also find links to some of my other (mostly film) projects. But no one’s life is just theirs and so you’ll also find here collaborative projects as well as the work, and wisdom of others.

Another thing that’s true of all of my postings is that I promise to make them as honest as I can. That claim involves a caveat or two which you’ll find below (if you read far enough).

Be Warned (mutatis mutants):
The contents of this site are in a process of nearly continual change. Over time new links are added old pages, text is modified, etc. This is not what you read here before May 18, 2013. As Plato has the dark philosopher tells us: No one steps in the same river twice. Or as the artist Eldon Garnet puts it on this part of his complex of sculptures around this bridge over Toronto’s Don River.

The River you Step in is not the River you Stand in.

More About This Site

To get things started here’s one of those promised caveats:

Honesty
I may not express myself well.
I might make some changes to names and so on to protect the innocent, or the guilty for that matter.
I will certainly misremember things, or accurately remember my initial misperceptions.

On top of that, I have no doubt my judgments and values are somewhat idiosyncratic – but so are yours, so it’s a wash.

I don’t promise great lucidity. Why, I sometimes think I confuse my dreams with waking life. Often I don’t know whether I am imagining the future from the past, or remembering the past from a future time.

Be warned
Despite the ambiguity and complexity of inherent in the labyrinth of conscious life I will nonetheless try to speak from the heart. That doesn’t just mean, no lies in the obvious sense. Of course we lie when we knowingly make false statements, but that’s far from the worst or most common form of lying.

What about all the time we spend pretending to be what we are not, to feel what we do not feel, to know what we don’t know? No, no present company excluded; of course I didn’t mean you – or me. I meant those other guys.

Just ask this fellow, he knows all about it. Maybe that’s why he looks so pissed off.

Dante by Dore

In The Inferno Dante places the liars (frauds, falsifiers, betrayers) in the lowest two (i.e. the worst) circles of hell. Here we – well maybe not us, but Dante and Virgil – find what I’d call liars or bullshit artists, and which he calls frauds, or falsifiers. He places them below the circle of the violent because, he tells us: they use their particularly human qualities for their misdeeds.

Leaving aside the Christian and Medieval climates of guilt and punishment, it works for me. And Dante goes further and perceptively divides simple liars, who are stuck in circle 8, from those who betray a special relationship of some kind. The treacherous frauds get stuck in the lowest pit, circle 9. In my universe treachery is much less about the affair you didn’t tell your couple about (see irrelevancies and monkey business) and much more about those who claim a special and unwarranted status as teachers, advisors, pundits, experts, guides, gurus, life-coaches, etc.

So, no lying, no bullshit, no unsubstantiated claims that don’t reflect my own experience. If I’m passing along hearsay, I’ll say so, if it is speculation I’ll let you know; otherwise its mine: my perceptions, my experiences, my points of view.

Writing
Nor should you argue that you dislike my way of presenting things, for you do not criticize the peel when you like the fruit.
Silo, The Inner Look II:5

I make my living as a writer and filmmaker so, since you are wise in the ways of the world, it won’t surprise you to discover that means I usually have to write to someone else’s specs. Sometimes I write for money(like with scripts), more often for the hope of money (like pitches, proposals, applications, etc), at other times for a particular event, or situation. However, I’m writing this for myself and for the few (my kin, physical and spiritual) who might enjoy what they find here. What a nice change.

As the rambling gambler says in the old folk song: “…and if you don’t like me then leave me alone”.

For those of you few who find something of interest here. Welcome and enjoy.

As far as I can manage it this will be an interactive site. I look forward to hearing from you. Please talk among your selves. I don’t know if this can be a dialogue, or an interchange, perhaps some kind of virtual symposium – we’ll see…

I’m very interested in hearing from other people with other points of view about these matters of common interest. In much the same way, I’m really not at all interested in hearing from assholes, and after all this is my little kingdom no matter how unfortunate or benighted a kingdom you may find it. Just as in the ‘real world’ interventions for the good of the inhabitants are rarely meet with an unmixed welcome at best.

Keys to the Kingdom
I think the name sets the tone (not the website name dzuckerbrot – the little slogany thing, “Fragments of an Unknown Life”). As one of the billions on this little world (not to mention all the others) I think I qualify as one more unknown citizen.

So you will find fragments here. Like you, my life has a number of facets. People who know me in one ambit (say family) surely know a different ‘me’ than the people I work with, or those I work for. How do all these versions of ‘me’ relate? Is there a common substrata? A single “I” behind them all? Or are they just casually related fragments, shards of shattered glass? It seems to me that what’s interesting is the question and the impulse behind the question.

So this website is composed of fragments of life. Where possible I’ve outlined some of the relationships between them marking them with annotations or links.

There are different ways in and through this labyrinth, there are different doors or portals to a particular fragment/aspect/ambit. Look hard enough and you might even find the paths/connections/links, etc marking out a few of those relationships.

And Even More

Want to know more?
If a story (as a piece of writing or a film, etc) is something that occurs in one dimension, perhaps we can think of an interactive game as allowing a second dimension. This Website might be a story told in 3 or 4 dimensions. That is, it might be, depending on what I do. Depending on what you do.

No doubt this is a memoir, but if you take even a quick look you’ll see it’s other things as well. Maybe it’s an invitation. Certainly it’s a testimony. As for what else it could be, we’ll see. I think it depends a lot on your response.

Buy whatever else it is definitely a work in progress. Things will be added, changed and shift.

This is a multimedia and multidimensional hypertext tale where we’ll meet saints (well my idea of saints) junkies, hustlers, scholars and even the occasional billionaire, world leaders, freaks and just plain folks . We’ll travel from tranquil suburbs to third world slums, from modern megopolis to small villages suspended in time. From the towering Andes to the mysteries still buried in ancient ruins above the Anatolian plain.

Where I’ve used other people’s music, words, photos, etc I’ve tried to get permission, and give credit. Thanks to all of you for your help. If you think I’ve infringed on your privacy, rights, or ownership please let me know so we can sort things out.

I can promise you encounters of all kinds. For example, we’ll have encounters with death (both through disease, accident and deliberate violence), and encounters with some of the poorest, and some of the richest folks on the planet. We’ll meet a few famous folks, lots of interesting ones and, most importantly we’ll hang out with Silo (still at this point the most important unknown person on our little planet). We’ll contemplate seemingly impossible phenomena. Experience things apparently beyond the laws of physics. We’ll travel in both time and space, and generally have a rollicking good time.

Sounds cool right?

I’m almost 60 and I’m just coming round to the idea that there might be something in my life sufficiently interesting or important that I should leave some reflections or at least some kind of record. But the fact is, through the usual mix of circumstance, compulsion and maybe occasionally even choice, I’ve been witness to some extraordinary things.

I made a film years ago on the critic and scholar Northrup Frye . At one point I came across a quote from him, which if I remember correctly, was that what was interesting in his writing was William Blake. ,

I sympathize. Every time I think of writing some of this I end up simply wanting to say: go read Silo. Study what he wrote. But most importantly put it into practice. I don’t know anything better. Like the man said: “Here it speaks of the inner revelation to which all arrive who carefully meditate in careful search.” On the other hand, he was always insisting that I should write these things down, and encouraging all of us to share our experiences and our interpretations of those experiences and ideas.

-Someone else’s memoir: My encounters with Silo. A collection of more or less random memories and musings involving Silo and his message.

-Turning Points: Other moments in my life where things went one way when they easily could have gone another. Like the time my enraged friend Krag held a knife to my throat while musing aloud on why he should kill me. Interestingly, years later the media seemed full of news about a surge in knife fights and stabbings but it wasn’t until writing these notes that I realized that, as a young man, I was at least once almost killed with a knife and worse, at least once I almost killed someone with one.

– Anecdotes about Silo and his teaching

-My memoir: how I found myself here

-Fictions and Factions: anecdotes, stories, etc

-The Search for Mad John and Captain America (a separate website)