WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?
Lately I’ve been asking myself, Where do I go from here?
Where do I want to focus my energies, now that Ray by Ray is published, a book that the Portland Book Review says, “strips away everything fashionable and glamorous about the behind-the-scenes Hollywood big-screen to reveal the stark naked truth about the devastating effects of drug addiction, alcoholism, and free sex….If this victim of abandonment and abuse can find redemption and reconciliation, it seems within reach for the rest of us, too.”
I think about what I can offer and how my experiences can bring hope to those who are struggling to find their place in the world. One thing Nick’s films did was to give a place for the outsider to belong. Looking back on my childhood I remember feeling like I didn’t matter and how, as a teenager, I gravitated towards the outsiders.
When I was fifteen Nick wrote me a letter where he was talking about feelings of alienation and how not sharing his struggles with another person kept him on a self-destructive spiral. He wrote, “I’ll do the same fault over and over again. I’ll make it a habit and really be a loner. I’ll be the best bastard loner in the whole miserable lot of loners. I’ll be the most wasted of the wasted, the orneriest of the ornery.”
I memorized his words like they were gospel.
One night, shortly after my father’s death, in 1979, my mother snuck into my bedroom while I was out. She wanted to find out what was bringing about the change in my appearance and attitude and put Lydia Lunch singing “Tied and Twist” off the Queen of Siam record on my turntable.
She was mortified and frightened for my well-being. I laughed off her concern and ran out into the Hollywood streets, moving into a house with a few newly found friends and submerging myself into a punk rock lifestyle.
I was so angry at my father for dying and at my mother for everything.
Which brings me back to Nick and how I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life consumed by him. I had to eat, breathe, sleep, dream Nicholas Ray. Knowing him inside and out was the only way I could ever be free of him.
Excerpt from my interview with Stay Thirsty Magazine.
‘Self-pity, anger, resentment and hate make for a small life. I’ve experienced all of those feelings towards him, but if I had held onto them, I would never been able to see his beauty. His beauty and contribution to cinema and film history far outweigh his flawed character. He suffered most likely more than those he hurt. Those he hurt could move on from him, but he couldn’t move on from his self.”
I don’t want my father to be forgotten. But, he is dead. His time has come and gone. I am alive now.
