The Magic of Travel.
At the end of 2022, I started moving and once I began it became almost impossible to stop. The richness of life in constant motion.
I come from a family of travelers. My grandparents built a career in entertainment moving from town to town performing in grand theaters and nightclubs across the country and around the world. And although I didn’t know it at the time, in August 2022 my own world would soon open up to travel in a similar way, and I would find myself in continuous movement over the next year and a half. Whether it was the mountains of Guadalajara or Utah, or the beaches of Florida, the ports of Maine, the deserts of Nevada, or the hills of California, I just started moving and once I began it became almost impossible to stop. Travel encompassed everything - liberation, inspiration, spontaneity, art, healing, freedom, connection with the world, with nature, with people. Fleeting and sometimes deep conversations with strangers, like-minded souls, and different perspectives literally and figuratively. The richness of life in constant motion. Most of all, it brought me to a more profound understanding of the patriarch in my family - my grandfather - the famed traveling magician, Mandrake the Magician.
In the 1980’s, ‘The Fifth Estate’ aired a television documentary on my grandfather and the host reported that “in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Mandrake was one of the top acts in the world. Later he broke attendance records in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, played the big theaters of Europe, even went to China and to India. The Act was so elaborate he needed two buses for the props and his 17 assistants.”
My grandmother was his main stage assistant and so they were inseparable for over 50 years. They worked together, traveled together, and hotels became their homes across the country. They even raised their four children while performing on the road. Each child was born in a different state. My Uncle Ronald was born in Miami, Florida. My uncle Lon was born in Chicago. My father was born in Dayton, Ohio. And my Aunt Geelia was born in Portland, Oregon.
In this TV segment, my grandmother said, “I always loved rolling down the road - new cities, new people, new adventures, and it was always exciting that way. I really enjoyed living that way.” My grandma was used to this lifestyle because her parents, my great-grandparents, were Vaudeville musicians.
While most parents encourage their children to go to University, my grandfather was against the idea. He believed in being self-taught, not being part of the system, not getting a job working for “the man”, but to work for yourself and be completely independent and self-sufficient, to educate yourself, read books, sharpen your skills, learn a little bit about a lot. He made the rules of his own life and hoped to instill the same mentality into his children. I didn't know those things about him until I was older but I connect with the concept of cultivating personal sovereignty and independence in a world that encourages us to be dependent and obedient compliant and I think a lot of this mentality came from the fact that he lived most of his life on the open road free as a bird.
In the 1970’s, my father and mother met each other while they were both traveling. They met in London. And I took my first airplane while I was still in the womb in 1975. Maybe that’s why I love to fly and have become obsessed with piloting my own plane. But that’s another story. Before my grandpa passed away he asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I was 16 years old and had fallen in love with photography. I told him I wanted to take my camera and hitchhike across the country and take pictures of the people I meet. He liked that I wanted to travel. He was about my age when he left home to join Vaudeville.
I never did hitchhike across the country, but I did take my camera downtown to Greenwich Village from the Upper East Side where I grew up. And for the most part I forgot about traveling and being in other places. But in 2005, I had an amazing opportunity to go across country in style, and my old feeling was reignited. Growing up in Manhattan I always preferred to walk and I never had a desire to drive a vehicle - except one. A giant 18-wheeler mack truck.
Cross Country
My mother was friends with a man named Thomas from Poland. He was an artist, a sweet man, who transported goods like Harley Davidson motorcycles from coast to coast in his 18wheeler commercial semi. He invited me and my mom to tag along on his next job from the East Coast to the West Coast. It was a one week ride, a chance of a lifetime. On the road Thomas handed me the wheel. He knew I couldn't drive so he put it on automatic and sort of hovered over the wheel as I drove. I drove for half an hour on the highway and it was amazing. Almost like flying - flying low above the freeway.
The truck stops were cool, very friendly and clean and homey. We stopped at some of Thomas' favorite diners along the way. But my favorite stop on the road was in Wyoming at Devil's Tower National Monument. We arrived at night with a million stars in the sky and we walked through bushels of sage. I plucked some to burn later and we laid down looking up at the constellations staring back down at us. An absolutely unforgettable moment.
There is something about removing yourself from all the chatter and sounds and lights of the city and experiencing the different smells, the feel of the air, the breeze, a different kind of heat from the sun, a different shade of blue in the sky, seeing the birds, the lizards, the spiders, the dragonflies, navigating the different points of longitude and latitude on the map. And you never know who you're going to meet when you're moving around from one place to another.
California
Last July, I met a woman at the airport. She was a professional photographer coming from a job in Mexico. We bonded when she told me she was at the Liberty and Health Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona and met Dr. Peter McCullough while she was there, and I told her I had written and directed the movie adaptation for Bobby Kennedy's book, which featured Dr. McCullough. We were both on our way to California. I was going to a wedding in Topanga, and she was going home to Palm Springs, but our flight was cancelled and so we became fast friends. We talked about travel, film and photography.
I made it to LAX at the last minute, and the wedding was perfect - light, playful, sweet, catching up with family and meeting new friends. I had the pleasure of meeting a man with an amazing handlebar mustache delightfully curled at the ends. Instantly I recognized him as a kindred spirit with our very interesting and flowing exchange. There was beautiful original music performed by my cousin and father, spirited dancing all around, and surprisingly soulful conversations about dreams and art with one of the littlest members of our Mandrake clan.
Nevada
The next month I stayed in Paradise Palms in Las Vegas with two American Bulldog Mastiff show dogs, Pearl and Blu, and their showgirl-extraordinaire mom, my old friend from New York. Paradise Palms is a quiet little paradise with a golf course tucked behind the homes where the old mobsters would house their gumas in the 1970s. (At least that's what the residents say.) Some old musicians like Bobby Darren, Dion Warwick, and Dean Martin were residents in Paradise Palms back in the day. World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Lewis and Hollywood actors like Donald Sutherland, Debbie Reynolds, and Johnny Carson were said to have houses there in the 1970s too.
Away from the Las Vegas strip there were goats making their way up the mountains, and things to experience like the fact that my skin felt cold in 105 degree weather when I went swimming in the pool because of the dry desert air. Robert took us to Hoover Dam where we walked along an overpass 900 feet above the Colorado river. And “Beans” took me hiking up Mount Charleston. I met Beans’ musician friend, Sage, who has fascinating stories about her family lineage.
Later my new photographer friend invited me to dinner with her relatives in Loma Linda and Laguna Niguel in California. They showed me their family photo albums. She has a large family and they all grew up on a farm in Iowa. Her brother, Bud, introduced me to an amazing book - a beautiful interpretation on the gentle and compassionate God. It was so aligned with my own spiritual relationship I had been cultivating during the last couple of years, but more seriously in the past few months, so this led to a sort of small impromptu Bible study discussion.
In 2020 the movie “Nomadland” came out. What was special about this movie is that most of the characters were not actors but people who were actually living this lifestyle. It seemed to me an authentic picture, an authentic experience, that truly allowed the beauty of human nature to be exposed. And most of all it was about community. It wasn't about loneliness or depravity; it was about freedom.
This is similar to the sort of community that my grandpa was working in when he traveled with his show. Each time he went to a new town he would meet new people. Sometimes they were people in need and he'd give them a temporary job on his show, help them build up their confidence, and then they'd each move on their own separate paths once again. So the movie made me think of my grandfather, but also his first wife and co-star Narda - “Princess Narda” - contemporary to the Princess Narda character from the “Mandrake the Magician” comic strip.
The real life Narda had traveled with her own show as a dancer independently before meeting my grandpa. And then they traveled together. And then she continued on to travel after they divorced. She had strength, vibrance and energy all the way into her late 90s. She was a rich and talented soul. She was a kindred spirit and I consider her one of the greatest friendships of my life.
Like Narda, I also loved to travel alone. And one thing I noticed throughout the past couple of years is that the true feeling of home really comes from within and since it comes from within that means home truly is where the heart is.
You can watch the “On Travel” Time Capsule Episode for free right here.