What Happened to Me

As a parallel, and for some detail, I am going to give a small bio here that runs concurrent with the events in the chapters. That ten years shaped my life, and it’s typical of people who grew up when I did.

The Venice lapidary Guild was only in Venice for about ten months after it’s official birth. I had moved in, with my girlfriend Pat, later to be my wife. We worked hard, and it didn’t really much matter where we were. When we moved to Echo Park, we were fortunate enough to get a little house in the back to saty in, so we had some privacy. living right in the middle of the urban smutz was depressing, but we were so busy that we didn’t have time to be too bummed.

The Metamorphosis people owned hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of lapidary equipment – diamond saws, slab polishers, globe polishers, surface grinders – even a very rare device called a Cavitron, which was capable of using ultrasound to grind a pattern from a superhard bit onto a stone surface. As I recall, they were using it to drill holes in slabs of agate so they could be hung in mobiles.

All the other equipment was similarly abuses, misused, raped and wrecked, and the place was filthy, with the entire workshop contaminated with coarse cutting grits. Anyway, we fixed it, and got the shop up and running 24/7, and profitably. And of course, the Metamorphosis folks were happy and grateful, and we were justly rewarded.

Ha, ha. Anyway, we lasted about six months there. Pat was pregnant by then, and I was miserable living there and working in that shop.

Around then, we ran into a doctor who had a huge house in Topanga to rent, and we made the move and set up our equipment in the basement. It was a big, sprawling place on Old Topanga road, back on the west side of the creek, over a bridge. It was a bout 2 1/2 acres, most of it arroyo. By the time Pat gave birth to Cybele, in November, we were moved in pretty thoroughly, and working out of the house.

And there was a lot of work to do. The place had been abandoned, and the grounds needed a lot of work.  Over time, life in Topanga started to agree with me. I was spending a lot more time outdoors, and the quiet beauty of the environment was soothing. I got attached to the community, so much that I stayed until 2005.

In 1972, Pat and I separated, and she went with my daughter to live in another commune, in Santa Monica. The business was starting to take off now, and we had money, and I was single again and had time on my hands. Needless to say, I got into trouble. Too much time and money got spent in the company of questionable people, and the partying really took it’s toll on Warren. He was the General partner, and he and his father owned about 75% of the business – and when he got sick, it was all any of us could do to recover a little of what we had invested.

So the Guild ended, like all the dreams of the sixties. By 1979, I was working in a jewelry store in Westwood, and hating it. I brought my tools home, went out and got a straight job, and have never made jewelry for anybody else since. I have the skills now to do what I want on a tabletop, and I will never attempt anything on the scale of the Guild again. I have too little time left to devote to the art to do it for a boss again.

That’s all. I still see a couple of people from back then, but almost all of them are scattered and gone. We changed the world for fifteen minutes and then we got high – but I have no regrets. I got to be there.

The artist at 17.