Let’s take a step back, way back for some. It was the year 1986 and I was a sixteen year old country boy in upstate N.Y, on summer break from school, when a friend suggested we catch a ride to the new mall in the big city of Watertown to catch the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. My whole world was flipped upside down by that event. The world was so much bigger than wrestling and football, working on the dairy farm down the dirt road I grew up on.
We started playing the forbidden game of Dungeons and Dragons “in secret” where my imagination started to really develop and I became interested in theater and the arts, which was strange for a jock in those days. It was about 1988 when I attended my first renaissance festival. I couldn’t believe all the people actually dressing in costume and participating in that kind of mass imagination event. I was hooked.
The years of my life have always been busy with family, school and career but if there has been an underlying theme it has been my love for imagination. Around 2012 I started stumbling across Steampunk events, music and fashion. It was 1986 all over again for me; I just couldn’t get enough of it and over the past few years, I have enjoyed being involved in the Steampunk community. The Steampunk genre has kept my imagination engaged and that part of my life that wants to be part of something otherworldly is satisfied. You could say it has become my adult playground.
We started playing the forbidden game of Dungeons and Dragons “in secret” where my imagination started to really develop and I became interested in theater and the arts, which was strange for a jock in those days. It was about 1988 when I attended my first renaissance festival. I couldn’t believe all the people actually dressing in costume and participating in that kind of mass imagination event. I was hooked.
The years of my life have always been busy with family, school and career but if there has been an underlying theme it has been my love for imagination. Around 2012 I started stumbling across Steampunk events, music and fashion. It was 1986 all over again for me; I just couldn’t get enough of it and over the past few years, I have enjoyed being involved in the Steampunk community. The Steampunk genre has kept my imagination engaged and that part of my life that wants to be part of something otherworldly is satisfied. You could say it has become my adult playground.