Some of my friends call me Hank, which I don’t mind because it seems to have a ring to it consistent with my Midwest roots. Originally, I am from New York City. But I consider myself a native Iowan more than anything. I also spent several teenage years in Florida where I played tennis competitively at a live-away academy on the Gulf Coast. During high school I attended a boarding school in New Hampshire – no, not the kind you get sent away to for being bad. Even today, I count it as having been one of the most positive and growth-oriented experiences of my life. It was during my time at boarding school that I discovered my affinity for humanities subjects. I was struck by the early American transcendental writers like Emerson and Thoreau. They taught me that writing could be not only balanced and beautiful, but that soaking it into your being could manifest contentment and inspiration – a life worth living at every turn.
At USC I extended my interest in American literature, but also found a thirst for examining storytelling in a new medium as well. Through the Narrative Studies program, the School of Cinematic Arts became a central component of my education and I studied everything from international cinema to prewar Hollywood to contemporary cinematography.
The biggest lesson I have learned from drifting between several colleges within the university, chasing the most interesting courses available to me, was that narrative exists in nearly everything. Books, films, music – these are the usual suspects of narrative discourse. However, I find so much more when I think back and consider the more innocuous, unassuming cradles of narrative that I encountered in the classroom: A throwaway character action in a Hitchcock film, and how it might reveal something unsaid or unwritten in the text; how the expression of a time, place and culture is not limited to the pages of a magazine or a novel, but can be found in a bottle of California wine or a Kentucky bourbon; how the framing of a wide angle shot can suggest the alienation of youth and spirit in an old Elia Kazan production. In short, I learned that a story isn’t just something that you read and comprehend, but something that can be imbibed, touched, visualized and digested. A story is something that makes you feel you’ve come to understand the arc of something new and fascinating. They exist in abundance; I want my life to be about uncovering and uncorking new and interesting narratives everywhere.
As my time at USC comes to an end, a new chapter begins. In few weeks, I start a job on a winery in Sonoma County, where I will be considering the depths of sensory experience and terroir as narrative.
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