About Me — Jane Kaufman
I am a collection of stories.
I joined Medium in January of 2022 at the suggestion of Karen Traub, who is now my partner in a 100 words for 100 days challenge, starting May 16.
I’ve been writing essays, song lyrics, poems, and short stories on and off since I was 11, shortly after Edward Arlington Robinson’s poem blew my mind.
The two greatest influences on my writing are Jack Kerouac and Tom Robbins. I love how we can create rhythm with words. I want to write stories you can dance to.
This is what those stories are likely to be about:
TRAVEL
I discovered the woods and mountains of the Hudson Valley as a teen, fell in love with hiking and waterfalls.
I floated in the Dead Sea on a trip to Israel with my sister when I was 19. Walked inside a pyramid in Egypt. Saw a bull fight in Spain. Got caught in a rip-tide in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of France.
In the US, I have set foot in all of the lower 48 states, and Alaska is on deck. I’ve been to the floor of the Grand Canyon more than once and saw a real live tarantula in a campground in New Mexico.
I’ve lived in NY, MA, UT, CO, TX, and OR. I’ve called home an 18-wheeler, 3 vans, and 2 station wagons. And once spent a month alone in a primitive cabin in a state forest in VT.
I’ve taken many risks and leaps based on little more than a feeling, an intuition, with results that make me believe in magic.
MUSIC
Over the years, I have attempted to play guitar (acoustic and electric), piano, harmonica, and drums. I learned enough to know I could do it if I practiced and then never practiced. (Though I had a blast banging around on the drum kit anyway.) When I was 50, a friend loaned me his bass and I knew I’d finally found my way to make music.
My life as a barefoot dancer has evolved from standing in the back of the crowd at my first show, completely clueless, in 1982, to taking up a solid 10 square feet of grass at Pearl Jam in 1995, to participating in what a friend of mine called ‘dance-church.’
I slept out for Pink Floyd tickets in front of the Capitol Theater in NJ. I wrote a love note to Pink Floyd that you can read here.
I’ve attended many concerts, in various states of mind, and I find music, instruments, and dancing are all great metaphors for life.
MOVIES
I’ve been involved in making a number of movies. Answering the call of both creative friends and creative strangers, I’ve arranged props, created call sheets, and once directed a director. My favorite gigs are script doctor and writer.
I was part of a team that wrote a musical about vampires. While the musical was never produced, we did do a stage reading and I got to see a character I developed come to life on stage. Wow! (Hello to Zoey Zero, the perfect actor for the part.)
Most recently, I tried my hand at being a background actor in a TV series. Fun! I enjoyed getting to experience the process of film-making from in front of the camera for a change and learning new terms like, “Check the gate!”
SELF DISCOVERY
I enjoy solving all sorts of puzzles, but my very favorite puzzle is that of figuring out who I am and how I fit in the world.
My views and philosophies have been formed in part by Zen Buddhism, a layman’s understanding of physics and quantum mechanics, Narcotics Anonymous, 60’s subculture and ideas about peaceful revolution, eastern medicine, rock and roll, ceremonies of the Lakota Tribe, and my late and beloved friend Joy who turned me on to meditation and other weird practices.
Other ideas that have my attention and may find their way in to a story:
Refinement over regret. We are animals in an eco-system. I am a co-creator of this world we share and as such, I attend to my corner of it with presence and love, as best I can.
The truth is, these words, my words, the ideas I express, the conclusions I draw from my experience, the questions I continue to ask, are not original. They are echoes of those I’ve heard and heeded as much as of those I’ve ignored. I say what’s been said so many times before. But never by me. And never to you. Until now.
My British Mum will be so proud!
