MY Life / My way

My life’s memories are deeply tied to songs—tunes that seize me in a particular moment and stay with me until another song comes to mark the next stage of my journey. Years ago, I began collecting the titles that captured those moments. Then, about 10 years ago, I started shaping them into an ongoing playlist: Ken’s Journey – this LIFETIME.

Some songs are light and playful; others carry emotional weight, marking moments when something shifts within me—an insight, a truth, or a clearer understanding of how I feel and think.

When I wrote my master’s thesis, I was consumed by Neil Diamond’s “I Am . . . I Said,” which inspired its title: THIS SOUND OF BEING ALONE: A Search and Portrait of Albert Camus’ “Absurd” Man. In the 1970s, I was immersed in deep, dark introspection, personalizing and living my sense of existentialism:

“But I got an emptiness deep inside

And I′ve tried but it won't let me go

And I'm not a man who likes to swear

But I′ve never cared for the sound of being alone”

While writing and performing my thesis project, I was alone in the research and in creating the two monologues. But when it came time to stage the performance, I stepped outside that aloneness and found solace in collaborating with others on the set, lights, costumes, and props—a creative partnership I still carry with me.

When I wrote my thesis, my life stretched ahead of me, full of possibility. Now, remounting it in my 75th year, I am changed and looking toward the end. The essence of the thesis remains intact: the scripts will stay the same, with the addition of my narration added at the beginning, between characters, and at the curtain call. Because I, too, have transformed, the title now becomes an absurd man: His Sound of Being Alone.

Creating the project website brings me back to my center, my core, as I define and describe what this work is. I am alone. I have my immediate family and a few friends, but my truth is that I am alone. Always feeling different, I once called myself an “extreme introvert.” Now, I identify as autistic.

I will perform with the support of my wife and creative friends—my chosen family. I am not alone in this project, yet I continue to live this absurd life, my life. As I look toward the end, I can see the thread of accomplishments that have shaped who I am. Frank Sinatra expressed this truth:

“And now, the end is near,

And so I face the final curtain,

My friend. I'll say it clear,

I'll state my case of which I'm certain.

I've lived a live that's full.

I've travelled each and every highway,

And more, much more than this, I did it my way.”

“For what is a man, what has he got

If not himself, then he has not

To say the words he truly feels

And not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows

And did it my way”

In accomplishing my degree in theater and becoming a theater artist . . . I did it my way. I will do it to the end.