The Road Less Traveled

On defying expectations, choosing your own adventure, taking the long way around…

An old plan de Paris; A map of outer Japanese islands, circa 1890s Los Angeles map detail, My favorite surf breaks map, La Jolla, CA

My life has been a series of left turns, choosing the complicated route, not following what is expected of me as (fuck it I’ll claim it) Hollywood Royalty.

At 13, I went to boarding school on the East Coast. Or rather I should say I was sent away after being invited to leave my private school in Los Angeles.

I was the only person in my elite prep school graduating class to apply to art school for college. I just needed to get out of a dormitory, off campus, go to NYC and start living. And live I did, quite wildly for a time, with not a single regret.

In my late teens as everyone asked are you going to be in the movie business are you going to be an actress are you going to follow in the family footsteps, I started a decade long research project about burlesque strippers, writing what would become the first of three books about sexuality (the gasps were audible at the time.)

In my early 20s when everyone I knew was sleeping with everyone I knew, I was happily married, monogamous and in bed at a reasonable hour.

In my early 30s when my friends were getting married, I was getting divorced.

In my 40s, I moved to Hawaii because I felt I’d be happiest there in my 80s and wanted to reverse engineer my life.

And thus began a turn down a new road.

As I did all the above, I was met with countless why are you…but what does your family think … aren’t you worried about and a lot of being labelled “brave.” I don’t feel deserving of this adjective,”brave” for doing things that, to me, haven’t felt like difficult choices but a matter of preserving my sanity. Bravery is climbing Mount Everest, barreling down a 60 foot wave, speaking out against injustice in the face of persecution, handling alligators and snakes. Also, if you are going to pick an adjective to describe me, I can think of about 900 others I’d prefer, for example, hot sexy cool hilarious, in case you were looking for suggestions.

Lately, as I make more left turns while embracing my roots, I find myself retracing the path my grandfather Sam Goldwyn traveled over 150 years ago, that bestowed upon me the Hollywood Royalty label in the first place.

I think about how few expectations there were on my grandfather to succeed. In fact all the odds were stacked against him. I think about the expectations he then placed on his son, my father, born in the Golden Age of Cinema as a Golden Prince of Hollywood to a Movie Mogul father. Dad tried to choose a less traveled path— I have some of his journals and sketchbooks, where he shared his secret dreams. He wanted to be an artist but the pressure to carry the Goldwyn legacy was stronger than his desire to turn left. During his lifetime I often saw this as a visible weight on his shoulders. I also saw the pressure he put on my four brothers as they grew to be men. The expectations on me were much less, being a woman. This has also been my freedom, to risk traversing unpaved roads instead of upholding the proverbial crown. It is also a connecting line to my grandfather, who was probably ridiculed by his family, friends and community in the late 1800s for his blind faith in roads less traveled. I think of him in his early teenage years, walking hundreds of miles alone, crossing the Oder River from Poland into Germany, seeking a better life. I wonder what he was running from in his family of origin. I wonder if I am going in a circle back to the beginning to understand the twists and turns he took along the way.

One thing is for certain, like my grandfather before me, I won’t wind up where I began. This Beverly Hills Bitch, oops I mean Witch, has left the roost for good.

Sending love from the road.

xoxo

Liz