Design 21: Social Design Network

I'm Paul. I'm a journalist based in Los Angeles, where I mostly write about contemporary art, architecture and film. I also like traveling, finding new music, exploring odd restaurants, and laughing--preferably all in the same day. I guess that's why I never have enough time. I'm curious about everything and I find everything curious. As Dorothy Parker once said, "there are four things I be better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt." Fortunately I don't have any freckles, so I only have three things to worry about. I've been working as a journalist for approximatley 15 years. Before that I was an avid filmmaker with an insatiable appetite for great cinema. Many of my own films played in festivals and garnered awards, but they always paled in comparison to the films of Antonioni, Bunuel, Bresson and Godard. At the risk of sounding pretentious, those were the filmmakers I admired most, not just because they exposed me to the artistic value of film as a medium, but because they tought me how to look at the world through critical eyes. They taught me that nothing is what what it appears to be, and that aesthetics--meaning color, composition and pattern--can have a profound effect on all of us. Not just 'in the movies', but in our daily lives. I have since spent the past 15 years writing about those people who have their own, unique visions of the world.