🚌 TREE 595: Jeff Gill – origins

In 2009–10 I wrote a series of autobiographical sketches – words and iPhone paintings – about the most formative parts of my life. I stopped when I got almost to the my present life back then. I was at the beginning of some huge changes. I find it hard to write coherently about things I’m living through. While it’s happening, there’s no plot. It’s just life. It needs time and space to turn into a story. I’m ready to tell the next part of the story now. But first, those sketches from 13 years, updated and hopefully improved.

The point of TREE is to get your brain thinking in an interesting direction as you start your day. I hope my story will do that. My motto for writing TREE is don’t be boring. If this series does or doesn’t hit the right notes for you, please give me feedback. Being helpful to you matters a lot to me.

Here we go…

1

In 1970 my future, pre-married parents and a bunch of other people in their late teens and early twenties piled into a clapped-out school bus with no seats – they had cushions and rugs and love – and set off to change the world – sort of a magical mystery tour for God. They called it The Blitz, maybe because they were young and not historians? They started a bunch of churches across the Southwestern United States. I grew up hearing stories about their trip, how one time when they ran out of money they washed the peanut butter off the paper plates and hung them up to dry so they could be reused, how my dad, the Blitz mechanic, dropped a tiny and essential carburettor screw in gravel then prayed then looked down and saw the screw through a hole in the bumper, how they snuck into the janitor’s closet at a high school and made out.

My parents are still adventurous people. They made sure they passed their spirit of adventure on to me.

This is from 1970, my dad is a big Neil Diamond fan and it’s a great song.

What are the best qualities of your parents that are now part of who you are?

Grow slowly
Jeff