l miss dad. I loved him. He was my volcano. He was the most passionate and enthused person I have ever known. There were few that, once meeting him, were not touched profoundly in some manner. He was a true force of nature, a creative tsunami, an inspirational leader, a passionate student of life, a prolific artist, a bundle of visceral positive enthusiasm and energy that erupted on contact.
A true Volcano.
Engaging him was a corporal experience that impacted one emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually. He was 91, well loved, lived an amazing life and taught me a few things about success that I hope to pass on to my children and others.
Life lessons below the fold.
My brother summed up his life this way..
Dad was born in Born in New York City in 1921 and raised in Scarsdale, New York. He also lived in India, Belgium, Holland, Canada, Philadelphia and Vermont. He leaves behind his first and second wife, his three children and 6 grandchildren.
Dad immediately enlisted in the Marines after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served in the South Pacific and ended his distinguished service as a captain. He then graduated from the University of Pennsylvania followed by a post-graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University. A very successful career as an advertising executive and later the president of an international advertising company in Canada provided a vehicle for his creative energies. In 1969, he left the corporate world to fully indulge his creative drive and started a fibre weaving business with my mother. This lead to his lifelong passion for creating art in various mediums including fiber, watercolor, acrylics and multi-media projects.
He taught us how to squeeze every last drop out of life but also so enriched our lives by sharing his charm, his wit and his love. Creativity was his motivation, art, his instrument. Dad always found the very best when presented with the mundane, and revealed the good in everyone he met. Regardless of how many books he read or how many people he talked to, he could never satiate his appetite to learn and discover. His curiosity of life never ebbed. Little gave him more pleasure than having a good cigar while holding court with friends or family or simply contemplating his next brush stroke.
This was just one of a long series of large paintings (4x4 feet) that adorn our homes, offices and other locations in the US and Canada.
Be Curious
Dad was blessed with an unquenchable curiosity and an enthusiasm that was contagious to anyone within hearing distance. He was well read and we grew up surrounded by 1000’s of books and letters, all of which he had read. Not one for small talk or idle chit chat, Dad knew that time was running out the day he was born and attempted to suck the marrow out of every living moment.
There was always a sense of urgency to Dad. He had a palpable need to see what was around the next corner or paint his latest vision before the sun went down for the day. Most days he would wake up at 4AM to start painting or writing to insure he could squeeze the day and enjoys its full fruit. Dad was like an energetic 6 year old waking up for Christmas.. every day of his life. It didn't matter who you were or how long you knew him, Dad delved deeply and rarely let any opportunity for knowledge go by.
This was most evident with anyone he ever met, friend or stranger. I remember getting into any number of cabs with Dad. Within seconds Dad would typically engage the driver as if he were the most important person on the planet.
Where are you from? I’m from New Delhi.
What part? North delhi? Yes how did you know?
Were you involved with the North delhi uprising of 1954? We had an uprising?
Yes it started on Pranesh Avenue at two in the morning on May 13. The 1961 letters of Lord Mountbatten provide a wonderful context for understanding the uprising. Who is Lord Mountbatten? What is context?
And on it went. Through a mix of questions and lectures, Dad would usually hone in on anything the driver had an interest in and then perform masterful surgery. It was a unique art form. He would do this with almost everyone he met - waiters, clerks, fellow passengers..it didn’t matter. Oftentimes he would adopt the same accent to insure a full dimensional event with his new friend. He would invariably leave his subjects panting and contemplating on the experience that was uniquely Rai, not really sure if this had been real or a dream. He impacted everyone that came into original contact with him this way and left them all newly ordained and blessed by the event.
Be in Awe
I think Dad became an artist to experience more out of life. He wasn’t happy sipping creative energy, he wanted to mainline it. He always reminded us that he was in constant awe of everything. He loved negative space in composition and music. The rest stops were as as important as the high notes. He was as much in awe at the intricacies on the back of a dead leaf as he was with new discoveries in robotics. I think being an artist allowed him time to really explore and experience this state of awe.
This was a typical piece on horses. He had many like this and was equally at home with portraits, landscapes, abstracts. Most of his images were very large and in watercolor.
Part of a letter he wrote to me in 2002..
You really have me interested in Photography. At least looking at it more closely and thinking about it more. I have always respected Coppolla who has gone deep into his sensitivities to the point he is acutely aware of everything he shoots..even the composition of the air, times of day , times of year and in different locations. He will journey to the right spot at the right time with the right people to do a more perfect take. Few audiences will appreciate what he has done...but he is a true artist who always does it in depth ..sensitive to his intuition.
After two years of painting faces , I am just beginning to appreciate the thousand subtleties that give them life ,differentiation, animation and character. As monet looked over his lilies year after year. He could say much more each year with less and less.
Love what you do
Dad was one of those rare people that reviewed and revised what was important in life almost on a daily basis and then lived it. He was uncompromising in this area. He truly believed that if you did not jump out of bed every morning loving what you were doing, you were simply not living your potential. It didn’t matter if you were an artist, race car driver or construction worker. Communion with intuition and manifesting one’s innate creativity was the goal and a life lesson that dad left for all of us. His decision to suddenly become an artist was not without some real costs to our family. Looking back however, I realize that while this transition may have been better planned and or communicated, ( dad was certainly not perfect) the essential lesson of finding our passions and living them, is something I hope will impact many generations in our family, especially the younger generation of grandchildren. As a young boy of 13 at the time that my Dad quit his position, this decision had an enormous impact on me and I vowed then that I would do the same with my life and sift everything through the “love what I am doing” filter that my Dad gave me.
Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to me in early 2000.
A friend of mine was a most successful managing director of Lever Brothers- discovered he could write..he gave in to it and said that for the first time in his life he became free . He had become encrusted with responsibility, prestige , acclamation and commercial success..and his shrewd intelligence had ruled out with contempt imagination and the subconscious in favor of reason. Through writing he found a new highway one to his true visceral feelings which had been building and hiding, through a lifetime and he wrote for years before he was published . For him the medium was the message. His usual preoccupation with good taste and satisfying social norms seemed empty..and he started putting it down. Only as it came to him from the inside ..he began to devour the “myths” of his dreams , of his subconscious . He discovered in nature and in people and in the moon, the sun an uplifting transcendent ence he had never noticed in his heretofore ever faster , speeding competitive, combative , rough, tough , vulgar, win at all costs commercial persona . No time for sipping , smelling , contemplating . Now suddenly he was finding magic in the mists of morning, the images in the wispy smoke of a burning punk. In his excitement at new discoveries he forgot to cover his vulnerabilities..as he had always done ..stripped to the vanity of his pretensions, he replaced it with the aura of his special humanity - truly reborn.
For passionate self discovery , time is of no importance - like going on a lifetime diet...faith, daily challenge , excitement and incremental mastery keep you there in spite of un importance and the call of material things which over time fade with the increased rewards of self realization.
If you are endowed and have potential...the release of that potential requires endless discipline and the endless struggle to keep swimming upstream.
Live in the Present
In recent years, Dad loved to talk about chaos and the power of volcanoes and their force. He loved that volcanoes were simply accidents that created amazing shapes and structures by their eruptions. I think Volcanoes also summed up the essence of his philosophy of life. I have been thinking of these recently and have come to realize that the “Volcano lesson” he gave me and many of us was to live passionately in the present moment - with less care for any end result. This was his faith. The faith of unintended “accidents” informing one’s life and destiny.
A letter of his from December 2002 sums this up nicely.
We must learn to do just for the sake of doing and not always assess the monetary consequences before action... More riches must be found in the action itself in the endless unintended consequences of creative discovery. Only change and reflection are constant. The results can be wonderful for a moment but always die. Set your compass on a worthwhile trip where the challenges of your progress and the investigation of your dreams are more than sufficient for a full life without a special destination.
My thoughts to "your children" - Run your own race. Too much applause can wreck the journey. It is very hard and costly but follow your instincts to all possible fulfillment and happiness. That along with love and compassion and endless knowledge, responsibility, honesty , restraint and stick to itiveness should fit the bill. Leaders, geniuses, inventors and poets are always people who follow their own drummer until it becomes a habit. Know that smoke is as beautiful as a sunset or an erupting volcano - and both are beyond understanding and achieving.
Breath it Deep
Dad wrote this poem for my son on the day he was born in 1998.
A Book, A song, A flower
The sun the sea, keep close to me
In the travels of my life
Read wide and deep
And travel far and learn all of you are
Love wide and deep
All the creatures here below + keep your fellows free
We know not the shore or where and why
so breathe it deep my boy
the sun the earth , the sky
I’ll miss Dad. My friend, my volcano.