At the age of twenty, Robert laid down his saxophone, his robes, and his rifle. He had experimented with LSD. He looked in the mirror and saw neither a priest nor a future captain in the R.O.T.C. He saw himself. Gazing in that mirror, he committed to art in an instant, and just as swiftly all else was stripped away: his scholarship, his apartment, his allowance, his shining boots, and, most profoundly, his father’s approval. He stayed for a while in a small empty room of a friend’s apartment. He slept on a simple white iron bed, surrounded by his portfolios. That was the boy that I met in the summer of love.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter