After 40 years of living in Los Angeles, I escaped.

I had to. It was life or death.

My decision to cut and run came from a vision of my death on streets where I’d walked and lived. Sounds overly dramatic, but I work in entertainment. I know drama.

You wouldn’t know me, but you’d recognize my voice on radio, TV, the Internet, narrations, documentaries and cartoons. I’m a professional voice over artist, aka “VO.” I do other things, too. I have talented hands; I can paint portraits and I write, produce and mentor.

In my last decade in LA I moved once, from the San Fernando Valley to the Arts Districtwhere rents were cheap and the spaces were perfect for my studio. The downsides:live/work lofts are commercial property with no rent control and landlords can charge what the market will bear.

Two years after my move downtown, people were paying twice my rent for a 1000-square-foot loft with concrete floors and a counter for a kitchen - a box with no interior walls or privacy. My old nemesis, gentrification, had officially arrived. I’d see Bentleys, McLarens and Land Rovers parked next to my cheap Fiat. Property value rose so fast that building owners made money on empty lofts.

To say it wasn’t artist friendly would be a vast understatement.

My epiphanic moment of clarity came while choking on toxic diesel exhaust. I was walking my little rat terrier at 7:00 am, and we had stepped out of the gate onto 6th Street. The produce warehouse across the street was noisy and moving at full tilt, my dogyanking my arm out of its socket to reach that first tree, when I noticed that the crawling masses of tens of thousands of homeless in tents from Skid Row were now within 40 feet of my front door - along with the smell of urine and excrement.

The man I’d seen yesterday, screaming in an expensive business suit, railing at the world’s injustice while standing on the soapbox pile of his life, was now sleeping peacefully, tucked up against a red brick exterior wall. Yesterday it was obvious he was evicted from wherever he’d lived with all his possessions: a cappuccino machine, a stack of stereo equipment and a lot of other nice clothes and stuff that looked like he’d lost an upper management position. Probably never saw it coming. That morning it was just himin a blanket. Most of his belongings were gone, his stereo, all the nice stuff, poof, gone. He had a bag of clothes for a pillow and his now filthy double-stuffed too-expensive down comforter was wrapped tightly around him. He probably didn’t know he’d lost everything, sleeping peacefully on the concrete. This was happening regularly since the depression of 2008. It is, has or will dramatically wound everyone but the very rich.

The reality of my age and his situation hit me like a bucket of cold water. I was one month, maybe two from being him. I’d barely pulled off rent a couple of times recently over parking tickets gone to collection, or union dues, or unexpected car troubles.

The immense financial depression had given people permission to do horrible things and act like heroin addicts, chasing profits with monkeys on their backs. I was witnessing the end of the middle class in my lifetime. Corporations insane for profits asked everyone to do three times their work at a 50% cut in pay. Celebs and the rich were the only ones unaffected.

Technology turned against me. Home laptop computers started recording sound good enough to convince everyone they could do my job. My agents went from a roster of 100 guys to 3500. To add insult to injury, celebrities routinely replaced union-scale voice over actors. Worse, audiences have no idea that bad VO performances on TV and radio are all celebrities. My world was unravelling. The last straw was Trump buying an election with blatant lies.

Capitalism would happily watch my death and only offer help if I didn’t need it. I was out of time, none left on the clock and wasn’t aware I was playing until I saw the dead being carried to ditches outside the stadium.

My art, my tens of thousands of dollars of studio equipment, my life - all on the street. At least for one night before it disappeared, picked clean of every valuable while my dog and cat cuddled next to me on a sidewalk. I’d get pension checks and mail via general delivery.

I could hear death rattle in my ear like a child’s toy.

I’d been homeless before, after first moving to LA. I made it six months. But how long would I last on the street as a 60-year-old man? Two nights? With all my stuff? I’m a tough old dude but I can’t stand against a gang of three or four hungry and homeless men.

Hypothermia is real, even in LA. Maybe I’d just fall asleep and never wake up.

Or worse, I could be killed for something like my weed, a sentimental bauble, or my iPhone. I’d be instantly relegated from a person to a statistic, then a number in a column, then added to a file and finally stored in one of a million boxes covered with dust, never to be seen again. I could taste vomit in my mouth and I decided I deserved more.

Obviously I couldn’t stay in LA, but I had no fallback. LA loathes old people. Hollywood is famous for professional careers that end in your late 30s, alone and in tears. In Hollywood, the only love anyone finds is on-screen. My career is an anomaly because I still work past 40, far north of 40. This wouldn’t be easy and I needed to move fast. The depression had made the new normal too expensive to hire union VO. The landscape changed to a dystopian horror scene from one of my sci-fi books. The pressure was on.

I started planning and worked toward my escape.

I never gave up.

I’d mention my plans casually with friends and it always came off sounding like something people say, but never do. But I stayed disciplined. I’d wake and be out of town going up the 99 freeway on Saturday mornings to meet a realtor at some run-down ranch in the middle of nowhere beautiful. Thousands of miles up and back - sticking to my plan, keeping my eye on the prize, not giving in to the negative voice in my head that said I was fooling myself and smoking too much weed, and that I didn’t deserve it, and all those other degrading scripts that pour out of your brain while you’re trying to achieve something hard or that hasn’t been done. I made lots of lists and always gave myself credit for every little step closer.

Finally, I did it. I found the spot and my offer was accepted. A house on six acres of pristine clean country land with a seasonal creek. I packed in two weeks and was audi five gee.

I shocked everyone in my little world when I announced my departure. I had been a city boy for 40 years, and most people didn’t think I would leave, but my tenacity never let me down while searching for my silver lining.

I saved money by eating rice and beans. That, and I hired a credit fixing company to clean off bad marks and a foreclosure. It took three years to get my credit clean and save5% down. It was hellish but satisfying in ways I never expected.

It was a fitting end to my time in LA’s downtown arts district not ten blocks from where I lived in 1976 as a stage manager in the backstage apartment of the Embassy Auditoriums on 9th and Grand. I was 21 then and I met and got to hang out with people like the Dalai Lama; I got high and danced with the Nicholas Brothers, I tripped on Timothy Leary and hung out with Jose Greco and Robert Mitchum. People say I’m lucky. The truth is, I set myself up for it.

My stress is nearly gone now; there are no traffic lights where I live. When cars pass each other, we wave like boats at a lake on weekends. Anxiety now is remembering to getCOB (corn oats and barley) for the wildlife, or cut firewood. I feel grounded, healthierand naturally happy.

Workwise, I still have to deal with Hollywood, whose foundations are laid upon thethrobbing pulse of stress. I have a mortgage and some hefty monthly utilities until I get my solar system, but my whole nut every month is covered by my small pensions. My agents like seeing me three or four times a year, so I’m in Beverly Hills for that and in LA to see my friends and downtown for THE best weed. So, Hollywood? It’s still there, but Hollywild is home.

This started four years ago; an impossible dream, inspired by the threat of homelessnessin a failed system where money is more valuable than people. Now, I’m living a life my dreams made.

This new life is better and wilder than I ever imagined. My new rhythm encourages deep observation and I feel a stronger connection to the creative parts of my mind.

The great oak forest is full of deer (and yes, cute fawns with white spots starting in spring), coyote, gopher, chipmunk, squirrel, bobcat, mountain lion, skunks, mice, possum, and all manner of birds of prey including eagles, great owls, rowdy turkeys, insects, frogs, scorpions, tarantulas and rattlers.

This blog chronicles my adventures as the King of Wishful Thinking - after Hollywood, in Hollywild. Come back and visit! There’s a lot to share: points of view, feelings, dreams, problems and solutions for living with my environment, reducing my carbon footprint and becoming the steward of my land, protecting, nurturing and loving this paradise that is nature.

Leave a note on the door, so I know you rolled through.