I was born in San Francisco, but my parents moved down to Big Sur and built the restaurant
in Napinthe.
And so I was raised in the country in a very, very small community on the coast.
My father had studied restaurant business, but his real passion was having a magazine
called What's Doing, which he had in a short spell in Monterey, around Monterey area.
And he loved that.
He loved being a journalist and schmoozing with everybody, so that was a very exciting
thing.
But the restaurant was like an extension of the magazine.
There was building and creativity going on, like lots of artists and writers, and as
my mother called the Rugged Individualists, all kinds of wacky people, and building, they
were always building, building something, starting out by building Napinthe and then adding
on rooms, because when we came here, it was just a log cabin with two bedrooms that
we had five kids, so we had to keep adding on rooms for the other children, and all the
crew that was working for us.
So that's my biggest thing, and it's still today, even happening, is that we're constantly
creating and building, adding on to this place.
1947, we came here, but it took a couple of years to get the whole thing going on about
building the restaurant, and we opened up in April 24th, 1949.
So today is our 60th anniversary.
I learned very early on how to cook for not only a large family, but a large crew, and
we never just made one batch of cookies, for instance.
We had to learn how to multiply by four, and we always got all of our mayonnaise and mustard
and gallon jars, and we would fill the gallon jars up with cookies, and so lots of baking,
which I still absolutely love to do too.
And my brother went to a private school, Happy Valley, in Ohai, and then he brought back
all the folk dancing, which was Russian, and Israeli, and it was wonderful for us.
We were given all kinds of classical music, and so we would listen to some, and then my
brother got a hold of a parachute that was made out of silk.
I mean, it was white, and we would tell our parents when to put that music on.
And then he came down, and we, also the girls were hiding under that silk and parachute,
and we came down in the parachute, just floated and filled the whole terrace.
And then we came out from under it, and then we would, we would actually do little performances
like impromptu.
I have no official physician.
I used to be a supervisor on the floor.
I came back in my 20s to help my brother and my mom run the restaurant at a time when
they needed some family on deck, so they could trust to be a supervisor and floor manager.
And it was only a couple of years into that, that I really realized that for them it was
their passion, and they just were so completely committed to all the aspects that make a restaurant.
And the Pentea was really a jungle gym and a really kind of an adventure lamp for a kid.
We'd run all over the property down to the beach, the canyon, our parents never really
knew where we were, and sort of in the pre-teen era it was just this fabulous place we could
run up and get French fries and ice cream, whatever we were hungry, and there was just all
of the life of the restaurant going around and the building and the background, and it was
just constant activity.
And there were always adults typically other than our family members who were keeping an
eye out for us because they were busy working or otherwise engaged, and so it was a real
collective, broad sense of family as a kid.
The Pentea was so much fun, like I could never wait to get back here because when I was
here I had bare feet, my hair was long and flying, and we were always dancing, and there
was always people playing the guitar and singing around the fire, and it was very, very free
and just wild and crazy.
I really never wanted to go anywhere because it seemed like the whole entire world comes
here.
I mean people from every walk of life and every land comes here, so I was like, why would
I have to go anywhere, and I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to be here forever.
As a teenager, it was a whole other set of adventures because then we got to work, and
then so being able to really start working different jobs in the summer and on weekends, and
I always enjoyed that.
Growing up in Bigster in the 60s and into the early 70s was a real sense that we were out
in the middle of nowhere.
I mean really disconnected.
We didn't have television, there wasn't internet, and getting on the bus for an hour each
way to go to Carmel, to go to middle school and then high school really had a sense of where
we were out in the middle of nowhere, and yet here at Nepenthi, the whole world was constantly
coming through.
And Nepenthi is not just a restaurant, it is an extended family, it is a property, we
have 100 employees, it's a gift store, we have staff housing, health insurance, plans,
profit sharing plans, I mean, it's like a little village, they had this passion that
I envied because I knew that I didn't feel that for restaurant management.
I felt that for something else in my life, but I didn't know exactly what it was, and
I felt like I was really letting them down by stepping away from being on deck, but
that I had to find that place where my passion would fulfill itself.
I like to play really loose and just get some back and forth distance from it, sometimes
I'll just turn the whole thing upside down and start all over again, or wipe an area
out.
And for a couple of hours, it's really just all about, for me, just warming up, and then
the last hour of a session will often be where it begins to come together and begins to
really become pain.
Big Sur is such a passionate landscape, it is not bucolic, it is not pastoral in a way,
I mean, it's rugged and fierce, and it thrashes you, and yet the serenity and the sense
of connection there that you feel with your inner voice with God is so profound, and it's
not a lazy, sleepy place, it's a place that ignites your heart.
When I'm working with paintings, what I'm trying to do is really bring that experience
into a visual language that gives someone else that experience.
That was really fun because that was like the heyday of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,
being Natalie in love, and we weren't so busy at that time because I think that actually
the Sam Piper did have an effect on our business.
I don't want to cheer you up a little bit, here comes your preacher friend.
Can I speak to you for a moment?
Everybody, this is Dr. Hewitt.
Dr. Witt, who to the club, no kidding, sit down, enjoy, oh well I'm, I'm, you know, we
were just talking about the word no kidding, how it here says it means the same as Nervant,
but class says it means the establishment of all paintings and stuff.
I don't really know, I'm not an authority, but I'm, I think that probably oblivion is
a better translation than the Greeks, I think for them, the Penthay as a state of mind
induced by drugs, probably Hasey.
Oh say there Reverend, I got a friend, and he claims he gets a mystical kick from H,
yeah H, so what do you say Reverend, you think you can find God at the end of a hypodermic
needle?
Cast, cut it out.
Oh well I served in the medical cordium, the war, and I can't tell you how many dying
and wounded men found, something of God's mercy at the end of just such a needle as you
describe.
I've some papers that Judge Thompson wants you to sign.
What kind of papers?
They, uh, they related to Danny's custody.
Hey, what do you say about that Reverend?
Cut it out, cards.
We got a pointer, we got a sorry, okay Reverend, I'm, I'm sorry.
These papers about Danny, what are they supposed to be?
And I think it better read them over first, anything you don't understand I'll try to explain.
Hey Reverend, uh, you can't explain anything here, let's get out.
Hey, what's about to wait a minute, did I say something wrong?
What's going on?
What's going on is business, mind.
No wait a minute, uh, like Reverend is straightness out on angel, what, angel, huh?
Cooler, just sounds dangerous, past is getting lower, yeah, this is a problem of sex.
Portland says that angels are neutered, you know, kind of like mules, overdone, it says
that she read someplace that angels are just like people, you know, four angels, and
girl angels, all that kind of thing, so, oh, that's it man, you know, what's the answer?
I think you've probably find the answer in Proverbs, it's chapter 16, verse 22, understanding
is a wellspring of life unto him, that path it, but the instruction of, who is funny?
Oh, always be funny, because you go stand in the corner, yes, me, yes.
I remember one day I was playing out on the terrace of my daughter, Aaron, and she just
barely learned how to walk, and she was standing up, and Elizabeth Taylor came over and
kind of tickled her on her head, and they talked to me about how they had adopted a child,
and they were just really friendly and nice, and that was fun, and then I, I was one
of the extras in the movie, where I was part of a party scene, where they would have
a beach party with all these artists and stuff, and I would be running down the path and dancing
around a bonfire, and that was lots of fun.
I used to DJ your side parties, and I'm pretty sure I'm part of why they don't have
side parties anymore.
What's your name?
I'm Seth.
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
Thank you.
Let me get out.
I shot at least, handsome young lad here.
Oh yeah, this is our next generation.
Four years old, somebody gave me a full set of oils, which I never used, but you know, obviously
I had some potential that somebody was tapping into.
I made puppets and dolls and little theater presentations, and would dress my sisters
out and push them around in wheelbarrows with fabulous hats and things, you know, so we,
we made our sort of own theater, really, and that, a lot of creativity went into that, and
I think that that's when I began to really think about images, so that when I started to
paint, there was a lot that I wanted to say on a canvas.
I think my mother was really a frustrated artist.
She would have been a brilliant theater director, or choreographer, or a set designer, or something.
You know, she had a real flair.
She had wonderful collections of oriental fabrics and dishes, and she would take us into
the oriental shops, and she loved that world of creativity, and she knew all the people
in those shops, and so as a little child, you know, I was like so intrigued by little
Chinese chachkis and little things from Japan, and so forth, and that was a big influence.
And everyone always says, oh, you love colors, because you grew up in colorful Big Sur,
and I said, if you ever looked at Big Sur, it's actually very neutral.
You know, it's stones and old wood, and you know, there's some color in the ice.
This plant, but you know, I hang on till we get to those ice plant patches, you know,
there's a nice bit of a blush of brown or red, or whatever.
No, it's not that colorful.
There was a wonderful painter who lived up on Parnington Ridge, and I was living in a
little shack, trying to paint as a young painter, just out of my teens, I've early 20s,
and he just showed up one day in his pajamas in a Jeep, and he said, I've decided you
should come and paint with me.
It's time.
And he just pushed me into his car, he was not going to take no for an answer, and drove
me up the hill, and put me through painting lessons, and taught me a lot about how the Europeans
looked at paintings and so forth.
He was a very extraordinary spirit from the south, and he had this very southern kind of
romantic quality to him, and he was an amazing painter, really good painter, and he taught
me a lot about observing and drawing and so forth.
His name was Al Behawood, there were very cheap places to rent that were built by prisoners
who built the highway, and so they had built these, I mean, I was living actually in the
mess hall of the prisoners that were brought there to build the highway, and so they put
up these really rough shacks, and so I was, for $25 a month, I was getting this enormous
great big cafeteria eating hall kind of thing is to live in with wonderful big windows looking
after the sea, it was just terrific.
I was already painting still lives, I was very influenced by Bonar and Morandi and people
like that, and particularly Bonar because he had a wonderful use of color, and lush, beautiful
images.
I wish we had some here we could just throw into this film because he's a wonderful, wonderful
painter, and he loved oranges and pinks and just lush combinations of color that really
stuck with me, you know, he was very daring about his use of color.
And also then deep in corn in San Francisco had just started to turn from the abstract world
to painting still lives and wonderful figure studies and so forth, but his studies of San
Francisco, row houses and big, wonderful still lives, that was also a huge influence
on me.
We used to always get dressed up with the Halloween parties, but I remember the closest
I came to really inventing costumes was painting my entire body to go to a Halloween costume
in black and white, like an African sort of mad crazy person, you know, with stripes
in black and white and with poster paints, I mean, it's one that we didn't ruin our skin.
He said to me, you need finishing school, you know, you've got panache, but you need
a little, you know, European culture.
So England is the perfect place, go there and get some manners.
And so I went to England, this very rich man who had hired me to draw of some pictures
of his house and he and his wife had this fabulous house in Heelsboro and I went there
to draw, and then he said, you know, my young man, he said, you know, you're wonderful
but you need, the corner is knocked off, you need finishing, you know, and I think England
is the perfect place for you, you should have that experience.
So I packed up everything and went off to England for a three month vacation and ended
up staying for 40 years.
I just loved, it was like walking into warm water, I arrived there and they were funny
people, they had a passion and they had this old world feel, the way they were using
oriental objects in their big old wonderful houses where everything was very relaxed
and, you know, the carpets were afraid and the old chints covering some of the couches
and everything.
I just loved it, it was a wonderful softness and romance.
I bumped into a fellow who was designing and he had a very original eye, he was going
to be the next big, big designer and I just spotted it right away, just out of art school.
And he said, I'm going up to Scotland to look for, I'm Scottish and I want to do these
Scottish outfits into Scottish tweeds and I could you come and help me pick out materials.
So I went with him and as we were going across this landscape, it was the most hauntingly
beautiful landscape, you know, of lichens and bracken and just kind of an old world feel
and they were just beautiful colors and the peat bogs and the wonderful, wonderful great
lakes that were reflecting the mountains and everything.
So when I got to the mill where he was buying this stuff, there were all the colors of
that landscape on the shelf in the form of knitting yards and I thought, yes, the world
gone mad.
I've never seen anybody put beautiful colors together like a tapestry.
These are tapestry colors, they're just ancient and beautiful and I bought 20 colors and
a pair of needles that was the size for that yarn and I was trying to think how I would
get someone to knit a design for me and how I would direct this girl and I knew she wasn't
going to be fast enough.
I hadn't met her but I knew she wasn't going to be fast enough.
And I thought, how am I going to sit with her day in and day out while she plods away
on this weather and I thought there's nothing for it, I've got to learn to knit and I just
said to a woman sitting across from me in the train, do you know how to knit?
She said, yes.
And I said, could you just show me right now, I've got the needles, I've got the yarn and
I showed me how to cast on, how to knit, by the time I got to London, I was hooked, I
was so excited and I ran out and bought a little pattern for a jacket, came home, put
all 20 colors in that first jacket and just never look back, I mean just immediately
the first sweater I took straight to Vogue magazine and I said, what do you think?
And they said, fantastic, we've never seen anything like this before and I said, well
I should think not and they said, this is where knitting is going in the future and
they just started writing about me as if I was this great designer and I just became a
designer, I had no idea how to do it and I started designing for the misonies in Italy
and so forth.
But it all just fell into place, it was something that just was meant to be obviously.
What I realized with the knitting is I couldn't do things that were figurative and what was
so wonderful about needle point was that you could make flowers and all the little subtle
details and the crevices and the shadows and everything so and also being able to make
furniture, you know being able to make a piece that would go on a chair, this is a chair
seat and so it's so exciting to be able to make gorgeous museum-type things for someone's
house and so I did a whole book on needle point after doing a book on knitting.
If I had done this as a kit, this happens to be a once off but if I had done this as
a kit then it would be printed on the canvas and it would be just like painting by numbers.
You would get a series of yarns and you would put those each color where it's supposed
to go.
What's wonderful about a piece like this is I don't have to worry, I can use 200 colors
in a piece like this, I don't have to worry about them being repeated or reproduced
or whatever.
If you have any inclination at all to explore your artistic side, do that and you can
still be a footballer or a president or whatever.
I'm always very, very touched when I hear that somebody who's in politics also loves
to play music or you know recite poetry or you know to read wonderful books and wonderful
thoughts.
I mean just writing is such a wonderful thing, just that could be something you can do
so quietly when you think of the wonderful poets like Dickinson, you know who just sat
in her garage and wrote these wonderful wonderful things which talk to us over and over
and over again.
I mean I'm in England where people love the spoken word and they love the written word
and we have these wonderful programs on the radio which I listen to a lot while I'm working
on this kind of work.
I can listen to beautiful spoken words so you hear wonderful assets of poetry and literature
and so forth at the opening windows into these worlds so I would say go for it, you know
make some expression whatever it is.