November 2019 | LUCY ARON’S STORY: “Stay open to everything, seek the edge—the one that makes you feel you’re tangling with a koan—and never lose the spirit of play.”

I started playing piano when I was six and only stopped in 2014. That was one and a half years after my husband passed away. The seven-foot, four-inch Yamaha Grand was my most precious possession.
 
I listen to music a lot. I love classical music and pop. Elvis’s “Don’t be cruel,” was my first single. My mother was musical, and we’d play four-handed piano.
 
The two most important things to me growing up were music and animals. I thought I’d be a vet. I was bringing home strays with mixed reception!
 
I was born in Brooklyn, came to LA when I was seven and lived in southern California until 1999. I started writing music and lyrics and found that I was stronger at lyrics, so I turned to poetry and then to prose. My originality is informed by being self-taught, having to experiment and explore.
 
My mother was half Christian Scientist and half Jewish. My father was a secular Jew. I had no religious upbringing. One day, I wandered into a Quaker meeting and felt I was at home spiritually. I was 27. Five years later, I joined the Religious Society of Friends. I was a Quaker for 30 years. In Sonoma County, I became interested in Buddhism. I feel my values are in both and that they complement each other beautifully.

I began photography in 2005 with a point and shoot camera on a road trip to Vancouver. Somehow, I lost the film of everything I’d shot, so I bought a digital camera. The writing stopped. I started teaching myself. I began with landscapes, people, and animals. I never dreamed I’d become a photographer when I was 60. My father had been a photographer, all black and white. He took his camera everywhere and I used to make fun of him for that. Now, I never go anywhere without mine.
 
When I was eighteen, I’d had a mystical experience walking through a cactus and succulent garden in West LA, and my love for Nature became deeper and fuller. Now it’s like food. It breaks my heart what we’re doing to the planet.
 
I like to experience Nature alone and in silence. My favorite place is the ocean. 
 
I’m very much an introvert and in retrospect I realize photography has been a good way for me to connect with people.

Photos of People

‘Breakfast Popcorn’—I was walking in Downtown Santa Rosa at 7 am. His face really touched me. I asked him if I could take his picture, and he was gracious enough to say, “Yes.”
 
‘Highway 1 Vagabonds’—I was driving down Highway 1.  It was a very stormy morning and I saw this man with a knapsack, holding a little dog, walking in the opposite direction. I passed him, turned around and pulled up behind him. I asked him if I could take his photo. He had no teeth. He was supporting one of the dog’s paws. He was telling me the story of his life. Finally, after half an hour I got too cold and asked if I could pay him for his time. I wanted to give him a twenty-dollar bill, but he wouldn’t take it.