Eulogy for Peter Geselowitz

My father lived life as an emphatic romantic, seeking the world as it ought to be, and sometimes daily rebuilding our lives from any temporary gloom into the unified light of philosophical common sense. He was often noted for his particular Style of joyous questioning, with sparkling eyes he’d peer into your life, Characterize the world around you to give it shapes and consistent form, organize the events of your story into a memorable Plot, and wrap it all up in a unified Theme that left any questions seemingly already answered. This experience of his presence was a very intentionally crafted form, and in many ways his deepest artistic devotion, and so perhaps an appropriate way to summarize his life is as a literary creation itself with Theme, Style, Characterization and Plot.

The Plot of course is a fun and adventurous one, constantly building a stable space from unstable situations: half-accepted boy in southern africa, learns art from the african sunset, applies it to writing and public speaking to become an artist even within an oppressive society. He finds his way into elite art schools, sees a glimpse of america but is brought back for mandatory military service, studies philosophy and art from great books, builds that into a marketing and fine art career, devotes himself to his two children when that time came, was really there for us, he meets as a civil rights proponent in advertising situations and government policy letters, builds a home for us where rights are protected even sometimes against the police, uses his skills to protect us when taken hostage, packs us up and goes to america, literally builds us from nothing to a local community legends, by getting a specialty green card for breeding african venomous snakes, rebuilds an art career in Florida until we are mostly off to college, focuses on refining his writing, is constantly rebuilding in different living situations, making beautiful homes, and finally helps craft this beautiful home business, which continues to this day, and until his pens and brushes could no longer be held firmly in his hand, and he choose to pass surrounded by family and even a grandchild giggling at the birds he had befriended outside the window.

His character is perhaps best shown by its effect on different people in his close family circle. His wife Halina, combines a keen eye for beautiful design, with the tough strength to wrought that plan out of a difficult situation, and with sufficient mistrust left over to handle any cheeky business someone may throw at them. His son Lewey, puts symbols and words to specific coded response, creating an effect in the listener that is certainly intended to enlighten and spread reason, or even sometimes is so silly that one can, and *should* laugh it off in the right way. And his daughter Kira, who not only deeply cares for the people around her… but actually does something about it, putting love as meaningful only when it is integrated into outwards action, and commits that time over-and-over again for so many people each day. There are many others, such as his son-in-law David, whose career in the refinement and questioning of the law and other means of explicit communication I could hardly do justice. Perhaps his life-long friend and co-founder Patrick who achieved what is in some ways the most noble pursuit of all, which is to visually communicate the ‘impression of beauty’, the artistic recreation of why considering a landscape is morally important to being human. These and so many other characteristics we carry were demonstrated and trained for us by my father, often with explicit instructions and explanations to go with them, and are but a fraction of how much he embodied them himself, which leads to his Style…

To express the Style of someone who has both caught innumerable cobras, sold innumerable artworks, rebuilt his life around family multiple times, and often tuned every single syllable of his texts is no easy matter. Most importantly, he cared about associating emotions with reason; for example finger-tickle teasing someone about their bad habits, or deeply thumping his chest with pride when acknowledging an achievement. More subtly this came in the form of a deep soulful listening when someone was talking about something they cared about, and pouring his heart out with love at someone taking a difficult but morally correct action.

In closing, the Theme he chose for so much of his political work, “the one law”, was an expression of how passionately he sought a unified take on reality, was really another way of saying: “life and art as one.”