Herbert Hofer’s “Million Dollar” Miami View Part 2
Being so well-traveled…why Miami Beach, specifically?
It can seem claustrophobic at times since you’re five hours from everything, but I came here at the perfect time. In the 80’s it was a slum; nobody wanted to live here and I thought, “Why not? It’s a beach, you’ve got palm trees…”
What made you want to be an architect?
I wanted to build dream castles. After the war everything was destroyed. I wanted to fix things. Little did I know as an Austrian at the time, we have professional aristocracy. In Austria, if your grandfather was an architect, and your father, you would just take over. But if you come from a working class family and become an architect you have to fight certain obstacles that other people don’t have. In America, a child may not even be born and yet they’ve already been written into Harvard or whatever school, you know? So, as a normal mortal you don’t really have a chance. This was the only mistake I ever made, choosing a profession where I would not be on top of the world; I would have to really work. I’m happy I did it, though, because it fulfilled my desire of that I wanted to do.
I lived in this small little town and I wanted to know: “What is beyond those blue mountains?” When I got a chance to go over those blue mountains a different adventure was waiting around every corner. It was very attractive and I’m so glad I did it because most people work all their lives at a job they hate in a place they despise and they say, “When I retire I’m going to go on a cruise, I’m going to vacation, I’m going to travel…” But you can’t do it then. When you’re old you get tired, you want to go to bed, and you can’t sleep in strange beds because your back hurts or whatever, so I’m glad I did it because now that I’m getting old, I’m never bored. Even if I sit and stare at the ocean for hours, I have these little movies playing in my head. If someone mentions Kyoto, I go right back. I can remember all the little temples, the feel of the streets. I’ve had adventures that people only read about in travel catalogs.
What other jobs have you had in your past?
I never had a job. I was either painting or acting.
That’s awesome. And now you’ll never have to go down that road.
I sit at home in the morning, looking out the window, sipping my coffee, listening to the news about two fatalities, some rollover on the highway, and it’s sad that people sometimes drive two hours to work at a shitty job and then drive two hours home and are too tired to spend time with their girlfriends, their wife, their kids, their friends. They’re grumpy, and when the economy sinks, they snap. They may be the nicest people but they snap because they are overstressed and can’t take it anymore. You can’t pay your rent. Most of the sicknesses–cancer, for example–come from stress. They are directly caused by stress.
What advice would you give people our age, people in the latter half of their twenties?
Discipline and Responsibility. With those two things you can become a rocket scientist. Whatever you learn in school…you can never really use it in real life. It was never my game. I was a dreamer; I was building castles in my brain. I couldn’t use anything I learned in school except those two things, discipline and responsibility. I had things to take care of. I never depended on a government to bail me out. I’m a citizen of the world. This is me. I also learned something from the movies. I learned form being an actor that I’m the center of the world. I am the center of the universe. Right now, Shane, with you…it’s like we’re shooting a movie. I’m the lead actor; you’re my co-lead. I decide if I want to shoot a Drama. I decide if I want to shoot a comedy. I want to shoot a cool movie every day, me as the lead actor. I love beauty around me because I don’t want to shoot a horror movie. My movie is cool! This is my life. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?
Yes, absolutely.
I told my wife to always act as if there’s a camera on her “because then,” I said, “you’ll always be a lady.” This is the secret. This is the key that few people understand. There’s a span from birth to death and you have to fill it up with fun. People look at Miami and say to me “Wow! You live in a nice place!” And I say “Why don’t you? You moved to Pittsburgh because of a job. I found a nice place, moved there, and then looked around and said, ‘what can I do?’” I never became a slave to a job or an income. I never did it for money. I did it to survive, to be happy. Kids ask me if an artist can make any real money. To that I say that there are plenty of artists out there who do what they love and bring in enough to support their family. If you want to make real money…become a bank robber or a bank director. I’ve been married for 40 years. Whatever I do, I have a wife who leans over in the morning and says, “I love you.” This is a success.
If you haven’t read the first part of this interview, please go here.
Category: ART, Beating the 9-5, BUSINESS, FEATURED, Interviews
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