I remember going to an art museum and staring blankly at a roll of lead. Not my thing.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked.
"It's a roll of lead," I said.
Taylor began to share with me the ideas and process the artist used to create the piece. Then the roll of lead began to look different. It seemed to have secrets, things you couldn't possibly know by looking at it, but if you had a Taylor by your side, then its mysteries would unfurl.
The roll of lead was just the beginning of my involuntary act of tuning in to Taylor's world. His obsessions were esoteric to say the least- one week it was fire-spinning, the next, photography of urinals. During our last months together in college, Taylor turned to Chekhov for inspiration, directing "The Black Monk" as a senior project. If you question the swing from toilets to the Russian masters, it is perhaps because his own life was such a volatile combination of the mundane and heroic. I didn't think I liked Chekhov, but I liked it in Taylor's hands.
Anyone who knew Taylor would have remarked on his cynical sense of humor, but more important than the veneer of caustic wit was his ability to uncover truths. He was able to absorb the great, the small, the cerebral, the inane and somehow extract the meaning behind it all.
--Hanna Dorn

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