Well, not being brought up in the USA, I wouldn't have been exposed to Shel's children's oeuvre, so it just shows to go ya that Playboy really did have readers. That's where I met the gent - only second-hand, sorry to say - but better that way than not at all.
I get this constant feeling that people with extraordinary artistic qualities quite often don't have the best private life; perhaps it's nature's way of not only compensating, but providing a lifelong distraction from other things outwith the person's ability to change.
Yes, Vincent Van Gogh provides an extreme example, but I did a short photo/scribble piece for myself a couple of months ago on the topic of suicides, and from researching it, it was very clear to me that artists can be very easily driven there. It's easy to have it, art, become a very dangerous obsession.
But there might be a distinct possibility that unhappiness through failure to integrate well with the wider society is almost guaranteed some artists; where there exists the imperative to earn one's keep, the separation between the person's art and the commercial versions that may or may not subsidise the former can lead to dreadful pressure.
I had my own moment of decision almost at the start of my career: I found myself on the steps of a church about to shoot the arrival of a bride. At that moment I realised that it was better to stop doing stuff I detested and go for what I craved, and that if I couldn't make it there, it was better quitting the entire photographic enterprise and doing anything, as far from photography as I could go. Fortunately, that was one of my better moments, and it paid off - after a pretty lean time.
Rob
