Walking through the lobby of the Peabody Institute, the sound of piano practice and chamber music reverberates through the marble building. The esteemed conservatory has been a classical training ground for young musicians and composers since the mid-1800s, but Peabody’s newest major pivots away from the traditional.

Last fall, Thomas Dolby, 1980s synth-pop pioneer of “She Blinded Me With Science” fame, and Chris Kennedy, a Baltimore-based composer, formed the four-year Music for New Media program to prepare students for the modern-day requirements of the music business. “These days, everybody is working remotely using the same piece of software,” says Dolby, commenting on the collaborative nature of film composition. “Dialogue, sound effects, and music are all being changed at the same time.”

During the first year of the program, students learn the ways of “linear” music composition, which is used to write music for film and television. First-year students spend their time in the Music for New Media classroom plugging away at projects such as composing original scores for famous movie scenes on industry-standard programming environments.

The following year, students experiment with “non-linear” media, such as games, virtual reality, and augmented reality scenarios. Sophomore Avery Tyler has grown attached to the composition of video game music, despite not playing video games growing up. “I went from thinking, ‘This is a way to further my music career’ to thinking, ‘Wow, I actually really like this!’” Tyler says.

While the major has only been around for two years, many students have already found opportunities for composition work through the Johns Hopkins network. Several have scored for films and animations made by MICA students, or, in the case of sophomore Jolene Shao, a theme song for a Chinese web series and a jingle for a rice commercial. The program is the first of its kind in a conservatory-style school, and it shifts Peabody toward the likes of technical schools, such as Berklee College of Music. Now, students can learn about programming and the music business while also continuing their violin training.

Outside of teaching the students about media scoring, Dolby hopes to imbue them with a sense of fearlessness toward the uncharted territories that technology opens up. “The best thing I have to teach these guys is, how, as an artist, do you respond to a new challenge?” Dolby says. “Technology is evolving all the time, and pop culture is evolving all the time. How do you respond to that and express yourself with new media?”

You’ve heard his voice on that iconic ’80s classic, “She Blinded Me With Science.” Now, electronic musician, tech trailblazer, and Johns Hopkins professor Thomas Dolby has penned a chronicle of his life, The Speed of Sound. He joined us to talk about how he decided to write the book, the electronic music scene, and what instruments he’s playing now.

When did you know that you wanted to write your memoir?
I was approached a couple of years ago, right about the time I came here, by a publisher, asking if I wanted to do a sort of music-tech business book. It didn’t really appeal to me, but it did prompt me to dig up some old diaries and journals I had, and they were really interesting to read because there was no context to them. And then I thought if I could string the journals together, fill in the gaps, and resist the temptation to editorialize, it would be more interesting than a retrospective. That idea got me an agent and the agent got me a meeting with the publisher, and I had about two meetings with the publisher and handed in the first draft and they said, ‘This is great. In the next draft, can we expect to see a continuous first person, past tense narrative instead of the journal thing?’ Apparently that’s not really en vogue these days. I was thinking it would be kind of fun to read something like Go Ask Alice.

It’s amazing that you had those journals because the level of detail that you have in the book allows the stories to flow seamlessly.
Well, a lot of them I have very clear memories of. But my memory is definitely selective. It’s a good thing that I had [my wife] Kathleen to remind me of what really happened. But it was interesting also because with the first draft, there were half a dozen people that I really wanted to read it and give me feedback, as it’s the first book I’ve written. So I sent it around to a few people thinking I’d get some constructive criticism, and the first thing they wanted to do was fix themselves in the book.

Did you listen?
I did. Chances are none of them are going to write a book like this, so I’m sort of telling their stories as well as mine. You have to be a little bit responsible. But I thought I’d apologize later.

You are very honest in the book, telling the good and the bad. Were there any stories that you balked about including?
Not really. Certainly as far as career stuff, I felt that if it had charm, it would be because you want to slap this guy around and say, ‘Oh, no no, it’s so glaring obvious of what needs to happen here.’ It would be a mistake to go back and whitewash it. On the more personal front, I was a little bit torn because it’s not stuff I’ve talked about in interviews, and it’s not stuff people ask—family life, disappointments, romances, that usually isn’t what people ask me. I was in two minds about whether to put that stuff in and whether it was ok to intrude into the privacy of people close to me. But I decided to do it really because the balance of the whole thing was crucial.

If it was just a business book, then I think people would be saying, as my kids did, ‘Why isn’t this guy a multi-millionaire?’ The answer is that I’ve always just been drawn to artistic possibilities, and as long as I can pay the rent that’s the choice I’ll make, against the better judgment of business people around me. And I just always wanted to keep my humanity through all of it, and it’s very easy when you’re the center of attention to lose that. I needed the book to reflect that that was a struggle.

It seemed like there have been several ethical dilemmas in your life that really determined what path you took, and it seems like that’s one of the things that’s most important to you is maintaining your ethical standards.
When I got stung for whatever reason—like the first time I was really close to getting a record deal and the evening before they canceled for no reason (which was either a U-turn on the part of the record company or that my then–manager had been trying to do something underhanded behind my back)—I was determined that I was going to try and counter that type of behavior with a similar type of behavior myself. I was going to try and be above that. Similar things happened in the tech industry as well, where I felt left down. In most cases it wasn’t deliberately spiteful or destructive, it was more that somebody else thought they were doing their job and I was the scapegoat. My solution to problems has always been creativity. When I was in a fix, I would always just go back to inventing my way out of it, and in a lot of cases, that was the only solution that I had. I’m not very good at politics.

Have you noticed anything specifically going on with you creatively since you moved to Baltimore?
I’ve been pretty busy teaching, so I haven’t been creating a lot of new stuff. I think as I’m teaching film scoring that it’s time I did another film score.

What kind of movie do you think you’d like to score?
Generally speaking the more cinematic a movie is, the more one notices the score. Oscar winning score are often for Dances With Wolves or Out of Africa or Gravity. There’s a lot of Hollywood blockbusters post Gladiator that have all been kind of same in terms of the approach to the score—the thundering drums and the choirs and the random ethnic instruments thrown in along with the giant orchestra.

Like the Verdi Requiem mixed with drumming.
Exactly. So that’s not particular interesting to me. I really enjoy working with so-called real instruments, and I enjoy that a lot more nowadays than twiddling knobs for months on end. I’d be happy to do an indie type movie with real emotions, because the most interesting thing about film scoring is the universality of music. If I find a chord change that affects me in a certain way, then I’ve often wondered, Will the audience perceive it the same way? But amazingly it turns out that it does.

With my music, and the feedback I get from forums and the Internet, people would talk about the same chord change emotionally like I felt when I was composing it. That’s a very gratifying feeling, and if your choice as a film composer is to underline what’s going on onscreen, do you stop short of manipulating the audience and telling them how to feel about something? You work with the director, but you’re also just a name on a crew sheet along with costumes and make up and all that. Collectively, you create an atmosphere.

What has it been like for you to watch the electronic music scene evolve?
It’s amazing to watch. When I started out, electronic instruments were very rarified and hard to get your hands on. They weren’t very reliable, they didn’t stay in tune, and they were all programmed manually, so if you spent hours working on something and then went to get some sleep and somebody came in and dusted and touched the wrong thing it would mess it all up. Or you’d trip on one of the chords and you’d be back to square one. Over time, they became a lot more accessible. You could save your work, and then there were libraries of sounds that you could buy that were programmed by someone else, so you could just focus on playing. So instead of renting studio time, you could just make music in the back of a coffee shop or whatever, and thousands more people had access to it. I was fortunate enough to dive into it and work with it. That’s a situation that I’ve always been very drawn to because I get a thrill out of working in an area that hasn’t been defined yet.

Generally speaking, when something crosses the chasm and goes mainstream, it looses its appeal for me. At each stage in my career, I kind of plunged in when no one had written the rulebook yet. That’s a really exciting place to be for me. If I feel like I’m one of a crowd of people who are jumping on a bandwagon, it’s not very stimulating.

Do you think it’s a good thing that so many more people are involved in it?
I think it’s definitely elevated the field, and even in the pop charts, you’re hearing the trickle down effect of all of that experimentation that’s going on at an underground level. That’s interesting and needed. I don’t go out to clubs much, so I don’t really understand the alternate dance music scene, but it’s very interesting to see the way it’s progressed. In the early 1980s, those of us who were using electronics were really struggling against this perception that it’s not real music, it’s got no feel, it’s got no soul to it.

The fact that, by the end of the ’80s it had gone more mainstream, and there were a lot of cool artists who were starting to use electronics rather than guitars and drums. A great example is Joy Division, who were sort of the prototypical indie guitar band, and suddenly started using synths. That was really a signal to bands of that ilk that it was ok to experiment with that stuff. And once they were doing that, they thought, why were we so snooty about it?

What instruments are you working with now?
I tend to start with the piano. It’s sort of ground zero for me. And I especially like that with a piano you don’t have to plug it in or anything. Any time you plug in a keyboard for the first time, you invariably hit a note, and there’s no sound, and you have to figure out why. I’m actually sometimes tempted to take up another instrument altogether and go and take lessons somewhere and not tell them who I am. Like go in a coffee shop and take one of those tags for French horn lessons.

What do you think you learned while you were writing this book?
I suppose that memory is quite selective. I think I became more aware of the pattern of the choices I’ve made throughout my life, including the mistakes. If Hollywood licensed this book and made a biopic, they’d have to change quite a lot because it’s not really the typical story. I think they’d want to fix things so I got the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I sometimes wonder if I’d just tweaked things slightly if that would be the case.

The fact is I’ve never needed to struggle with a choice that I’ve made based on how I’m going to pay the rent, how am I going to pay the mortgage. I’ve always been able to go, ‘Wow, that sounds really cool’ and go for it. And that’s an enviable position for any artist, really. It’s absolutely ideal. There’s no body I’d rather swap places with.

The Speed of Sound

By Thomas Dolby (Flatiron Books)

From the beginning, Thomas Dolby’s memoir is an honest depiction of how life doesn’t always turn out as planned. The books starts with Dolby—the pioneering electronic musician behind hits like “She Blinded Me With Science”—attempting to pitch songs to Michael Jackson (yes, the King of Pop himself) from a pay phone outside Dolby’s tour bus in the middle of Nevada. Sadly, Jackson doesn’t retain the Englishman’s songwriting services. But instead of bemoaning his bad luck, Dolby accepts—as he does throughout his career, including when his first recording deal falls through—that the entertainment industry is a roller-coaster ride and that he would rather keep his head up and look for the next opportunity. This path leads him from his days as an MTV star to a software startup in Silicon Valley, and finally to his current position as a professor at The Johns Hopkins University. Filled with reminiscences about the likes of Foreigner, David Bowie, and Shane MacGowan, The Speed of Sound is an enlightening account of a man who has lived life at his own tempo.

See our full interview with writer Thomas Dolby.

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Food Fight

By McKay Jenkins (Avery)

As GMOs—or genetically modified organisms like aspartame, sugar beets, and hydrogenated vegetable oil—have become prevalent in our food, their presence has ignited a contentious debate as the world decides whether these scientific advances are hurtful or helpful. Supporters say GMOs are our gastronomic future, as they have the potential to increase the food supply for an ever growing global population. Critics believe they are just another way for multi-national corporations to control our food system and make us more reliant on processed, unhealthy food. Baltimore writer McKay Jenkins, who teaches at the University of Delaware, explores this polarizing issue with great depth in his latest book. He takes the reader behind the scenes to scientists developing GMO crops for underserved areas and activists on the front lines of the fight to rid their communities of these engineered crops. Though Food Fight at times loses the reader in the depths of heavily detailed debates, Jenkins provides excellent context and analysis for a question we will grapple with for years to come.

On August 8, Thomas Dolby will bring his tour home to Baltimore armed with a classic Roland TR-808 drum machine (the 8/08 date is no coincidence), a projector screen, 40 years of experience, and no setlist.

For the final show of his tour, Thomas Dolby: An Evening of Music and Storytelling, Dolby will take apart hits and deep cuts as chosen by the audience and put them back together again using a couple of keyboards, a drum pad, and a laptop. The whole process will be shown onscreen behind the artist, giving those in attendance an exclusive look inside the creative process.

“In many cases, my songs sound quite complicated and sophisticated,” Dolby says. “But when people see them built from the ground up, they realize that actually they’re built on quite simple building blocks. They can see on those large video screens the output from my laptop, and then see me actually building the songs as I go and hear the components and then hear them performed in full, so it gives people a very powerful insight into the process behind those songs.”

While most people might recognize Dolby from the video for his 1982 hit “She Blinded Me with Science” or 1984’s “Hyperactive!,” he says he actually gets the strongest response from fans with deeper cuts. Luckily for them, they’re the ones choosing what direction the night at Center Stage might take. And there are many paths to go down. Some lead to anecdotes about playing with Roger Water at the Berlin Wall, others toward memories of performing at Live Aid with David Bowie, who introduced him to the estimated 1.9 billion watching as “very brilliant.”

Whichever direction the audience decides to go, Dolby is prepared with his setup and a lifetime of photo and video archives to help illustrate his long and collaborative career.

The show caps off a summer of touring, but there won’t be any rest for Dolby, who has been at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute since 2014. This fall, he welcomes his first class of students in the Music for New Media program, many of whom he personally recruited. These students will be the next generation of experimental musicians, learning to compose for virtual and augmented reality.

“Linear media like film and TV have a hundred years of history and legacy behind it, but with a VR experience, for example, there is no formulaic way to approach it,” Dolby say. “So it will be fascinating to see how the students take it on. They’ll be the ones that will create the new guidelines, not people of my generation.”

How do you teach a line of work that is only just getting it’s start? Well, that’s the tricky part. Students and teacher will be learning the intricacies of composing for new forms of media together, but Dolby’s lifetime of experimentation and looking at problems new ways will lend themselves to the task.

“These are super smart kids,” he says. “Some of them are brilliant virtuoso violinists or concert pianists that have been trained in a classical sense to far higher degree than I ever was. But what I have to share with them is a career of experience and a sort of willingness to experiment with new technology and techniques. And that’s hopefully what will rub off on my students.”

But it was the moments that you would spontaneously encounter that made this night special, allowing you see how it could become an annual Baltimore tradition.

You might happen upon a bundled-up crowd clustered around Baltimore artist Paul Rucker playing his cello and handing out twinkling star lights to anyone who answered questions related to his work that focuses on the history of Baltimore’s slave trade. At the end of his performance, he asked the star holders to wave their lights, and told them, “You’re all bright stars, don’t forget that.”

Or as you walked underneath the shimmering Pixel Promenade, you’d hear gasps of delight as parents lifted children up to get a better look at the vibrant lights. Or you’d hear the cheers of the crowd when bike riders who were part of the “Dear Baltimore” light work peddled by, their neon letters giving the City That Reads a great reminder—“Read Baltimore.”

Yes, the advisory-strength gusts did wreak havoc and the installation Labyrinth had to be taken down, though organizers hope the work will be back up soon. The lantern parade also kicked off when it wasn’t quite dark enough for lights to shine brightly (begging the question—did anyone remember daylight savings time?), as was also the case when soul group Bosley rocked the Harbor East stage at 7 p.m.

The exceptional moments continued in one of the last events of the night—a performance by legendary ’80s synth-pop musician and Johns Hopkins University professor Thomas Dolby, who took the main stage wearing a lab coat and a paperboy cap that held a pair of his signature, steam-punk goggles. “Baltimore, you look beautiful!” he declared enthusiastically.

When the opening notes of arguably his biggest hit “She Blinded Me With Science” thumped across the stage, Dolby invited out two young dancers, who popped and locked along with the beat, alongside a duo of belly dancers rhythmically swaying their hips. Their enthusiasm was contagious, enlivening the crowd of young and old, black and white.

When the dancers clasped hands to take their bows, you could feel the crowd’s excitement as they celebrated the collaboration and artistic talent that makes Baltimore so unique.

On a recent Wednesday morning, a dapper fellow in a fedora and black overcoat pilots a wooden skiff towards the wharf at South Ann Street. He silences the puttering outboard and drifts toward a cleat in the walk across from Bonaparte Breads. After tying up the boat and ascending a ladder to the cobblestone street, he points out a “No Docking” sign. “I hope I don’t get a ticket,” he says, in a distinctly English accent that suggests he pronounces Thames Street differently than the locals. At the Daily Grind, he orders an espresso and an Odwalla strawberry drink and turns a few heads on his way to a table in the back. As he passes, a woman in hospital scrubs mouths to her tablemate, “Who is that?” The tablemate shrugs.

Daily Grind regulars are accustomed to spotting the occasional celebrity since the days when Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire cast members came in for caffeine fixes. But the natty, seafaring Englishman isn’t an actor—he’s Thomas Dolby, the 1980s pop star (“She Blinded Me with Science”) and tech whiz, who recently relocated to Fells Point and started teaching at The Johns Hopkins University.

“I enjoy the vibe around Fells Point,” Dolby says, between sips. “This street in particular reminds me of the London Docklands, although that area has undergone a lot of redevelopment and isn’t as well preserved as this. There is a sense of history here.”

Dolby, exuding an engaging combination of English civility and intellectual curiosity, mentions the architecture, a faded “Wagon Repair” sign near his home, whiffs of H&S Bakery and Domino Sugar in the air, and the carpenters and electricians he sees around the neighborhood. “It’s a real place,” he says. “I like that.”

He also likes the fact that he doesn’t need a car, as he prefers getting around the city by bus, bicycle, and, weather permitting, boat. These days, he’s a regular presence around Hopkins’s Homewood campus and Station North, where Hopkins and MICA are redeveloping the Centre and Parkway theaters along North Avenue to house the schools’ joint film and media programs.

Dolby will be the artistic director of the Program in Sound on Film at Station North. He’s a curious choice if you only know him as a Reagan-era MTV phenom. But anyone familiar with Dolby’s career understands that, in many ways, he’s been preparing for the Hopkins gig his entire life.

“It makes use of all the things I’ve done,” notes Dolby. “It’s a perfect fit.”

He was born Thomas Robertson in London to a middle-class family steeped in academia and took his stage name from the Dolby noise-reduction system. His father was a professor of classical Greek art and archaeology who “basically lived in the fourth century B.C.,” says Dolby. “He was the epitome of the absent-minded professor.”

His mother was “very dynamic,” a math teacher with six children, of which Thomas was the youngest. His siblings would become teachers, like their parents.

Dolby grew up in Oxford and spent time traveling around Europe, sometimes accompanying his father on archaeological digs. “For a long time, I didn’t think I had much in common with him,” says Dolby, “but then I realized it’s all about storytelling. During the period he was interested in, stories were told through oral poetry and painting on pots. I tell my stories through songs.”

“It’s all crap! The Beatles, Genesis, all rubbish! We should be listening to Iggy Pop and MC5.”

Dolby graduated from Abingdon School—a boarding school that dates back to the 13th century and counts the members of Radiohead as alums—at the age of 16. By that time, he’d developed wide-ranging musical tastes. His early interest in singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen evolved into a fascination with jazz composers such as Dave Brubeck. He got into Motown, the Allman Brothers, and prog-rockers like Genesis and Pink Floyd. He was even a Deadhead for a while.

But Shane MacGowan, who later formed The Pogues, pointed him in an entirely different direction. MacGowan possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of music and presided over a group of fellow aficionados that met at a local cafe. The group included Dolby, who recalls the day MacGowan pounded his fist on a table and insisted, “It’s all crap! The Beatles, Genesis, all rubbish! We should be listening to Iggy Pop, MC5, and [ex-New York Dolls guitarist] Johnny Thunders instead.”

The group gasped. “It was a slap in the face,” says Dolby, “but also exciting and rebellious, which had its appeal.”

Dolby played keyboards, an instrument shunned by early punk bands, so he mixed sound and worked as a roadie instead. But he became increasingly intrigued by the possibilities of electronic music and started building his own synthesizers, which he found more interesting and stimulating than punk’s primitivism. It wasn’t long before he was making music of his own, touring with new wave singer Lene Lovich, and doing session work. (In fact, that’s Dolby playing synthesizer on Foreigner 4, including the hits “Urgent” and “Waiting for a Girl Like You.”)

Dolby used the money he earned to record his debut disc, 1982’s The Golden Age of Wireless. It didn’t sell well at first and received just a handful of reviews that tended to characterize Dolby as a marginal, but intriguing, act. But MTV was generating interest in new artists, so Dolby’s record label bankrolled a video to help jump-start sales.

When the director bailed to work on Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” instead, Dolby directed the video for “She Blinded Me with Science.” He also came up with the “Home for Deranged Scientists” concept and starred in the clip, which drew heavily on his love of silent film and the anti-hero personas of Chaplin and Keaton. “I was more comfortable with that,” he says, “because I never wanted to be an alpha-male frontman like Sting or something.”

The video was a huge success and catapulted Dolby to the top of the charts and international stardom. He quickly found himself playing sold-out tours, appearing at Live Aid (in David Bowie’s band), and performing at the Grammys alongside Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder. “It was delightfully unexpected, a mad time,” he recalls. “I felt like a fish in a bowl, and I definitely appreciated escaping back to my real life.”

Going forward, he scored a few films and pursued more idiosyncratic music that reflected his diverse tastes. His 1992 album, Astronauts and Heretics, for instance, featured guest appearances by Jerry Garcia, Eddie Van Halen, Cajun accordionist Wayne Toups, and Israeli singer Ofra Haza. That sort of eclecticism won Dolby critical praise and wowed loyal fans, but it cost him commercially.

Then, he didn’t release any new music for almost 20 years. He was on to other things.

Dolby was already working with technology firms, designing synthesizers and developing audio software, when he moved to Silicon Valley in the early 1990s. It was an ideal location for him and his wife, the actress Kathleen Beller (who played Kirby Anders on TV’s Dynasty), to raise their three children, and it was the perfect time and place for a techie to do business.

“Things were frenetic, and everyone was full of optimism,” recalls Dolby. “If you had a business plan on a napkin, you could get it funded.”

Dolby formed his own company, Headspace, which helped pioneer mobile ringtones. Headspace also forged partnerships with the likes of Netscape and Yahoo and developed an audio engine, Beatnik, that Nokia embedded in its mobile phones. At one point, the Beatnik technology was used in two-thirds of the world’s mobile phones. “Eventually, it became more about marketing than innovation, and that wasn’t very interesting to me,” says Dolby, who started entertaining the idea of getting into the “family business”—teaching.

“I felt like a fish in a bowl, and I definitely appreciated escaping back to my real life.”

After a stint as musical director for TED conferences and a multimedia tour for a documentary, The Invisible Lighthouse, that he filmed and scored himself, Dolby considered teaching positions in Boston, New York, and Baltimore. The combination of Hopkins and the Station North project sold him on Baltimore. “Hopkins was looking for a blend,” he says, “someone with relatively recent film experience and a handle on the technology. They basically hired me to teach music for film, which I feel semi-qualified to do, but I know I can assist in other areas, as well.”

Jeffrey Sharkey, Peabody Institute’s director at the time Dolby was hired, understood that. Sharkey said he expected Dolby to “enrich a number of fields at Hopkins and the Peabody Conservatory—from film and recording arts to computer science to business.”

To some extent, it’s already happening. “He’s proven to be an enthusiastic and effective supporter of our initiatives in Station North,” says Linda DeLibero, director of film and media studies at Hopkins. “He is a crucial part of the program’s plan to expand our work with Peabody in sound and composition for film.”

DeLibero notes that Dolby “has been game for anything, including performing ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ at Hopkins so many times that it’s fittingly become our unofficial JHU anthem.”

The class Dolby teaches, “Sound on Film,” is comprised of film and music students who, under his direction, collaborate on scoring their short films. Dolby has a firm handle on the technology, and he’s working on sharpening his classroom skills. “I’m not good yet at getting them to open up,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I need to get better at drawing it out of them, because they’re fairly quiet in class. But when they write their assignments, they’re absolutely brilliant.”

Dolby has also provided input on the layout of the new Station North facilities and the types of courses that should be offered in the future. He cites a need for keeping up with developments in episodic television and mentions the impact of locally filmed shows like House of Cards and Veep. He’s particularly intrigued by the potential of DIY filmmaking, because “the barriers to creating your own show are now down to nothing. It’s like what happened in the music world fifteen to twenty years ago when people could just dive in and make music on their computers. That’s what’s happening in film right now.”

Despite his high profile, Dolby stresses that he sees himself as a mouthpiece for the project, not some sort of savior. “As a Johnny-come-lately, I have little right to speak to any of the larger issues at play,” he says, noting his aversion to politics. “But I also realize it’s an exciting time to be here, in Baltimore and Station North.

“You know, this will be an amazing accomplishment if we can pull it off, and I just want to be part of it. I want to help tell the story.”

That said, Dolby departs the coffee shop and returns to his boat. He hasn’t gotten a ticket.

Within minutes, he’s off again, headed across the harbor toward something that’s caught his eye.