A local TSA agent looked at my ID and said, “Warren Epstein? Like the movie critic?”

I smiled. It had been a minute since I reviewed movies or worked as entertainment editor for The Gazette. I half expected the guy to pick a fight about my “Lord of the Rings” review from 2001.

He didn’t, but it was flattering just to be remembered, and not like my buddy (and former Gazette city editor Bill Vogrin), who often taunts me with, “Didn’t you used to be Warren Epstein?”

Funny guy. I could do without the ego-stroking of local fame. But I do miss connecting with The Gazette readership, even when it was just somebody calling to complain about a review.

Since my Gazette days, I’ve worked in marketing — including at the Fine Arts Center before it joined Colorado College (more on that in an coming column), helped rebrand the Business of Art Center as the Manitou Art Center, and helped promote the Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival. I’ve done an entertainment radio talk show, a bunch of freelancing, and recently retired as communications director at Pikes Peak State College.

Retirement. I had dreams of beaches and pina coladas. But those dreams don’t fit my reality. My mind moves at a New York pace, so I’ll give the beach 15 minutes before bugging my wife about what we’re doing next.

I’d been at this in-between space, writing and performing in plays and freelancing for some local publications, when Gazette Executive Editor Vince Bzdek called, suggesting I write an arts column for him.

I don’t think I’ll ever do a 9-5 again, if I can help it. But writing a monthly column about the arts? That sounded like fun. More than fun, it sounded like the best way to get back into something I’m positively reverential about.

To me, the arts have always been more than casual diversions. A teacher I once met made an analogy that stuck with me. He compared the arts to the communication of birds in flight — the way geese fly in a chevron formation. How they keep just the right distance from one another, and know when to swap out as lead and drop back to the back of the V and vice versa. Thousands of subtle movements of their beaks, wing feathers, talons. In so many ways, they’re all saying the same thing: “I am here. … I am here. … I am here.”

How we dance. What we paint. The worlds we create on our stages. They tell other humans where we are, right now. And right now. And right now. And in doing that, we show people how they’re not alone.

The joy and responsibility of an artist, in any medium, to communicate with beauty and authenticity who they are, what they see, what they fear,and what they love, can be freeing as well as daunting. They expose themselves.

This column will celebrate those courageous acts. My life since The Gazette, working on the other side of the curtains, watching and participating in how the arts sausages are made, has given me a broader perspective.

I hope that broader perspective will help me share insights about our local and global arts, where they’ve been, where they are now and where they’re going.

That’s a bit of a lofty goal, I know. But as I move into this next phase of my life, I’ve become more aware of the wind against my face, the forces that shift my position in the world, ruffle my feathers, and, more than ever, I’m hearing the calls of artists: “I am here.”

I appreciate The Gazette for giving me this new flight of fancy, and a new way to connect with this outrageously talented community that has always kept me aloft.