Ashleigh Brilliant obit

Author Ashleigh Brilliant of Santa Barbara, 1933-2025

 

He was not on the list.

On Sept. 24, 2025, the world lost a wildly unique and wonderful human being, Ashleigh Brilliant. 

Following a brief illness, Ashleigh was confined to the hospital for three days. On the morning of his death, which also happened to be on Rosh Hashanah, and the day following a night of magnificent lightning and thunder, Ashleigh was with people who loved him deeply.

He rested comfortably listening to a few of his favorite songs and heard loving words of encouragement, telling him of the plan to take him home later in the day. 

Ashleigh’s death was quick, efficient, and completely on his terms. Thirty minutes after the last visitor had left his side, in the presence of one of his regular daily helpers, and without fanfare or medical assistance, Ashleigh simply closed his eyes and left the building.

Ashleigh Elwood Brilliant was born Dec. 9, 1933, the first child of Victor and Amelia Brilliant, and brother to Myrna Brilliant. Ash, as he’s known to his friends, was born in London, England, where he lived until the age of five.

In 1939, with the threat of World War II looming, Amelia Brilliant took her children to her hometown of Toronto, Canada, where they stayed until immigrating to the U.S. in 1941. 

Once in the U.S., they found a new home in Washington, DC. Ashleigh’s father was a civilian member of the British Admiralty Delegation and continued to work in London for many months after his wife and children had moved to Washington, DC. Eventually, Victor was able to rejoin the family, ending a years-long separation.

In 1947, the family returned to England, where they settled in Edgware, on the outskirts of London. After graduation, Ashleigh immigrated back to the U.S., choosing Southern California for what he thought would be his permanent home.

After a brief stint teaching at Hollywood High School, Ash relocated to San Jose, California, for college, then went on to UC Berkeley to earn a Ph.D in American history. 

Following graduation from UC Berkeley, he landed a teaching position aboard the “floating in university,” teaching history and geography while sailing twice around the world. The year was 1965.

Upon returning stateside, Ashleigh lived in San Francisco, where he “practiced public self therapy as an open air speaker in Golden Gate Park.” 

He was a self-described hippie, frequenting Haight-Ashbury and participating in the San Francisco counterculture scene. It was also during this phase of Ashleigh’s life that he began publishing his “Brilliant Thoughts” as postcards, wrote and recorded songs and generally exploded onto the creative scene with wit, wisdom and irreverence.

On his second floating university stint, Ash met Dorothy Tucker, the great-granddaughter of Capt. Charles P. Low, a clipper ship captain involved in the China trade who retired to Santa Barbara around the turn of the last century. 

Ashleigh and Dorothy married in 1968 and settled in Santa Barbara in 1973, establishing Brilliant Enterprises, running the business from their home on West Valerio Street.

Ashleigh was one of a kind. A long-time member of Mensa, a dedicated scholar and lifelong learner, there wasn’t a moment in any day when his mind or body were idle. Most of Ash’s hours were spent researching any topic one could think of. 

His many file cabinets attest to this, with hundreds of manila file folders stuffed with information, facts, and articles on everything from aardvarks to zucchini.

Ash appreciated music of all types, poetry, almost all literature, fine arts, the performing arts, and old movies. He disliked excessive noise, pollution, and above all he despised noise pollution. 

Beginning in the 1970s Ash took part in a campaign to ban leaf blowers, blaming them for unnecessary noise and dust. He stepped up his game in the late 1990s forming BLAST or Ban Leaf Blowers and Save our Town, who’s ballot initiative in November 1997 led to a ban on the use of gas powered-leaf blowers in the city of Santa Barbara. This civic reform was one of Ashleigh’s proudest accomplishments.

Ashleigh was complex. He had definite opinions and made them known to friends, family, and anyone he cared to share them with. His core beliefs were rooted in philosophy, science, religion, aesthetics and experience. 

That’s not to say he was religious. In fact, Ash was a self-declared atheist. An atheist with a startling command of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Tanakh and the Torah.

Raised in a Jewish household, Ash was familiar with Jewish spiritual values, teachings, customs and traditions. As a result of his years of world travel and study, he understood and appreciated the religious and cultural traditions of many peoples and societies around the world. 

Despite his rejection of organized religion, Ash never shied from a discussion or examination of religious or philosophical principles.

Ash was a man who adhered strictly to the codes of conduct he believed in, and almost nothing could sway him from a firm belief or a routine to which he had dedicated himself. One particularly charming example of this was Ash’s daily diary writing. 

On his 10th birthday, Ash was given a diary in which he immediately began to write about his daily activities, thoughts and musings. During his 80-plus ensuing years, there were no more than a handful of days in which Ash failed to write in his diary. This inaction was always due to logistical inability, never to a lack of desire.

Ash was a well-known local author, epigramologist and the creator of Pot Shots, postcards with witty and amusing sayings. All epigrams penned and published by Ashleigh were required to conform to rigid rules including: 

They must be no longer than 17 words (the same length as Japanese haiku); there must be no blatant reference to current political events, fashion or fads; there must be no rhyming or use of puns; the sentiment must be perpetual, universal and easily translatable; and the maximum number of Pot Shots was capped at 10,000 (which he hit years ago).

Another hard and fast rule Ashleigh lived by is that no one could use his copyrighted material without prior permission. If he found unauthorized use of his work, Ashleigh tenaciously went after the plagiarizer through legal means, seeking monetary compensation. He won many lawsuits, some against huge corporations. 

The author of many books, Ashleigh was also a long-time columnist for the Montecito Journal, writing a weekly column called “Brilliant Thoughts.” The column was submitted every Thursday morning directly after Ash had read the previous week’s column in the paper.

As with his epigrams, his articles conformed strictly to a self-imposed set of rules: nothing political, nothing faddish, nothing specifically related to current events, no commercial interest or intent, no repeat information or topic, and the article had to be exactly 750 words in length. 

The essays were written months before publication, to keep them from being topical. If a column seemed particularly relevant to the times, it was purely by coincidence.

Ashleigh has a Wikipedia page as well as a website, both of which have historical information about him and his work.

Ashleigh was predeceased by his parents, sister and wife Dorothy, who died in 2018. 

During the years following Dorothy’s death, Ash had daily helpers, all of whom eventually learned to balance companionship and care with Ash’s demand for independence and autonomy.

His helpers supported Ash during his two daily around-the-block walks, as well as during the walks he made from his home near the Old Mission to his West Valerio Street office. 

The long walks to the office stoped in 2024, but the neighborhood walks were never subject to cancellation. Rain or shine, even if it meant following behind Ash in the car as he made his way from point A to point B, Ash’s helper was there to ensure his safe arrival at point B. 

In the last several years of his life, Ash’s helpers became his friends, confidants and protectors. Each offered Ash a different gift and type of support, which he appreciated and expressed gratitude for.

Throughout his lifetime, the evenings belonged solely to Ash. Up until the end, he independently made his own dinner, wrote his evening diary entry, and prepared for a restful sleep. Lifelong routines and rituals provided Ash with a level of comfort, helping him maintain clarity of mind and personal independence.

If Ash had prepared for his death, he would’ve written a meaningful obituary acknowledging and thanking his many friends, fans and helpers. But alas, he was too busy researching or writing his next article, or gathering thoughts for his next email blast to thousands of fans and readers.

Without a doubt, Ash would have humbly thanked his good friend Sol for their enduring friendship and the constant supply of New Yorker magazines. He would also have thanked Chasity, his “angel” helper who, for the last three years, kept him on the straight and narrow path of making the most of each day and being grateful for the health he enjoyed.

A memorial will be held for Ashleigh at a later date. If you are interested in attending, please contact Stacey Wright at staceywrightsb.com, and you’ll be updated as to the date, time and place of the celebration of Ash’s life.

He was best known for his Pot-Shots, single-panel illustrations with one-line humorous remarks, which began syndication in the United States in 1975. The Wall Street Journal described Brilliant in a 1992 profile as "history's only full time, professional published epigrammatist". 

At one time, there was some confusion and controversy as to the ownership and recognition of Brilliant's distinctive art form. In a copyright infringement suit filed by him, a United States federal judge ruled that, while short phrases are not eligible for copyright, Brilliant's works were epigrams and therefore copyrightable (Brilliant v. W.B. Productions Inc., 1979).

While Brilliant employed a self-imposed limit of 17 words per epigram, he wrote and published 41 with 18 words and one with 19 words. Once discovered, all of these were corrected and re-published by him.

In 1999 he authored the "Y1K Crisis" article which parodies the "Y2K Crisis" of 1999.

In his 1998 book Information Liberation, Brian Martin cites Brilliant as a "professional epigrammatist" who has been known to threaten legal action in order to display his market precedence over legally owned fragments of human language, thus managing to reveal one of the many absurdities behind "intellectual property", namely its ability to limit the free use and dissemination of human expression. When Brilliant found someone who has "used" one of his epigrams, he contacted them demanding a payment for breach of copyright. For instance, in 1991 television journalist David Brinkley wrote a book, Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion, the title of which he attributed to a friend of his daughter. Brilliant contacted Brinkley about copyright violation, concerned that this friend had been "subconsciously quoting" an aphorism that Brilliant had copyrighted in 1974. Random House, Brinkley's publisher, paid Brilliant $1000 without contesting the issue