When I experience or even hear about gestures of civility, I’m thankful. The alternative to endless vitriol offers profound potentials for invention, for growth, and even pleasure. On Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for demonstrations of people finding ways simply to treat each other well, or at least with respect.
Read MoreINVISIBLE WORLD
The difference between everything that’s come before and the last two seconds (relatively speaking) is that media now shows us things that were otherwise invisible, as opposed to made up. We now seamlessly blend our intake of special effects—impossible events, like superheroes flying over skyscrapers—with otherwise unseeable events—things like slo-mo, high speed, and highly dynamic color correction. We practically expect it, demand it. We count on augmented experiences that transcend our unassisted human abilities, and we feel like there’s something unsatisfying if our media experiences don’t show us physics-defying phenomenon.
Read MoreTHE MARGINALIZATION OF ORIGINS
In an era with seemingly endless, ubiquitous invention and creation, how could we ever have time for all of the books we told ourselves we ought to read, all of the old black and white movies we thought might enjoy late at night on the couch, all nine of Gustav Mahler’s superb, challenging symphonies?
Read MoreROCKING MY INNER MENDELSSOHN
Music colors many experiences when we’re young, and as a soundtrack of our great potential it always reminds us about what we were hoping to become
Read MoreIT'S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME
Find a crack in the road: fix it. Cause a foolish fender bender: learn from it. Develop a better highway ramp: build it. In the churning, maddening mass of growling engines, I sometimes cling to the thought that genuine progress might be afoot.
Read MoreRICHARD WAGNER IN TEL AVIV
When we respectfully engage those who philosophically challenge us or even provoke anger, we open the potential for new understanding and a wider middle ground. Perhaps that’s the most profound value of a creative life in the first place.
Read MoreEVIDENCE OF HUMANITY
The lights in the darkness are evidence that people have accumulated themselves and their energies. Behind these lights are stories and sorrows, triumphs and traumas, pleasures and, above all, perseverance. In the bright patches of light shining from a darkened globe there are concentrations of humanity, and come what may, they represent forces beyond any singular individual anywhere.
Read MoreTHE WALKING DEAD
That mortal fantasy is the crux of the show’s genius and the singular reason why it’s so successful. Without a complex and sophisticated playbook of narrative rules governing the program’s engine, the action would be little more than splashing around in a shallow pool. Instead, The Walking Dead taps into a deep sea of anxieties and simultaneous wish fulfillment and social means testing.
Read MoreELATION (1st of a two part series)
Filled with lightness your heart is so full: it's not crazy at all to think the novel that you've been longing to write could just come out, right now— I'll just drop into my seat for a moment or two, sketch it out—easy!—and fill in the blanks this afternoon! Anything is possible. Songs come into being unbidden. Hunger makes you feel good, as if those cranky pangs were just life's way of helping you savor your own wonderful, scintillating senses. You must have been doing something substantial to grow so hungry, right? Right on!
Read MoreTHE PROBLEM WITH POLITICS
The creative process is one of figuring something out that has little to do with gaining popularity. Politics, conversely, is all about popularity. Politics is about getting enough people to like you so that you can do things to perpetuate the trend of people liking you. Creativity is about solving problems.
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