“We are userers whenever we make demands upon others as a return for our actions or gifts; whenever we say or subtly feel that we are owed something or by life itself.”
THE CREATIVE LIFE
THE DESIRE LINES HALF-DAY WORKSHOP HAS ARRIVED!
THE FIRST DESIRE LINES HALF-DAY WORKSHOP HAS ARRIVED: SAT. DEC 5, 2020, 8:45 AM-1 PM PST!
ARCOSANTI
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Arcosanti has been called an “experimental city,” ” an “urban laboratory,” a “caravanserai.” Seventy miles north of Phoenix, the 25-acre compound, built on a 4,060-acre land preserve, rises from the desert like a mirage. The project was the brainchild of “visionary” Paolo Soleri (1919-2013). Arcology—a concept combining […]
G.K.CHESTERTON: I AM
Legend has it that around 1910, The Times posed the question to a selection of eminent writers and thinkers: “What’s Wong with the World?” “Dear Sirs,” G.K. Chesterton replied: “I am.”
WHOEVER I AM
“I am a question-asker and a truth-seeker. I do not have much in the way of status in life, nor security. I have been on quest, as it were, from the beginning. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me: no ambition, no interest in tenure, always on the march, changing […]
LOTUSLAND
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Madame Ganna Walska (1887-1984) was the type of Southern Californian eccentric over whom people from back East love to roll their eyes, muttering “land of the fruits and the nuts.” Born Hanna Puacz in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, she was an opera singer who was married six times. […]
HARROWED: LIFE LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN
IT IS HERE. My newest book. the back cover copy. “This is the story of the garden: my first, and perhaps my last. I started it at the age of 64. I’m 68 now. The garden brings me satisfaction, beauty, astonishment, joy. The garden also requires an inordinate amount of worry and work. When I […]
THE CELLIST: GREGOR PIATIGORSKY
Violinist Isaac Stern recalls watching Piatigorsky maneuver a cello through a narrow corridor of orchestral musicians. “He would hold it at shoulder height, straight ahead, as he walked—a magnificent gesture and a lesson to me in the need to establish a certain character of one’s own when coming onstage.”
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
Then I learned that when he died, a 40-plus-year-old letter from Riborg Voigt, the first woman he ever loved (of course unrequited), was found in a little leather pouch around his neck. That was when I knew Hans and I were soul-mates.
KIMSOOJA
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: A little of “performance art” can often go a very long way. So when a friend sent me an Art21 video by a Korean-born female artist named Kimsooja, I steeled myself. The adoption of a single name—Michelangelo! Madonna! Prince!—I did not take as a good sign. […]
HORACE PIPPIN
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: I first came upon the painter Horace Pippin on a trip several years ago to Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, an art collection and educational institution boasting one of the world’s greatest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modernist paintings. Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), a wealthy businessman with cash to […]
WHAT WE’RE OBLIGATED TO SEE
I’ve been working on getting my next book, HARROWED: LIFE LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN, in publishable shape. And getting the dox together to apply for Irish citizenship. And writing my weekly column. And having many conversations per week with the many people of prayer, thought and heart who keep me afloat.
TIME TO THINK
Over the freakishly hot weekend, I enjoyed a couple of days indoors of reading, resting, pondering, and writing in my journal–and in the process learned some unsavory but nonetheless quite welcome things about myself!
ART WORTH DYING FOR: JAMES DICKSON INNES
Born in Llanelli, Innes studied at Carmarthen Art School and the Slade. A colleague there noted that he ‘was of middle height, black haired and thin featured, handsome to many people… there may have been something satanic in his look.”… He was already dying of tuberculosis, having been diagnosed at 21.