An Eclectic Journal of the Arts
Riffing on my previous post: The Arts have the potential to get us to stop for a moment, cool our jets, focus. Great art does that and more. It gives us license to think in entirely new ways about old and new things, and if we let it, pushes us to stop thinking in self-destructive […]
Last night, after watching the game, I looked out my front door at Magic, then walked to the back of the house to see more. Moonshadows on the snow. Twins of tree branches on snow-covered ground, spread out like black spider-webs, searching with Sistine fingers, telling stories we’ll never truly understand. Yes, they talk, and […]
The Alien Suggests Go camping. Go together. Share a tent, a fire. Build the campsite with one another, for one another. Wake up to the sounds of brooks and rivers nearby. Pause and listen. Walk in the forest together, or by yourself when the dawn appears. Climb the mountainside for kindling and a peak at […]
Brains trick us. Not just those who use them, and use them carefully, creatively. Those who never use them are tricked too. We see things not as they are, but as our minds want us to see them. This provides a great deal of amusement for our brains, which is their sole reason for existing […]
Rod Stewart’s Mandolin Wind So, I’m up in the mountains again, and I’m reading Wallace Stevens — reading about him, reading his poems. I take music with me, listen to it before and after the readings. It’s very windy on the top of the mountain. Actually, the winds are ferocious at times. Merciless. And […]
Jaded Aesthetic Hand-Wringing too Soon The difference between Nature and nature I think is like Woods and woods Rivers and rivers Rocks and rocks It’s like the sun shining down on the green And making it more green not less Or the river looking back at you in sorrow or joy […]
When I was very young, I didn’t see this. I didn’t see the heroism of color, or the way we make colors ourselves, in our eyes, in our mind’s eye, or the bravery of Nature’s way, or its tremendous courage in painting as it does. Yes, Nature paints, and that’s not just a Romantic notion. […]
I go to my spot. It’s my spot though it’s everyone’s. It’s everyone’s though it’s really just mine. Because I say so. Because I believe the rocks, the trees, the birds, the clouds all speak for me. They are my eyes and ears and voice. Voices. Plural times plural. So close to infinity, but not […]
In the last several years, there has been a long over due spate of films with women as heroes. Two recent movies have told the tale of women, based on their memoirs, testing themselves against the harshest of elements, against nature, striving to go beyond their previously known levels of endurance. This has long been […]
The river is real and metaphorical at the same time. Or, perhaps, a shade or two off the instant. It is real only before and after the photograph. When I look through the lens, I’m already behind the times and separate from my river. When I look at the photograph, I am further removed in […]