Where does the mass of what we know come from? Sometimes the wellspring simply surprises me, and other days I nod my head in respectful remembrance. The balance of each day is an accumulation of past experience, and to forget our sources is to forget ourselves.
Read MoreTHE ESSENCE OF PLACE
Sound makes sights real. A movie with the sound turned off is not only inert, but slightly disturbing. Something substantial feels out of balance, and mere intellectual understanding of the problem does not satisfy our need to fix the context. The barest whisper of wind solidifies the clear air of Autumn, moving crispy, auburn leaves through space and into our senses. Autumn colors tell us what’s happening; Autumn sounds saturate our senses.
Read MoreUBIQUITY
Ubiquitous ability to create things of all sorts may be a profoundly positive trend, but the cultural challenge it presents requires careful consideration. Without a deep appreciation for a professional class of creators, the average quality of many things may rise tremendously, while professionals—those people who actually move various disciplines forward—gasp for air.
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Novelists and journalists both use the same tools. Pens, paper, computers, and digital audio recorders are really at the bottom of the list. Narrative tales, regardless of which camp tells them, require information to start, followed by synthesis, context, and perspective. From there, the potential for interesting results grow.
A REPORTER AND A NOVELIST WALK INTO A BAR…
That experimental space of narrative invention is simultaneously the great dividing line between fiction and journalism, as well as the bridge between the two camps. Where journalism trades in carefully considered observations, backed up by sources and evidence, fiction makes sense of how received information fits into a larger cultural context. Where journalism digs up hard-to-reach raw minerals, fiction polishes them into jewels.
Read MorePOETRY AMID THE WRECKAGE
Through each cadenza, each sigh of poetry, each cue to shine spotlights on to the foot of the stage helps stave off life’s absurdities, which is really just another way of holding off the endlessly encroaching darkness.
Read MoreENLIGHTENMENT
Comprehension is not all encompassing. There are multiple ways to understand an experience, an idea, an emotion, or a sensation. I believe these can be divided into roughly three sequential tiers.
Read MoreTAKING IT WITH YOU
None of us can carry all of our life experiences with us everyday, per se, but that doesn’t mean we can’t create ways to keep track of them. Just like runners arrive at each race through an accumulation of training and experience that leads up to the starting line, each of our lives can only be possible by an accumulation of experiences we choose to regard as parts of a much larger whole. When we break apart the moments of our lives into narrow, compartmentalized good moments and bad moments, we reduce ourselves to little more than highlight reels.
Read MoreHEART OF DARKNESS
Sweet things taste special precisely because they’re infrequent. They’re pure pleasure, but I’d never want a diet of chocolate and ice cream.
Read MoreNO FILTER
Truth, in its many forms, therefore becomes a cultural obligation, and that obligation must be demonstrated and nurtured first and foremost by the most creative people in the group.
Read MoreREMEMBERING THE BIG PICTURE BY FORGETTING IT
Expertise in discrete tasks, even ones that get changed and exchanged, becomes the reason to perform. Rather than becoming tedious burdens to bear, the atomized elements of a larger whole take on deep value for those performing the jobs.
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