Sensations of all sorts are new in everyone’s adolescence, no matter where or with whom you lived at the time, and the geologic pressure of successive years piling up fossilizes memory. Intense moments of sensual, visceral pleasure become reinforced with subsequent mental recollection, which is why we can conjure our teenage years in sparkling detail and cannot recall what we made for breakfast this morning.
Read MoreTHIS ISN’T REALLY ABOUT ANDY WARHOL…OR THE SUPREME COURT
I don’t mind angry art, I don’t mind sad art, I don’t mind disturbed art, or erotic art, or challenging pieces that ask me to pause and think. I don’t even mind “bad” art that I might choose to ignore. What bothers me are so-called artistic assertions that knowingly, consciously, conspicuously waste my time by pretending to be something more vital than they really are.
Read MoreINESCAPABLE: Thoughts on the novel AGE OF VICE
Book readers—and we must presume that there are at least a few of us left!— cannot help but be aware that screen-worthiness is part of the appeal. But the fact that it reads so well as a book means that it is also proudly declares itself as a novel first and last, which ironically solidifies one of its great pleasures. It lives through words on its pages, and this book comes alive in ways familiar to the sensations you get when your exercised heart pounds in your chest.
Read MoreWHAT I TRY TO REMEMBER
Art is the reason to preserve life in the first place, to fortify our shelters and our camp, to share sustenance with others around the fire. Art is the reason we exist. We exist to create; creation becomes the over arching beauty worth pursuing in a finite life; beauty is the reason to endure.
Read MoreWHY PEOPLE MAKE STUFF
Most of the creative people I know and with whom I like to spend my time pursue their work without assignments. They create because they don’t have a choice. Nobody’s forcing them. They have no choice, because to ignore the impetus pushing them to create is to leave a relentless bathroom faucet dripping in the nighttime of their mind. Musicians know there’s always another another guitar lick to get into their fingers, another set of harmonies to explore. Photographers want to see what happens when they frame their world in a particular way. Poets pursue the right words in the right order to present something that evokes an image as much as it engenders a feeling.
Read MoreAN IMPROMPTU MEETING IS LIKE A POP UP TORNADO
Meetings are not the same as one-on-one or small group F2F conversations. They look similar, but they’re not. And to think: a moment ago you were fully focused on a project commanding your full attention!
Read MoreCAN UNICORNS SWIM?
One of the reasons strong creative work becomes memorable is that it strictly follows its own internal logic. Things that appear to abide by a set of rules and standards not only make sense but tend to stay in mind. To extend my original question, we are not surprised to hear that unicorns can fly. Magical creature: sure, makes sense. But swim? Interesting. I’ve never considered that before.
Read MoreTHE INFLUENCING MACHINE
Most of the time we don’t seek out fresh voices because fresh voices take work to take in. Even old fresh voices: most people these days aren’t going to stream an great chestnut from the French New Wave. More to the point, we are all inundated by information and increasingly complicated lives. Be honest: ordinary things are endlessly complex and often exhausting in the modern world.The inertia to shed previous skins and try something new holds the vast majority of us locked in habituated place. There’s a reason so much of the country eats at McDonalds as frequently as they do.
Read MoreHERE'S LOOKING AT NEW, KID
Nobody creates in a vacuum. Nobody emerges with a fresh take without already being fiercely and voraciously pursuant of something that foundationally has nothing to do with pure commerce. Money makes things possible, but money by itself has nothing to say. Artists with ideas look to other artists, and other people, and what comes before is always the genetic code for what comes after. Just like children, we may know the parents, but we can still scarcely predict where their lives will go.
Read MorePAINTING THE WALLS
In a time when we’re all overwhelmed by media from carefully managed corporate committees, or ceaseless chatter from social media, a small painting on a piece of a former teenager’s bedroom wall is enough to make us stop and smile and notice how it, too, has influence—perhaps even more lasting influence than any disposable electronic signal that may tempt us for ten irrelevant seconds.
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