Traditions that cease to evolve render themselves irrelevant or obsolete. And what's the problem with inventing new performance practices? Are customs being slandered? Do successful alternative diminish the value of traditional ones? *The argument th...
What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the ...
In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death....
Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective ...
Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone - not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book, , and the next he was dead. , his mind echoed numbly as he ...
I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.
Writing is the art of remembering and forgetting. You must forget what you’ve already written, because if you’re dwelling on your old material you can’t write new material, and you must remember all you’ve written and read, so you are not dup...
Rumi and Shams taught us how to see the world with new eyes, how to find our place in the order of things, and how to extricate the true self trapped under layers of noise.
The present convergence of crises––in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more––is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.
Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there. It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds.
Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from ...
So many people talk about the Golden Gate bridge, but I would bet they haven't seen the new Sava River Bridge. It has long metal ropes suspending it, like a gigantic angel's harp waiting for god's fingers to reach down and pluck the first chords, to ...
Art serves a purpose. It expands our horizons, frees our minds, and opens us up to new experiences. It opens the imagination. All these great discoveries of our time — without the desire to reach beyond our boundaries, we would be forever stagnant....
There is no greater catalyst for change in a man than a woman. To love a woman is to become a new kind of man, in one direction or another. A woman holds sway over all. The right woman can assume command of your every part of your being, both body an...
You get older and you are a whole mess of things, new thoughts, sorry feelings, big plans, enormous doubts, goling along hoping and getting disappointed, over and over again, no wonder I don't recognize my little crayon picture. It appears to be me a...
I guess they knew me well, because they were right. They didn’t have to capture me. Because I was going to follow. And even if I didn’t make it out of wherever their new secret hideout was, I was going to do everything in my power to get Christin...
The last remnants of Deanna the child--the idealist, the sheltered elite--had been torn loose by tonight's tragedies, slain with the same bullet that had felled her would-be killer. She had no idea who the new person inhabiting this shell of her old ...
I knew the world too well to believe this sudden smiling. (…) The gods never send us this invitation to delight so readily or so strongly as when they are preparing some new agony. We are their bubbles; they blow us big before they prick us.
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold...
A smell of burned hair and cotton wafted into the air as I spun toward my desk. There was a low whine from the desk and then smoke billowed out of my closed laptop. I gaped. My precious, perfectly brand new laptop I cherished like one would a small c...
It is not the job for those who are angry about the events of the day to strike out and post things that they hope will incite anger in others as well. Do not sell your social media friends short as far as their ability to find the news for themselve...
