Unbeknownst to many inhabitants of New Orleans, a small enclave of eccentric, often ingenious outsiders thrive in twelve homemade stilt-houses along the Mississippi, hidden from sight by the levees. Macon Fry’s book living in the “batture” is a compelling view of resourceful alt-living choices that may be the way of the future.
Read More
At the ever-illuminating @upstate_diary, we suddenly found ourselves looking up through wintry trees into a vast moving star-scape. It transported us to a chilly night in the country. It led to reminders of cosmic views of the everyday.
Read More
For a long time, I was hard-pressed to find a good definition of “blessing” that encompassed its quality of kindness, possibiity and transformative power without referencing formal religion. I found it in ‘To Bless the Space Between Us’ by poet John O’Donohue, and in one of his exquisite blessings.
Read More
Do you ever wonder why we humans tend to feel good in nature? Annie Murphy Paul’s scholarly The Extended Mind: the Power of Thinking Outside the Brain gives the simple, obvious gist. It’s message is surprisingly echoed in art…
Read More
In This is Happiness, a beauty of a novel by Niall Williams, I found a nugget of gold that has been subtly transforming my view. It reminded me of Henry Miller’s radical philosophy of living.
Read More
After being diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, filmmaker Derek Jarman bought an austere tar-painted fisherman’s cottage in sight of a nuclear power station in the bleak shingle landscape on the southeast coast of England. It would prove to be an act of creative vision as unique as those Jarman realized in his films.
Read More
When uber-journalist Bibi Baskin was asked what she planned to be doing when she retired she replied, “Nothing.” It is a pursuit she has longed for. Still it is not always easy to do given the fierce demands of a society that values productivity above most else.
Read More
We have marveled at Susan Simard since we realized she was the model for the fearless, hermetic tree botanist in Richard Price’s wondrous tree-centric novel The Overstory. Her new book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Ancient Wisdom of the Forest about the intricate underground communication network trees create and depend upon got us thinking about the perfect gift, for Mother’s day or otherwise.
Read More
One morning, I found myself listening to poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge reading Wonder from her book A Treatise on Stars. I was transfixed, calmed, transported by her voice and the story it told. It proved a surprising lesson in seeing stars, and the connection between wonder and not knowing.
Read More
From his retreat at his upstate cabin, legendary actor Mandy Patinkin sings in Hebrew as gets his dog Becky’s food for her. We were surprised to discover that what he is singing is a prayer. And that got us thinking about blessings to accompany simple tasks of daily life.
Read More
Opening at random Richard Powers’ remarkable novel The Overstory, we found the ancient formula for gratitude.
Read More
These New Yorker cartoons describe the peculiar brand of anxiety that has become our weird shared experience. They give a much-needed sense of connectedness, AND levity…
Read More
We’re loving Jane Hirschfeld’s wonderful poem I Wanted to Be Surprised. It is the lens through which we’ve been looking to discover uplifting…surprises…
Read More
In a 2012 talk at AIGA, Zach Lieberman, cofounder of the School for Poetic Computation, read the short, powerful ‘I Am Art’ out loud. It is one of the most astonishing and rhapsodic proclamations of art-making we’ve seen and totally nails the exhilaration art brings.
Read More
Over our transom came this moving piece from Underland: a Deep Time Journey by British naturalist Robert Macfarlane. We’ve written before about his remarkable ability to connect us to nature, landscape, heart…
Read More
We are thrilled by the publication of Donald Judd Spaces, a rare visual survey of the legendary artist’s living and working spaces. It contains a trove of new and archival photographs alongside five essays by the artist which afford a close look and greater understanding of his integrative thinking and aesthetic, and very employable ideas.
Read More
Without realizing it, I’ve collected a few books about “doing nothing”, one for kids and a couple for adults. All have unexpected wisdom to offer.
Read More
The recent post about Mister Rogers got me thinking about how to give gifts that “encourage wonder and reflection? Here are some gift books that do just that.
Read More
As we work to move Improvised Life to a new form, we came across this passage from Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of finding her artistic voice: the secret of improvisation she learned from Sam Shepard.
Read More
We were casting about for a new book to read when we came across Patti Smith’s technique for rereading personal favorites “three-dimensionally, cubistically, from several angles.
Read More