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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Opening at random Richard Powers’ remarkable novel The Overstory, we found the ancient formula for gratitude.
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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…
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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…
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In a 2012 talk at AIGA, Zach Lieberman, cofounder of the School for Poetic Computation, read the short, powerful ‘I Am Art’ out loud. Â Â It is one of the most astonishing and rhapsodic proclamations of art-making we’ve seen and totally nails the exhilaration art brings.Â
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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Although I’ve often left art books open around my space so I could live with an image, it only recently occurred to me to do that with a volume of tiny, powerful poems.
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YoYo Ma described The Art of IS as “a philosophical meditation on living, living fully, living in the present.” We find it full of surprising ideas that are also incredibly helpful.
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How swell to see Improvised Life mentioned in New York Magazine’s ’31 Low Lift Home Improvements for Under $100′ for our decoding of Donald Judd furniture. We got a lot of ideas for jazzing up our space….
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In the sixties, Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton published a magazine with a radical and artful mission. Here are some excerpts…
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One of the most remarkable stories in the late Oliver Sacks’ posthumously published book is about Sacks’ unexpected meeting with an orangutan while visiting the zoo. It describes Sacks “”a brilliant singularity”: his ability for showing us the big fat gifts to be found in the everyday. Perfection in 274 words.
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