The recent transition to Improvised Life’s new architecture continues. It echoes a bigger sea change in my own personal life: How to balance my need for more time and spaciousness with the endless demands of a 10-year-old active website rooted in an increasingly competitive and numbing internet? …and more specifically, What do I need to…
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Recently, a doctor I know asked me the remarkable question “What is your medicine”. The answers have nothing to do with pills and are unique to each of us, surprising and powerful.
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This short video compiles some very surprising answers to On Being’s Krista Tippet’s favorite interview question. It evokes “a very fertile place in everybody’s imaginations, whatever their story is…full of questions and searching and softness.” It’s a wonderful question to ask ourselves…
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A few days ago, Yoko Ono posted this remarkable message on her instagram, a perfect New Year’s wish. We’ve found some compelling images to go with it, and Ono’s spare, powerful recording of “Imagine”.
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In this short video clip, the remarkable Fred Rogers describes one of the most powerful gifts he was given in his life, and got us wondering how we can give, and encourage it ourselves?
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Over half a century ago in 1967, John Lennon’s ‘A Day in the Life” nailed the feeling of hurried daily life infused with dark news that continues to reverberate today. Check out this antidote to the relentless daily barrage of bleak news…
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At the great Artist’s Prints and Multiples, we came across these inspired fridge magnets. We realized that making lists of “likes” can provide the same benefits as counting blessings AND work curiously like poetry…
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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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Artsy’s Alexxa Gotthardt combed through interviews with legendary abstract expressionist artist Lee Krasner for her insights into “how to be an artist”, with three essential lessons.
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Whenever we look at designer Paola Navone’s homes, we come away with a zillion ideas that we could actually do, without a ton of dough. Here are our favorite steal-able ideas.
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We know quite a few people who are making major life changes these days, living with the question of what to do next, waiting for the path to become clear. What’s the mindset to embrace in limbo: all questions, few clues, no answers?
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The past week or so, the same message arrived through a variety of sources: in an email sent by a friend, a poem stumbled on on instagram, a notice of a museum exhibition…
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“This is what thought looks like” begins Dennis Overbye’s article about Jessica Wynne’s remarkable photographs of mathematician’s blackboards, that reminded us of Steiner and Cy Twombly…
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We’ve watched this little video on instagram many times now, vicariously soaking up its unexpectedly BIG expression of joy AND its insight into the most common of personal catalysts…
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If the usual interior porn leaves you cold, I recommend spending time at photographer Pedro Guerrero’s website to roam through his photographs of Alexander Calder’s very original living spaces.
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Kraft paper is so wildly useful that if I had the room in my city apartment, I’d keep a roll on a wall to have easy access when the mood/need hits.
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At #Consider Journal, a remarkable post ranges from W.S. Merwin’s last book to the “cyclical effect of nature and art” to the bigger question of how our expression might come to resonate in bigger ways.
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The impetus for Dr. John Kitchen’s radical life change into the skater Slomo was the answer a very old man gave him when he asked, “What is the secret to living so long?”
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From The Guardian on the day of massive worldwide climate strikes comes this excellent 3 minute film on what we/you can actually do to restore the devastated climate. Empowering and essential.
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The bathroom is the one place where I find mindfulness overrated. It is a lovely place to read, write, draw. Look at all the way it can be an incubator of ideas.
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