A few years back, I went to see a Broadway play. Afterwards, I hung around outside the stage door and wound up talking to the director. “Be patient,” he said when I asked for advice. This is something at which I’ve never excelled. Be it waiting for a break, waiting for things to change, orContinue reading ““be patient””
Category Archives: creativity
here and now
In the final episode of The Last Dance, Mark Vancil had this to say about Michael Jordan: Most people live in fear because we project the past into the future. Michael’s a mystic. He was never anywhere else. His gift was not that he could jump high, run fast, shoot a basketball. His gift wasContinue reading “here and now”
the machinery of storytelling
The more I write, the more I come to think of storytelling as building a machine. The basic formula for story is a character who wants something and must confront an obstacle in the pursuit of that desire. But there are other parts to the machine as well, with metaphors, images, and tricks of languageContinue reading “the machinery of storytelling”
the stories we tell
I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey, which in light of recent events, feels all too apt. “A mortal folly comes over the world,” reads the epigraph from Antonin Artaud. Couldn’t have said it better myself. One passage in particular stood out, especially when read alongside James Wood’s How Fiction Works. As SmithContinue reading “the stories we tell”
Austin Kleon on parenting
In times like these, I often wonder if the greatest service I can do my future children is preventing them from being born in the first place. (Yes, I’m aware that’s a dramatic way to say I’m sure about having kids.) Austin Kleon is someone to whom I’ve turned time and time again for wisdomContinue reading “Austin Kleon on parenting”
writing and living
While plowing back through some of the old voice memos, I found a quote from a dear friend of mine, writer and musician Michael Winn. We were talking about writing and developing characters and he explained why he’d had such trouble capturing human life on the page: “Living your life makes you a good writer.Continue reading “writing and living”
art school
Another gem from Ilse Crawford’s episode of Abstract: The Art of Design. When I moved to Michigan to apprentice at a theater company, a friend of mine expressed his jealousy: “Man, I wish I could just move away to the great white north for a year and do nothing but work on my art.”
the importance of contrast
I’ve been watching Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix recently and I can’t get enough. In an episode on interior design, Ilse Crawford talks about the importance of contrast in material texture to evoke sensory experience: We actually understand materials best by contrast. Our senses are actually wired in such a way that weContinue reading “the importance of contrast”
