Among the Balinese, there is no word for art. They just say ‘we do things the best that we can.' Which is a nice way to think about what we all do... You know, I do know how to prepare for old age: For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceeding well prepared for my old age 10 Things I Have Learned
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Plot Twists In Store: Crazily Beautiful
With profits in the publishing world pretty flat in recent years, big publicity budgets are largely limited to the heavyweights in the writing world, the proven novelists (such as Stephen King) or famous memoirist (such as Bill Clinton). Everyone else gets about $5,000 to $10,000 to promote their title, if they're lucky. Many get nothing at all... The days when it was enough for an author to launch a Web site and give away some tote bags are over. An unknown writer today has to be an imaginative entrepreneur, with strong marketing skills -- not just a wordsmith
• It's An Author! It's A Marketing Whiz! Wait! It's Both! [Libraries 'in scandalous state' Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance in the scandalous Libraries Now) ; Madame Bovary was introduced to the concept of love through ploughing through “the refuse of old libraries”. The concept of love that she formed was a distorted one – of love as involving “gentlemen brave as lions and gentle as lambs, too virtuous to be true, invariably well-dressed, and weeping like fountains.” And it was because she had this hopelessly idealistic concept that she made such a terrible and tragic mess of her life Love's complications ]
• · A tour of First World War battlefields and burial grounds in Eastern Europe: No one comes to mind – none of Celine's or Remarque's heroes are as distinctly memorable as Schweik. They are too self-absorbed, because the war frustrates them. Schweik, meanwhile, frustrates the war with his hypnotic prattle, and in the process he frustrates the sense and order of the world to date. Schweik has no regrets. He laughs and dances on the graves. He is a nihilist, because it's the only way to survive. His creator would end up as a Red Army commissar Not a living soul around ; The Lady Who Owns Venus... The Glass Castle, A Memoir
• · · Former Prime Minister Milos Zeman couldn't have hoped for better timing to launch his memoirs, How I've Erred in Politics: Zeman takes on cohorts in book ; Waterloos: Communism's ubiquitous and maligned high-rises, are here to stay, so what should the state do with them? Panelaks
• · · · Character assassination in France is less of a sport than in Britain, because the French care less about character, and in the culture that gave us Les Liaisons Dangereuses it is hard to inflame prurient sentiment by saying that a man has slept with a woman not his wife In the long term media imposture is no less dangerous than totalitarian imposture ; Lawyers for Change Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we will change the world
• · · · · Basic training in the world of opera So You Wanna Be An Opera Singer... ; Worn down by community pressure, board members of the Lodi Valley Historical Society resigned so that the organization can accept a more than $500,000 bequest that included a condition that the entire governing board step down Basic Bequest
• · · · · · Rocker David Byrne is touring with his current instrument of choice - a computer loaded with PowerPoint. Byrne is most interesting when he goes off on flights of fancy that illustrate why he is called the Renaissance man of rock. PowerPoint is a symptom of a long train of thought that started picking up steam during the Enlightenment David Byrne: PowerPoint As An Instrument Of Art ; Just as I was getting used to edu-tainment (education that's entertaining), eater-tainment (restaurants that sell themed experience), and enter-tailing (retailers with an experiential eye), along comes another contender for audience time and attention: agri-tainment: Agri-tainment: Farms and Entertainment