Insecurity, like blood, will out. It makes us feel so vulnerable and exposed that we eventually expose ourselves and become vulnerable. Like a scarlet sock in cold river or in the load of white wash, insecurity has the irksome power to stain our speech and writing, interfering with the immaculate (playfulness) poise we’d like to project.
Elizabethans joked about venereal disease. Romans laughed at bald men. The history of humor is wildly inconsistent about what’s funny... Human Humour
The swatting of a fly – so common, so insignificant – demonstrates that we don’t know what to think about death, whether a fly's or our own... Thinking Differently
What do we want when confronting great art? Solitude, contemplation, silence – all of which are inhibited, even prohibited, in most museums... Art of Making Appearances
An artist’s memory is a dangerous, necessary thing. To turn experience into art, to make something out of remembering, is like “watching ghosts in sunlight”...Ghosts
These are hard times for the study of literature. Technology is ascendant, the humanities in retreat. But the activity of writing continues to redeem itself... Briefings For The Comisar
Coda: How to write cover letters like media dragons