I’m going to go ahead and post some more abstract notes, developing some ideas I’ve had floating around for a while. This is related to this post and this post, where you’ll find what I was then calling the Aspect Aesthetic (I think I need a better name). This is…

Your style is a straitjacket. You’ve figured out what you think is beautiful, and what kind of work you’re committed to, and what kind of character you have as an artist, and this is your protective stance as you present yourself to the world. Every time you give the public…

John Crowley wrote about Sleep more perfectly than I could ever hope to rival, so I’ll use his words (culled from his novel Little, Big) as padding between my mutterings. “But life is wakings-up, all unexpected, all surprising. On a certain November afternoon, twelve years ago, from a certain nap…

It’s hard to think about anything but politics these days. I’m not the first to notice this. It’s a known issue, especially within the media-elite bubble of anxiety and outrage. …

A disfiguration of a Ben Franklin quote: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Which is itself a poor flopping fish, ripped out of a sea of context, looking pretty in only the most superficial, dysfunctional way. Original quote…

Those of us who fetishize the expressive capacities —we self-identified “creatives” and “artists” and associated communities— we have a lot of unresolved questions floating over our heads. Among these questions: who is your target audience? Do you have one, and if not, should you? What’s your obligation to the people…

Driving between a daycare center and a pediatrician’s office, I heard a story on NPR about Trump’s cabinet. The lede, as I heard it, was about how Trump is organizing a coup to deregulate Wall Street. This is, of course, infuriating to me, as I thought this was one of…

When lightning strikes on the horizon, we stand and gape for a moment, no matter how predictable it was, and no matter how prepared we thought we were. The hardest part about reconciling with the present moment — not submitting to it, of course, but finding the right way to…

Earliest attribution, via Quote Investigator, is that this comes from a guy named Anselm Batbie, quoted by Jules Clariete, attributing the idea to Edmund Burke. The formulation that’s most relevant to my own political framework comes from a 1977 pamphlet, and was attributed to Benajmin Disraeli: “ A man who…