Arlene Goldbard

Just about every spiritual tradition preaches it; just about every psychological tradition teaches it. So why is it so hard to learn to separate one’s desire from expectations of its fulfillment? Why is it so tempting to give up wanting what doesn’t seem to be forthcoming?
One of my strongest desires is help potentiate a paradigm [...]

I’m not in classrooms every day, only dipping in occasionally when I’m on a campus to give talks. But I came up K through 12 in the California public education system, I vote here now, and I have more than a casual interest in the future of the human species, which gives me ample reason [...]

By now, I have tried out approximately one gazillion concepts, arguments and images intended to convey my passion for art’s public purpose. Some have great persuasive power and some, despite my deep conviction of their merit, don’t quite get over.
Sometimes, these are like beloved children who learn to walk or talk behind schedule: you just [...]

Be forewarned: if you don’t feel like a rant today, save this for later. For the last few days I’ve had the strangest sensation. It’s as if I’ve been struggling to emerge from some intensely sticky substance—a vat of rubber cement, perhaps, or a freshly spun spider web as it might appear to a hapless [...]

“Life is a mistake that only art can correct.”
Stew, Passing Strange
I discovered this week that I have become a member of a religion I used to reject: the Church of Art. (I’m guessing you clocked this before I did.)
I discovered it during the swooning spiritual experience of watching the DVD of Passing Strange, the uniquely [...]

I don’t know if this is a political problem, a spiritual one, or a psychological one: I’m fairly certain it’s all of the above. Or maybe it just feels that way based on all the space it’s taking up in my mind. How do people overcome the obstacles—fatigue, disappointment, magical thinking—that make them reluctant to [...]

This is a profoundly confusing (and almost irresistibly depressing) moment in our political culture. Reactivity is at such an all-time high, a visitor from outer space could be forgiven for concluding that in the U.S., anyway, we humans lack any access to the neocortex, while our reptilian brains and limbic systems are shooting as many [...]

I spent the first part of this week in Sacramento, where I gave a talk to a statewide “arts visioning retreat,” an audience of about a hundred artists and administrators who wanted to help lead a conversation about reframing the arts’ public purpose. (Download my brief introduction and keynote at California Arts Advocates’ Web site.)
The [...]

While the rest of the world is ho-ho-ho-ing, I’ve been oh-no-no-ing, pounding out what the friend who advised me to write them calls “anger chapters.” Lately, I’m on this path of inquiry into absolutely everything, and now it’s anger’s turn. You see, I don’t usually get very far with anger. Most of the time, I [...]

My ancestors were nomads and refugees, and I have carried on that tradition. Sometimes I think I was born packed and ready to go. I no longer speak the language of infants, so I can’t quote my exact thoughts, but I have the distinct impression that the synapses that fired when I first opened my [...]