The most-forwarded article award for this week goes to “The Creativity Stimulus” by my friend Jeff Chang, which appears in the May 4, 2009 edition of The Nation. It’s a concise and compelling argument for the vital role that artists and artists-activists can play in democratic renewal and national recovery: Every moment of major social …
Two more video clips have been produced to advocate putting artists to work as part of national recovery. One features movie star Peter Coyote, and the other features…well, as you can see—me. You can access both videos, plus one starring actor Bill Irwin, at my YouTube channel. I’ll be writing more soon about how others …
By now, I know my tribe: like Lewis Mumford, “I’m a pessimist about probabilities; I’m an optimist about possibilities.” (Or like Gramsci: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”) If you’re a member too, perhaps you also watched Battlestar Galactica, a sci-fi series that just ended (but will certainly be available in one form …
It’s exciting and scary to be present at a birth. I’m not thinking of the literal kind except as an unimpeachable source of metaphor for the birth of an idea: as with a living being, we look for wholeness and soundness, the fulfillment of hopes in a generous measure of new possibility. For some time, …
We humans are good at condemning other people’s sins of omission. There’s a whole publishing industry around how much the average German knew about Nazi atrocities, for instance, calibrating ordinary people’s exact degree of culpability for what was done in their names. But it’s much harder to admit the same faults in our own and …
Intimations of spring (my first in the Midwest) are everywhere. It’s been amazingly warm, with passers-by in shirtsleeves. Yesterday on my walk I saw thick green clumps of narcissus and daffodil thrusting through the earth. The tips of branches that had very recently looked dead have now swollen into buds, smooth or fuzzy according to …
I grew up in a house without many books. Each volume in the single short bookcase my family owned stands out in memory, I suppose because each one had to be singular in some way to earn its place, something like a cabinet of curiosities. By the time I left home at 17, the bookcase …
My activist colleague sent me a message that appeared to be written in Martian: “ITOS BET SPOFTA?” is what he wrote, kindly providing the translation: “Is There One Senator Brave Enough To Speak Out For The Arts?” Judging from recent debate in the Senate, where the Right seems determined to snatch defeat from the jaws …
That cloud of energy that enveloped the National Mall this morning, the vapor of an simultaneous exhalation synchronizing the breathing of millions to the beat of one brave and honorable man’s heart! Hope was in the air and relief soared alongside, like two birds in flight: we survived eight years of George W. Bush and …
I’m in the midst of writing an article about public service employment for artists, an ideas whose time has once again come around. There are numerous proposals afloat and a semi-mysterious political process that will determine whether and how this idea will be implemented. I’ll be posting a link to my article and more information …