Jonathan Demme’s new Neil Young concert film, Prairie Wind, is out on DVD, so I rented it. I like much of Young’s music, especially the melancholy, sweet songs, but I wasn’t prepared to be blown away by the totality of the artist and his art. The film documents two nights on which Young and a …
I recently watched a fascinating documentary jointly broadcast on the Sundance Channel and Court TV. The Human Behavior Experiments was directed by Alex Gibney (who also made the excellent Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Now I can’t stop thinking about it. In the compass of an hour, Gibney and his collaborators touched down …
When I was first learning to drive, every movement of the steering wheel caused the car to veer too far in one direction, and when I attempted to correct by steering the other way, I often went too far back. Until I’d practiced a few times, I drove like a drunken skater. And so we …
This is the third in a series of essays about bridging the distance between generations of artists who use their gifts in the service of community, of social healing and of social justice. In the first two essays, I wrote with longing about my memory of connecting with mentors in the sixties, about the relationships …
My last essay, on a generation gap among socially engaged artists, has provoked quite a bit of response. Now I’m moved to write by readers’ descriptions of encounters with younger activist artists they perceived as remarkably uninterested in getting down to the work, to the deep learning needed to ground their practice in a continuum …
First, a disclaimer. At no time did I personally utter this sentence: “Never trust anyone over 30.” (FYI, it was coined by Jack Weinberg, whose 1964 arrest for violating prohibitions against political advocacy on the UC Berkeley campus ignited the Free Speech Movement, and who—at 65 or so—is still a dedicated environmental activist, having had …
You know what I think of predictions, right? If you need a little reminder of the perils of prognostication, consider that we’re coming up on the 40th anniversary of the late Timothy Leary’s 1967 prediction that “Deer will be grazing in Times Square in forty years.” Actually, this morning I was thinking of a line …
Once again, I’ve been given an opportunity to visit another world, the strange and exotic land of teen culture. I’ve been assisting the New York-based organization Global Kids by reading and writing about 133 essays by high school students on how digital media affects their lives. You can download my report, read the essays and …
I have been noticing how much public trouble is rooted in what seems to be the general human proclivity for kings. George Bush and Silvio Berlusconi are in the headlines now for wanting to be emperors, but it isn’t as if they are aberrations. It seems we love to have a single figure whose image …
Dear readers, perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve been quiet for awhile. With springtime’s emphasis on rebirth, I like to think I’ve been hatching an egg, conceptually speaking. A new thought (new to me, I mean) has been taking possession of my mind and I’ve been readying myself to express it. I am beginning to think …