The phrase “culture wars” has been popcorning to the surface of the cultural landscape lately, the renewal of a trope from the late eighties and early nineties. Many people are perceiving a re-emergence of the eighties/nineties culture wars, in which art—especially art depicting homosexuality and/or religious images and artifacts—provides the setting for combat over freedom …
How much does the past constrain the future? To what degree are we bound by the chain of causality? In many forms—inherited guilt, pathways of desire, the freedom of art—the past week has brought these questions to my attention. The more I ponder them, the more I am convinced that the answer encompasses opposites. We …
We are suffering from an epidemic distortion of reality, the byproduct of commercial media addiction to shock and awe. What are we going to do about it? I recommend an immediate moratorium on believing the sensational garbage blasted through the mediaverse simply to sell airtime; and a reality-check that helps liberals and progressives kick the …
Human resilience is a flat-out mystery. I’ve had a great many occasions lately to tell bits and pieces of my childhood. Online dating-world is awash in reminiscence: where did you grow up? Are you close to your family? Some profiles even stipulate it: I’m looking for a partner who had a happy childhood and loves …
A few days ago, a wise friend told me, “You’ve really lost faith in everything, haven’t you?” But he had to modify the statement immediately. If faith means “confidence” or “trust,” then I have plenty of it. I have what seems to be an unshakable faith in human possibility: consistently, I see that what seems …
A tidal wave of hindsight washes over the country after every election, drenching us in a not-quite-drinkable cocktail of hypothesis and certainty. When things go badly—as they did for Democrats, especially conservative ones, in some key races—it is consoling to believe we know precisely how the outcome could have been reversed. But that particular consolation …
Election time brings it out, I suppose: the deafening clash of certitudes. However vainly, I find myself wishing to hear a candidate ask a question without a foregone conclusion, actually engaging us in discovering new answers. But no matter how clueless they may feel inside, politicians act like they know it all. And no matter …
What grounds you? That’s a serious question for a person who travels for work as much as I do. When I’m rooted in my own time zone, my tastes run toward a particular balance of the exalted and earthy: intensely bittersweet music, especially the most baroque blues; accidental intimations of eternity in a conversation I …
This is my sixth and final post about the Grantmakers in the Arts 2010 conference, where I was invited to take part as a live blogger. It was tremendous fun: I got to write morning, noon, and night, which is my preferred type of ecstatic meditation. It was also a perfect antidote to the anxiety …
On Tuesday, I attended a Grantmakers in the Arts conference presentation on “Participatory Arts and Community Health: Challenges and Opportunities,” organized by Amy Kitchener of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. It began with presentations on exemplary projects braiding art with individual and community well-being, offered by Maria Rosario Jackson of the Urban Institute, Beatriz …