Improvised Life

New Views of a New Year (Antonio Gramsci, Arundhati Roy, Patti Smith)

Something doesn’t ring true to us about the idea that with a simple change of year would come an erasure of the heavy mood and fearful times we’ve been feeling. Here is a different view…

A Question for The Last Week of a Fearsome Year

As always, we are taking the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. It’s a time to slow way down and reflect on the rough year that’s passed and on the new one we are about to begin, starting with this question from Yoko Ono…

Odes to Joy in Days of Darkness

Bach’s Ode to Joy got us thinking about how JOY works when when life throws in a giant monkey wrench and we find ourselves navigating darkness we never imagined…,

Cosmo Sheldrake’s Remarkable Musical Collaboration with Endangered Birds

Over 9 years at dawn, Cosmo Sheldrake carried recording gear, laptop, and sometimes a keybord into fields and woods to make music in collaboration endangered birds. The result is his new album Wake Up Calls; it is both charming and illuminating…

How to Socialize in the Cold + Richard Johnson’s Ice Huts

With winter fiercely, the covid-mandated necessity to socialize outdoors is challenging for those of us who live in cold regions or are simply cold-sensitive. So I’ve hunted down advice about how to hang out outside, whether at a restaurant or on a park bench or in an ice hut if you happen to have one.

Life Lessons from the Forest

Ferris Jabr’s deeply-pleasurable “The Social Life of Forests” tells the story of scientist Susan Simard whose pioneering research changed the way we think about the fundamental nature of forests: as complex deeply-connected networks that allow trees to communicate and cooperate. It offers a powerful lesson for this time of pandemic.

Marina Abramovic’s Public Service Announcement

In this video, performance artist Marina Abramovic describes the tree therapy she developed many years ago in the Amazon rainforest. It has become part of her “Abramović Method,

Apple Time Recipes: Crumbles and Freeform Tarts

We’re seeing apples everywhere and FEELING the yearly hunger for warm apple desserts…so we pulled out our most potent recipes…

Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.

Fred Rogers

Creative Thinking is a Martial Art

SO GREAT, wherever this few seconds of inspiring outside-the-box thinking came from.

Sunset TV and Other Ways to Watch Amazing Goings-On

An image titled “sunset TV” reminded us of the many alt-TVs we’ve known people to watch. And the pleasure and illumination they afford.

Tiny Whale Videos Spark Dreamy Reverie

A therapist friend once described the idea of reverie as a tool for healing; dreamy meditation and daydreaming, free of anxious thinking, has a powerfully restful effect. That state is what I found myself in after I stumbled on these tiny videos…

Siloing on the Island of Creativity (S.B. Dworski)

S.B. Dworski reflects on the nature of being “siloed”, which most of the world is grappling with, and a new way to think about it.

How to Give Thanks Anyway (Melanie Beatty, Bob Dylan, Gary Snyder, Pablo Neruda…)

Many months after coronavirus radically changed our world, we don’t know anybody that is not having a difficult time. We turn to the greatest balancing mechanism we’ve found to find out way back to fullness, “enough”, clarity, joy.

Remembering A Brave New World (Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Zack Bush, Richie Havens, )

The other day, three random discoveries converged to knock me out of my zeitgeist-powered malaise and into a big wave of joy. They remain a breath of air…

Tool for Living: Low Profile Step Ladder, in Colors (With Poem)

As I’ve gotten older, the grim reality-sandwich of falling OFF a ladder has become something I don’t want to experience. I’m loving this light, sturdy low-profile step ladder that looks good enough to leave out.

How to Practice Magic

There is a big message in this little film, way bigger than its title, Reframe the Familiar. The visuals seem somehow of another time and act, with the words and odd voice, like hunks of poetry.

House Paint by Artists + Why (Katharina Grosse, Andrea Zittel)

After months being seriously home-bound, I’ve found myself looking around my space for ways to shift my head. The work of several artists provided both inspiration and illumination as to why…

We Celebrate Our National Voice (Patti Smith, U2)

Perhaps the most heartening victory of the fiercely contested national election is the record-breaking turnout of voters braving long waits and the coronavirus to exercise their VOICE. We can think of no better celebration than the anthem Patti Smith wrote in 1988…

Why Walk in Hard Times (Rilke)

We take a walk daily because it never fails to refresh our thinking, change our view of things, calm us. Especially, in these most stressful times. It is perhaps our most powerful medicine. Walking, we find our mind shifting, ideas sparking, problems beginning to yield in ways we never expect. Rilke nailed it in A Walk:…

Posts navigation