A Side-Benefit of Procrastination

I understand the blessing of laughter better than I used to, having — I hope — outlasted some of the portentous solemnity to which, when I am tired or frightened or insecure, I am sadly prone. A light heart has more virtue than romantic agony.
— Anne Truitt
It is easy to be heavy: hard to be [...]

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Fundamentally Contrary to Human Nature

Creative-writing programs are designed on the theory that students who have never published a poem can teach other students who have never published a poem how to write a publishable poem. The fruit of the theory is the writing workshop, a combination of ritual scarring and twelve-on-one group therapy where aspiring writers offer their views [...]

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Support Systems

It’s hard to write about an inevitable part of artistic life without sounding like a self-obsessed whiner. But the truth is I’ve not been posting much lately because I’ve been in a bit of a hole. I wrote in an earlier post something about the act of painting being like skating out over a chasm [...]

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Capaciousness

I was re-reading Daniel Smith’s article about Lewis Hyde in the NYT Magazine recently, and got to thinking about this notion of a creative or cultural commons. In the article, Smith writes about distinguishing between

“rivalrous” resources, like drinking water, in which one person’s use by definition competes with another’s, and “nonrivalrous” resources, like the English [...]

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