We are readers, my partner Dave and me. And given the current sheltering at home circumstances in the world, we are, like many others, ingesting even more. (When a friend called us “a pair of bloody whales”–referencing their prodigious ability to filter and digest 8,000 pounds of krill every day–I had to admit being flattered […]
Author: deborahbarlow
Start Where You Are
For years we have discussed the Singularity, that point in the future when artificial intelligence will achieve an irreversible explosion and exceed well beyond human capacity. At that juncture, a purely biology-based version of the human race will come to an end. Mathematician and science fiction author Verner Vinge placed that event somewhere before 2030. […]
- Art Making
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The World and the Margins
Years ago, when I was 19, I spent a month in southern Spain. My best friend and I bought guitars in Barcelona and then buskered and hitchhiked our way from one end of the continent to the other. Back then Francisco Franco, “El Caudillo,” was in power, holding the whole country hostage. While Spain in […]
Movement in the Macro
Like the difference between weather and climate, big patterns are not easy to see. Trying to tap into the larger forms can feel counterintuitive, furtive, confusing. As the old saying goes, no matter how good their eyes, the short person can never get the overview. My personal bookmark for that problem of perception is a […]
- Art Making
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Deep Visceral Echoes
I received this message recently from Karen Fitzgerald, a remarkable artist and dear friend: I’m no longer making work for the art world. I’m making it for the world. The art world can go hunker down in its lumpy lodge, as can the fame makers, the fame industry. My back is turned. That may be […]
Moby-Dick: A Musical Reckoning
More than any other American writer, Herman Melville creates a distortion in the fabric of the author spacetime continuum. A complex and moody man whose early books gave no indication he was capable of writing the greatest American novel, Melville engenders a devotion today that is famously passionate, intractably opinionated and deeply personal. (Melvilleans have […]
The Voice That Comes in Through the Window
You can’t start writing until you know what you’re doing, and you don’t know what you’re doing until you start writing. I still have to resist the false intuition that I need to know as much as possible in advance. The essential thing is to know as little as possible. Ideally, when things fall out […]
Behind the Music
Falling in love. Finding a passion. Feeling drawn to a particular place. These are common human experiences that play a significant role in the ultimate trajectory of a life. They happen well outside the domain of logic and intentionality. Even in a culture like ours that places such high value on linear thinking, we all […]
Not Fade Away
Our language—or maybe our culture in general—have limited terms to describe those times when a life gets turned upside down. For creative types, much has been written about writer’s block. Whether you view creativity as a product of sheer self expression or the gift of an inspirational visiting daemon, every artist I know has had […]
Making The Old Feel New
Anna of Cleves (Brittney Mack, at center) performs “Get Down” in SIX, written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. Photo: Liz Lauren We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail. –Greil Marcus It’s a long standing theme on Slow Muse: Storytelling is powerful, […]