Six years ago I read Charles Eisenstein’s book, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. I was immediately caught in its spell. I described it to friends as a book that will fundamentally change the way you see the world. I know I am particularly susceptible to books. New ideas are the most […]
“Don’t know mind”
In the Bewilder
“Nagala,” mixed media on linen, 54 x 78″ (one of a series painted a few years ago) My friend Tina Feingold, reliably epigrammatic and to the point, sent this message to me today: Time is slow. Days are slow. But life is fast. This feels so apt even though I don’t understand how it works. […]
Maps, Territories and Mind Drift
Territory I could get lost in, with a map or without (Southern Utah, near Boulder) The texture of every day consciousness has changed dramatically over the last two years for most people with whom I share my life. We are like patients whose vitals don’t make any sense—some of the indicators are healthy and hopeful, […]
However You Get There
Philip Guston, Painter III, 1963. Photo: Courtesy of Hauser and Wirth Robert Benchley‘s infamous statement, There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide the world into two groups, and those who don’t, also speaks to the human proclivity to figure things out and be right. We all strive to make sense […]
From What You Know to What You Don’t
Notched disk, at the Freer Museum, Washington DC. China, probably Shandong province, late Neolithic period, 2500 BCE. The purpose of this intriguing object has never been established. Not knowing, uncertainty, the pathless path, that which lives outside of language—these are themes that appear with determined insistence throughout the thousands of short essays I have posted […]
What We Can See, and What We Can’t
Earth rising as seen from the lunar surface via Apollo 8 (Photo: NASA/Bill Anders) Lessons learned from the last U.S. election cycle are still being processed and discussed. A big theme for me is just plain epistemological: How do you know what you know? The strange and the unreal took over somewhere in this process, […]
Identity, Universality and the Search for Meaning
Remains of the Traianeum (Temple of Trajan) on the Acropolis of Pergamon in Turkey. This most recent trip to India, South Africa and Turkey brought me into even closer proximity to some of the most persistent, larger-than-life issues like belonging, tribalism, identity, belief. In looking at those enormous ideas more closely, it is impossible to […]
The “Don’t Know Mind”
So many points of light. (From a Kiki Smith installation at the DeYoung Museum, San Francisco) Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything. –Robert Rubin In the spirit of “everything is autobiographical,” this blog is a map of the ideas that matter most to me. A quick search here for […]
Let the Mystery Be
“Tezoom”, from a new series that seems to have a mind of its own In an interview with the artist Claerwen James, she was asked about what useful advice she received while she was a student: One was from Bernard Cohen who was director of the Slade at the time. During a lecture he said, […]