Third Acts and the Transrational

Diana Nyad arriving in Florida (Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity) I spent the past weekend quietly contemplating third acts, those moments when the extraordinary emerges from someone in their later years. Like Diana Nyad‘s momentous swim from Cuba to Florida—110 miles—at the age of 64. She became the first person to make that swim without a shark […]

Solnitessence

Vascular bundle of a fern rhizome (Image from a fascinating website, Urbagram which addresses a set of interlinked concepts, models, speculations, probings, essays and artefacts based on urban systems.) I first encountered Rebecca Solnit quite by accident. About ten years ago I was making my usual pilgrimage to the lusciously overstuffed and highly iconic City […]

Epic Out, Epic In

Rama Burshtein, the Israeli director of “Fill the Void,” at right on the film set. (Photo: Vered Adir/Sony Picture Classics) Some art forms favor expansion. Those are the ones that ask—require?—you to untether yourself and be taken outward, into a nimbus that exists beyond the quotidian of terrestrial constraints. The epic experience in art is […]

Material Ephemera

Jakara 5, part of the exhibit, “Material Ephemera,” currently on view at UC Santa Cruz I will be away for a week for my show, “Material Ephemera,” on view through May 13 at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Porter College. I am speaking at the artist reception on Saturday, April 27. I am […]