"Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are." ~ Muhammad Ali ...
Midlife Mashup
Gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamtkunstwerk? Gesundheit! I'll pass on poetry for this afternoon's look at Gesamtkunstwerk. It's tough enough to splutter off the tongue, much less massage into melody. Ever interested in matters curatorial, I recently discovered Swiss art curator, critic and historian Hans-Ulrich Obrist who is currently working as the Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. My ...
Protean
"A chameleon," I explained with a smile, as high above Paris as one generally gets for appetizers and cocktails. Excepting the silly Tour Montparnasse, of course. The mother of my friend –– not quite a girlfriend, but an attractive, charming young lady who distracted me briefly at the tail end of my twenties –– was shocked. A chameleon, she assured me without wavering even out of politeness, is ...
Memento Mori, Danse Macabre & Vanitas
Memento mori. Remember that you will die. Us moderns don’t like to think too much about death. It’s a bit too depressing and morbid for our think-positive sensibilities. Our culture is devoted to perpetuating the lie that you can stay young forever and your life will go on and on. But for men living in antiquity all the way up until the beginning of the 20th century, rather ...
Plot
"What makes a great story makes a great life." ~ Anonymous Ever heard that? I've long treated it as a truism. But I just wandered the web looking for a source and couldn't find one. In fact, it looks like this saying is mostly getting bandied about my pastors and marketing mavens. Hmmm... Maybe it's been composted together from many different sayings? Searching for a derivation I came across ...
Countless Lives
My father recently forwarded Roger Cohen's editorial, The Vast Realm of ‘If’. A poignant read that struck a familiar chord up until the curtain call which felt a little too defeated for my pollyanna disposition. "What happens only just happens; then inevitability is conferred upon it. Between the lived and the not-quite-lived lies the little word “if.” It’s a two-letter invitation to the vast ...