Keep Culture Alive: Sing A Rare and Different Tune
"The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice. His job is to shed light, not to master." -Robert Hunter
When I enter an art museum for the first time, I browse the gallery walls until something slows me down and makes me look. “The Green Dress” by Jane Peterson did that for me this week at McNay Art Museum in San Antonio.
It’s a painting that’s easy to gaze upon with wonder. For instance, what’s the young lady in the dress thinking? Is she angry or proud or none of the above? Is she about to lead a revolution or write a sonnet? Did her father want a boy? Is she inheriting the family fortune, nevertheless? So many questions…
Art makes you think. Art makes you smile. Art makes you want to make more art. Therefore, please support the artist in yourself, the artist in your spouse, in your siblings, and especially in your children.
Kurt Vonnegut shares the reason why:
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
“Music, dance, drawing, storytelling — all of these have been a part of human cultures for tens of thousands of years. As a result, we're really wired for art," says Susan Magsamen, director of the International Arts and Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “And when we make art, we increase the brain's plasticity — its ability to adapt in response to new experiences."
In summary, making art keeps your brain working, grows your soul, and makes you and other people happy.
“Prose Poems” - The Chapbook
Darby super surprised me for my birthday this week by making a chapbook of recent prose poems that I’ve been writing about work and career. She also commissioned my friend Jason Walton in Portland to make a custom illustration of me for the cover.
If you’d like, you can hear me read a poem from the new collection.
Hunger in America - We Can Fix This
Millions of Americans are hungry for attention, for love, and for something to deliver them from ennui and/or digital distraction.
Millions more Americans are hungry for food. Nationwide, more than 33 million people, including five million children, are food insecure, according to the USDA. That’s roughly the entire population of the New York City (19,768,458) and Los Angeles (12,997,353) metropolitan areas combined.
I recently started volunteering locally for Meals on Wheels and the more I see the problem, up close and personal, the more driven I am to find immediate and long-term solutions.
Lagniappe
Substack is changing the internet.
Resilience is a survival skill and something we all can learn to cultivate in our work gardens.
Ray Bradbury used to make lists of nouns to help him “feel my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.”
Thanks for being here now,
When you’re ready to run for office, grow a business, or spark a social change movement, let me know. I may be able to lend a hand.