One of the things I love about being married is exchanging those “knowing glances” with my husband. They occur when, say, one of our kids has just declared with great conviction that he/she is going to do something we doubt they will actually follow through on. All we have to do is look at each...
Tag: art
Art Cafes – Great Ideas Giveaway
Think of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald hanging out in Parisian cafes in the 1920s. Think of all those writers and critics and actors exchanging barbs at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City. Think of the many movie stars, singers, and musicians who waited on servicemen during World War II at the Hollywood...
Why Bad Art Matters
Most of the music enthusiasts I know would admit that Achy Breaky Heart is one of the dumbest songs ever recorded. Why is it, then, that whenever someone mentions that song, it gets stuck in my head for days?! And all of my writer friends agree that Bridges of Madison County is one of the...
Chasing Perfection
Anthony Doerr recently won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See. And his book is not only noteworthy, it’s popular. It seems as if everyone I know has read or is reading that story, including one of my relatives, who is one of the sharpest...
To Boast or Not to Boast
If you look up the words “confidence” and “arrogance,” you’ll find there’s a fine line between the two. The former means having self-assurance in one’s own abilities or qualities. The latter implies an offensive display of superiority or possessing an overbearing pride. But where’s the line between self-assurance and overbearing pride? And who decides? As...
What’s a Woman to Do?
Ask any person on the street to name a famous painter, and they’ll likely say Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Monet, etc. Ask that same person to name a famous composer, and you’ll hear names like Mozart or Bach or Beethoven. According to statistics for 2014, male actors still out earned female actors in Hollywood. If you...
Sing it again, Mom
I love to sing. That’s not to say I’m great at it. I can carry a tune, and I’m game enough to massacre a song or two on karaoke, but my favorite way to use song has always been to get my kids’ attention. As they were growing up, whenever they were ignoring my directives...
The Power of Art
“Black Lives Matter” may just be one of the most powerful political slogans of our time. And it all started with a Facebook post. According to an article I read, Alicia Garza was upset when George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin. She wrote a heartfelt post on Facebook that contained the words, “black...
The Happiness of Art
There are two lines in the book The Artist’s Way that read, “A productive artist is quite often a happy person. This can be very threatening as a self-concept to those who are used to getting their needs met by being unhappy.” Yet we, as a society, continue to hold on to the concept that...
Sam I Am
Sam Smith was the big winner at the Grammy Awards this year. “Before I made this record,” he said, “I was doing everything to try and get my music heard. I tried to lose weight and I was making awful music. It was only until I started to be myself that the music started to...