I was reading an article about Twlya Tharp, the renowned dancer and choreographer of Push Comes to Shove and many more—and the author of The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life. The article said that every morning Twyla emerges at six A.M. from her New York apartment building (my apologies to Ms. Tharp if I get any of these details wrong) and catches a cab to her dance studio, where she starts her day’s work. Here’s what I immediately thought: I’d love to set up a video camera across the street from Ms. Tharp’s building, pointing directly…

The artist’s mindset has always been that of the free agent. The painter, writer or filmmaker by definition can only follow her own vision. She has to know (or teach herself) how to be self-defining, self-motivating, self-reinforcing, self-validating. And yet artists have always run in schools. Paris in the 20s, Rome in the late 50s and early 60s, New York any time. I wish I had been part of a school. I once went to Paris and did nothing but ride the metro to the places Hemingway had mentioned in his short stories and in A Moveable Feast. I would’ve…

What is the Macro Change that’s going on in the world today? As fish never realize they’re swimming in water, is there something happening all around us that’s so apparent that we can’t see it? I think there is, and here’s how I’d define it: We—meaning anybody now living in the globalized/digital/satellite-linked/worldwide-web world—are faced with the challenge and obligation to make a primal shift in consciousness. This shift is as cosmic, I believe, as the transition from illiteracy to literacy in the Gutenberg era, from farm to factory in the days of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the post-Industrial Age…

[The blog is on vacation this week. Herewith an “encore presentation” of a fave from the past:] I never talk about a project I’m working on. It’s bad luck. But something happened a few nights ago that made me think I should make an exception, both for the sake of my own thinking and for sharing an insight or two. So I’ll keep depiction of the project vague but the wisdom as clear as I can make it. I was at a professional event with a friend who, each time he introduced me to a new acquaintance, described and made…

Not long ago I took a wilderness trek with an old friend who had been the commander of a Recon company in the army. We were out in the boonies for five days, with no check-ins with civilization. I had never done this kind of thing before and I noticed two things: One, my friend was completely confident of our whereabouts at all times. Two, we were lost at least half the time. A phrase kept re-appearing in my friend’s conversation: “In the end, we’ll succeed.” At first I didn’t pick up on this theme, but after the twentieth time…