Inspiration; where does it come from? And what do you do with it when you have it? I, being a writer, write it down: endless notes, ideas, configurations, interpretations, quotations. I have always been an inveterate note-taker, so this is my default mode.… Read More
New Orleans is jazz. More precisely, New Orleans is improvisational jazz: a city built on the familiar strains of complex cultural chords — French, African, Creole, Spanish — with ever-expanding riffs and variations on one enduring melody. With its “blended family” of history,… Read More
Most people have never been to Abilene, Texas. I, myself, had probably been there, or through there, in my childhood, but who remembers? It is familiar to most people because of the song, Abilene, Abilene, recorded over the years by country greats since the 1960s… Read More
I can still recall how I felt that day, now over 30 years ago, when I had my first piece of writing accepted for publication. Thrilled wasn’t the word; I became positively giddy when the editor called. I had recently been laid off from my… Read More
Sustained concentration takes a lot out of you, especially when your project gets derailed at the end. (See “Goal Digger, 3/1/17) Buoyed by the promise of a rescheduled museum exhibition in the near future, I have now hung “Busted” in my studio in my own… Read More
I really hate winter; January and February are blah no matter where you live, and March isn’t much better. Here in South Texas, weather varies, wildly, from 85 degrees to 19 degrees, with tornadoes and wind and rain and sleet in between, sometimes all in… Read More
the narrative thread 