For most of 2014, since June, the album I played every day to help keep me awake and inspired as I worked — was Jack White’s Lazaretto — that album had great verve and energy that fit any writing mood.
However, that all changed a month ago when Neil Young‘s latest masterpiece — Storytone — appeared on my musical horizon.
Continue reading → David Boles Blogs Album of the Year: Neil Young’s Storytone
Surprise and imagination can be both wonderful experiences and dangerous concepts. We’re trained early in life to find surprise in the world around us, usually juxtaposed against the wilds of nature. We are often encouraged to “think outside the box” and to reimagine reality in ways that can fundamentally change the way we view the world and our role within it. Nothing is out of reason. Everything is possible.
Continue reading → The Wounding of Surprise and the Danger of Imagination
I live my life trying to create Art and Beauty in all conditions and I also do my best to recognize and celebrate Art and Beauty in others — even if they do not recognize those gifts in themselves. I know a sandwich maker can be an Artist. It’s all about intention and the cut of the knife and the slice of the bread and, of course, choosing just the right condiments. While an Artist can create a sandwich, a sandwich is never really a piece of Art because Art — in its essence — must have the capacity to endure. Sandwiches, by their very nature, are crafted to be temporary and dissolved. Albert Einstein was an Artist as was Alexander the Great.
Imagine my surprise the other day when a new online friend sent me a gift — something he’d made with tools and machines he’d created in a faraway land — and I wrote him an email to thank him and celebrate his talent and my “You’re an Artist!” compliment was wholly rebuffed. I’d unwittingly insulted The Mechanist by identifying his keen aesthetic.
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