I am not myself today. It isn’t because I am awash in all variety of ruination — that my 17 year-old dog, Luna, died in my arms last Wednesday or that my 100 year-old senile grandmother — of whom I am the only grandchild — called me Herman (her long deceased brother’s name), and told me to milk the cows (I consented, hundreds of miles from the nearest bovine utter)….
Hell is hot for many reasons. Punishment, by itself, is not the only consideration. Dante’s thermostat may be in the red for inspiration…or as a forewarning…or as a symbol of passion to motivate us up here on the upper crust of planet earth. But sitting in the summer heat of an un-airconditioned doctor’s office yesterday, I was convinced that, at the very least, hell is real. My visit to Dr….
I’ve waved it, hung it, and ran it up a pole. I’ve “pledged allegiance” to it — to freedoms that include the right to criticize and to think freely. The American flag is a symbol of my government — a fabric rectangle, red, white, blue, stars and stripes — the representation, but not the foundation, on which we stand. Anyone can fly the flag and anyone can hide behind it.
In 2017 — the 50th anniversary of the modestly named Summer of Love — Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at Zurich University determined that LSD can turn a common event into a game-changing sacred experience. This heightened transformation in meaning takes place due to the stimulation of certain serotonin receptors not only during an acid trip, but after — in-other-words, with LSD, personal change could be…
I like crows not because of James O’Barr, Brendon Lee, Carlos Castaneda or Irish cock and bull mythology. It’s not because of the crow’s “nevermore” reputation, their association with a staged dark underworld, either — a spooky crow profile unfairly earned during the plague, when crows plucked the eyes from the dead. As well they should. It was good eating — food on the run. Eyes of corpses are hassle-free…
The German philosopher Theodor Adorno once said, “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident.” We’re at a point in time when nearly everyone has access to producing artistic things. But when replication, sampling, mashups and mixdowns are thought of as art — what becomes of process? The making of art? Does it vanish into a programmed format or does it flourish?
