Living a creative life
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I've come across two works recently that got me thinking about the importance of analysis in creativity. The first was a passage from Steven Hyden's 2018 book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock. The book explores, among other things, cultural aspects of…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. My wife and I recently watched Julian Schnabel's 2018 film At Eternity's Gate. In the movie, Willem Dafoe plays Vincent Van Gogh during the years he lived in the south of France. During a brief scene of Van Gogh arranging the space where he lived and worked, I…
"What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does." -from The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carre Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. In a recent post, I referenced Robert Caro's diligent research process. If you haven't read any of Caro's books, either The Years of Lyndon Johnson series…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. As a lifelong insomniac, I looked forward to reading Benjamin Reiss' 2017 book Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World. I wasn't disappointed. Wild Nights is not a book about how to get a better night's sleep. Instead, it's a cultural study of the history of…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I recently came across a compact disc recording of Elvis Presley's comeback special (officially titled "Singer Presents...Elvis!") that aired on NBC in December, 1968. Presley hadn't performed before a live audience in years. It was a dramatic example of a career comeback that, for a few years at…
It's the time of year when schools all over are sending new graduates into the world. Even though it has been centuries years since I graduated from college, this time of year always calls to mind some of my favorite advice for graduates. Most people first heard this as the Baz Luhrman production "Everybody's Free…
Welcome back to the Creative Life Adventure. I'm in the middle of reading a collection of some of Vincent Van Gogh's letters, primarily letters he wrote to his brother Theo over a period of 18 years. It's a fascinating body of work. Van Gogh wrote so many letters that they end up providing a sort…
