the chanting and the night air and the crackling fire and the incredible experience of the stars overhead was just hypnotic, and I started to have a quiver in my right arm. It started to tremble, and I had this experience that I absolutely had to extend my right arm and it started shaking and it became so much larger and felt like this giant wing. Then my left arm started to quiver and I couldn’t have held it close to my body for one more second, and I had to extend that. And then this sort of strange hard thing started growing on my face, which I realized was a beak. And then I had to fly. I could not lay there for one more second. I had to lift my body up in slow motion with th... posted on Dec 31 2022 (4,005 reads)

the trailblazing composer Julia Perry wrote, “has a unifying effect on the peoples of the world, because they all understand and love it… And when they find themselves enjoying and loving the same music, they find themselves loving one another.” But there is something beyond humanistic ideology in this elemental truth — something woven into the very structure and sensorium of our bodies; as the great neurologist Oliver Sacks observed, “music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.” Psychologist Dacher Keltner examines what that unmediated something is and how it pierces us in a portion of his altog... posted on Jan 16 2023 (3,661 reads)

where one way necessarily loses. In our attempts to build a bridge here, we often burn a bridge elsewhere. All of us understand that changing the face of the problem never amounts to progress; yet, when we feel disconnected personally, inter-personally and systemically, we play zero-sum games and fight for a bigger hammer – more money, more fame, more power – to exert our beliefs, our will, our vision onto others. Each of our wins seems to set off a ticking bomb for someone else to sort out later. Can we do better? Instead of discounting the power of inner transformation and hollowing out the depth of human connection, can we imagine a new possibility?  Heartivism, then,... posted on Feb 2 2023 (8,811 reads)

this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it. So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” — that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things,... posted on Feb 11 2023 (50,069 reads)

and she was delighted, I mean the orangutan was. Myrrena was a little startled and stared at her but the orangutan went into ecstasies and screwed up her face and brought her hands to her face and wiggled her fingers at the baby like little old ladies do on the street when I’d let them see Myrrena and they’d have this exaggerated look of tenderness and she had it too. I never did believe in those old ladies before, it seemed too overdone to believe, but there was this different sort of old lady doing it too and I realized it must be something more than upbringing and presumed expectations, it must be a real feeling, so I watched her carefully then to see if she would explain... posted on Feb 20 2023 (2,678 reads)

and the sky dissolved away. And there was a kind of wholeness to it. So I was the clouds, I was the creek, I was the trees, I was the body. So, when I was trying to explain this to my colleagues, I said, I don’t even know what to say in English, that there was a connection of the whole that was… And there was no word. So I said, “Oh, I know what the word is, it’s intraconnected.” There was a connectedness within the whole of that fullness of being. Everyone sort of nodded and said, “Yes, interconnected, great, whatever.” Then, when we went back to our place we were staying and I had a computer and I wanted to take some notes about what that t... posted on Mar 10 2023 (2,349 reads)

Asian knowledge had kept saying for hundreds of years. And then, also, if I can bridge these two, that would be exactly doing something, what my being tells me. So those two things, they took years. It's not like just instant inspiration and the next day I started doing it. It took me almost six or seven years, since the school’s framework of doing-being, until I actually started to devote myself to the Ikebana Project Institute. That was like the beginning of my realization and my sort of rebirth, just being me and doing what I'm supposed to be. The purpose of and the reason why I'm put on this earth. Pavi: It strikes me as extraordinary that very early on in yo... posted on May 3 2023 (2,377 reads)

we need to be the change we wish to see in a very tangible, physical sense. So the foundation of this farm is a farm. It’s not the idea of a farm. Day in, day out, it’s cold fingers, delivering food—all the things that go into it. The book and the work really need to be centered on the practical: How do you save a seed? How do you have a business meeting? How do you run a youth program? But dealing with this work as if it were material, and not also alive, not also its own sort of living, breathing entity, would be disingenuous too, because that’s not part of our cosmology. The storytelling about Soul Fire and the weaving in of reverence for land and the spiritual... posted on May 13 2023 (1,741 reads)

"Is that a real word?" And then you encounter in the singular glossary of Things that Are (alongside her definition of "vasty") this unequivocal response: "Do not let anyone tell you these words are not words; all words are words." But "even more than words, I think I love music," confesses Amy, who plays bluegrass and the piano, "If a word doesn't sound right, I don't care if it means the right thing, it's not the right word. I can sort of get swept away with soundy things." In the realm of prestigious recognitions, Amy's soundy words have done their own share of sweeping, carrying away the Nautilus Book Award, a Whi... posted on Jun 21 2023 (1,946 reads)

and nails have agency:  When I Met My Muse I glanced at her and took my glasses off—they were still singing. They buzzed like a locust on the coffee table and then ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and knew that nails up there took a new grip on whatever they touched. “I am your own way of looking at things,” she said. “When you allow me to live with you, every glance at the world around you will be a sort of salvation.” And I took her hand.  The poet not only personifies and personalizes “the Muse,” he also animates what are commonly regarded as non-living “o... posted on Jul 1 2023 (2,360 reads)

exercising this courage. Let not the man* who subscribes to a weekly theater series feel that he is losing something if he makes use of it only every other week. I guarantee: he will gain. Let anyone who is accustomed to looking at a great many pictures in an exhibition try just once, if he is still capable of it, spending an hour or more in front of a single masterpiece and content himself with that for the day. He will be the gainer by it. Let the omnivorous reader try the same sort of thing. Sometimes he will be annoyed at not being able to join in conversation about some publication; occasionally he will cause smiles. But soon he will know better and do the smiling himself... posted on Jul 2 2023 (5,881 reads)

said that stuck with me, maybe you’ll find it surprising, was when you said the first creative act is making music. And I think I found that surprising, because during the whole first half of our conversation, I had the experience that I was listening to music, listening to the three of you talk together. I kind of felt, inside my body, this is what it feels like when I listen to really good music. And the question that occurred to me is I’m curious how you each experience your sort of inner instrumentation, if you will, or vocalization or inner music, what that’s like for you as individuals who are now playing, creating music together, what that’s like for you? ... posted on Jul 3 2023 (2,104 reads)

up then.  The beauty of death, the beauty of perspective, the beauty of profile: why do we find beauty in these things? BWE:  This is also a very difficult question!  Who wrote these questions?  (MFS: Cynthia and I did.) BWE:   They really are very deep questions.  This one touches on the so‐called aesthetic response, which can be described, in simple terms, as the feeling one has, say, on seeing a rainbow—a feeling of being transported to a sort of exalted state.  Now, the aesthetic response is a very slippery concept, to the extent that even the spelling of the term is not agreed upon.  It is sometimes spelled “aesthetic... posted on Jul 9 2023 (2,606 reads)

raised with a concept of heaven as something that came after this life, a utopia that I had to be “good” on Earth to deserve. The oldest story I ever heard was of a vengeful, violent god who would punish and shame and erase his people, who then eventually sent his only son down to suffer for our sins, blanketing us in a conditional forgiveness that, if we followed the rules, would grant us access to eternal heaven. I know a lot of different belief systems likewise envision some sort of punitive divine force and embrace the sacrifice of an innocent in exchange for a blessing. Ursula K. Le Guin has a short story called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” about thi... posted on Jul 12 2023 (4,858 reads)

poems, what was it like for you, Mark? Here you are, you mentioned at 72 you’re looking back at decades of writing and you’re selecting hundreds to go into this volume. My understanding is that this is the first of a multi-volume series of looking back at your … How did you know, especially with this notion about re-visioning, “Oh, this poem needs to be re-visioned. I’m not going to include it,” or, “I’m going to rewrite it”? How did you sort through all that? MN: Well, it was very interesting, and after all these years, it was very clear what was worth keeping and what wasn’t, very clear. So one way that I noticed w... posted on Jul 16 2023 (3,719 reads)

loss suspended her world. As it slowly regained the motive force of life, she set out to redirect her professional experience of studying emotional intelligence and resilience toward better understanding the confounding, all-consuming process of grief — the process by which, as Abraham Lincoln wrote in his immensely insightful letter of consolation to a bereaved friend, the agony of loss is slowly transmuted into “a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before”; a transmutation in which skillful loving support can make a world of difference — support very different from what we instinctively imagine helps. ... posted on Aug 13 2023 (6,587 reads)

that’s almost an exact quote. He even used that word “crescendo”. There are philosophers lurking everywhere. Then I walked through the remnants of a hundred-year-old orchard to the historical house where the ballots were to be counted. We opened envelopes containing slips of paper, each one nameless and secret, reading the votes out loud to two other citizen volunteers who were carefully tallying. This was true democracy in action. Local community. It’s the sort of thing that makes me giddy and grateful.  Afterwards—speaking of philosophers—I decided to visit my friend Aristotle, who lives in a house on a hill at the west end of the r... posted on Sep 24 2023 (3,049 reads)

When we talked on the phone and you were talking about this, you were talking about how you went back to the fire, digging, and you somehow wanted to find your husband, your home, you kept looking. And then you said something, “But you can never really recreate it the way it was. But you still can create something really beautiful out of the ashes.” Jennifer from everything you’re saying, the dark of the darkest moments of your life, somehow you were able to connect with some sort of cosmic lifeline, the universe, or God. Something got through to you and sent you a message. So when you said, “You can still create something really beautiful out of the ashes,” wh... posted on Nov 20 2023 (2,565 reads)

sound like what the energy in the club sounded like. So I decided to start making records only as a fan and only as a — basically as a documentarian. I wanted to make music that sounded like what I felt at the nightclub, because the records that were being made were being made by professional people who didn’t really know what hip-hop was, but they were going about it the traditional way of making dance music, which was very different than hip-hop music. So that’s sort of how it started. Tippett: You know I’m just, I’m so curious, this is a huge question, but after all these years of being immersed in music and being with so many musicians and... posted on Nov 30 -0001 (31 reads)

our values. And so what you’re describing when you talk about a teachable moment is that these tough emotions are signposting. There's something that we care about here. There's a value that's being abrogated or something that is really important to us that is hindering us. Adam Grant:You know, when we talk about the idea that emotions are not necessarily inherently good or bad, this, this makes me think immediately of your profound work on forced positivity. Talk to me about that and sort of the problems that you've seen with the pressure to always be in a good mood and what, what that says about people, about our culture, and what we should be doing instead. Susan David:When I w... posted on Mar 28 2024 (309 reads)