November 19, 2015
Notes on Love and Violence
‘Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.’ — Max Frisch (1) My mother did not like me hanging around outside: to stand on a street corner any day, […]
November 19, 2015
Moby-Dick Out Loud on the Way to the Paris Climate Conference
By Karen Malpede I’ve been reading Moby-Dick out loud at night, slowly, with my partner. We were on chapter ninety-three–in which the castaway Pip loses sanity after being left adrift alone […]
November 13, 2015
Dybbuk or Ibbur: Midnight Dances with Isaac Bashevis Singer
Ghosts and all these things which people call today superstition are the very sparks which we are ignoring in our day. —Isaac Bashevis Singer in The Paris Review In an […]
November 1, 2015
Exxon Vs. Biophilia
By Karen Malpede The news broke in October, during the lead up to the Paris Cop21. Exxon’s scientists investigated the effects of burning fossil fuels in the 1970ies and 80ies. […]
October 31, 2015
Short Takes
Last-Minute Halloween Costume Ideas are over at BuzzFeed, PopSugar and Ranker. Want to check out how your favorite writers have dressed up throughout the ages? Oh, yes, Susan Sontag as Teddy Bear […]
October 30, 2015
Holograms and Hurricanes (Part Two)
Last week I wrote about Don DeLillo’s prescience in forecasting the return of Redd Foxx and Andy Kaufman. (They’re back! As holograms.) This week I thought I’d shift from holograms […]
October 29, 2015
Hard and Brittle Religions
Why do some religions die out, while others persist in the face of brutal persecution? Religious diversity, while not completely analogous to biological diversity, has drastically diminished over the […]
October 29, 2015
Hello from the Other Side
I tasted once The milk of a woman friend, The milk of a sister— Not to slake my thirst But for the liberty of my soul. —“Memory of a […]
October 25, 2015
Holograms and Hurricanes (Part One)
In yesterday’s New York Times, a story caught my eye: Redd Foxx and Andy Kaufman are heading back on tour. Sure, they’ve been dead for decades (Foxx died in 1991, […]
October 23, 2015
“This Balance Hangs in a Place That Is Not” : The Work of Michael Hafftka
In A Retrospective: Large Oils 1985-2003, the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of Michael Hafftka’s work at the Housatonic Museum of Art, Michael Bordsky compares the artist and the “creatures” of his paintings […]
October 14, 2015
The Literal Underground: On Bernie’s Hip Hop Night
In Columbus, our underground hip hop night was literally underground. Bernie’s Distillery sat below North High Street, accessible through a black staircase that carried you down 10 feet, past a […]
October 13, 2015
Stranger in the Midrahov: On Forgiveness
I think artists have a strange sense of happiness. It’s always a little painful. There’s an ache to touch something untouchable, but when we do, it disrupts, shakes, the borders […]