drmstream[writing]

A pho­to­graph can make some­thing mun­dane appear unique and dis­tinc­tive. The ren­dered image metas­ta­sizes into some­thing alto­gether dif­fer­ent. One of my favorite exam­ples is street pho­tog­ra­phy. A tal­ented pho­tog­ra­pher can take a can­did photo of two women at a street cor­ner, star­ing jaun­tily at the cam­era. If we encoun­tered these women in every­day life we […]

  I was at lunch with an artist today and asked him about his work. “I keep push­ing ahead and it changes,” he said. I asked him to describe a cre­ative phase that was par­tic­u­larly dis­tinc­tive. He became ani­mated as he talked about the chal­lenge of adding a third dimen­sion to his paint­ing. “I painted a very […]

 William Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) Le Lever Oil on can­vas 1871 106 x 145.5 cm (3’ 5.73” x 4’ 9.28”) Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art (Man­hat­tan, New York, United States) Come into this pic­ture with me to find its sen­sual sub­ver­sions, its temp­ta­tions and tit­il­la­tions. Don’t begin at the young boy’s eyes. Don’t start there, no […]

I’ve started from no place. I am going to no place. What occu­pies me in the mid­dle, the con­cen­trated effort of climb­ing from one rung to another, the aware­ness of the aching in my calf and shoul­der, the chaf­ing on my palms, the dizzy­ing dis­tance of every­thing, can not occupy me at the end. At the end there […]

Matt kept the books apart on a spe­cial shelf in his writ­ing room.  It was hard to say which one he val­ued the most.  There was the copy of On the Road.  He didn’t know if it was a first edi­tion, but he’d found it down in his grandmother’s base­ment, so he fig­ured his mother […]

That’s my 12-year old son. I’m sit­ting in the leather chair play­ing around with a draw­ing pro­gram on the iPad. “What are you doing?” “Draw­ing.” “You can’t draw.” “Any­one can draw.” “No they can’t.” “Stay still.” A cou­ple of sec­onds. He watches me. He’s curi­ous, a lit­tle skep­ti­cal, and knows that I’m unpre­dictable enough to draw an orange cir­cle that I’ll […]

Worldly suc­cess has been elu­sive as has been sup­port where I live and work which makes me think I have mis­used my gifts.  Eas­ily refuted by rea­son and not a very exclu­sive club either. There’s going to be an end, a time when the lights go off, the vapor of life expires.  Then the brushes […]

When you cre­ate some­thing, the first test is to engage and inter­est your­self. Cre­ativ­ity is a gift, an instant of self-nourishment, of being gen­er­ous to your­self. You can write, draw, paint, play music, what­ever keeps your atten­tion; but you have to be will­ing to do it for your­self. Feed­ing your inter­est and atten­tion engages your […]

Expe­ri­ence presents a con­stant puz­zle: the fullest sense of expe­ri­ence is to be wholly in the world, immersed and accept­ing of the things that we encounter, sur­ren­dered to the moment. To share these moments requires tremen­dous art. You can’t force mean­ing, say to your­self that you’ll use this tech­nique or that tech­nique to mimic something […]

This is from a fas­ci­nat­ing set of illus­tra­tions kept in Mole­skin note­books. A per­sonal imag­i­nar­ium. When I look at them closely, I try to imag­ine what it would be like to draw one small sec­tion, then move to the other, an idle walk into the imag­i­na­tion turn­ing into a full-blown dream­scape. A full-set can be […]