A recent article in The Wall Street Journal describing the Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition in New York of Emily Dickinson’s handwritten fascicles and poetry scraps gave me pause. I pictured the great poetess, as if in a film, in her Amherst home gathering up the closest scrap of “coarse brown wrapping paper” to write down an idea that had sprung to mind. I jumped cut to regarding my own creative process because I, too, often capture an inspiration by grabbing the closest scrap of paper … [Read more...]
A Mother-Daughter Story: Conversations Over Breakfast in L.A.
My daughter, who lives in L.A. and works in the film and TV industry, is connected like a made guy. She knows all the cool places to go, all the cool places to eat, all the cool places to stay without spending wads of cash. She’s a cool, sweet kid, more interested in unearthing cool stuff than in being cool, if you know what I mean. And the kid has taste not only in highbrow stuff, but in fine lowbrow stuff. Before my last trip to L.A. for a mother-daughter weekend, I got this text: Isabel: … [Read more...]
Writing on the Edge: “Ice, Ice, Baby”
If I’m writing or skating “on the edge,” that groovy term mythologized in the Seventies, then I’m aiming to put it out there with maximally cool, technical style. A worthy goal, indeed, for this child of the Seventies whose jams are writing and figure skating. Go figure: You can observe that a skater moves beautifully on the ice, or that a writer has written a beautiful novel, but to the untrained eye each appears to produce beauty mysteriously. To analyze how writers and skaters achieve … [Read more...]