The scroll of Kerouac's soul

Perhaps every writer and artist who read On The Road while coming of age held the knowledge I chose to avoid.

A brother helping me remain in light

My friend’s butt dial was nothing of the sort. Thinking of me, and loving me over the span of decades, he dialed my number and held his smartphone in air, surrounded by thousands of fans, that I might hear the music I love.

Ten things to never say to a new car salesperson

Salespeople are trained to uncover a buyer’s needs, desires and weaknesses. The best salespeople can do all three at the same time by asking probing questions.

The question of an evolving identity made whole by street artists and vandals

Souls get painted over by strangers, family and lovers all the time. We are written on indelibly. Sometimes on purpose. Sometimes by accident.

The warmth of knowing my baseball glove is in the sweater drawer

The love is inexplicable. Yes, it is the single remainder from the love of a game that I didn’t understand at the time. A game that brought tears. A game that brought joy. A game for which I had little talent.

Sonny Rollins standing on the bridge in Giverny

In the early 1960s, later in the evening, when he needed a place to practice his saxophone, myth holds that Rollins would walk the span perfecting his instrument’s voice.

Sitting in front of forever

Picturing Rothko leaning back, smoking a cigarette, while contemplating the work in front of him, suggests a leisure that few artists feel while in the act.

A temple, a church, a synagogue or an artist’s studio?

Usually, the complexity of meaning refers to either darkness or light, in the most absolute sense of each word.

Foghorn Leghorn inside the flower garden of the mind

Old enough to have had a black and white television as a child, I had no idea the Looney Tunes gang could blaze in full color

My first cup of Tibetan butter tea

In reading about Lhasa, the topic of butter tea came up repeatedly. And, since I like both butter and tea, my curiosity was piqued.

Dancing is better with a corn dog in each hand

Corn dogs flew high for three minutes and sixteen seconds. I burned the rule book to the ground. My friends were absorbed by the music.

Even Edgar Degas made mistakes

A close friend talks often about wanting to draw, but never does. She is afraid of making mistakes, expecting of herself some kind of perfection to which she can’t quite put words.

Running shoes, rhetoric, hyperbole and the dog with the human head

Legend holds that a creature patrols the graveyard. It is a bastard, described best as a dog with a human head. Imagine the body of a rust colored pit-bull, proudly carrying eight pounds of rugby ball-shaped evil on its shoulders, with one pound of face having been beaten into the head with a flail and mace.

Still life painting at 36 Via Fondazza

Giorgio Morandi was a modern master of the painted still life. He lived in Bologna, at 36 via Fondazza, from 1910 to 1964.

True creative genius

What matters is that rats the size of small dogs were strolling from pile to pile, across five lane avenues, with an impudence usually reserved for a Goldman Sachs partner.

"Sometimes you need to just lay on the sidewalk and bleed for a little bit"

The flow sculpts efficiently, precisely and permanently. It’s effortless. Not a finger raised. Not an endorphin earned.

Dozens of worn-out couches in a true art house

Every artist’s studio needs a comfortable place to sit that allows one to recline and contemplate the most recent creative actions taken — a well-worn sofa or an overstuffed armchair, perhaps.