LAWRENCE RUSS: Soul, Art, and Society
Some Cautions about Enlightenment
As I’ve said, a part of what I plan to do for you in these posts is to give you what I’ve called clues, aiming to bring you closer to genuine reality. As part of the preparation for that, sort of checking your spacesuit for leaks, let me dispel some common errors about the voyage. […]
Art and the Mad Machine: The Spirit of Life vs. The Spirit of Addiction
What you see above is a reproduction of the cover of the July 1992 issue of OMNI Magazine, for which I wrote the month’s “First Word” piece. The “First Word” name of the feature referred to its being the first piece of writing in the issue (on page 3 after the Table of Contents), and […]
A Little Guidance and a First Pair of Clues
We’re all taught – or, rather, misled – by our families, our schools, our occupational or professional training, by the ubiquitous stream of advertisements, to believe that what is unreal is real, what is real is unreal; that what is poisonous or trivial is priceless, that what is priceless isn’t worth our time. How often […]
A Welcome to Further and Farther Voyages
If you’ve read my first post on this blog — “Welcome to Artists, Lovers of Art, and Unknown Friends” — you’ll have a good indication of my intentions here. And if you’ve been here before, you may have noticed that I’ve upgraded the template for this site. But that was just a prelude to more significant […]
Art and Mystery
“. . . there is only one thing valuable in art and that is the bit that cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm . . . if there is no mystery then there is no ‘poetry,’ the […]
An Unhappy July the 4th
Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet and psychotherapist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2011. Transtromer, who died in 2015, wrote this poem after the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but, as anyone with eyes open should see, it is not merely a topical or occasional piece. Reading it today should make that abundantly […]
The Poetic Image
“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” Robert Frank
Dear Li Bo, Brother of Clouds and Dragons
Li Bo, how could you keep your heart from loneliness, calling always to the moon?
The Body, Mortal and Immortal, as a Camera
Yes, the word “camera” is italicized in the original text of this passage from “The God of the Living” by George MacDonald. The word opens an entrance into these thoughts as a revelation of what photography, at least great photography, in its essential, not its merely “definitional” nature, is and aims and serves to […]
Suffer the Little Children to Come unto Me
On the front page of The New York Times for Saturday, April 21, 2018, there was an article titled “Over 700 Children Taken from Parents at Border.” It began: On Feb 20, a young woman named Mirian arrived at the Texas border carrying her 18-month old son. They had fled their home in Honduras through […]