Emerson once wrote that ‘In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
With this definition in mind, songwriters are a particular type of genius creators. With a melody and relatively few words (usually between 100-300), the best have a rare ability to sing to us as if the words were moving from our own minds to mouths.…
In the movie The Intern, Anne Hathaway plays the founder of a tech/fashion startup and Robert DeNiro is her unlikely “senior intern.” At the company’s open layout office, there is a tradition where a bell is rung to celebrate an achievement. You can ring the bell to announce that you’ve done something noteworthy or in recognition of someone else’s efforts or accomplishments. When the bell is rung, everyone stops what they’re doing for a moment to cheer or clap, before going right back to what they were doing.…
The community turned out en masse. The line inside and outside the funeral home snaked; people waited over two hours to pay their respects to a man who was a pillar in the community for decades. The heat and the crowd swelled as the family received friends, colleagues and admirers for six hours. After texting my daughters that we’d be longer than expected and letting them know they would need to fend for themselves for dinner, one astutely noted in her reply, “a long line is a good thing.” …
I learned earlier today that I apparently have not one but two meniscus tears in my right knee. This is in addition to an ACL sprain.
There are two treatment options. One is rest, anti-inflammatories and physical therapy. The other is surgery. The first does not preclude the latter because if it fails, then surgery will still be on the table.
Timing is also a factor.…
Tracy Chapman’s song, Fast Car, tells the story of longing for a better life. Over the course of the song’s four and a half minutes, you’re taken on a ride of yearning, frustration, resignation, and hope.
It is a simple but beautiful song about the complexity of trying to better yourself and your situation.
I heard the song at a pivotal moment in my life where, like the characters in Chapman’s song, I too was longing to escape – to in her words, “leave tonight or live and die this way.”…
