‘When you see a Gauguin,’ writes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, ‘you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man.’

Artists are supposed to be our designated crazies.

‘The sower broadcasting his seed was an image that had been with him almost since he had become an artist. It stood for a painter - or an evangelist - sowing the seed of beauty and truth.’
Martin Gayford, The Yellow House: Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles

Our culture is about success, ‘Rich & Famous’ our mantra. No matter how badly we screw up, a strong tenet of Western Civilization assures us ‘they’ will suddenly adore us (and regret ignoring our fledgling efforts) once they see we’ve succeeded (ie. we are rich & famous, yes!).

My mother’s standard answer when complimented on her cooking was, ‘I just use good recipes.’ As though, with the right recipe, tasty food just makes itself.

My nephew drives his invention, pictured here, around southern California, for no apparent reason.  Were he selling busses, boats or amusement, he’d have the perfect schtick.  Crazy contradiction gets our attention.

His cousin, new college grad, went from cap and gown to shirt and shoes in a day, writing code for a midwest start-up.  He loves his job but sometimes wishes he’d majored in design, a place he gets lost in.

Words can be toys.  Children’s books bank on the likes of those who thrive on words like mugwump and quoz.

‘The idea that language is beautiful and strange and that you can play with it is very appealing for children, and also very important.
Catherine Bohne

A younger man approved my then long hair, telling me he wished women wouldn’t cut their hair the minute they reached a certain age. 

History is art, because story is art. Able writers interest us in world events by framing them in story.  And by the way, you and I are world events.

The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage During the Great War tells the story of Warren G. Harding’s 15 year affair with Caroline F. Phillips.  Of their fiery correspondence, many of his letters remain. The book is a fascinating juxtaposition of personal revelations and global political fault lines. In the heightened patriotism of World War I, Phillips’ German sympathies threatened her personal safety and Harding's political solvency. When she was suspected by the nascent FBI of spying for the enemy, Senator and future President Harding sent her this cautionary plea:

‘You have the intellect, the soul and personality, please command the poises befitting your superiority.’
Warren G. Harding

Sometimes lives of the past can dwarf our ordinary lives, but it’s worth remembering that we know these people through story. Boringness has been edited out. Even primary sources, letters in Harding’s own hand, were sculpted by the author. Ordinary and extraordinary lives, framed and pondered, reverberate through story craft.

This week, Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio asked me to represent myself and 60 artist colleagues for a television interview. Grappling with how best to explain my storytelling work in schools, I wanted to ‘command the poises’ - an artist mantra so aptly penned by Harding. A kind friend sent me these words just before the interview:

‘You are smart, sharp and a role model. You'll be terrific.’

Thus bolstered, I stepped before the cameras. I had a hunch my audience would glaze its eyes at concepts like ‘arts/curriculum integration,’ so I looked my interviewer in the eye and reenacted an Ohio & Erie Canal digger of Harding’s era. I became humble Italian-American Tony, one of my fourth graders’ favorite immigrant entrepreneurs, plying his enthusiasms with twinkling grace. What better way for students to frame, absorb and remember the past?

When story happens, large or small, nerves give way to art, preparation matures into performance, boringness vanishes and the rest, they say, is history.

I used to think imagination preceded art. If dreams run rampant, haunting the day with their memories, that’s inspiration, right? If feelings are ripe, it’s time to create something. Yes? 

Then there was that time I stepped out of my comfort zone into an acting class taught by Scott Plate. Asking his students to journal about their experiences, he promised to read every word. I soon began to richly dream, and freely add the findings to my journal. 

The dreams were vivid and complex, my sense and sensitivity at full tilt. A gift, I thought, that just when assigned the task of introspection, dreams should surface, ripe with illustration.  

Bill Moyers recently aired an interview from 2004. He asked Maurice Sendak, author illustrator of ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ how he calmed his own demons.

'Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain. I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I'm here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me.'
Maurice Sendak, Bill Moyers Journal

Beethoven composed elegance, vast and beautiful.  Listeners of the day had to warm to his passionate scores.  Because they did, his masterpieces live on.

With songwriting, brevity is key.  Gone are the days when the bards preserved whole histories through song.  People don’t stick around for that sort of thing.  We have books now, and Google.

Having just read such a book, filled with storied minutia about how print and broadcast media (dying life forms?) came to be, I’m charmed by the author’s élan.  The LA Times, CBS and Time, Inc. are the protagonists of David Halberstam’s gripping saga, The Powers That Be.  Power, politics and greed disregard justice or conscience and repeatedly give short shrift to a citizen’s need to know.  It’s the old story of democracy dashed on the rocks of the bottom line.  But the details, like notes in a Beethoven sonata, make the story live.

The book is a worthy, time consuming read.  Mr. Halberstam melds a composer’s lush ethos with a songwriter’s cut to the chase in segments like this:

Reporters and editors were at their best when motivated by instincts of social conscience, and belief in justice.  But those very instincts, given the curious value system in America, often made them stars.  It was heady stuff, this new touch of the bitch goddess.
David Halberstam, The Powers That Be

Our best instinct leading to our worst inclination: hardly a new phenomenon.  Ironically, it was the ever increasing reach of the media that magnified celebrity, goading even its best reporters and editors to follow fame’s fancy, to the detriment of honest reportage.

The Powers That Be predates Facebook, Youtube and the like.  Today’s web media give the impression that all of us have a shot at the spotlight, robbing the bitch goddess of her six inch nails.  Surely the saintly blogger can be trusted to honor truth?

Maybe someday, when we, the new journalist-citizenry, yearn to ride herd on our own rude hubris.