Search results for “james baldwin”
Art and the Human Spirit: Olivia Laing on What the Lives of Great Artists Reveal About Vulnerability, Love, Loneliness, Resistance, and Our Search for Meaning
“We’re so often told that art can’t really change anything. But… it shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living.”
The Best of Brain Pickings 2020
A glance over the shoulder of time to reveal the patterns, themes, and ideas that steady us and shelter us in the tempest of life.
On the Beach Alone at Night: Meshell Ndegeocello Reads Walt Whitman’s Ode to the Interconnectedness of Life
A song of praise for “all souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different… all nations, colors… all identities that have existed or may exist… all lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future.”
Octavia Butler on Creativity, the Generative Power of Our Obsessions, and How We Become Who We Are
“Love quiets fear. And a sweet and powerful positive obsession blunts pain, diverts rage, and engages each of us in the greatest, the most intense of our chosen struggles.”
Sappho’s Timeless Elegy for Heartbreak at the End of Love, Reimagined in a Haunting Choral Invocation
“Rejoice, go and remember me.”
Einstein on the Political Power of Art
“Nothing can equal the psychological effect of real art — neither factual descriptions nor intellectual discussion.”
Favorite Books of 2020
Audre Lorde, Keith Haring, Bruce Lee, chance, love, black holes, constraint as a catalyst of creativity, and a whisper of Whitman.
Beyond Good and Evil: Nietzsche on Love, Perseverance, and the True Mark of Greatness
“A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.”
Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing
“As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas… a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change.”
ABOUT
CONTACT
SUPPORT
SUBSCRIBE
Newsletter
RSS
CONNECT
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Tumblr