a selection of photos by Giovanni Pescetto of Dr. Fritz Smith
Read MoreThe hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations, through the inheritance of muscles, ligaments, and, over longer periods of time, bones that had undergone special development and the ever-renewed employment of this inherited finesse in new, more and more complicated operations, have given the human hand the high degree of perfection required to conjure into being the pictures of a Raphael, the music of a Paganini.
Read MoreThe line, “That phraseless Melody—The Wind does—working like a Hand,” inspired this August newsletter. How can our hands doing bodywork, playing instruments, touching loved ones, in all our gestures embody the graceful spirit that Emily Dickinson evokes here?
Read MorePianos strings are “mis-tuned” slightly - on purpose! Why?
Read MoreBone flutes are among the oldest known artifacts of human technological ingenuity.
Read MoreOn April 23, our son, Jake, and the love of his life, Lauren, got married. May we all share in the highest blessing of these two creative, wonderful people.
Read MoreYears ago I saw a colorfully painted wooden sculpture that struck and delighted me. The vision and memory of the sculpture has become indelible over the years. It was sculpture of two great figures: Muddy Waters and Georges Balanchine.
Read MoreWe ourselves are mostly water, human forms of embodied rain. Rain represents mourning, yet also replenishment and new growth.
Read MoreThere are special places of awe and power where we can rest and be rejuvenated. The book reminds us that we can do this within ourselves. We already know this in our bones.
Read MoreMusic arises out of silence, like form from emptiness. And the best music, just like the best of poetry and visual art - takes us deeper than words, deeper than its own images and melodies, to a quieter place in the heart.
Read MoreIn his day as famous as Salvador Dali - Pavel Tchelitchew was a visionary Russian emigré artist who deeply influenced Alex Grey and other people who explore the beautiful form and energy of the human body.
Read MoreDECEMBER 4th I turned 75. It is science-fiction: a “scientific” fact that I am 75 and a fiction- I don’t experience myself as 75! Please indulge me in reminiscing a bit through a few pictures.
Read More“Do you love a living person absolutely? Tell them now”…..
- read more of this poem by Brenda Hillman
To touch a stone, to touch it with the fullness of sense / With the knowing mind alive in the fingertips Is to go deep back where all belongings were / To feel the flames and the floods that wrought the earth / And know this hand is one with all that was…
Read MoreThe lore of the Chinese lute gives us an unparalleled window into touch technique.The descriptions and imagery of the kinds of touch used for lute-playing show us that we in the West have a highly under-developed vocabulary and imagery for the vast range of gestures, shapes and spirit conveyed through the infinite and different ways we touch.
Read More“Poetry is prayer.” There are a thousand prayers from around the world in these treasured anthologies.
Read MoreExcerpt from a review by Srikanth Reddy of “How Do You Know Where You Are”: Poems by Dana Levin, in the New York Times Book Review, April 17.…..(Levin variously) attempts to find a way out of her literary PTSD. So it’s quite exhilarating when, toward the book’s end, the poet finds her truest muse in the unlikeliest of places, on a chiropractor’s table:
Read MoreHow do you carry a dream in a broken world?
Read More'Roughly forty-three thousand years ago a young cave bear died in the rolling hills on the northwest border of modern-day Slovenia. A thousand miles away and a thousand years later, a mammoth died in the forests above the river Blau near the southern edge of modern-day Germany. Within a few years of the mammoth's demise, a griffon vulture also perished in the same vicinity. Five thousand years after that a swan and another mammoth died nearby.
…These different creatures, lost across time and space, did share one remarkable posthumous fate. After their flesh had been consumed by carnivores or bacteria, a bone from each of their skeletons was meticulously crafted by human hands into a flute.