The Western world is an ancient system that repeatedly fails to reform itself. That place where the human quality will be experienced as simply as it should be is probably the African continent itself. What cannot be avoided, is for Africans to be referred to , not simply as humans, to quote Hannah Arendt, but [...]
In politics, the revolutionary radical of today regularly becomes the totalitarian Grand Inquisitor of tomorrow. This is no less true in art: institutional and administrative dedication to freedom often produced a rigid conformity.Or as Hannah Arendt once said, ” The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution”. The Museum [...]
Art in Limbo. Like lost packages at the post office without a return address. Metaphorically, on the bottom of the ocean in Davy Jones locker. Painters without a name, art without a number. Every generation of art has its casualties whose work lies outside that prescribed by the official tastemakers. These artists are sent artistically [...]
Call it balladeering of the part-time priest.A man caught in all the intensities and entanglements of being suspended somewhere between Demons and the call of Angels. First Abbe Prevost, a sometime cleric wrote his famous story, then set out to live it. It poses the question whether individual lives are scripts which we set out [...]
In antiquity men spoke of her as the tenth muse. Today, Sappho ( 618 BC-565 BC ) remains one of the most famous lyric poets the world has ever known.Sappho was called a lyrist because, as was the custom of the time, she wrote her poems to be performed with the accompaniment of a lyre. [...]
Santa is a monopoly. Many are called, but few are chosen.The evolution of the species of Santas has resulted in a survival of the fittest. Whether a case of perfect creation, the quantum leap, or evolution, only more time will provide the answer. The Santa we know today is very much a sub-species of the [...]
When the Spanish conquered Guatemala in the 1500′s they overcame a series of independent highland tribes known as the Mayans. The conquered Mayans were allowed to speak their language, but their religion was banned and,in the inquisition style of Spain, they were forced to become Catholics on pain of death. Their descendants are part of [...]
Christmas. Undoubtedly the holiday with the greatest inclination to bring out the fruitcake in all of us. Is Christmas really any worse than other times of the year and do the Christmas blues really exist? Carl Jung differentiated himself from Freud by his addition of the analysis of that part of the psyche called the [...]
Bah! to the humbugs and the skeptics. To Santa, it is all about the voyage and not the destination. To the mere mortals,on a diet of hope and determination, its about reclaiming a piece of Paradise lost. A battle between belonging and unbelonging. Its whas writer Christopher Hitchens would call getting the ”X” factor back [...]
T’was the night before Yuletide, and all through the pad/Not a hipcat was swinging, and, thats nowhere dad/The kid’s was all hung, on that stocking routine/Hoping the fatboy would soon make the scene/I was ready for snoresville, man was I beat/My main lady and I, were decked out to sleep A screwy old geezer was [...]
