Confessions of a Conservative Atheist
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To some of the film’s detractors, casting a black woman as Helen of Troy, a transgender man as Sinon, and updating the story to reflect some aspects of modern values is an assault on the foundations of all they hold dear, but Teddy Roosevelt might disagree. Teddy Roosevelt spent much of his life advancing the… Continue reading Teddy Roosevelt, The Odyssey, and the reality that Western civilization is stronger and more inclusive than defenders seem to believe
It’s the year 1600 and I am already an accomplished playwright, having written plays and created characters like Romeo and Juliet that would be revered for centuries. This might have been enough for any other artist, but I am not any artist by any means. I am William Shakespeare about to write Hamlet. It’s the… Continue reading I am William Shakespeare about to write Hamlet
Mr. Lynch was a director’s director, an artist who operated well outside the mainstream, sometimes far outside of it, but whose appeal occasionally crossed over in both classic films such as The Elephant Man and the birth of prestige TV with Twin Peaks. David Lynch as had a career perhaps as strange as the film’s… Continue reading David Lynch and a life lived outside the frame
Much like music, a great film can exist purely on an emotional level, as a stream of loosely related and structured consciousness that teases us with symbolism, impenetrable to a complete analysis, and yet filled with meaning all the same. Federico Fellini’s 1963 surrealistic fantasy about a film director struggling with his love life and… Continue reading Fellini’s 8½ and whether or not reality matters in either art or life itself
Two geniuses, separated by their respective fields of study, their appearance, manner, and over two hundred years, but both kept detailed notebooks, jotting down their every thought. Beethoven, however, transformed his into hundreds of published works while Da Vinci wrote thousands of pages he kept almost entirely to himself. Few would debate that Leonardo da… Continue reading Beethoven, Da Vinci, and the mysteries of the creative impulse
My writing process can best be described as vomiting on the screen and sifting through it in search of an editable morsel. The morsel is then preserved as I throw up again and repeat the process. Many morsels do not make it, some do as the process repeats itself into something resembling a final product. … Continue reading Celebrating 500 posts: Why and how I write
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 