Empathy . . .

Feb 27, 2018 | Uncategorized

—CB— I’ve never spent a lot of time asking myself about “my purpose in life.” One does, of course, in writing your college admissions essay, but after that it’s catch as catch can. There’s your mission statement for your theatre company, dozens of grant applications...

Lear to Bed. . .

Jul 3, 2017 | Culture

—From EF— Today we put King Lear to bed and gave his crown to the ocean. We’ve lived with him for more than five years, having started thinking about doing this production while we were writing Galahad’s Fool. In that novel, a puppeteer is confronting making new work...

May Day. . .

May 3, 2015 | Uncategorized

— From the Fool — I’ve got a friend in New Jersey, Reggie, who wants to be called Reginald, but nobody does, it just doesn’t fit. He writes me letters, real ones with stamps you stick on like the old days where they had stage coaches and cowboys, but I...

Touch. . .

Apr 27, 2015 | Uncategorized

— From EF — Touch is amazingly powerful. It can’t be packaged or monetized or tweeted — you have to get the real thing, in person. There’s a subset of child abuse that’s labeled “failure to thrive,” and one of its big elements appears to be an absence of loving touch....

Spring Fools. . .

Apr 5, 2015 | Culture, Spirituality

— From the Fool — I went to this Fool Parade. It was a nice day. There was a band playing pretty loud, and people had funny wigs and noses and bright colored pants and hats and hair and a dog with a baseball cap that peed on a tree. The dog did, I mean. They all...

Sheba, Lear, and the Begats. . .

Mar 30, 2015 | Uncategorized

— From EF — Sheba came home this morning . Not the “little Sheba” of the 1950 William Inge play — this is our beloved whale of a Dodge Maxivan, and she had gone across the street to visit the neighbors for the weekend. (We needed every inch of parking space for our...

Chronosynclastic Infundibula. . .

Feb 9, 2015 | Uncategorized

— From EF — The Goldberg Infundibulum. Or, if you prefer, the Chronosynclastic Variations. There are times when I’m going along, minding my own business, and suddenly a word or a phrase comes leaping down from a low-hanging branch and snarls all its paws in my hair. I...

Sand Castles. . .

Feb 2, 2015 | Uncategorized

— From the Fool — My friend Luce said she really liked what I wrote last week, I think because I mentioned her dog. “You oughta get your stuff published,” she said, “There’s a lotta wisdom in there.” I never thought about that. I...