Whenever I am asked to speak with students I usually tell them to try to find their own voice, to try to find that thing that expresses who they really are. I add that this is not something that comes easily, that it takes real effort and sacrifice. The great poet e e cummings (you most likely know him for his unusual punctuation) offered up a beautiful piece of similar advice for aspiring poets that I think can be applied to most any discipline.
Or to anyone who simply desires to feel deeply in this world.
I particularly like the line: To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. That line alone speaks volumes.
Take a moment to read this short bit of advice and see what you think– or feel.
A Poet’s Advice To Students
(e e cummings)
A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.
This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know they feel-but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling-not knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time-and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world-unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.
Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.
It’s the most wonderful life on earth.
Or so I feel.
… I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
Every spring the Library of Congress selects 25 recordings that they deem to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to be added to their National Recording Registry. There is a wide selection each year with recordings from all genres of music combined with radio broadcasts. speeches and other spoken word recordings.
I’ve been a fan of 
If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.
There is an exhibit of paintings currently hanging at the Grand Palais in Paris that features the work of the early 20th century Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. It is only the second major retrospective of his work and the first since 1958. He is another of those artists who are probably not on your radar– I know I was unaware of his work. But once I found it, I couldn’t shake the memory of it.
He was born in the north of Portugal in 1887 near the small city of Amarante. While still a teen he made his way to Paris where he absorbed the fertile art scene that was in place. He began painting and drawing while becoming close friends with many artists and writers such as Gertrude Stein, Modigliani, Juan Gris and Brancusi.
In the last few months we lost two of the most unique and transcendent musicians of our time, David Bowie in January and now Prince. Luckily for us, both had long and prolific careers and left large musical legacies behind. I admired Prince greatly and I think that is all there is to say, especially after the millions of words written and spoken over the past few days. I don’t think I can stand to see another tweet on one of the news channels form some celebrity saying that this is how it sounds when doves cry.
One of the things in my paintings that is often commented on and asked about is the Red Chair. Sometimes hanging in a tree, sometimes alone on a hilltop or in a field or sometimes on its side on winding path, it is one of those recurring images that I use as a symbol. It has come to represent ancestry and memory as well as acting for a symbolic stand-in (or sit-in) for humanity’s place in the landscape.
I have
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