Tag: art
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Tension & Obsession in Art
“One thing investigators of the psychology of creative people have demonstrated beyond doubt in the past thirty years is that creativity has something to do with obsession. The demons of Poe, Van Gogh, and Liszt are not exceptions but extreme cases of the rule. The tensions we find resolved or at least defined and dramatized…
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Gallery
We are voyeurs moving like spirits through a gallery of images. If we never saw our image in a mirror, a pool of water, or a pane of glass, what would we imagine ourself to be? Someday an exhibit. If you create it, they will come. Well, not necessarily. But, for now, all the Light-Years…
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Nightlife
The dead are drugged, dragged outside, and left unburied. The murderers have gone behind the trees for a smoke. The air is a choking haze. The sky should be black but it is not. The moon is full, a jaundiced yellow. I feel sick. How did I get here? This is a mistake. I don’t…
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Falling
She was falling to her death like the earth into the sun, slowly and relative to nothing that mattered anymore. So she accepted the stranger’s offer to buy her a drink without bothering to turn and see who this new Patron Saint of Alcohol was. The offer had been conveyed to her by the bartender…
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Therapy
For three years he remained her patient, coming to her plush office, lying on her leather couch, and exposing his phobias – fears of acquiring then losing everything he owned. There was much to lose. He had property around the world – estates, vacation homes, villas, even a castle. The numerous companies he presided over…
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Fear
Life’s a high-wire act, said a man seated across the table from me. His eyes were mesmerizing, intense like a bird of prey. The trick, he added, is to not look down. As if calculating our thoughts, he smiled before confessing, This is not to say I’ve never slipped from the proverbial wire. No! In…
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Zoo
An hour before the gates opened to the public the human couple were locked in their cage between the leopards and the orangutans. Their meals were prepared at scheduled times, served to them on plates, the food consumed while curious onlookers gathered outside their bars. The couple stared back, curious too. As a rule they…
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Heroics
From pop-up books to electric trains to video games, he dismantled all his toys. Within days after flirting with the notion of play, he divided each item, strewn in pieces across the floor, decomposed to nuts, screws, and micro chips. Neither his father nor mother could comprehend their son’s destructive nature. As he grew, he…
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Guilt
He raped his wife then kissed her crying face before collapsing into sleep. Later that night he was handcuffed and shoved into the caged backseat of a car with flashing red lights. Driven downtown past decaying office buildings and abandoned warehouses he descended with the vehicle into a mausoleum-shaped structure down a cement ramp to…
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Publicity
The interviewer had charmed her with his smile. After being invited into her home, offered coffee, and allowed to have a crew of technicians run cables, cameras, and lights throughout her living room, she soon realized her guest was not only unappreciative but mean-spirited. He sat in her love seat and told her she looked…