Ultimately, Carl’s novel is a journey of hope. Despite characters’ woundedness, art-making still frees and transfigures: draws out the parched soul, leads it to water. In the end, Carl suggests, it is the water from which the soul drinks that matters; for some, art-making is simply the path that leads there.
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March 25th: A Feast of Feasts
Many Christians celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord on this day, and for years that was my only association with it. As it turns out, some combination of historical circumstances, fate, and tradition has placed a great deal of weight on this date, and the reason the Annunciation has been celebrated then is no mere coincidence but a participation in an older tradition preceding even the birth of Christ.
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Working on Beauty: Listening to Robert Johnson and Arnold Schoenberg
I would hate to relegate beautiful things to the realm of merely pleasurable things. Therefore I think it is important to regularly pursue experiences of the beautiful that do not initially appear to be pleasurable at all.
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Featured Artist: Matthew Paul Cleary
I first approached abstraction through sculpture—specifically the materials they were created from. What metaphorical weight do particular materials hold? How can these materials convey a message or a story to the viewer?
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On Exile, Desire and Happiness
Recent articles of note from around the world wide web.
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O Solomon, I Have Vanquished Thee!
Once a church becomes politicized or commercialized, can it ever reestablish itself as a sacred place?
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“The Passionate Poet to His Reluctant Love”
⎺A New Translation of "Catullus V" by Thomas Roe
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What is the Good Life?
Recent articles of note from around the world wide web.
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Music That Listens to Itself
How does one account for music which follows a plan that hasn’t been made? Music which evolves organically, in real time, into a coherent structure? Talent is one answer, and Taborn has it. Training and experience are also clearly worth acknowledging as necessary foundations for this sort of work. But these answers leave something to be desired.
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New Public Domain Works for 2022
It’s January again, which means thousands of books, films and other copyrighted items entered the public domain and are now free to be appreciated, reprinted or artistically remixed.
