What is real power?

(Good old Amanda, asking the small questions.) We're coming to you live from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, on a hot-as-summer May afternoon, where we're marinating in existential angst. Today's special: deep, probing questions about the nature of power. I've written about how my sense of power is tied up in my income. ("It eats away at your …

Advertisements

What’s knocking at the door of your life?

Last night I had a dream that someone or something was knocking, and it represented getting a step closer to becoming a full-time artist, and in my dream, I said to myself, "This is a perfect metaphor for what I'm going through — I should blog about it tomorrow." (Yes, I am apparently scouting for …

Doing what feels right (instead of what we wish felt right)

If you read yesterday's post, you know I'm processing some intense feelings these days. Feelings of shame, of loss, and — at the same time — hope. All tied to finally, finally listening to my intuition and becoming the artist I'm meant to be. So when Facebook reminded me of this blog post that my friend Lauree …

Talking with Betsy Stover About Being Mentored by Amy Poehler, Improvising Marriage and Home Ec

I met Betsy when she was eight months pregnant and teaching an improv class I was taking at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in NYC...

Dear Amanda Palmer (An Open Letter from a Fellow Artist-Mom)

I was so moved by the artist's open letter earlier today about why she fears motherhood as an artist that I write my own open letter in response.

“You Seem Like You Have Stories to Tell.”

If there's a small voice inside of you saying "I miss writing/painting/acting/dancing/[fill in the blank]," this post is an invitation to begin again.

Attach Your Own Oxygen Mask First

The battle to make time for self-care, even when things are topsy-turvy (...especially when things are topsy-turvy)

Channeling Creative Impulse

I'm lucky enough to be working on a project for TED, and even luckier that it required me to watch (for a second time) Elizabeth Gilbert's talk about elusive creative genius... and this section of the talk just REALLY stood out to me, this time, and I wanted to share it...

Meet My Friends: Ted Hearne

I met Ted because my daughter wouldn't stop talking about his son. They went to daycare together at the time (before Ted left us for Los Angeles!!), and she would come home talking about him every day, to the point where I realized, "We need to have this kid over." Ted and his awesome wife Janina came, too, and we ate bagels and drank bloody marys and talked about living meaningful lives and it was, as Ted would later put it, "A great hang." Fast-forward to a month ago when I got to see an amazing work of art that Ted composed as part of BAM's Next Wave festival (which I wrote about the other day). It made me curious to know more about his creative process, how he managed to make a living as a composer and how he balanced art-making with fatherhood. Read on for his characteristically thoughtful answers -- and do yourself a favor and check out his work at tedhearne.com.

“I Wrote.”

Wouldn't it be cool if writers everywhere wore "I Wrote" stickers as a way of acknowledging the hard work of writing, and to remind us that we aren't in it alone?