My Muse ~ Movies, Music & Books
Journeys and words inspired by the arts...
I was digging into Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Dao one day back in January (over a lovely Red Snapper Soup @ Granville Island) when a passage in the second chapter inspired the following poem.
I’ve always loved this scene introducing Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. In a film rife with extraordinary storytelling and wisdom, it remains my favourite. In hindsight perhaps it’s the spiritual undertone of Lawrence’s statement that’s always intrigued me most because, of course, Lawrence isn’t only talking about […]
Mythology began with just three muses, Aoidē (“song” or “voice”), Meletē (“practice” or “occasion”), and Mnēmē (“memory”), but overtime expanded to nine. While my three primary muses are music, movies and books, the people in my life often inspire creativity and creation, some more than others. Yesterday brought such a […]
Every now and again I post a status message on Facebook that generates a comment storm. And every now and again, that comment storm generates ideas good enough for a blog post, as it did with The Tao of Love and Light: Riffing on physics and faith. Yesterday morning I […]
Blade Runner is among my favourite films. In a veritable symphony of cinematic elements — cinematography, script, production design, soundtrack, direction, acting — it doesn’t miss a note. The film touches on all the major themes of the human condition: love, death, good and evil, redemption, justice, ethics, greed, passion. […]
I started a post about courage, featuring this song, a couple or three weeks ago. It’s still sitting in the drafts folder. The Tragically Hip are a favourite Canadian band from the late ’80s and early ’90s, a time when I, and many other Canadians, considered them the best rock […]
A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare. ~ Gregory David Roberts Shantaram
A while ago I was reading Ken Follet’s The Pillars of the Earth. Set amidst the brutality of the English middle ages, it’s interesting to see how all Follet’s characters experience fear, and more interesting how they respond to it and how, oftentimes, they are controlled by it, particularly the […]
Some weeks ago I watched a documentary about a piano prodigy. In his young teens, the boy spoke about music with a profound wisdom. One thing he said, in particular, stayed with me. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something like: “The more you work with a piece of music, the […]
