Normalizing Celebrity ~ On the beauty of being vs. the glamour of fame.

If Madonna were just like normal people

A fellow film colleague posted a link to a set of celebrity images. Some of those images had been photoshopped by Danny Evans to give his “artist’s impression” of what these celebrities might have looked like without makeup, hair stylists, fashion stylists, diets, personal trainers, botox and a battery of […]

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Letting go, moving on, going forward ~ Camel and Ice

Camel ~ I Can See Your House From Here

Camel’s lilting, melancholic and epic instrumental, Ice is among my favourite pieces of music. Discovered on a late-night college radio station in 1979 in Rochester, New York, it stands out on the album I Can See Your House From Here (despite the DJ’s touting of Remote Romance as, “Best on […]

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Before and After ~ Stephen Mitchell’s Second Book of the Dao

The Second Book of the Tao, Stephen Mitchell (trans)

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.

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The trick … is not minding that it hurts ~ Lawrence of Arabia

The Match Scene ~ Lawrence of Arabia

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 […]

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Beginning again with Sacred ~ Lotus Feet & Shakti

Remember ~ Shakti

I haven’t been living the sacred enough lately. Sometimes I forget how sacred life is, become caught up in the mundane, the day-to-day of existing in a corporeal world, in the meanness that can be everyday life. I stop, for a while, living a life that is sacred. I’m often […]

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Watery Rhythms ~ Deva Premal sings of Oshun, Goddess of rivers, seashores and love

Deva Premal ~ Love is Space

Listen very closely to this song, to the underlying rhythms. What’s that sound, the shsh sshh shsshsh? This mantra is Ide Were Were, from Deva Premal’s album Love is Space. Listen closely. There’s a hint right at the start. Depending on the fidelity of your sound system, you may not […]

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Paul Simon ~ slip slidin’ my way from the blues to the rainbow’s loving hues

Paul Simon - Slip Sliding Away

A day of sunshine and warm summery breezes, moving conversation and revealed transformations, a day of intimacy and worries unburdened, of gratitude and the most difficult of life’s moments shared… A day not so much impervious to the hardships, the horrors, the blues, but one that finds itself on the other […]

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Jason Bourne and identity — who am I?

Robert Ludlum ~ The Bourne Identity

Who are you? Are you the sum of your experiences, your actions, your memories? Are you your dreams, your plans, your aspirations, the person you’ll someday become? Are you your past, or your destiny or your present? The best films in any genre are always the ones that touch on […]

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