When you’re at the bottom of a mountain and you look up, you can’t see every rock and stone or path. You see the peak, how distant it looks, and very often, an insurmountable task ahead. It may not be immediately obvious how to start climbing. It may be that you see people at the top and project your insecurities onto them, thinking about how great they must be, and how small you must look to them. What we can’t…
We can learn a lot from athletes. They know, factually and without dispute, that they must practice before they compete. A runner knows that he or she must run most days leading up to a marathon to build endurance. A high jumper knows that he or she must practice in order to be able to achieve the jump of their dreams. Yet a lot other professions, passions or hobbies aren’t necessarily seen in the same way. Photographers and artists, for some…
There exists within each of us a certain fear that hangs above our heads like a black cloud, threatening to pour rain down upon us at any moment. The more we believe in this fear the larger it grows, and the threat spreads beyond your control, to other people who are passing by, who cannot escape the rain when it pours. Some fears float out in front of you, looming in the distance, a storm cloud rolling in, while others…
There is a certain song that we sing, sometimes without realizing that our voice escapes our clenched throat, that vibrates through the air, noiseless, until it beats against the place it was meant to find. The lyrics are without words yet speak to a place inside where the voiceless booming of magnetic poetry carves itself in deep. Words are not necessary in this song. It is a pounding mystery. The ocean beating rocks against one another, or the crack of…
It was the trip of a lifetime. One year ago I hosted an artist retreat in France, and the group that came together fell in plutonic, blissful love. Throughout the rest of the year we had joked (who even knows how it started) that we should go to Iceland together for an epic reunion, and somewhere along the line, it started to become real. I put together an itinerary with my assistant, and we planned and planned what a trip…