Category: On writing
-
I’ve been reading Irving Sandler’s book on the Abstract Expressionist painters, The triumph of American painting. I picked this book up also because I wanted to study how someone writes about that art. I’ve gotten other things from my reading, too, and it makes me think about why we write about art and music, the…
-
The metaphor of opening doors into hidden worlds is powerful for me. I think of any writing project as starting when I find a door that opens into the world of whatever it is that I’m writing about. I’m often intimidated by my new project on Morton Feldman’s music, but I am also beginning to…
-
Just about all of the substantive pieces of music writing that I’ve produced in the last thirty years or so are available here. Most of these are about John Cage and/or Morton Feldman. I’ve curated a list of what I think are my “essential” texts and also provide an index to the pages and blog…
-
I’ve said that I’m more a storyteller than a musicologist. I was reminded of this while reading Kay Larson’s new book “Where the heart beats”. Our tellings of the story of Cage’s spiritual journey aren’t that far apart.