What do you wish you could do more every day? When I retired, people said, “But what will you do with all that free time?” This was, of course, a subtle way of suggesting that only working is a meaningful way to spend one’s life and that I’d be bored without standing in front ofContinue reading “More Creative Time”
Tag Archives: retirement
Cross-Country
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike? Let’s first rule out buses. I had so many bad experiences back in the 80s with bus travel, not to mention more recent Arts Trips as a faculty member, that I don’t really want to do a bus trip again. Maybe when IContinue reading “Cross-Country”
More on AI Creation
In my last blog post I talked about creating a video with various digital and AI tools. Here’s part two. I recently worked on creating some video scripts to continue the process of educating those interested in theatre; even though I’m retired, I still want to disseminate some info that I’ve gleaned over the years.Continue reading “More on AI Creation”
Lose Yourself in the Flow
What activities do you lose yourself in? When I am writing or working on making a film, I often experience the phenomenon of missing time, usually associated with alien abduction. (There are those aliens again!) But the one activity I have always lost myself in, while still being acutely aware of (the) time, has beenContinue reading “Lose Yourself in the Flow”
Life Fertilizer
What experiences in life helped you grow the most? I chose the title above because sometimes life gives you you-know-what (a four letter word for fertilizer, that is), but it changes a person’s direction and helps them grow. As. Mephistopheles says in Goethe’s Faust, “I am a part of the power which eternally wills evilContinue reading “Life Fertilizer”
My Job…
Do you enjoy your job? I always said, “I love my work but hate my job.” Teaching theatre and directing shows, working with students—this was my life’s work. But navigating the job, which included committee work, assessment (which, I always quipped, “begins with asses”), filling out endless reports (do I really need to do Sarbanes-OxleyContinue reading “My Job…”
Most Ambitious DIY
Describe the most ambitious DIY project you’ve ever taken on. I think, after years of refinishing furniture and building and staining bookshelves, my most ambitious DIY project would be creating a costume for a Steampunk Grim Reaper. I started with the base being an Australian drover’s coat, and added a skirt lol mask fronted byContinue reading “Most Ambitious DIY”
Faust: Ever Striving
My encounters with literature, whether dramatic or narrative, have been wide-ranging. From the briefest (the poems of Richard Brautigan, as tightly constructed as any haiku) to the epic works of Neal Stephenson and Thomas Pynchon (I read Gravity’s Rainbow three times), my reading list has been extensive. Of course I’ve only scratched the surface ofContinue reading “Faust: Ever Striving”
Can I get a little STEAM?
Not steampunk. Not this time at least, although it has been a recurring theme for me: my theatre production of Birth of Merlin used this aesthetic, and of course, my novel Watchers of the Dawn is aptly subtitled A Steampunk Adventure. Here I am referring to the addition of Art to STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering,Continue reading “Can I get a little STEAM?”
The Mind’s Eye
Years ago, I wrote a Christmas newsletter. It started as a parody of those you get from people who talk about how their kids’ books are on the NYTimes best seller list after winning a Nobel Prize. Then the newsletter, dubbed The Mind’s Eye (from my first independent venture, The Rational Mind Theatre Company) becameContinue reading “The Mind’s Eye”