A photographer friend told me I could improve my photos if I bought a good camera. I use my smartphone. I got excited and then I remembered E.B. White’s reaction when he saw his officemate, James Thurber, doing some cross-hatching on one of his drawings. “Stop,” White told him, “if you ever become good, you’ll be mediocre.” Though it may be different with photography.
He wanted to leave his comfort zone but was afraid he wouldn't be in a safe place.
There are actually four types of people in the world: Those who have not been to Portugal and don’t know about fado. Those who have not been to Portugal yet know about fado. Those who have been to Portugal and know about fado. And those who have been to Portugal but don’t know about fado.
These last are the ones you usually get stuck sitting next to on airplanes.
Mariza, the Portuguese fado singer, sang at the Arsht Center Friday night and, unlike at her performance a number of years ago at the Olympia, she was very personable, chatting with the audience and, a few times, asking us to sing along. I thought of these latter moments the following morning when Pico Iyer, paraphrasing Joseph Campbell at Books & Books, described life as “joyous participation in a world of sorrow.”
Walking down 2nd Street in Philadelphia on Wednesday I was happy to see that Head House Books, where I did a reading in 2016, was still in business. Continuing on I noticed that the bar on the corner where we had gone for drinks afterward, The Irish Times, had closed. Philadelphians, or at least Queen Villagers, live in a place where independent bookstores survive and Irish pubs don’t.
His personal journey allowed him to take control of his narrative which started a national conversation on our overuse of clichés.