Mapmakers once filled unknown regions with lions and monsters. The phrase hic sunt leones did not appear everywhere, but the instinct did. Where knowledge ended, imagination supplied danger. We still do this. We draw lions around people we do not know, histories we avoid, and futures we cannot control. Political leaders exploit that instinct. They…
The imagination has a curious double life. It allows us to invent symphonies and constitutions. It also allows us to invent enemies. That may sound like a contradiction, but it is simply a truth about being human. The same faculty that helps us envision a better future can also persuade us that people we barely know…
No one rehearses a fire drill because they hope for a fire. No orchestra rehearses because the concert has already happened. A rehearsal is where habits form before the moment they are needed. We rehearse not because we know what will happen, but because we want to become the kind of people who can respond well…
Musicians understand something policymakers have largely forgotten: tradition is not the enemy of innovation. Every musician begins with an inheritance. A jazz standard has a structure. A sonnet has fourteen lines. A blues progression has twelve bars. A fugue has rules. A raga has conventions. Even improvisation happens within a shared framework. Form is not…
It is easy to feel overwhelmed. We can doomscroll. We can tune it out. We can become consumed by anger. We can tell ourselves that somebody ought to do something. Or we can become part of that “somebody.” Throughout history, people have resisted injustice in countless ways. They have marched. They have organized. They have…
When Nations Lose Their Minds, Artists Help Them Remember From fascism to apartheid, history shows the arts do more than protest. They preserve truth, protect imagination, and help societies find their way back. The twentieth century offered repeated examples of governments trying to define reality for everyone else. In Nazi Germany, modern art was condemned…
There has to be more that creative minds can do than shake their heads or their fists. I’m not interested in positioning artists anywhere on a political spectrum. That road leads straight to identity silos, and I’ve spent enough time trying to bust those up. What I’m interested in is gathering people who have an…
I thought this season of life would be quieter. Instead, the world feels louder, faster, and more unstable than I remember it ever being. Institutions feel strained. Leadership feels compromised. Public life feels staged. Many of us who have spent our lives creating feel a tension. Do we retreat into private practice? Do we disengage?…