Hiroshi Tasaka is talking so fast it makes my head whirl. Can even Japanese listeners follow him? I wonder.

— “We’re so lucky to be alive at the same time Leonard Cohen is.”–Lou Reed — Not everyone can appreciate Leonard Cohen’s performance style, but few would question his chops as a songwriter, plainly evidenced in immortal, frequently...

– Faced with what we are becoming, it’s important to recall what we have been – Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for attending this week’s special Soul Shelter convocation. Now allow me to find my notes. … Ah, here they...

—Twyla Tharp reminds us that “being creative is not a once-in-a-while sort of thing.”— The Creativity/Inspiration genre can be problematic, tending toward cheery but chicken-soup-style platitudes at one extreme, and falsely authoritative...

— After which I embark on a Soul Shelter sabbatical — Thanks to my twelve-year-old son’s craving for action flicks, in the past week I saw two extraordinary movies: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Despite...

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” – Henry David Thoreau Here in the Pacific Northwest the tree-leaves that haven’t yet fallen are burning bright with reds and yellows. Over the last several weeks twilight has come on noticeably earlier, and...