Arts and Letters
The sixth year of Still Life—organized by theme
Friends,
This year started with a close reading of a still life painting and the search for a common tenderness of heart. Almost 365 days later, and that search still continues. It’s a daily practice, really, to stay hopeful and grounded, to till the soil of our own lives trusting that things can grow even on the dark days.
Looking back over the year, I’m proud of the writing I’ve done. It’s the sixth year of Still Life letters, and truthfully: I’m very tired. But I’m also grateful—grateful for you, reader, for reading and supporting and connecting over these letters. I’m also grateful for the time and space to develop a habit of mind and heart through writing all these letters, and most of all I’m grateful to the artists and poets and musicians who help us see and more deeply enter our shared life.
More on this next week, but for now, here’s an index of the year, organized by theme. I hope you click around and find a letter you miss. Forward one to a friend. Print off a poem and tuck it into your jacket, maybe read it out loud on a cold night to a friend. So the words arrive in the world as heat and breath, something to warm one another by.
Take care,
Michael
Poems You Can Eat
Five poems that start with simple fruit and veggies and spiral out into existential questions, creative work, and learning to cultivate joy and gratitude for being alive.
A poem on radishes in the rain and holding thunder in your hands
Peeling a grapefruit and waking up to the possibilities of each day
What we can learn from the loose and free life of a tomato on the vine
A translucent onion, a translucent life
Peaches and the orchard blossoming inside you—even on the gray days
Social Sculpture
These six artworks act as lightening rods for inspiration—they draw down light and energy and spread them through whole communities. In these letters, we studied them carefully, trying to learn how they might influence our own creative efforts.
In Project Rowe Houses, an artist transformed a dilapidated neighborhood into a globally recognized art studio complex
What “maintenance art” can teach us about mending, dignifying, and remembering
Pumping honey through a museum and the shape of "social sculpture”
How one artist transformed an old cotton gin into a museum dance party
A handmade performance venue inside church ruins reintroduced a city to itself
Life lessons from an annual pencil sharpening festival
A Cultural Blueprint
I did a close reading of R.A.P. Ferreira’s album Purple Moonlight Pages, tracing all the references and letting his rap songs inspire new ways of thinking. It lead to learning more about the celebrated artist Jack Whitten, and I made a “collaged essay” by the artist in response, stitching together final interviews into a spiritual reflection.
Reckoning with the Country Music Hall of Fame—and finding a larger musical world
How to cultivate resilience and hope when your creative community loses it’s voice
Collage, imagining new worlds, and Jack Whitten's spiritual vision
Slow-farming humility and the patience we need to build a creative life together
Art and Community
What might happen if I turn my focus away from the endless internet and instead focused specifically on the local art and culture happening right here in the Twin Cities? The question inspired a brand new project and prompted students on the other side of the world to join me in looking toward the local.
How do we discover the multicultural life around us?
How to time travel through concerts, museums, and art
Discovering art and community through a sense of place
Students in Australia respond to Still Life and explore the arts around them
TWIN CITY LIFE—my new project to help local art and community grow in the Twin Cities
A quote anthology on art and community-building
Reflections from the founder of the Forecast on art and community building in the Twin Cities
The Embodied World
The struggle is real, and the struggle is in our bodies. Literally: it’s so hard to balance these screens and digital tools with living in the world, with taking deep breaths and learning the names of trees and celebrating our neighborhoods. These letters try to cultivate that longing for an embodied life.
A gardener taught me the names of trees
How to look at a leaf and see the whole world
Good food, monastic chefs, and the way toward Paradise
A letter on second brains and cultivating an inner life
A conversation on perfectionism, spirituality, and the life of the mind
One sculpture and a few poems to keep us grounded
A conversation with Hallie Waugh on embodiment and the arts
How a restful Saturday coaxed me out of burnout and into a lush world
A sculptor's recreates a dead tree—and discovers unexpected spiritual insights
The Creative Spirit
Writers don’t build platforms or make book deals or take author photos—they write. They obsess over words and sentences and love language, and the rest follows like ripples in a pond. In these letters, I wrestle with trying to keep priorities straight and look to Christian and Buddhist traditions to stay wise and focused in the creative life.
Letting go of personas to live a more creative life
The nightmare of chasing the approval of others
A frog haiku took me out of insecurity and down a stream of thought
Why getting stuck on a ride was my favorite day at Disneyland
How dominating war metaphors shape our art and culture
A nun looks for spiritual wisdom through the eyes of artists
12th century spiritual bird poetry finds new life in music
Buddhist wisdom for the head and heart
An empty trainload of sky and a song to see the world through
An art critic, poet, and theologian look for a shared future
What a paper angel can teach us about the fullness of life
“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.