Play with words. Have fun and someday, when you're running through a sprinkler or eating a hot dog or drifting off to sleep, you'll feel a tap on your shoulder, and a voice in your ear like it's being whispered through a tin can telephone. Be ready.
Read MoreWillie Stratton is loud. And it makes us quiet. Everyone-there-with-their-mouths-hanging-open quiet. He wails and stamps and even on his own, it's blistering. He's a really nice guy. But not when he plays. When he plays, the whole world smiles and shakes.
Read MoreTea parties and dance halls and lemon yellow picnic gingham, made by hand, with scissor snips at the seams. They find me in antique barns and Frenchy's bins. I am their Josephine Baker, and they are my rainbow tribe of orphans.
Read MoreWorkshop participants gave so many gifts that day. To themselves, each other, and the people who landed in these woods. We had so much fun, all of us so invigorated to create images together and in parallel. I rang the bell: BONG! Go grab a soul.
Read MoreUntil we let go of being right, we remain in an endless loop of a You Did A Bad Thing—No, I Did A Good Thing gridlock. It’s an expensive one. It costs energy and turns everyone sour with its touch. It’s a parasite that entrenches deeper, widening the gap.
Read MoreI am thrilled to share the shiny, wonder-eyed news that the excellent Eric Orchard is illustrating the book! Right now! And I'm crying again as he sends sketches through—although this time, it's more cry-giggling. Breakdancing zombies will do that.
Read MoreThere's a three-legged cat, a 1960s cocktail bar. She is never without Pimm's. She wears mustard-coloured tights and bright teal pumps and a black and white checkered miniskirt. Inland, she's rare to the point of scandalous. I certainly hope so, she says.
Read MoreYou don't pass into made-it-on-your-own territory with a marching band and a fondant cake. You make it on your own mousetrap by mousetrap, taking it on because you may as well, and because live rodents are more icky than dead ones.
Read MoreWhen you make space for art, you become a magnet for other people who make space for art. And people like that are weird and rare and fantastic. They throw wood onto our fires and they make the room warm. Oddity fuels oddity when everything else is beige.
Read More"Never didactic but wisely intentional, it is just a matter of time before The Flight of the Griffons takes off and lands in classrooms and homes everywhere. Missy Bullseye oughta rub shoulders with Harry Potter on the world stage. This is not hyperbole..."
Read MoreI've been wanting to share the lazy, lovely day I had with singer-songwriter Kim Harris for ages. We poked our way through the woods across the creek on one of the fall's last golden days, bringing with us a bag of Billie Holiday and soft things and sparkly things and we played while the last leaves drifted to the ground.
Read More"Flight of the Griffons is much more than an adventure story. Flight of the Griffons could be read as a stand-alone, but to have read the first one in the series would make it even more satisfying! So buy both volumes!"
Read MoreWe went for pappadums and chutney and samosas. We talked about Charlie Chaplin, Lancaster Bombers, and swing dancing. We went to the most peaceful place I know because their great-grandfather never visited a cenotaph.
Read MoreWomen come to the Serendipity retreat from all over, from Californian ranches to the Texan panhandle. They bring everything with them. Duffel bags full of ideas and grief and husbands and sons and daughters and love affairs and crippling doubts. They bring journals and paint and everybody eats too much.
Read MoreThese two, since they were two. Her mom and me sitting with mugs of tea, thumbing through cookbooks. We didn't finish more than three sentences in one stretch for a good five years or more. Someone was always, suddenly, too high up in a tree.
Read MoreAmsterdam was an infinite diorama with roses on vines and the indecipherable, en masse murmur of another language all around. It was the first time I was an outsider. It unfolded around me like a giant pop-up book, like magic.
Read MoreIt was some kind of emotional bomb that went off, this constant state of disbelief and grateful overwhelm. How is it possible that a weekend this special happens at this little house—this crooked, paint-peeled, lost and abandoned place that I found when I felt just the same—how can it be mine, any of it?
Read MoreChefs curse and yell in a pressure cooker, squishing organic matter into mathematically-shaped molds. Organic matter always objects, yet we continue to squish, and this is art. Presentation is at least three of five stars. That's what makes you gasp.
Read MoreEverything came out, stuff I've been collecting for years. Not one boa but two. Not one gypsy skirt but two. A soft pink 1980s prom dress. A witch hat. A woodland fairy, a hippie, a go-go girl. A disco-dancing alien witch. A woodland-fairy flapper.
Read MoreI come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, well-placed outrage and courage. It's banjo song and smoke in your eye.
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