I think a lot about perspective. Where you stand, where you live, where the light hits, your mood; all of these affect how you view the world in a particular moment. A couple of weeks ago my family went to Dallas for Spring Break, just as spring was breaking in Chapel Hill where we live. The day...
On some level, at its heart, our new film "All the Rage" is largely about ideas related to belief. Modern science uses the word placebo to describe the effect of one's belief on the efficacy of a treatment. When drugs, or procedures, are tested they are only deemed effective if they work better than a sham drug or procedure. The...
This morning I got an email from a friend who recently read Dr. Sarno’s Book “Healing Back Pain”. He expressed appreciation for the book but he also had some relevant questions. I get asked questions like this a lot, so I thought I’d answer them in a post. His first question was, “Dr. Sarno stated that if...
If you have ever lost anything of value you have probably experienced what I call "a hot feeling of regret". I see it as a cross between shame, anger, and fear. Your mind might simultaneously scan the past to figure out where and when your valuable item could have disappeared while also scanning the future for the various...
A couple of weeks ago I got an email asking if I would be willing to include a photo from my mall series in a show at a Williamsburg-based gallery. I was given a description which read in part, “The artists included in this exhibition have been chosen for how their work delves the socialization of space—not as something perceived...
I think it has to do with my general tendency to chafe against expectations, but I'm not so good at giving birthday gifts. It's not that I don't like to give things to people but instead, on some level, I find it uncomfortable to give gifts just because I'm expected to. Like my daughter Fiona (and my mother and my...
Humans have a tendency to want to think of ideas, as well as scientific "facts", as solid and immutable. Unfortunately, things tend to be a lot more complex and nuanced than we want them to be. This is nowhere more evident than in health care. The disease model of medicine looks for a single cause of illness because that makes...
Suki and I got back to work on “All The Rage” yesterday after two solid weeks of having the kids at home due to snow days. Snow days are good way to practice learning to accept what comes. It was distraction from the work, but sometimes stepping away gives up renewed perspective. One of the most difficult parts of...
[caption id="attachment_17833" align="aligncenter" width="681"] "Yellow Glove with Shank" -Lavar Munroe- from Area 919 show at the Nasher Museum of Art[/caption] I know both from memory, and reminders by mother, that I could be a real brat when my I was a kid. This knowledge give me a great deal of empathy for my parents, my kids, and myself. When my daughters...
Today there was an article in the Washington Post that discussed a surprising new study which found that it's not asthma and urban poverty that are linked, but instead, poverty in general. While the author of the article was able to surmise that living in poverty might possibly be a causative factor in regards to asthma, it completely missed the...
[caption id="attachment_17785" align="aligncenter" width="711"] a note card found on the floor at the airport[/caption] There are times that I read something that's of interest to me that don't really seem to connect until much later. Other times, I'll read just a sentence and it will hit me like lightning, connecting back to something that I have read, sparking a new understanding...
This morning, while driving my daughter to the first day of school after the holidays, I heard a story on the radio about how much our environment influences our habits, and as such, the role it plays in our addictions. The story began with the discussion of the high rate of Heroin addiction among soldiers serving in Vietnam. At the...