Category " Food for Thought"

(illustration by FairyGodFlea) Every year, we collect one more case of it. Mostly small stuff, a hurt here, a slight there, a let down, a misunderstanding. A job interview that fell flat, a song pitched that didn’t land. A promised cut that never materialized. A hold that got held for 10 months then replaced by a brand new one by the artist’s son. And every year we stack that case in our emotional...


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I have heard of a hungry young band turning down a record deal because their contract contained no clause specifying limousines on call. I have heard of a wonderful little movie that won't get picked up for distribution because the producers are holding out for a 5-picture deal. I have heard of a songwriter who won't permit one hit song to be recorded unless others of this writer's songs are included...


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Let me make myself crystal clear here: If you want your point of view to be heard, really heard, by your audience, there is no device like clarity. No cleverness or circularity can ever arrest your audience like nailing your idea. If you hit it just right, the results will make you sound brilliant. If your ideas miss their mark, that's what people will hear. They won't know what you "meant" and they...


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Do you know the difference between making honest mistakes in judgment that in some way hurt your chances or had the effect of holding you back; and making unconscious decisions or choices that have the effect of making you fail? Be honest now: Are you guilty of sabotaging your goals by constantly staging High Drama in and around your life? Each of us has acquired baggage in our lives. No-one is immune...


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If you are not in the "Awareness Zone," nothing that you read will be helpful. The hints contained in the pages you turn will simply be reams of words that you absorb with your eyes only, but not with your psyche. To be in the "Awareness Zone" you must be alive to every influence, be it visual, visceral, or emotional. Once a lesson has been learned, take it forward with you. You cannot correct past...


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I have often pondered the meaning of the Hindu concept of Nirvana, feeling a certain resignation that I probably will never know what it is. And then last night I had an absurdly clear flash of understanding (Nirvana?) in which I was blessed with a most comforting insight: Nirvana is not (a) a state reached through meditation and prayer (b) only possible in a hypnotic dream-like passivity (c) requiring...


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The Land of Make Believe is not just a place in a Chuck Mangione song. For those of us involved in the Fine Arts whose job is to write words, it is a place we call home. When we start writing, everything is purely biographical. We write about what we know, what we see, what we feel, what we experience. Each of the characters we write about is a mini-us. Songwriters begin as puppeteers, and the singers...


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Zen philosophy tells us there cannot be space between thought and action. Even a space as narrow as a hair's breadth is too much. From the moment of its invention to your recognition of it, the processing of an idea must be a fluid motion wherein the thought becomes the lyric, the ephemeral melody that flits though the mind, becomes the song. Ideas are gifts which we must not stop to ponder and dissect,...


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U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said at his 1933 inauguration, "There is nothing we have to fear but fear itself." This rousing speech to the American people was, "to dissipate the fear and panic which had laid a paralyzing hand upon the Nation." He wanted to stir people to rise above their lethargy and self-doubt that began with the spectacular stock market crash of 1929. Americans, unable...


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I am, like you, just another person on the path of daily living and making sense of life. I believe we are all on this planet to learn some lessons and to evolve spiritually. As writers we need to draw from the philosophies of many great thinkers, speakers and writers, and also from those with whom we may credit little profundity. A fortune cookie once informed me: "A wise man can learn more from a fool,...


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