Sunset Overdrive

Conception

A small idea can be infectious and grow far beyond its original intent. This happened to me shortly after I moved into a loft on the upper east side. I had this vision of standing on the roof, dragging a paintbrush across canvas while looking out across the city. The house is only a few blocks from the Guggenheim museum and inspiration hangs thick in the summer air.

The small idea was to host a paint-party, where my artistically inclined friends and I could gather and learn from each other. I wanted to mix hobbyists, professionals, students and novices.

I had no idea that my roommates would take this idea with them to the Frieze Art Festival on governors island. That they would meet a curator and infect her with the idea too. That it would grow from a single day of painting to a month long art exhibit, featuring some of the coolest contemporary artwork I’ve ever seen, AND a live painting by Vernon O’Meally.

Continue reading From a Home to Hosting an Art Exhibit →

Without rhythm there is nothing
and life has just found its pace,
its cadence of pleasures and twists.
Men nod their head and smile.

We move to the music
as God conducts the world around us.
Moments opportunities and pleasures abound,
plentiful as grain in the field,
patient,
waiting to be harvested.

Thank you to /r/writingprompts for the inspiration:

Prompt :  A person who has used his ability to read minds to glide through life, finds the one person whose mind he can’t read

Tick, tick, tick, Jason smiled and nodded as the interviewer kept talking and babbling. He didn’t even recall the man’s name who sat across the shiny table from him. Their body language told the whole story, this job was in the bag. One man leaned forward, inquisitive, probing, absorbed; the other leaned back, quiet, a serious expression on his face but a smile in his eyes. One thing Jason learned young was when to be silent. How to control the flow of conversation by shifting his attention, and how to move the center of the room to his feet. He used that now to begin planting ideas into the mind of his interviewer.

The best part was approaching, the moment when all his clues and subliminal messages would unfold into an organic idea. The build up was slow and he was patient. He felt his heart rising, an inadvertent smile that didn’t help, but couldn’t be helped. His opponent had crumbled, and was ready to make an offer,

“Why haven’t we made a move in Cambodia yet?”

Continue reading Writing prompt: Friends →

There’s that moment when the world stops.
First your heart
then everything else slows until you’re just looking at your hands
and every sense becomes a drone in the background.

You blink and everyone has disappeared.

For a while it stays like that.
the cup on the table moves slowly,
a little to the left a little to the right.
Sometimes its filled with ice,
each day is a Dali clock,
a finger dragged through melting plastic.

Each blink is another moment
and I realize I have only so many blinks left.
They drug me so I won’t cry out at night,
but pain or sleep I would rather be awake.

I second guess everything.
Everything is accelerating

I am the boy sitting by the water.
With his pocket knife against a walnut,
and the walnut against his thumb.

With a deliberate squeeze,
he split it into two halves,
and beheld the hull of a ship.

It was a grand vessel,
you should grant him that,
and he didn’t feel cramped at all,
until you pointed it out.

You would have him build a rudder,
but I am glad he left without a mast.
For what is this pretense
that we control our direction.

Donato Borrello