Image credit: Gina Greenlee, paint, ink, marker, collage An excerpt from Free Play, Improvisation in Life and Art  by Stephen Nachmanovitch: “I have never ceased to be astounded at the power of writing, music making, drawing, or dance to pull me out of sadness, disappointment, depression, bafflement. I am not talking about entertainment or distraction, but of playing, dancing, drawing, writing my way through and out. This process resembles the best in psychotherapy. We don’t

Image credit: Gina Greenlee, Pinterest Mary said, “you need grounding before you take this big trip around the world .” So, she coached me to “create-destroy-recreate” art pieces for 30 consecutive days in the months leading up to the trip. Minimal instruction, no elaborate context, only “ Try it and see what happens. ” Image credit: Gina Greenlee, quick fashion magazine collage Always playing with art , I was open to possibility in the moment without having to know what came

Image Credit: Gina Greenlee, paint, ink, collage For more of my take on growing up on New York City’s Lower East Side: Black and Blintzes: Growing Up Not Quite Jewish on the Lower East Side Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments in New York Hush Life, a novel No Tears for Frankie: A Memoir on the Life of an Essay     ◊ ◊ ◊ Take a YouTube tour of my hometown. The background song is the 1977 hit Native New Yorker , performed by Odyssey . The lyrics, shared in this

Image credit: Gina Greenlee, paint and ink   An excerpt from Free Play, Improvisation in Life and Art  by Stephen Nachmanovitch: “Precisely because the standing of posterity is so tenuous, art is now more relevant than it has ever been. And again, I mean not just art but artfulness: playfulness, seriousness, connectedness, structure, wholeness and heart… “…This means an explosion of creativity into areas of life where it has been largely excluded. Looking at international pol

“Equipment breaks down, it is Sunday night, the stores are all closed, and the audience is arriving in an hour. You are forced to do a little bricolage, improvising some new and crazy contraption. Then you attain some of your best moments. Ordinary objects or trash suddenly become valuable working materials, and your perceptions of what you need and what you don’t need radically shift. Among the things I love so much about performing are those totally unforeseen, impossible c

“Play,” for artists, might reside in the exploration of materials and techniques; the initiating of imaginative collaborations; the pursuit of seemingly absurd ideas, or the bringing together of unexpected combinations . Play is not simply an open-ended recreational activity for artists. Play can reveal new possibilities and be a powerful antidote to pressures of perfectionism. Stephen Nachmanovitch

About the Holstee Manifesto

“9. Begin Anywhere. John Cage  tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.” ...

Image credit: Cats, the musical In one of his most viewed TED Talks, the late Ken Robinson told a story  that deeply resonated worldwide:...

Image credit: Alvaro Calvo at Unsplash More Happy Visuals: Saketh Upadhya Alan de la Cruz Belinda Fewings   Gina Greenlee   Girl with Red...

Use the paint. In the United States we are often obsessed with perfectionism. And catastrophize our failures. Luckily, failure does not...

A fave YouTube comment: “Played this at a private costume party in September 2011. All the people were high out of their minds, including...

Quotes from Revolution from Within: A Book of Self Esteem by Gloria Steinem True Self The point of the journey is not just the healing....

Be Ruthless Why Stop at Lemonade? Life on the Edge London Life Expansion Pact Stand Up for Yourself by not Standing Yourself Up...

Lost Café para Llevar Agape Playdate Tragic Happy Valentine’s Day Spiritual Slomo Transcendent Forever Cross-cultural Two Strangers Who...

The Neighbor’s Window To Serve Her Man The Six Month’s Game Recipe for a César Vallejo Poem The Voices Inside Your Head Gremlins: Not...

Until I saw it, I didn’t know I needed to witness Leonard Cohen skipping off stage at the end of a London performance to the beat of...

Discovering Reasonstobecheerful was a lifesaver. I discovered it on Oct 7, 2021, when I was feeling deeply hopeless about humanity....

When I was in my 40s, I mentioned to a woman half my age at the time that I had asked a friend to make music CDs from my 45s. And she...

Let’s talk town fair. Three giant beans on a placemat win a blue ribbon. A kid with a cow on a frayed rope. Walking it like a dog. Fried...