Sharing the Darkness

Carolyn Forché

I wake with a start at midnight. A nightbird striking the window? A bat in the eaves? Maybe someone in the theater of my sleep gave me a nudge—someone I don’t know in waking life. It is cloudy and warm…

Reflections

Lisa Luckenbach

Feel confident, beautiful and empowered in your new wig, the instructions read. In the mirror a stranger stares back—weak, powerless. I see her ghostly image. She looks raw, bound, and scared. I sit in the pretend “barbershop” in our…

Hamilton The Musical and Political Reception of Art

Emma Pawl

Lin Manuel Miranda’s decision to cast people of color (POC) as white historical figures in Hamilton the musical, both helps to further representation for POC in musical theater, and more accurately depicts the America of today, as well as the…

Creativity

Bella Komodromos

Life is a game of skill. Hone in on your skills, and rise to meet what wants to bring you suffering. Since releasing my debut EP, I’ve gotten the question “What is your songwriting process?” more times than I could…

Reduced: (She/Her) Why I Struggle With My Pronouns

Natashia Deón

In this present moment, the courthouses where I argue for my criminal clients, offices where I practice mental health as a therapist, and universities where I teach (or attend), have not completely returned to pre-pandemic functioning since COVID-19 began. For…

How Real Is Your Brain?: a Playful Warning About a Science of Our Selves

Nathan Greenslit

I’m agnostic about the brain. I won’t stoop so far as to say that I don’t believe in it. But I’ve never experienced it — not mine, in any case. I’m not trying to be coy or obtuse. It’s just…

Well, What Would Lincoln Do?

John Burt

Of course, nobody really knows, and there are many reasons why. In the first place, nobody knows how Lincoln would have understood the century and half of political and social change since his own day. In the second place, Lincoln’s…

Bella’s World

Montserrat Turriza

Bella’s most prized possession, a Mozart doll, lays in the center of her bed, surrounded by a small herd of Build-A-Bear stuffed plushies, American Girl dolls, and stuffed zoo animals. He lays stiff and unyielding in the throng of plastic and plush, wearing a sponge-like grey wig, and a red suit with white ruffles. When his key is turned, he plays Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, translated as “A Little Night Music.” And though intended as a light-hearted serenade, not a lullaby, its playful notes comfort Bella. ...

Gardens and Psychedelia

Pat Pattison

I’ve just started my 45th year teaching at Berklee, and, with 50 years in front of classrooms (earlier teaching stints at Indiana University and the University of Notre Dame) someone might ask, “Isn’t that enough? When are you going to…

The Poetics of Natural Being: Buddhism, Creativity, and Nature

Lama Elizabeth Monson

As a writer, a poet, and a Buddhist, I have practiced to use language to communicate something fundamentally beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond any possibility of description. That something is the deepest nature of our being, a state of being…