Author: Benjamin
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Post #32: Why We Watch (The Jeremy Lin Show)
There’s often good cause to question our culture’s obsession with sports. Large chunks of it are dedicated to discussing, debating, observing, coddling, and paying for games while there are vastly more important issues (you know, like, say, poverty) who receive so much less face time relevant to their actual importance…
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Post #31: Lush Life
Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life” is one of my very favorite songs. Melancholy and haunting, full of experience and regret and a kind of upbeat sadness. Or, if not upbeat, at least still standing. Plus when’s the last time you heard a song that had a line like “Where one…
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Post #29: Revising Blue Dot
Been spending my writing time the past two weeks beginning revisions on my new novel, Blue Dot, which I’ve been dubbing a horror/sci-fi mash-up. For the uninitiated, I wrote the first draft of Blue Dot in a month during National Novel Writing Month, in which participants take on the challenge…
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Post #28: Completion Issues
So I used to be the kind of person who labored through whatever he was reading, determined to reach the end. Finishing was important to me then. Cue the cute girl who changed my point of view merely by suggesting an alternative. Cute girls are good at changing lives without…
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Post #27: My Obsession With a Small, Be-Spectacled Man
There’s a small handful of artists with whom I’ve experienced what can only be described as an obsession, and I don’t use that term lightly. I’m serious. I was so head over heels for these people’s work that I probably should have been medicated, or sedated. They include, but…
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Post #26: “IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?”
As someone who’s many times been walking through a subway station, been briefly inspired to pause at the quality of the busking musician I just walked past, wondering, how the hell could someone this good be playing for change?, this article was a revelatory gem. It’s about the violin virtuoso…
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Post #25: Circumstance
Ask 10 random people what “Setting” is and they’ll tell you something resembling the following: The Time and Place a story occurs. Not so fast. A third element of setting worth celebrating, though oft neglected, is that of Circumstance, which I humbly submit is actually its most interesting and durable attribute.…
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Post #24: Take this Poem, and Listen to It
Alan Heathcock, a writer I admire, recently wrote a fabulous short essay for NPR about reading a poem a day to quiet his mind and steady himself against the bustling life he (and we all) leads. I listened to the audio version of Alan’s piece while waiting for the shower…
Benjamin Roesch 