If you had a talk show, who would you want to interview?
Category: Paul
Pieces created by Paul
There’s a quote that I’ve hung in my cubicle at work: “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” It’s from Bryan Stevenson. The paper hanging on my wall is from a page-a-day calendar that I got last Christmas, but I first heard the quote in July 2017. I was attending […]
I found a new favorite song last week. Well, “found” is not quite the correct verb. I didn’t find it, because I wasn’t looking for it. It’s more accurate to say that I was presented with a new favorite song last week. I had been listening to Midwest emo legends The Get Up Kids on […]
Hey friends, Jackie and I just wrapped up our annual Easter tradition: watching the 1973 film version of Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve written about this movie a number of times because it is a foundational text for me. To steal a line from Las Culturistas, it’s the culture that made me say culture is for […]
Sometimes I remember that I used to spend Sunday mornings attending Catholic Mass, and I have to pause. Was I really a member of a parish, a regular churchgoer? What a waste of time and energy! Mass was typically an hour long, but there was also the preparation: taking a shower or a “bird bath,” […]
One day, I’ll be able to tell you how important Gordon, the debut album from Barenaked Ladies, is to me. Fifteen tracks, just under an hour long, the soundtrack to so many essential memories. It wasn’t the first album of theirs that I owned. Like most Americans, I learned of the band from their 1998 […]
Observation. Awareness. Picking up on context clues. These are essential skills for any person, but especially those who identify as artists.
A perfect Friday: sunny skies, warmer than 30 degrees Fahrenheit. (This is one word that I say more than spell, so that first H tricked me. I then spent a few minutes on the Wikipedia entry for the measurement and the man who defined it. Of course there’s only one question any sane person would […]
What is an annual retrospective “best-of” list other than an attempt to remember great things about the preceding year? It’s an effort to document the creative endeavors that mattered to us, a commitment to remembering that, in the midst of everything, there are things worth remembering. I asked recently in the RBP Discord, “Asking for […]
As a teenager living in northern Delaware, I yearned for blue skies. Their presence outside my bedroom window was a delight, signifying possibility for all good things. Their absence didn’t guarantee disaster, but I had little hope for a good day when I saw no blue through the blinds. I recognize that this reliance on […]