Still looking

Journalism broke my heart, so I decided to stop writing in public. I've changed my mind, and reserve the right to change it again.

I don’t know if I will post here once or hundreds of times. Seven years ago, I had my reasons for declaring myself finished with writing. I went back to school, I became a psychotherapist, and I stay busy enough parenting and working full-time.

Still, sentences come together in my head all day long, and I move the words around, reveling in them, enjoying them. I’ve been doing that as long as I can remember.

Turns out this is just the way I am built.

If you ever read anything I wrote in my 20 years as a newspaper critic, then I have written to you before, and maybe you will want to read what I am writing again.

Why now? I blame it, in part, on Mary Louise Schumacher, Carolina Miranda, Hrag Vartanian, Jenee Osterheldt, Seph Rodney, and Kriston Capps. This fall I met up with those critics in Washington, D.C., for the premiere of a film that documented a dozen years of our lives and careers as art critics in changing times. I sat in the dark and saw who I used to be played back on a screen. Schumacher filmed when I left The Stranger, where I wrote for 11 years. Her film is called “Out of the Picture” (no distributor yet; I’ll keep you posted). My fellow subjects in the documentary are inspirations to me, and just being with them thawed the parts of me I put on ice.

Then, last month, I had a singular experience in London involving the art and recent death of the artist Pope.L, and it needs to be shared. That post will come next, and soon.

So, I’m going to write … sometimes, when I feel it. That’s the whole plan.

Subscribe if you feel it, and only if you feel it. Thanks. (I am bad at technology and don’t want you to feel obligated, so if I’m somehow doing this wrong and you don’t want this email, please don’t hesitate to delete it, and don’t feel bad. Also, I don’t want any money, so if I somehow accidentally enable some button that asks for money, ignore it.)

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