Why You Do Your Best Thinking In The Shower: Creativity & the “Incubation Period”

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Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The great Tao fades away.”

So begins one trans­la­tion of the Tao Te Ching’s 18th Chap­ter. The sen­tence cap­tures the frus­tra­tion that comes with a lost epiphany. Whether it’s a pro­found real­iza­tion when you just wake up, or moment of clar­i­ty in the show­er, by the…

Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)

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These days, ref­er­ences to sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion increas­ing­ly require prefa­to­ry expla­na­tion. Who under the age of 60 recalls, for exam­ple, the cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that was Mary Hart­man, Mary Hart­man, an absur­dist satire so faith­ful to the soap-opera form it par­o­died that it aired every week­night, putting out 325 episodes between ear­ly 1976 and mid-1977? And even…

A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Helmets & Swords, Courtesy of the British Museum

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Even if a stu­dent assigned Beowulf is, at first, dis­mayed by its lan­guage, that same stu­dent may well be cap­ti­vat­ed by its set­ting. While that myth­i­cal but some­how both glo­ri­ous­ly and dankly real­is­tic realm of kings and drag­ons, mead halls and bog mon­sters may feel famil­iar to fan­ta­sy enthu­si­asts, it’s also strange on a deep­er…

Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive

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If you want to immerse your­self in the world of Pablo Picas­so, you might start at the Museo Picas­so Mála­ga, locat­ed in the artist’s Span­ish birth­place. But to under­stand how his work devel­oped through­out his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picas­so did to accel­er­ate…

See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen

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Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing Albert Camus’ his­toric vis­it to NYC in 1946. One event in the fes­ti­val fea­tured actor Vig­go Mortensen giv­ing a read­ing of Camus’ lec­ture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Cri­sis”) at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty–the very same place where Camus deliv­ered the lec­ture 70 years earlier–down to…