Category: Life

Hygge!

dannygregory34 Comments

So far, so good. The mercury is in the 50s in New York and winter seems to be slower to come this year. I did encounter a few snow flakes in Indianapolis but I also discovered a concept there that will help me weather the cold.

My Indiana friend told me she used to suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder. I know lots of people who do. SAD is a form of depression that comes on with the shortening days of autumn and lasts till spring. The treatment usually involves gazing at boxes of color-corrected lightbulbs and popping Wellbutrin. But my friend said that one word had helped her enormously. One word and she immediately felt a color-corrected bulb go off in her head.

Hygge. It’s a Danish word that’s pronounced “hoo-ga” and has no direct equivalent in English. It’s sort of like ‘cozy’ or ‘snug’ but it’s bigger. Hygge isn’t just about soft sweaters, wood paneling and roaring fireplaces — it’s about attitude, about a sense of well-being. About being gentle and calm rather than battling arctic gusts. And it’s about people. It’s about having a warm heart, even in cold times. About sharing comfort and cheeriness with friends and people you love.

hyggeDenmark, despite 17 hours of darkness each midwinter day, has the world’s happiest people.  They value being good to oneself. To finding warmth in others. To sitting around in wooly socks, sharing a mug with a couple of friends. To chilling, without being chilly. The Danes buy more candles more capita than any other nation. And, come on, they have a pastry named after them.

This winter, I plan to hug hygge. I will enjoy the changing rhythm of winter, rather than fighting it tooth and claw. I will cultivate cheeriness. I will fill my house with friends and warmth. And I will take it easier on myself.

Care to join me?

Fat ‘n’ grateful

dannygregory13 Comments

According to this article, recent studies show that expressing gratitude is good for you and can make you crave sweets. So here goes.

I’m grateful:

  • that I’m not a turkey or a yam.
  • for The Knick and Karl Ove Knaussgard.
  • that the skies are blue and it’s supposed to reach 60˚ today.
  • for my girlfriend who is smart and lovely.
  • for my son who is creative and hairy.
  • for my family who are healthy and only mildly annoying.
  • for my Pentel brush pen which has gone from a cantankerous stranger to a deep collaborator who has freed me up and shown me some inner grace.
  • for my partner and my colleagues at Sketchbook Skool
  • for my friends, analog and virtual.
  • for Joe and, usually, Tim.
  • for the last two weeks in Eastern Europe.
  • for 2016 which promises to be amazing
  • that I overcame my obstinacy on a flight last week and finally watched The End Of the Tour
  • for finishing the last tweaks and revisions to my favorite book so far.
  • for gouache.
  • for this blog and all who read it.
  • for licorice allsorts, Mars Bars, pecan pie, and Big Gay Ice Cream.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all.

Raw

dannygregory42 Comments


I woke up at 4 am and this was in my inbox. I watched it in the dark and it filled my heart.

When I decided to share it with you, I thought I’d make a joke of it. Call it, “Cure for Insomnia” or some such.

But every time I watch it, it fills my heart again. Fills it with peace, with sweetness, with raw simplicity.  I think of my boy, standing on a hillside in Sicily, filming this on his phone, hanging on till the end of an extraordinary moment.

I love the beauty he sees. I hope you like it too.

Suggestion: watch the whole thing. Give yourself a two-minute experience before clicking away.

The Month of Sleeping Dangerously

dannygregory18 Comments

A month ago, I stayed up several hours past my normal bedtime then went to Queens to board a plane. After midnight, we took off and I stayed more or less upright in a middle seat surrounded by several people with sketchy notions about personal hygiene for a bunch of hours until we landed in Paris. It was noonish in France but about 6 a.m in my head.

I had a cafe au lait from a vending machine, then three hours later flew to Basel, Switzerland.  Some lovely people met me at the airport, drove me to my hotel, then took me for a long walk  and some snacks by the Rhine. They explained the general concept behind the mass transit system, pointed at the tram stop and walked me back up to my hotel.  It was 9 PM in Basel. It was somewhere between 3 PM and 3 AM in my head.

The next morning, my phone, my ipad and my laptop all sounded their alarms. Apparently, it was 6:30 am in Basel.  In my head, it was coffee time. At 7 AM, I was on what I really, really hoped was the tram to the International School of Basel. I spent 45 minutes staring at the tram map, crossing all appendages, and praying in German, Italian and French. At 7:40, I detrammed and walked into what I hoped was the school I’d be visiting for the next week. A few minutes later, the teacher who was my host gave me more coffee and led me into the school auditorium where I would address 600 students and their teachers. I did a good job, I think. They applauded raucously while I stifled a yawn and calculated that it was about 2 am in New York.

For each of the next five days, I worked with several hundred children from the ages of 3 to 11. They had loads of energy. I absorbed much of it and increased my caffeine consumption quite alarmingly.  On a couple of nights, I took a half of one of the old Valiums I’d found under the sink in our bathroom. When I did, I slept till it was time for the breakfast buffet. When I didn’t, I read books and watched Swiss late night TV.

After the school day ended, I gave talks to staff or parents or visited an art museum. I had a magical experience on an ancient ferry boat. One night, I ate Wiener Schnitzel. Another night, I got a sausage roll at the supermarket. I avoided fondue, imagining it coming back to haunt me at 4 AM Basel time, 10 PM in New York. On my last night, I went with some friends to eat dinner in Alsace Loraine. That’s in France. In the restaurant, some children came up to our table. They had been in my drawing classes at the school. I pretended that I remembered them well and told them to make sure to visit me in New York.

The next afternoon, I flew to Rome. I spent four days with Jack, eating pasta, drinking beer, drawing domes and walking everywhere. I stayed in an airbnb in a 15th century Palazzo. The day I arrived, they decided to renovate the hallways.  Each morning at 7 AM, Italian men would make sure I was awake and pound away the five hundred year-old plaster with hammers and chisels.

I dream about being late for  buses, trains, planes, ocean liners, dentist appointments and giving speeches before the UN in the nude.

On my last night, before I was to leave for a 7 AM. flight, the neighbors had a five hour coop board meeting on the landing outside my door. At 10:30, I stood in the doorway in my underwear and made every pleading gesture I could think of to communicate my wit’s end. Italians understand gestures and despair and, by 11PM, they had packed up their ashtrays, card tables, and folding chairs. I considered taking the last half Valium but then imagined sleeping through the alarm and decided to tough it out.

I rarely set an alarm because I often wake up before it rings, sometimes a minute before hand. At other times, I wake up every hour wondering if it had gone off. I dream about being late for  buses, trains, planes, ocean liners, dentist appointments and giving speeches before the UN in the nude.

One middle seat later, I arrived at JFK. As per my new self-employed habit, I took the subway home from Queens. My dogs were glad to see me, Jenny was at work. It was 2:30 PM in New York. It was 8:30 PM in Rome. I stayed up till Jenny came home, had dinner, and pushed it till 10 PM EST. Then I slept, sort of, till morning.

Two days later, we took a plane to Austin, Texas. the plane was slightly delayed and we took off at one in the morning EST. That’s 7:30 AM in Rome and midnight in Texas. I don’t remember when we got to our hotel or where we got up in the morning but we started our drinking early and then got on a bus to our friends’ wedding at about 5 PM, Texas time. The bride was from Dallas, the groom from New Zealand, so there were pyramids of  beers and wines and shots and we danced until the wee hours We couldn’t get a flight out on Sunday so we decided to stay at the hotel at the airport to get an early start. The car picked us up before 5 am and we caught B6794, leaving Austin at 6:20AM.

My plan for the next weekend was to drive five hours, alone to New Hampshire to shoot a new set of videos for Sketchbook Skool. Then the media started predicting the first massive hurricane in two years heading our ways. Reviving fears of Hurricane Sandy, (we and much of NY were without electricity for ten days and my sister’s house was trashed), I decided to cancel the shoot.  The hurricane never materialized so we spent the weekend hanging out and drinking too much on Saturday afternoon with a friend visiting from Virginia.

I spent thirty minutes trying to remember Christian Bale’s last name. Blaze? Blade?  Bartofski?

Each night I would wake up at 8 AM. … in Rome.  Only problem, I was in New York and it was 2 AM.  But I am used to getting by on the occasional rough night of sleep. I come from a long line of bad sleepers. My mother generally rises and walks around like making tea each 4 AM. My grandfather took a schlurp of brandy and a Lunesta every night and he lived to be 98. It can get a little crunchy at 3 PM but, by 4 PM, I am usually filled with vim again and motor on till bedtime.

Not this time.  The effects of my peripatetic ways finally caught up with me. I wasn’t sleepy. I’d just lost my mind. 

One night, I woke up so I could spend thirty minutes trying to remember Christian Bale’s last name. Blaze? Blade? Bartofski? Then I tried to remember all the people who had worked for me at my last job. I spend all day, every day with them till just two years ago but I couldn’t remember who any of them were. Slowly, I worked my way cubicle by cubicle, remembering first names, then finally, surnames. That took me till dawn illuminated the NYU library across the street.

When I fell back asleep, I dreamt wildly — about apocalypses, unscheduled presentations, oncology visits, police investigations.

I didn’t have Alzheimer’s. Or lupus.

When I was fully awake, my memory returned intact. But my mood grew worse and worse. I became blue, then deeply sorry for myself, then downright bleak. I couldn’t write a blog post, couldn’t do a drawing, couldn’t think of an idea. I guess I looked sort of okay, but inside I was a basket case. (Way more than usual.) Not me.

 I had weird aches and pains. I felt like I’d sprained my ankle. My stomach was constantly rumbling and sour. My teeth didn’t feel like they fit properly in my jaws.

Finally at the end of the week, I slept. Deeply, dreamlessly, untwitching for nine hours. Straight. Unmedicated. Flat out.

And then, only then, did I realize what had happened.

I didn’t have Alzheimer’s. Or lupus. I wasn’t going insane. I was just sleep deprived and a wreck after a rough month. I had to recharge.

What stuck me most was that it didn’t feel like normal tiredness. I wasn’t yawning and dragging around. I went to the gym. I went to bed at 10. I avoided coffee.  I seemed normal and functional. But I was losing me. It was like half of my brain, my imagination. my judgement, were carved away. I was functional, mobile, but a zombie.

Sleep is crucial. Sleep is lovely. And I am making it a priority. I’ll be traveling quite a bit over the next few months but I’ll be a lot smarter about it.

ZZZ.

This post was just a way of blowing out the cobwebs, stretching the old grey matter and warming up the carpal tunnels.

Okay, that’s all for now. Hope I didn’t put you to sleep.

La vita bohemien!

dannygregory16 Comments

Ten years ago, I illustrated a book called A Writer’s Paris by Eric Maisel. It’s about why/how you could/should move to Paris, at least  temporarily, to fuel your artistic impulses. It worked on mine — Eric’s publisher paid for Patti and me to spend a long weekend wandering around Paris and making many of the drawings that would fill the book. What a time!

I’ll be honest, I don’t remember the book’s argument in detail. I was irritated that the publisher thought to combine my drawings with some collage artist’s work and so I couldn’t read the final version of the book with an open mind. That peevishness notwithstanding, the basic premise of Eric’s book came back to me as I sat here in the Piazza Benedetto Cairoli with my Macbook on my lap. I’ve been in Rome for less than forty eight hours, but the magic of a different continent, city, culture, place and pace is already working on me.

piazza-cenciAt Jack’s suggestion, I didn’t book a hotel room but found an AirBnB just a few meters from the door of his school. It’s a fourth floor walkup in a 15th century building with a giant front door key and iron shutters I swing open each morning to flood my room with sunshine. As I sit here in the Piazza across the road, I hear the tram rattle by, the chuckle of an accelerating Vespa, the doo-da, doo-da of the carabinieri, and snatches of Italian wafting over from the men on the next bench, smoking and joking. I’m not in Kansas anymore.

Being in a new place always open my eyes and ears. Everything is unfamiliar to some degree, a degree that inspires my record in ink to be deeper and fresher. My travel journals contain the richest pages on my shelves, the most experimental, the most free. Each day in a new city is both energizing and depleting. I strain every hole in my skull to suck in more and more information and end the day wrung out and deep in sleep.

jacks-alley
Hanging out with my boy in his new city makes my imagination run wild. He lives and works in a gorgeous old building, a 15th century villa with frescos on the 16 foot ceilings and huge windows flung open upon mouldering terra cotta walls and stone alleyways strung with phone wires. His bed is narrow and hard but he has his own studio, bigger than our living room, with a checkerboard marble floor and walls filled with sketches and pages pulled from the old Italian magazines he buys at the flea market. A few blocks away is a park full of Roman ruins, fenced and gated to protect the hundreds of ferrel cats who’ve made it home. The Jewish Quarter is full of street markets selling big blocks of mozzarella and cadres of prosciuttos in chrome slings waiting to be shaven. Jack has learned to make pasta from scratch and to order a cornetto and a cappuccino with confidence.

He has less than a year till he graduates. But something in me tells him not to worry, to take it slow, to revel in this season in Italy, that it will be something he never forgets. Last week, he and his classmates traveled to Abruzzo and put on a performance in the earthquake ruins of a tiny village. Next week, he heads to Venice to sleep on a boat. I tell him that for the first year or two, he can keep his needs modest, can earn money here and there, can work on being a man of the world rather than a slave of the wage.

roman-viewI spent a year in a garage in LA. And then I came back to the Manhattan haunts I had commuted through for decades, a new perspective on the same streets. It would be nice to have a garret here in Rome. Or to couch surf across India like Prashant. Or to get a cabin in the woods or a minihouse I could pull behind my car. It’s hard to eat leftovers  with  the same relish, but certainly New York is the kind of place I can have creative reawakenings, just like Eric’s Paris or Jack’s Rome.

Going somewhere fresh and rich and living just for one’s art for a period, that’s something every creative person should try, methinks. Forget the pressures of income of language and culture and history, just for a month or two, long enough to rearrange the pieces and shake the monkey back into his hole.

I don’t know that I need an adventure so complete, to completely pull up roots and repot on foreign soil. More likely, the many trips I have planned over the next few months will suffice. Next weekend, I’ll be in Austin. Then to Prague, Doha, Reykjavik, maybe Hanoi too. Shifting perspectives, fresh pages in my travel journal, the search for adventure, new faces, new menus, new conversations, all adding up to a big thick deck to shuffle and deal myself out another winning hand.

Hungry Tim and other news

dannygregory9 Comments

I know I promised to eschew advertising on my blog but, come on, people, it’s in my blood! I can’t help it. So here’re a few announcements, updates and, yes, ads about things I’m doing that you might like. to know about.

• First, a mini film about an innovation at Sketchbook Skool.

The gist: Sketchbook Skool kourses are now available on-demand rather than by semester. Sign up and plunge in any day of the year. We’re like Orange is the New Black — but with a full palette of colors.

open-monkey-books
Coming in late fall.

• Next, an exciting announcement: we have just completed the final nips and tucks to the design of Shut Your Monkey: How to control your inner critic and get more done and it heads to the printer next Tuesday! You can preorder your copy today, however.

 

inside-abbworkbook
Coming next year!

• My other new book, the Art Before Breakfast Workbook has just come back from my editor and I am ready to continue work on the design phase of the book. It looks quite gorgeous already, I must say.

• On Saturday night, I will strap myself into a Lufthansa flight to Switzerland to  work with the students, teachers and parents of the International School of Basel. I have been working on lots of little films and projects to inspire them and can’t wait to see the art we make together during my artist-in-residency.

TobleroneI am also excited to see Basel which I hear is brimming with dozens of amazing museums. I also plan to eat chocolate. I’ll post news of my trip here, maybe even before I get back.

Jack draws in rome
A younger, beardless Jack Tea draws the Colliseum.

• Next, I will RyanAir to Rome to spend a few days with Jack who has just begun his semester abroad (he’s in Abruzzo today). He has promised he will take me to his favorite places to draw. We also plan to eat pasta.

 

Ciao!

Some thoughts while blowing out candles.

dannygregory38 Comments

Today is my birthday. I’ve had quite a lot of them. I hope to have more.

A few years ago, I worked on an advertising campaign for Viagra. Our insight was that the men most likely to have erectile dysfunction were the age I have just become, what we called in AdSpeak “the age of male mastery,” a time when we are have achieved competence in most aspects of our life.

We know how to do our jobs well, we are as good as we’ll probably get at understanding women, we have raised children to adulthood, we have shed the gloss of youthful fumbling and incompetence. We are mellow but still alive.

We used this insight to say to men: look, you know how to do most things well so, rather than hiding and avoiding your wiener’s unfortunate behavior, be a mensch, talk to your doctor and get a prescription for these blue pills. You know how to solve most problems and you know how to solve this one too, so get on with it and get it on.

I do know how to do a lot of things. But I’m not particularly interested in those things I have mastered, in sitting back on my laurels. Instead I am aware of how many things I still need to get better at. I want to read new books, hear new music, go to unvisited lands, embrace new ideas, technologies, and improve myself each day. Tackling new things is what keeps one young.

Not that I need to be young. In fact, when I was young, I wanted to be old.  When I was ten, I read adult books. When I was thirteen, I tried to grow a mustache. When I was fourteen, I bought my first record album: “Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.” In college, I wore thrift-store suits and smoked a pipe. My friends joked, “Danny’s grandfather said he’d pay his tuition if he wore his grandpa’s clothes.”

I can feel the old man in me and I don’t like a lot of things about him. I am ready for bed at ten. I wake up at five. I have three pairs of reading glasses. I drink half-caff.

I still go to the gym a few times a week, not to be rippling and bulging but to make it easier to tie my shoes and carry groceries. My body is like a car from the early ‘Eighties — still running, but a bit bulkier and noisier than necessary. It needs its oil changed more frequently, it pulls more slowly away from the light, and I have to watch for rust. Girls ignore it.

I see a tendency in myself and my old friends to want to talk about the past in a rueful way, to lament the closing of a long-time business, to bend young ‘uns ears with stories of the good old days before we were all glued to our phones and tattoos were for sailors, truckers and convicts. I assume I am boring my friends in their lush beards and man buns when I talk about seeing the Talking Heads at the Mudd Club down on White Street, about outlaw parties in burned-out buildings on the Lower East Side in the early ’80’s, of going to Studio 54 when I was in high school. Now the rebel anthems of my youth have become Muzak. Joe Strummer’s long dead and they play “Lost in the Supermarket” in my supermarket.

I have pretty good DNA. Both of my parents are alive and fine. My grandparents all lived into their eighties. My paternal grandfather died in his sleep at 98. So I live each day assuming it probably won’t be my last.

My birthday means a lot less to me each year. I often have to do a little math to remember how old I actually am. I don’t especially like the reminder. Or the attention. There’s nothing I want or need as a present besides the love of my family, the warmth of my friends, the hope that this one won’t be the last.

But today, I will be celebrating me, this older, and, in many ways, better me. I will indulge myself all day long and do some things I like. And I will look through my real presents, the many things I have to look forward to.

I am excited about my various new jobs, about my son’s adventures in Rome, and lucky to be in love with my beautiful, wise girlfriend. I have new books being printed, new ideas percolating in my head, new art I want to make. I am about to go to Basel, Prague, Doha, Hanoi, and Reykjavik to meet new people and to spread my love of drawing. I just shot a new klass for Sketchbook Skool yesterday. In so many ways, the year ahead will be the best one ever with loads to be grateful for.

So screw the wrinkles. Let’s have cake.

Jack hits the road.

dannygregory11 Comments

Yesterday my son left home.

He forgot his comb.

Jack flew to Rome

in a tube of chrome

To drink cappuccino with foam

And grow his beard like a gnome.

Across Europe he’ll roam.

He’ll visit Place Vendome

And read the Mysterium Magnum of Jacob Boehm.

(Quite a tome.)

He’ll hike across Italian loam

To draw a thicket of ancient brome

Then pause to chant Om

on some verdant Tuscan holm.

And then he’ll return from St. Peter’s dome

to New York, cold as Nome,

and say, “Hey, Papa, Shalom!

What’s for dinner?”

My heroin addiction.

dannygregory18 Comments

When I was thirteen, they showed a movie in morning assembly that fucked me up. We had moved to America less than a year before and I was clueless about virtually everything that wasn’t to be found on the shelves of my grandfather’s library in Lahore. I knew about hunting ocelots, excising neck tumors, and the pretenders to the Romanian throne, but nothing about rock ‘n’ roll, heroin or afro picks. This movie taught me about all three.

It was a black and white 16 mm, faux documentary about a young Puerto Rican boy’s short and tragic life. The movie opened in an alley as Chico and his homies squatted on an abandoned car, passing a joint. In the next scene, this gateway led Chico to a party where he and older pals sniffed white powder while a portable record player blasted a screeching guitar solo. Soon Chico was snorting, skin popping, then mainlining junk, dope, smack, skag, and horse. Various other madcap adventures ensued, leading to the final scene in which Chico ODs in a shower. The film closed with a slow iris down centering on Chico’s lifeless eyeball.

“What?!” he said and pushed me up against the wall. “Where are you getting the stuff? Give me names!”

That night I knocked on the door of my mother’s bedroom. My second stepfather opened it, looking bleary and irritated. I told him I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid I was a heroin addict.

junky1
Before.

“What?!” he said and pushed me up against the wall. “Where are you getting the stuff? Give me names!” My mother joined us and my stepfather told her I was a dope fiend. “Names!” he hissed again. “Who’s your dealer?!”

“I don’t know,” I whined. “I don’t know where I get it. I don’t remember anything.” I told them about the movie and how insidious heroin addiction could be. “I think I’m such a junky I can’t remember anything about it. It’s like I must be leading a parallel life or something. Seriously.”

They looked at each other, eyes rolling. “Jesus! Go back to bed,” my stepfather groaned and turned on his heel. The door slammed.

The film had a long-term effect on me. A) It was very effective in deterring me from being a heroin addict. Forty years later, I am still clean.

B) It also left me with a life-time aversion to wailing guitar solos. Unlike all my normal friends who would air guitar to Zeppelin, who loved heavy metal, hair metal, death metal, Metallica, Megadeath, Motorhead, Maiden, Sabbath and Priest — metal freaks me out. That first whining shriek still seizes my bowels like Malcolm McDowell, making me anxious and tense and waiting for hell to break loose. It’s the thin edge of the wedge, man — a couple of Motley Crue tracks and next thing ya know, it’s mainlining and toe-injecting and selling my butt in the street.

junky2
After.

I have no particular aesthetic reason not to like heavy metal. I love punk, after all, which is far more nihilistic and loud. I like abstraction. I like the blues. I even like spandex on men.

I can only attribute this aversion to a Pavlovian response wired into me back in the dark of the assembly hall in ’73, a reprogramming of my limbic system that still holds sway.

I have other long-seated childhood aversions that I still trip over. Sweet and sour pork. Shredded wet paper towels. Bitter-sweet chocolate. Trigonometry. Cilantro.

In my never-ending quest for mild self-improvement, I have begun to question these knee-jerk repulsions and am working on reprogramming myself. I refuse any longer to be haunted by these ancient specters, especially the one whose origins I know, origins that are absurd to be enslaved by when you are a man of my age and dwindling hair. So I am watching Dianne Wiest movies, eating Filets-o-Fish, even drawing with a soft pencil. And blasting Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” ’round the clock.

I am stronger than my weaknesses — and I shall prevail.

 

Off-Roading

dannygregory6 Comments

Almost exactly a year ago, Jenny and I drove from Los Angeles to New York City. In the months before, we talked a lot about where we might go and drew up lists of places to stop en route. We weighed the pros and cons of going north and driving the length of the Canadian border, of drawing a straight line from LA to NY and beelining across the Midwest, of meandering through the heat of Texas and the Deep South. I consulted web sites about cross-country drives, downloaded a half-dozen apps, and reread On the Road.

A couple of days before we left, we had a big yard sale and emptied the cottage we’d occupied for a year. Then we hit the road with 666 dollar bills in the glovebox.

Despite all our discussion and planning, we ultimately committed to just one decision: that each day we would  decide where to sleep that night and that decision could be postponed until the sun was setting. Sometimes we booked our hotel while sitting in its parking lot. This was pretty atypical behavior for Jenny and me — she’s a producer and I’m a Virgo, organized and methodical people who like a sense of control. But this trip was to be different. We intended to get New York in roughly two weeks — and that was all we knew for sure.

It was a risky and brilliant strategy. We meandered all over the map and saw things we had no idea even existed. We made monumental plans while driving, then scuttled them over dinner. We acted impulsively and took many roads less traveled. When we pulled onto our street in Greenwich Village, we knew we’d had an adventure that we would always remember. It was epic.

The core of my brain (and yours, hopefully) is the limbic system, the ancient part that sits under my cortex, deep in the most protected part of my skull. It manages my emotional reactions, its gnarled, primitive fingers fidgeting on the buttons that trigger my reactions and form my most salient memories. It is primitive and essential, making me happy, angry, hungry, horny or terrified. This part of my head is me at my most impulsive.

Sitting astride is my modern brain, the source of higher function, the part that cracks the bullwhip, straightens the cutlery, talks to my accountant, and imagines itself superior. I have relied too heavily on this ultra-rational part of my brain for most of my life. It has helped me think my way out of feeling too intensely, providing Mr. Spockian rationales for my baser yearnings, keeping me in check. It has helped me succeed — but I wonder how many roses it has kept me from smelling.

I have published a dozen or so books by now, and each one has started with a road map. Sometimes my editor has asked for it, an outline to include with the proposal she submits to her editorial board. But always my frontal lobes have insisted on it, wanting some clarity about the mission ahead. Believing that I can’t build a building without a scaffold or a monument without an armature, I have arranged bullet points and sub-points into neat staircases with sturdy handrails to lead me to the summit and safely back down again.

And then I have sat down at this machine and kicked the blueprints under my desk.

Outlines and bullet points are one thing but writing or painting something that lives and breathes are something quite other. No one wants to dance in the moonlight with a sturdy skeleton. Flesh and blood are lissome, moving under your finger tips, breathing and changing shape. And so it is with art. A sketch is meant to be done in pencil so it can be erased as better choices emerge.

All this preemptive planning just gives me the courage to turn the key in my driveway, the balls to say, let’s drive three thousand miles and trust that we’ll eventually get where we’re going. Even if I draw the route in the thickest Sharpie, I still plan to listen to my gut, to my amygdala, to the songbird at the crossroads who says, hey, let’s take a left here and see what lies around the bend.

We have GPS and we are safe to wander.