Author: Bob
It has been fascinating to see the range of narrative on the hundredth anniversary of the Walt Disney Company. As has always been the case when it comes to “Waltology”, the stories range from the scholarly to bare snippets of legend with some pretty credible first-hand accounts threading through the...
Let's start with this: I don't think there is anything special called “Immersive Entertainment”. This is the most blatant kind of industry self-aggrandizing jargon. With all appropriate respect to my friends who actually have celiac disease, “Immersive Entertainment” is the equivalent of the jar of Bubbie’s Kosher Dill Pickles in...
As I get older, I find I read more biographies. I guess when you have more road behind you than ahead of you, you get more interested in other folks perspectives on the hike. I am always amazed when I read about writers and storytellers I admire. From Shakespeare to...
Poetry is to language what a fine brandy is to grape juice. It is refined, distilled, and concentrated. It has strength and potency and at the same time it’s subtle. A poem invites deliberate contemplation and promises to tantalize, awaken, satisfy and warm and, at the same time, to provoke...
In contemplating Lessons From Live Performance, I had to think for a while about what I thought a “live performance” is. I’ve performed as a musician from marching bands to concert choirs to various incarnations of what we used to call “acoustic-country-rock-sci-fi”. I’ve also given talks and told stories ranging...
Improvisation immediately drives me to music. I spent a good deal of my life as a “musician” but I used to always tell my bandmates that I wasn’t a “real musician” like them. They knew stuff. They had (and still have), a deep understanding of the musical “field”-used here in...
Here, I presume a reasonable lay-person’s familiarity with Shakespeare. Fair, I think, and if you know but two of Shakespeare’s plays one is likely The Tempest (the other with a 98% probability is Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream). If you are one of those people who (and...
The Next Normal My grandparents never completely let go of the Great Depression. Mistrust of banks, obsessive frugality and a pervasive vigilance persisted for the rest of their lives-which in my Grandmother’s case extended well into the 1990s. Like the Depression or a World War, Covid-19 represents a human inflection...
When I was 9, the walls of my bedroom were covered not with hot rods or pop stars. They were covered with 24" x 36" posters of every rocket in the US fleet. Redstone, Atlas, Titan, Agena, and Saturn-I framed my passion a determination to go to space. Werner Von...
It would be irresponsible and cruelly glib to imply that the Covid-19 pandemic has not been difficult, and that the results haven’t produced fear, anger and for so many, tragedy. Those things are all true. Loss of livelihood, loss of well-being and even loss of life are real and averting...
At the turn of the century, out of the chaos of a chilling economy and the double punches of 911 and the Iraq war, large corporations contracted, revamped and retreated to the perceived safety of their “core”. History will show that this retrenchment spawned both a massive unemployment rise on...
