Originally posted March 11th, 2012
By Michael Konik
If you’re an artist, or have an artistic impulse, or care deeply about art, you probably experience the kind of quiet despair that I find in many of my jazz musician friends, my poet friends, my painter friends, and frequently from myself. Yes, it’s heartbreaking to be part of a culture that finds the work that we do increasingly irrelevant and of little worth (at least in the marketplace sense). It’s depressing to be so astonishingly good at something and yet so relatively uncelebrated and unappreciated. But you must never stop. We — all of us who care in varying degrees about stuff other than acquiring and consuming — are out there. We’re reading, and listening, and looking, and cogitating, and arguing, and questioning, and loving. We can’t be co-opted. We’re too smart and too aware. We’re not going anywhere. And we need you, you specifically, with . . . → Read More: Encouraging Words for Despairing Artists
Originally posted April 24th, 2011
By Michael Konik
As Thomas Jefferson did in the 1700s, let us set aside the Bible’s confounding melange of mythic mysticism, foggy mumbo-jumbo and confusing contradictions and, instead, let us concentrate on the principles that a dangerous Jew from ancient Nazareth was willing to die for. Let us behave less like the charlatans who organize their businesses around lost souls and more like Mr. Christ himself. Let us put the Christ back in Christianity.
Love they brother. Take care of each other. Recognize the divine spirit in the humblest receptacle.
Originally posted March 20th, 2011
By Michael Konik
This morning in the rain, a pounding torrential rain that punished the streets and those upon them, I walked a couple of blocks from my warm dry house to Sunset Boulevard, where I found thousands (tens-of-thousands?) of people in shorts and sleeveless shirts, splashing toward Santa Monica, more than twelve miles to the west. Most of these folks, soaked and somewhat short-of-breath, seemed unaccountably happy to be out in the elements on their own two feet. (Literally. Several participants were barefoot.) Whenever the rainfall intensified, voices rose from the throng as if urging on a rock band in concert: “Whoooooo!” But it was they who were the rock stars.
At the Los Angeles Marathon, this thing we call “human spirit” was on glorious display. And not just among the runners.
Volunteers, a crew of Sikh men, their turbans and frocks covered by plastic ponchos, distributed freshly cut . . . → Read More: Marathon Watching
Originally posted February 26th, 2011
By Michael Konik
This week twenty-five years ago, in 1986, Filipinos ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos with a non-violent massive protest on Manila’s main highway, EDSA. The movement was known as “People Power,” an apt description of the force that overthrew a tyrant. It wasn’t bombs or kidnappings or guerilla warfare that toppled the criminals in charge. The deed was accomplished by amassing enough people unified in purpose that the military realized they would have to kill thousands, tens-of-thousands, maybe more, if they wanted to preserve the corrupt status quo. This was a major problem, because if all your indentured servants are dead there’s no one left to exploit.
The People won. Marcos fled, the charade of fair and free elections resumed, and others took his place at the self-enrichment trough. The revolution continues, peaceably for now.
We’ve seen similar scenes unfold, thrillingly, over the last few weeks in Tunisia, . . . → Read More: Standing Together, Singing
Originally posted November 1st, 2009
By Michael Konik
What the world needs now, aside from love, sweet love, is doers: People who, like everyone else, enjoy talking about big plans and brilliant ideas; people who, unlike everyone else, aren’t content to merely talk about big plans and brilliant ideas, but feel compelled to act. Such folks are rarer than you might imagine. It is exponentially easier to not try than to try, since the latter invites the real possibility of failure and all the icky feelings that tend to accompany it.
Without doers, great things remain theoretical, and safe. Without doers, the world stays static, or, worse, inexorably decays.
Everyone benefits from the toils of doers who dare to dream big; few comprehend the magnitude of effort required to make dreams come true. Hooray for those unafraid of doing. We need them.
Originally posted October 24th, 2009
By Michael Konik
After the excessive optimisim of youth, the impressive energy of young adulthood, and the confidence of being all grown up, those of us who are fortunate enough to make it to our Forties generally look forward to an incremental and inexorable decline in just about every meaningful area of life — and not just health, romance, and adventure. Your work, your career, if you’re lucky enough to still have one, changes. For some, it ends. If you are, say, a professional athlete, your days of glory will either be in steep decline or finished. If you’re a model, you had better start looking for judging jobs on third-rate televsion programs.
These are extreme examples, of course. Few of us rely solely on the magnificence of our body (or the feats we can do with it) to earn a living and leave a legacy. But all of us, . . . → Read More: Art After 40
Originally posted October 11th, 2009
By Michael Konik
Folks who haven’t seen me for a long time have been looking at me quizically, slightly startled. One lady who previously had encountered my visage only on an old video archived on the Internet said when she met me, “I didn’t recognize you. I thought you were, you know, a big guy.”
At one point, I was — if you can call someone who is only 5’9″ a big guy. Now I’m not. I’ve lost more than 25 pounds.
On purpose.
About sixteen months ago, I had a physical examination. When I was weighed, I felt shame, disgust, and concern. I was as heavy as I’d ever been in my life, the consequence of middle-aged metabolic changes, careless eating, and general sloth. I was more than 190-pounds. I was fat.
As a former marathon runner and multi-sport athlete who wrestled in high school in the 145-pound weight . . . → Read More: Losing Weight: How I Did It
Originally posted September 13th, 2009
By Michael Konik
The new book I’ve just completed writing attempts to examine several Big Ideas through the prism of a fable. One recurring theme is cowardice.
Our common conception of this repulsive quality is that it is simply a manifestation of outsized fear. (A soldier sees his city being overrun by intruders; instead of upholding his duty and honor, he turns and runs.) But given the opportunity for self-preservation, most of us will instinctively avoid danger, to stay safe. Most of us will avoid the unknown in favor of the known. What is it, then, that distinguishes the coward from the normal human being?
It is the duty and honor part. One can only be a coward — or feel like one — if he has shirked responsibility, refusing to perform the task that he has explicitly (or implicitly) agreed to fulfill. In the case of the soldier, he . . . → Read More: Defining Cowardice
Originally posted August 23rd, 2009
By Michael Konik
Of all the vegetables a gentleman farmer cultivates, tomatoes may be the easiest to grow organically. Aside from onions, indestructible optimists who require virtually no care whatsoever, tomatoes seem to provide the organic gardener with the highest success rate, the best fruit-to-labor ratio. They’re vines, and, like most vines, if they’re left to their own opportunistic devices, tomatoes will find a way to flourish — and to engulf other plants that don’t grow as aggressively as they. Sun, water, and a little compost, and they’re happy.
But even tomatoes don’t succeed at everything they try. Much of the pruning I do on weekends is devoted to removing sickly or undernourished tendrils, cleansing the fertile trunk of energy-sucking offshoots that fail to produce sweet vegetables. My rough estimate is that for every ten attempts a tomato plant makes to blaze a new path, to establish a new colony . . . → Read More: A Lesson from the Garden
For all of our Republic’s obvious imperfections (such as a dysfunctional healthcare system, environmental catastrophes looming at every river and lake, an obscene infatuation with violence, to name a few) the United States of America is still the place that everyone from everywhere else is trying to get to.
If you talk with recent immigrants, legal and otherwise, the word you hear repeatedly is “opportunity.” To most recent arrivals from dysfunctional societies, “opportunity” is not fraught with the poetic connotations or symbolic undertones that political philosophers and tendentious pundits squeeze out of the word. To most immigrants, many of whom underwent hardships that would be unimaginable to the coddled residents of America, the USA is less an inspiring symbol than a grand bazaar, where it is possible to earn far more money (and have more things) than back home. Although our nation is acutely class-conscious, prejudiced, and . . . → Read More: Congratulations, America
We're really sorry about our most recent trading loss. People will say we require more oversight, and, in this case, maybe they're right. It shouldn't have happened, and we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen for a third time.
The $4,000 or so ($4,882) of your money that we failed to bring back from our annual company trip to Hollywood Park Racetrack and Casino will in... Read More-->
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers...
North Korea is launching rockets, Syria is slaughtering its citizens, and the Filipino community is organizing a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for a crucial election (not for something boring and unimportant like a public office but a cause that’s got folks passionately engaged: the American Idol finals). So...
Sometimes our chaotic, unknowable, seemingly random Universe arranges itself with perfect symmetry. In these moments of bracing clarity, authored by a Creator (in whatever guise or nomenclature you prefer) whose sense of irony is matched only by her/his/its sense of wicked humor, our innate foolishness and learned...
Poet Robert Pinsky. Pianist Laurence Hobgood. Text, music, and the moment -- what we hear on the new POEMJAZZ recording is two giant artists making something greater than the sum of its parts. While Pinsky recites his lovely words with his unlovely (but weirdly attractive) voice, Hobgood, the longtime arranger and accompanist [...]
