A conversation with Philip Glass and Fredericka Foster Philip Glass and Fredericka Foster We are on the phone, freewheeling about our practices: music, art, and meditation. Another day, we are in Philip’s kitchen, sitting at a wooden table. Behind us are comfortable couches and a private outdoor space. Philip’s partner, the artist Saori Tsukada, is working with flowers in the urban garden surrounding the house. —Fredericka Foster Philip Glass (PG): I was talking once to Gelek Rimpoche [1938–2017] about meditation, and I asked him, “Isn’t it just paying attention?” Yes, he said, “that’s absolutely what it is.” Meditation is a nice fuzzy word that we … Continue reading Music, Meditation, Painting—and Dreaming

“You must be vulnerable to be sensitive to reality. And to me being vulnerable is just another way of saying that one has nothing more to lose.” BY MARIA POPOVA Self-knowledge might be the most difficult of life’s rewards — the hardest to earn and the hardest to bear. To know yourself is to know that you are not an unassailable fixity amid the entropic storm of the universe but a set of fragilities in constant flux. To know yourself is to know that you are not invulnerable. The honest encounter with that vulnerability is the wellspring of art: Every … Continue reading Bob Dylan on Emotion, Vulnerability as the Price of Integrity, and Music as an Instrument of Truth