urbantrappistblogastery

Lent is generally associated with the story of Jesus’s temptations in the desert A fun thought experiment is to muse on what the devil would use to tempt you. I find that I would be a very cheap and simple soul to seduce. , but the parable of the prodigal son is more apt; [...]

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I am a sucker for anything that is unabashedly, unrealistically beautiful (excepting photoshopped cover girls). From magical novels by Salman Rushdie or Gabriel Garcia Marquez to amplified art by Georges Rouault or Vincent van Gogh to ultravivid films like Amèlie or The Fall, works of astonishment [...]

I have this penchant for the high brow: modern paintings, strenuous books, Belgian beers.  I love these difficulties because I find treasure in the inaccessible.  Edmund Hillary, among many others of his sort, agreed. Anything with broad appeal tends to lack the potency and depth of the arduously crafted art which can only be [...]

In these hard times, will we be able to have our art and eat it too?

There were a lot of sacred days in March: selection Sunday, the conjunction of the first weekend of the tournament with the Triduum, and the release of Counting Crows’ newest album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. I’d had plenty of previews of the material before it came out, but I was most expectant about [...]

(things that are ruled)
In quintessential Catholicism, a nun at a college assembled a list of rules for her art department. But unlike indulgences or purgatory, these are good ideas. If you have any interest in creative production, you should read them.

Better yet, you should make them. For as much as I approve [...]

Thanks to Netflix (the greatest thing in film since technicolor), I watched Into Great Silence, an experience of the Grande Chartreuse Carthusian monastery, an austere order pitched in the French Alps that happens to make delicious liqueur. It’s so good (and chromatically distinctive) that the grassy yellow elixir inspired a crayon. You [...]

(the 2007 Christmas email, for virtual posterity)
In the beginning, there was art. There were sunrises, nocturnes, landscapes, still lifes. Finally, The Eternal Artist fiddled with figures and formed a pair fit to express His image. He saw that they were good and so decided to be fruitful and multiply, expressing Himself uniquely [...]

This is lifted from an email to a wise man who suggested that my linguistic skills need an “emotional core” to transform them from mere play into something potent. You probably wouldn’t have noticed that contextual theft, because my email style is rather similar to my style on here. Must be the virtuality [...]