Majicman Notes

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot. Groucho Marx Read more

Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived. The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the… Read more

During my years of teaching literature at Cornell and elsewhere I demanded of my students the passion of science and the patience of poetry. As an artist and scholar I prefer the specific detail to… Read more

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday… Read more

Perhaps a better way to think about experience is not as how many times you’ve done a job before, but instead how many times you had to change yourself in order to be successful. Reinventing… Read more

All these squalls to which we have been subjected are signs that the weather will soon improve and things will go well for us, because it is not possible for the bad or the good… Read more

THE BEST INTERIORS ADVICE I WOULD GIVE is that juxtaposition and beauty are the key to success. Beauty leads and beauty guides; if you collect beautiful things – and this has nothing to do with… Read more

The funny thing about a picture, thought Woolly, the funny thing about a picture is that while it knows everything that’s happened up until the moment it’s been taken, it knows absotively nothing about what… Read more

The early soloist Sidney Bechet, calls jazz the sound of freedom. “It’s the sounds that emulate [sic] from the emancipated slaves. The newfound freedom that they found in the South of the United States, and… Read more

Akrasia, commonly translated as “weakness of will,” a habit of not listening to what we accept should be heard and a failure to act upon what we know is right. It is because of akrasia… Read more