Writing

Machines & Dreams is a Substack newsletter about art, culture, technology, and building a creative life. Posts appear occasionally. Writing here also includes academic reviews, papers presented, op-eds, and pieces published elsewhere.

• The AAG Review of Maps on Vinyl

  Book review for the Association of American Geographers — Damien Saunder's atlas connecting cartography, music, and art
  Feb 2026↗
• I Was Accused of Kidnapping My Own Son

  a distressing momentary inversion of reality
  May 2026↗
• Higher Education's Napster Moment

  What Higher Ed Can Learn from the Music Industry's Worst Decade
  Mar 2026↗
• Can the Art Studio Model Save Higher Ed?

  arts education as a surprisingly resilient path forward
  Feb 2026↗
• Hidden Doors

  On Entering Magical Spaces on Campus
  Sep 2025↗
• A Day in Ostia

  Emperor Hadrian and Belonging
  Aug 2025↗
• Stacy Isenbarger

  A tribute to my friend Stacy — an artist, art educator and career angel
  Aug 2025↗
• Step in Hot Poop (and Buy a CD)

  How a trip to a music store in Washington wine country got me thinking about the future of music
  May 2025↗
• A Fog on College Hill

  Creative Expression and Free Speech in an Era of Institutional Caution
  May 2025↗
• Breaking Free from Breaking News

  The Night is Full of Terrors and New York Times Breaking News alerts
  Feb 2025↗
• Followers & Fans

  Social Media and True Fans in an Erratic Media Environment
  Jan 2025↗
• An Aging Artist

  A short reflection on aging, gratitude and a life of making things
  Jan 2025↗
• The Road Back to Music

  From alt-rock to academia — and back again
  Nov 2024↗
• Growing Up Weird in J.D. Vance's Hometown

  How diversity and 'weirdness' are assets in America's heartland
  Sep 2024↗
• Working at McDonald's

  The worst and most normal job I ever had
  Aug 2024↗
• Water Confidence

  My son brings chaos and joy wherever he goes
  May 2024↗
• Ghostbusting

  Early adventures in ghosthunting
  May 2024↗
• Two Wolves

  Multiple identities and switching from the everything channel
  Apr 2024↗
• Stress Week for the University Educator

  Two weeks before finals is often the most stressful time for educators — and three ways through it
  Apr 2024↗
• Machines & Dreams

  What we learn and what we lose when we work with machines
  Apr 2024↗
• Help! My Kid Might Be an Artist

  An introduction for a book about intensely creative kids
  Mar 2024↗
• AI Weirdness

  Using AI-generated errors, aberrations and incongruities in meaningful ways
  Mar 2024↗
• Antisocial Media

  The creative instinct is a gift. It has been hijacked.
  Feb 2024↗
• Drunken Crazy Action Painting

  Jackson Pollock, Wild Cursive Script, and what Modernism still owes Asia
  Jan 2024↗
• You Should Start Painting. No Really, You Should

  Painting is fun, fulfilling and relatively immune to AI disruption
  Jan 2024↗
• Smartphones Are Too Small

  A reflection on the absurdly small size of smartphones, the immersive quality of large paintings, and what scale has to do with it
  Dec 2023↗
• An Homage to the Ancient African Masters of Realism

  Fayum Mummy Portrait Painting Kicks Ass
  Dec 2023↗
• Flax to the Max

  What would painting be without the flax plant?
  Nov 2023↗
• Genesis & Giving Form to Uncertainty

  My first concert seeing Genesis in 1992 taught me about the power of music, media and transformation
  Nov 2023↗
• Dead Dad's Weekend

  Reflecting on parents' weekends at Washington State University
  Nov 2023↗
• Fitness for Artists

  Fitness journeys are annoying. Here's mine anyway.
  Oct 2023↗
• Shifting Digital Landscapes

  Changes in technology and permission to disappear
  Oct 2023↗
• An Introduction

  Launching a newsletter about art, culture and building a creative life
  Oct 2023↗
• The Failure Resume

  Taking stock of things that didn't go as planned
  Apr 2022↗