We ignore how our thinking—about feelings, bodily functions, friends, politics, what’s on the television— lets us down. I am not talking about the possibility that someone else—Sontag, say—might be smarter than I am or have more-incisive insights than I do. I am talking about thinking on a much more basic level: that a particular peach…
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Surviving the Twenty-First Century (the book)
Parenting, Corporate Thievery, Aging, Technology, Ideals – one might easily feel overwhelmed. With a unique approach to the personal, the political and the intellectual, William Eaton’s essays keep asking: “How might we live?” Excerpts from Amazon 5-star reviews: “William Eaton thoughtfully and gracefully examines his experiences as father, wage earner, consumer, citizen, dreamer, ethicist. (Spoiler…
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From photos/artworks
A very few of the drawings and paintings that William Eaton has been working on. These drawings and others can be purchased from the artist using the contact form below. Many more images are visible at Montaigbakhtinian.com. After Picasso, Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, 1936 After Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) Untitled 1927, in the collection of…
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Cut-outs
Inspired by Matisse of course. But also exploring, exploring . . . These and other works can be purchased from the artist using the contact form below. Many more images are visible at Montaigbakhtinian.com.
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Art, Sex, Politics
In a provocative collection of essays, William Eaton, the author of Surviving the Twenty-First Century, shares the pleasures of questions, tastes, reading and more visual arts. That we are animals, that is as sure as ever. How savagely we behave toward one another and toward other species and inorganic others. How we rub affectionately up…
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Trouble in mind (Nina Simone; Richard M. Jones; portrait of a veteran artists’ model)
Portrait by William Eaton of a model with much in and on her mind. A few words about Nina Simone and the songwriter (Richard M. Jones), along with an extract from the song: “Trouble in Mind.”
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Woman Hat Café Portrait (+ Thomas Eakins and Alice Kurtz)
Colorful portrait of a nicely-hatted woman in an outdoor café. Complete with a short commentary that quotes from the subject of one of Thomas Eakins’s greatest paintings: Miss Alice Kurtz. (The portrait, however, owes more to Degas, Lautrec and nineteenth-century Paris than to Eakins and early twentieth-century Philadelphia.)
Read MoreWoodstock Drumming Circle (non-figurative – black tubes)
Drawing made at the Woodstock (NY) Drumming Circle in March 2019, by William Eaton. The drawing is non-figurative; however, earlier, figurative Eaton drawings of the Circle have been on exhibit in the gallery of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. The post includes one of John Cage’s Zen-ish stories, from the Indeterminacy website.
Read MoreSample from “Zeroing In”
(A personal favorite because of its oddly repetitive, experimental approach.) The list has ten items, plus some variations. Below are a few: 1. How could I have known this is what you wanted—because you never mentioned it? 2. The role of imagination in sensation may be underestimated. The highly sensitive may add imagination to sensation…
Read MoreSample from “Sick”
A parent has a great, if not entirely fulfillable responsibility to prepare his child to survive as well as possible in the social, professional, commercial and psychological jungles in which the child will find herself. And learning must be done step-by-step. Even if a child is ready intellectually to understand a complex moral argument, if…
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