I’m fascinated by faces. In part, this is because I’m an ignoramus who has to gather information by instinct and intuition rather than by intellect. Faces are fruitful for me in a way that lots of other things aren’t. But then you’re an ignoramus too. You’re human, after all, and no human can look at... Read More

Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, brows — all of those words are home-grown English. But when you put them together and view them as a whole, they turn French in the word “face.” That doesn’t happen in German, where home-grown Augen, Nase, Mund, Kinn, Wangen, Brauen come together as home-grown Gesicht. Faces, Races, Spaces German... Read More

It’s a perfect image for our insane and ugly age: an overweight gender-fluid Black woman in a Wu-Flu mask pressing her head in worship against a giant mural of George Floyd at the site of his martyrdom in Minneapolis. The martyr is ugly, the mural is ugly and the mourner is ugly: In its ugliness,... Read More