Mannequin Monday – A Sense of Compassion

Clothing our blank forms again, with an awareness of suffering. A sense of compassion. This week’s short story Friendship and Art comes from Alan Ziegler, courtesy of Narrative magazine. This week’s interview is from NPR, Scott Simon talking to Dr. Suzanne Koven, formerly with Massachusetts General Hospital. And I offer a writing sample of my own about street art.

This Week’s Story

Read Alan Ziegler’s iStory here.

“It’s nice,” I reply, the words you use when you want to break a poet’s spirit..” As Alan Ziegler says in Friendship and Art, the words you use to break a poet’s spirit. A writer’s spirit. Narrative magazine again brings us a compelling piece of fiction, one of four iStories. How devastating to an artist to say something like, your work is nice. And in this story it’s said deliberately. Intended to break spirit. A moment of compassion extended to a friend has two years later become a poetic description of a cold person’s tolerance.

This reminds me of an interview my wife and I conducted with record producer David Malloy in Nashville years back for Music and Sound Output magazine. David was walking us through his Emerald studio, explaining the equipment, listing his gear. He introduced us to young singer/songwriter Anthony Crawford. He played one of Crawford’s songs that he was producing. I commented naively that Crawford’s voice reminded me of another established country singer. David jumped on me immediately. Don’t ever tell an artist his work sounds like someone else’s work, he said. His work stands alone. I never forgot that message.

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