Author Archives

Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

• The tip of your tongue

  By Bill Pearse on June 15, 2013 • ( 0 )

  

  Art is just around the corner, just outside the edge of this song that’s on, now. Art is your nature, a prick of light on the skin of the dark that leads you somewhere warmer. Follow that.

• Cold

  By Bill Pearse on June 14, 2013 • ( 0 )

  I haven’t written cold in a while: meaning, I sit down, type, hit publish and move on. It’s similar to standing behind a microphone not knowing what you’re going to say, not being able to see who’s looking at you…. Read More ›

• The nature of art and science: a short rant on differences and dependencies

  By Bill Pearse on June 13, 2013 • ( 1 )

  

  I used to think that art and science were separate, discrete: “the art and science of project management.” In my mind, the art-part was more appealing and mysterious. But as with other things we want to understand, they run back… Read More ›

• The guy in the van

  By Bill Pearse on June 12, 2013 • ( 7 )

  I’ve been writing about some homeless people who live on the street by my office, in Seattle’s SODO district. I walk Utah Avenue every day, rain or shine, to clear my head and dream. They are a part of the… Read More ›

• Date stamps and blank tapes

  By Bill Pearse on June 11, 2013 • ( 1 )

  Mix tapes from friends are like photos or letters you save, to take you back in time. Like a letter, they take care to create, and there’s more of the person in the print. Mike mailed tapes to me when… Read More ›

• The sports court

  By Bill Pearse on June 10, 2013 • ( 2 )

  When we bought this house, it came with a sports court. That’s pretty unlikely, that we’d own a sports court. First, the bombast to own property that’s big enough for one. Then, the idea that I’d be out there in… Read More ›

• Beer, blankets and sunsets

  By Bill Pearse on June 9, 2013 • ( 3 )

  That time of year the days outlast us, the sun comes through the trees and into our family room around 9 PM. Saturday night with Cat Stevens, the girls’ dramatic dance interpretations of Peace Train, the irony that my mom… Read More ›

• Fake rooms for people

  By Bill Pearse on June 8, 2013 • ( 2 )

  In the mid 90s I didn’t have a computer and had to rent time on a box at an internet cafe on Broadway. It was dark, small and felt sleazy: four or five of us with our backs to each… Read More ›

• When slice-of-life doesn’t cut it anymore

  By Bill Pearse on June 7, 2013 • ( 2 )

  Eyes closed, on my back, losing touch with my position in space. Voices passing outside the door, in the hall. Someone pushing a cart. Someone running water. Can’t feel my hands, can’t move my feet. Mind is awake. I can… Read More ›

• Flirting with the banal

  By Bill Pearse on June 6, 2013 • ( 0 )

  

  James Joyce can describe a commonplace train commute as something wondrous. Shouldn’t it be? You can take pictures of trees and rocks or write poems about them. There aren’t special glasses for artists, though. You have to find the fruit… Read More ›