"Capitalism drove our expansion westward, leaving an enormous human and environmental cost in its wake. However, the myths surrounding our settling of the west will have you believe something totally different, entwining these events with American values of ‘freedom’ and ‘independence.’ Our history of settling the West is both a...
In the cinematic music video for “Wine,” Canadian Chinese singer Carson Cheng — also known as KICCC (pronounced “kick”) — emerges from hot ashes like a phoenix and finds himself face-to-face with a white wolf in the woods. The dramatic result of a creative exchange between KICCC and director Brock...
Cinescopes is a monthly column about astrology and the movies. Ruled by the Sun itself, Leo is fixed fire. If cardinal energy (like Cancer's) is about initiation, fixed energy is about holding on, holding steady, and holding it down. If water signs (like Cancer) are the deep feelers, fire signs...
Laraaji, whose name honors the divine energy of the sun, is a radiant personality who often plays up solar influences by dressing head-to-toe in a bright orange color, considered by Eastern yogis and color theorists as symbolic of transcendence. Sun Piano, his summer 2020 release on the British label, All...
John Lewis gets stopped in airports. A lot. In John Lewis: Good Trouble, a new documentary by director Dawn Porter, there’s a scene where we follow Lewis through an airport terminal as strangers approach him to call him a hero and an inspiration. His son says, with a rueful laugh,...
For centuries, witchcraft has been the sign and symbol of subversive and liminal pathways in life and art; the focal point of cultural anxieties and repressed dreams. Lately, the aesthetics of witchiness have enjoyed a major resurgence. Showing up in fashion and the popularity of herbs and crystals, its widespread...
Thirty years ago (July 12, 1990, to be exact), Northern Exposure premiered on network television. The six-season series depicts life in a fictional small town called Cicely in the wilds of Alaska. It does not shy away from the spiritual nor the surreal, in employing extended dream sequences, fairy tale...
LA-based musician and visual artist Vinyl Williams -- born Lionel Williams -- explores ontological realities and connecting nexuses of sound, harmony, digital world-building, and higher consciousness. Tapping into Aldous Huxley’s realm of “mystical insight,” Williams puts it succinctly that, “If you have a vision of the music you love, you...
For Seattle-based Black artist Zahyr Lauren -- also known as the artist L.Haz, or more concisely, Z -- discovering their personal connection to art came as an unexpected blessing. It was 2015 when the shift began; they were living in New York, working at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project as...
Welcome to Cancer season! The Sun is now in the sign ruled by the Moon. This is a time with real spiritual weight, where our ego meets our inner child and the energy of the moment feels positively tidal. Cancer is the soil that feeds our roots, the feathers that...