Our advice for aspiring musicians and artists: 1) Trust your instincts and find a project where you can put some of that trust in the people you play with. It’s like magic. 2) Hold yourself and your collaborators to the “Don’t be a Dick” Golden Rule. 3) Surround yourself with kind people who inspire you.

My husband’s photo was chosen by a huge non-profit for a postcard. He signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement for the use with payment of $250. They have never paid us and continue selling the postcard into the millions of copies. Can’t we sue?

My life turned upside-down, as I learned to cope with the sudden onset of these new physical ailments related to my work. Aside from the emotions of fearing I may never paint again, I became physically sick when I walked down the detergent isle at a grocery store, entered a mechanic shop or inadvertently set foot in a room where someone was painting their nails.

Mainly what I’d say to my friend is this: Imagine a world where there is a free beer tap on every corner. If you want to make a living selling beer, how can you succeed? One inescapable part of the answer, it seems to me, is that you end up giving away a LOT of beer.

Guest Blogger Jeff Andersen: “We work with students in local classrooms for an entire year teaching them how to write and perform their own plays. I see the students make the same connections I did. They realize that they can not only participate in the world around them but also, even better, help to shape it.”

Our modern civil rights movement needs as many people as possible to be themselves and for us to work together for change. But people “being themselves” also means that they are allowed to not talk about their private life for as long as they do not want to talk about it, maybe even forever.

These vessels, or Acallis with which we express ourselves, are in essence bridges for dialogue between different cultures under threat. They are works that call to those who would offer their support. They depart from the local, but resonate with the global.

The question you’re wrestling with—whether the purchase of a copyrighted item permits you to use the item as part of another product—has come up several times in court cases.

Mastery means knowing in your bones what you donʼt know. It also means form is second nature—you didnʼt get up that mountain without learning how to hike. And it means youʼre free. When you come back down, youʼve been changed.

Art is not a eugenics program. We’re all mongrels with our own unique deformities, and that’s what continues to keep artists and the arts in general interesting.

I am inspired by artists who say “I’m going to write or paint this weekend” without regard to “what” they are going to write or paint. Sometimes we just have to put brush to canvas, without being attached to the result.

A society in which not all members are free is not truly a free society. Pussy Riot understands that and Pussy Riot stands in resistance. They stand for resistance.

The general rule is that you can keep and dispose of property once it has been deposited in a trash receptacle from which routine collections are made (and once the person throwing it away has left the area).

Moments of discovery come when you are tuned-in and not thinking about your own performance. This can come naturally after playing with a band over time, but it’s also easy to become worn out from the repetition of playing the same songs over and over again.

Iʼm pretty sure this is the freelancerʼs life. Unless youʼre truly gifted—I mean frighteningly, what-you-touch-turns-to-money gifted—youʼre probably throwing anything at the wall and praying it sticks.

I want to work on making things better, by voting, by talking about this stuff online and in person, by recognizing my white male privilege and not abusing it, by being a vegetarian, because “human privilege” exists too (and I know that the way we treat animals reflects how we treat each other).