William Stobb

From Conduit editor in chief, William Waltz: Dear Friends and Allies, I am very pleased to announce the premiere of Night Light: How the Moon Made Us Human , our twenty-third launch into orbit. Night Light boasts a shine-all-night crew of poets, artists, rascals, and thinkers, including: Alice Notley, Dorothea Lasky, Alissa Nutting, Matthew Rohrer, Bob Hicok, Tomaž Šalamun, Noelle Kocot, Dara Wier, and many more Interviews with Buzz Aldrin, iconic moon-walker and advocate for space exploration, and Evans Lansing Smith, Space Age literary scholar of myth and moon Artwork by Andy Warhol, Gilbert & George, Edward Hopper, Sharon Harper, and Ai Weiwei, full-moon artists all Kutch and Mancuso, our favorite pair of men in the moon * * *Land on < http://conduit.org/pages/online_audio.html > for bonus audio content, including readings by Amanda Nadelberg, Nate Pritts, plus more on the way soon. Past and current contributors: join the fun! Record yourself reading t...

It’s said that a hot air balloon landed on the roof of Rene Magritte’s childhood home, and that the imprint of this unexpected, vivid event can be seen in Magritte’s paintings of familiar objects possessed of unusual characteristics or set in unusual contexts.   It’s also said that the early death of Magritte’s mother led to the painter’s sliding from the world he knew was real, where his mother was dead, to the world he wished was real, where his mother was alive, and that this slippage between worlds shapes Magritte’s work.   I like the tidy mythologies used to explain the signature qualities of interesting people.   I don’t care if they’re true.   They allow me to imagine origin-points for art, which can inform my own thinking about art and how to make it.   It can also be useful in trying to teach people to engage an art form, whether it be painting or writing or film-making—any art that involves a relationship between an artist and the world around him or ...