Journey of an Aesthete Podcasthttps://www.jouneyofanaesthetepodcast.com/

“The decision to approach Elizabeth Williams has a long journey; indeed one connected initially more to prose, rather than drawing or visual art, and going back a couple of decades. In 1984 the writer/journalist and film and t.v. producer Dominck Dunne wrote an extraordinary essay for Vanity Fair magazine that had much influence upon me.  Titled "Justice: A Father's Account of the Trial of hi...

*Please note: Henry's work is so comprehensive and gorgeous, we have only selected a few images to highlight. Visit https://horenstein.com to dig deeper and truly appreciate the scope of his work. From Mitch's Notebook about this episode: "I must immediately mention a film in which I played a role in its kickstarter funding that Henry Horesntein made called Partners , if only because we failed to...

Hello there! We are SO excited to share that Skillshare is our new show sponsor!!!! Here is more about the new partnership from our show host, Mitch Hampton about this relationship and how Skillshare reflects so beautifully what our podcast is all about.  This is Mitch Hampton , the host of the podcast Journey Of An Aesthete . I'm not much for multitasking. You'll notice I played a little pia...

“I never know how I am going to connect with a guest. Some- times the guest comes to me and there was no instance of this more welcome than when Dr. Philander Ratliff introduced himself on the fb. While I was ensconced on a feed from the fb, I received the fol- lowing song: https://www.reverbnation.com/philandervanratliff I knew next to nothing about who was being this music, but I loved what I wa...

" Theo Horesh is one of the guests on my show I have known personally, from the all too brief (in my opinion) time he happened to have been living in the Boston area.  I would run into him at a coffee shop in Cambridge and we would discuss many matters of note. He was very well read, could and would talk about practically anything and everything in a fearless manner, and I don't need to tell...

“Back in the day, in an era that now seems ever more remote, the early 00s, there was this phrase in popular culture that got started about the virtues of being the kind of guy (I think it was the gender specific "guy", but maybe not, let's say person in the current interests of 2021) that you "could have a beer with." It was never really specified what this meant, yet everyone just seemed to know...

"One of the earliest film critics I ever read was Pauline Kael , who was an enormous influence on so many of us in the 70s. I would literally read all of her reviews for films as I watched them in theaters, comparing notes. I Lost It At The Movies was a late 70s favorite and I could recite whole passages of her prose from memory at that time.  Yet this was only a prelude to further devel...

“I often have the reconfirmation of the dictum that each individual life is so vast, mysterious and, in part, a process rather than any final thing, that we would all do better to take a step back and be more cautious in what we are prone to say about others, and this quite apart from whether the assertion is positive or negative. Robert Riskin , the socialist screenwriter of It's A Wonderful Life...

Inside the episode with Mitch Hampton  "There are literally thousands of t.v. movies that Amanda Reyes and I could have covered.  I often ask myself why I like this particular one so much.  I think that, in all honesty it comes down to at least three reasons: the emotional directness of the content, the production style(s) of the period in which it was made and the many sided treatm...

“I usually mention that our guests can be categorized into those i know personally and those I have never met, in the case of the latter, making our conversation on the podcast the very first contact with them.  Of course among the ones I have never met I try and become well aware of what we could call their accomplishments, in most instances, well before the airdate. Kerry is someone that our pro...

On this solo episode to inaugurate the New Year of 2021, Mitch Hampton gets a little more personal than usual, plays some brand new piano music at his home Steinway, discusses his autism diagnosis, what he loves about his guests, some recent movies and more! More on the episode from Mitch's notebook: "Doing a solo episode in an historical moment in which I most assuredly have spoken less in four m...

“The manifold connections by which one individual touches another can be a quite mysterious and beautiful thing. In the case of our guest Candace English everything starts with this film by a man named Jon Jost called Rembrandt Laughing . I happened to see it on television in the 1980s in the middle of the night, I am going to guess 2:30 AM, that kind of thing, and this little picture touched me v...

Inside the Episode with Mitch Hampton “From South to North: A conversation on visual art, Geography and personal biography with Danielle Norris” Danielle Norris is an artist who I knew very well when I was living in Boston. She had been working, among other gigs, as a waitress in one of the oldest and more famous of spots in Cambridge  . You can see that she did the artwork for Tyler Bejoinas' alb...

“Readers of this blog and listeners to this podcast will know that I made a dramatic change in geographical address in the year of 2017, from Boston to Weaverville, North Carolina. In the interest of full honesty, I was and remain ambivalent about this move as it was made for reasons of unforeseen circumstance and not for any I would call personal choice - by any definition of the word choice. One...

“Of all of the guests I have had on my show whom I have had the great fortune to know personally, I believe Dmitri Matheny would count as the oldest of friends since my association with him goes back at least to early 1983 - at Interlochen Arts Academy . When we were both living in Boston, I was the pianist with a wonderful group he organized.  I have to say, without reservations, that not on...

Inside the episode with Mitch Hampton “Being Open To One's Entire Environ- ment: A conversation with singer/song- writer Tyler Tyler Bejoian ”  Tyler Bejoian is one of a handful of guests on our show with whom I have had a personal association, long before we had this podcast, and even before podcasting was a thing.  Originally we were friends because of shared cinephilia, back in the da...

“ I think the very first time I became aware of our guest Melanie Mayron it would have to have been in the August of 1978 when, at the age of eleven, I went on a hot and blissfully underpopulated New York City in August 1978 late afternoon to see this movie called GIRLFRIENDS. I dearly wish I remembered the exact theatre that was exhibiting it in that first run. (Was it The New Yorker? Bleeker Str...

Inside the Episode with Mitch Hampton  "Regular listeners to our podcast will note I mention that there are both guests I have known personally and then there are those I have never even met. Amanda sits firmly in the former group as I got to know her through a mutual interest (in my case a most serious hobby): clothes, fashion in general and vintage in particular. We were all part of the sam...

"I talk with veteran actor, write, producer, and teacher on his life in the art of acting." Inside the Episode with Mitch Hampton: "T he diverse group of guests on our podcast encompass both those I have never met and only know from their work in what you might consider a "public" sense. Then there are those guests whom I have had the good fortune to know personally. I have never gotten to know th...

“ I came across the work of Dr. Azar Nafisi at exactly the same time I was undergoing a spiritual transformation regarding the value of the arts and letters. This was the time of the years 2001 and a few years after.  At that time I gave no thought at all to the internet (though perhaps I should have!) and podcasts were not yet even an idea (as far as I know) on anybody's mind. But I was givi...

Featured Artists in this episode:  Hannah Sharafian: is an actress, playwright and teacher in NYC Tyler Bejoines: is a singer/songwriter and leader of band Tyler And The Names, based in Massachusetts  Jane LeCroy: is a poet, punk/folk/rock singer and bandleader of The Icebergs and teacher in the NYC public school system, resident of NYC  Heather Kapplow: is a multimedia artist based...

Inside the Episode with Mitch Hampton “I confess I tend to lay it on pretty thick when making self deprecatory jokes about all the many things I claim to not be able to do well, whether it is drawing or, not able to do at all in the case of our current episode any kind of sculpture. In this particular episode I happen joke about how I am "impaired" in seeing objects in three dimensional space for...

Mitch's Note on this episode: "As we find ourselves in the middle of Season Two of our podcast, Journey Of An Aesthete I thought I should like to record a second solo episode which I guess means me sitting in front of the microphone and speaking all alone with the listeners/audience. I always get really nervous with these episodes as, speaking historically I have done very little in the way of pub...

From Mitch’s Notebook about the episode “As with some other guests, Erin Kinard is one who I have known personally, at least since the two years of living here in Weaverville. While I did know her for her singing as she has been a regular at Blue mountain here with just her and her guitar, and I did know her to possess both a truly beautiful voice and gift for songwriting there was much more. I di...

From Mitch’s Notebook about the episode “ Meghan Daum is somebody I became acquainted with as part of my ongoing love for creative non-fiction, the kind of prose that comes out of a meeting of literary criticism, personal memoir, the opinion column and essays, and some other genres thrown in for good measure. Reminiscent of Joan Didion , George W. S. Trow , and others, Daum's nonfiction writing is...