Michael Morgenstern

it gets better

A girl called Emily

I subscribe to The Listserve, a group with 20,000 members that lets one member post every day. Most of the time they are saccharine duds, but from time to time one comes through and wrenches your heart. It’s wild that this guy got his chance to post right

Why we're starting Nametag Day

Watch it and share it! C’mon, you know you want to! Many times I’ve looked down, hours after a conference or first-day meet-and-greet, and noticed that I was still wearing a nametag. I’ve always looked up right away, pretending that I forgot to take it off. I

Another great video: Amanda Palmer on letting people give

I love what Amanda has to say about being an artist and having a direct relationship with her fans:

Watch this: Lana Wachowski receives the HRC Visibility Award

Inspiring for so many reasons: the message, her life story, and the opportunity to listen to someone brilliant speak clearly, in high and low concepts, without talking down in any way.

Why I Still Opt Out

Cross posted on The Huffington Post After traveling extensively to film festivals with my film this year, I’ve gotten good at the airport game. A few weeks ago, I arrived at LAX one hour before takeoff, boarding pass already in hand and laden only with the backpack on my

MUSIC VIDEO! Blue Kid - Next To You

I’m seriously, insanely excited to share some work I’m very proud of. The fruits of my music video collaboration with singer/songwriter Lydia Benecke and her band Blue Kid just hit the Internet this week, so you can now click to watch Lydia’s delicious croon explode at

Meditate...Now!

Cross-posted with, and featured in, the Huffington Post. I think the problems of the world aren’t caused by people coming together and saying “let’s make problems.” They’re caused by people coming together and saying “let’s make solutions” without having solved the problem of their own suffering.

Math is self consistency

I was speaking with a mathematician friend who talked about math as existing outside of human consciousness. I don’t think so. I think math is really just self-consistency. We imagine something like a line and then the “objective, conscious-less” math is just the construction of self-consistency around that construct,

Just see Life of Pi (I was an office PA on it, but that's not why)

Wow. I just finished watching this movie, and it is impeccable. It is brilliant and beautiful and wow. Ang Lee said (or at least, the promotional materials said that he said) “I don’t direct a movie, I let it direct me.” Watching this masterpiece I could see how one

I'm only lost until I see

“I’m only lost until I see  / I’m lost because I want to be.” Thanks to the monk whose name I forgot who led the dharma talk today. The Labyrinth by W.H. Auden Anthropos apteros for days Walked whistling round and round the Maze, Relying happily upon His

The last bit

It takes as much time to get from 80-90% as it did to get from 0-80%. It takes that much time over again to get to 98%..and so on. And that last bit makes all the difference. Here I am, looking at a gorgeous music video, with probably a

We Were Out Again Too Late music video

I’m so happy to have this out there. Thanks to Lydia, Nicole, Matt, The Muse, Tony from the church, and everyone who has been with us every step of the way. And here’s to more on its way! If you like this, you can see it premiere-in-the-real-world tonight

Twelve days, four projects, six showings

Aahh!! It’s one of those weeks where I wonder “how in the hell will I get through this” at the same time as being so excited that I get to live through such a week. After all this is over I’m taking a day or two off next

Growing

As I grow old I travel through the crowd That girl with guitar open, she could be me. That boy with a nintendo and gum in his hair That’s who I could used to be And the bankers with ties and suits and hollow stares aren’t so old

November: Special ONLINE screening plus screenings all over the world

I sent this email out last week: Hi everyone! Hope those of you in the Northeast are hunkered down and staying safe.Shabbat Dinner just won the Audience Choice Award at the Barcelona G&L Film Festival. What an incredible festival run! This month we screened in 13 cities

A Dispatch from Staten Island

Five of us went to Staten Island on Saturday. Here’s an excerpt of our day, cross-posted from the Huffington Post: I can only relate the small picture we got from the ground, hopefully it will inform people who want to help out. Four things to know: * They don’t

Manhattan in the dark

We biked across the Manhattan bridge to see New York without power. Halfway across, there were no lights and we were plunged into darkness. It was eerie, but not nearly as strange or lawless as I had expected. Order is being kept, in part by the police cars that sweep

Quick run through the aftermath

I went on a run for about 45 minutes this morning to the Brooklyn Promenade to survey the state of Brooklyn after the storm. Here in Ft. Greene (where I am for a few days before I move to Williamsburg) things were surprisingly calm. I was accompanied by dozens of

Climate

Everyone knew. Nobody admitted to knowing.

By the time she'd reached college, the wrongness had moved closer. She remembers the oppressive sensation, like waiting all the time for a heavy stone footfall, then the knock at the door. Everyone knew. Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them

An open letter to President Obama on happiness

(cross posted on the Huffington Post) Dear President Obama, I was recently traveling for an extended period of time, which provided me with some distance from our great country and an opportunity to process my feelings on the past ten years. I realized that I have something I want to

You're Ruining My Burn

The temple burn at Burning Man is a solemn and quiet event. A wooden structure that has been written all over with Sharpie’d memories of loved ones, dreams, and thoughts that people wished to expunge is meant to go up in the dead silence of 40,000 awed Burners.

New website!

Welcome to my new website. I’ve been meaning to do a refreshed and was pushed to with my hosting expiring, so this is a bare bones sketch of what it is going to look like once I trick it out. It’s clean, it’s fresh it’s modern…

This film again?

When you make a film, it’s going to define you for at least a year. For the past ten months, Shabbat Dinner has been my next project, what I was working on, and then my most recent film. I like to joke that I’m sick of watching it

Shabbat Dinner summer screening update

I sent this email out to my friends and acquaintances last week: Hello friends, When I last emailed you it was to ask for assistance with funding a short film project. I’m overjoyed to tell you that we surpassed our Kickstarter goal by almost 40% and shot the film

Meditation Retreat 2012 Photos

I finally took a few days to sift through the 500 or so photos I took on my meditation retreat and edit them all carefully. Some of these are HDRs, which means they are stitched together out of multiple images of different exposures to create something magical that the camera