I added a ton of new quotes to the sparks section. Reading The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz became almost an exercise in quote extracting. What an amazing poet and visionary! The quotes pool randomly but hopefully you will come across one or two from his book. Happy winter!

The Sparks Suggestion forms are now online! You can now suggest movies, film, music, and literature that you feel should be added. I look forward to learning about many new beautiful works of art. You’ll find submission forms on every page in that section. Thanks for contributing to the site! Happy Spring.

I have added a bunch of films and other new items to the sparks section. I cannot recommend enough the film Bright Star, directed By Jane Campion, which has just been released on DVD. Fugitive Pieces is also one of my new favorite films.

Also, this website will see some new features, hopefully soon, including a form for you to share your own discovery of sparks within film, music, books, and poetry. I look forward to that exchange.

I am also in the process of compiling what will become my first collection of poetry.

I am just beginning a summer tour, which includes a show tonight (Friday, July 10th) in Boulder, Colorado. There are still a bunch of tentative performance dates for Houston, North Carolina, Boston, New York City, Montreal, and more. So please check my website often in the next few weeks to see what new dates have been confirmed.

I am excited to be back on the road, enjoying the American highway system to it’s fullest, but especially meeting so many beautiful people along the way. David Goodheim, my guitarist, will join me for the two Boulder dates. For all the others, I will be playing my songs with just my voice and acoustic guitar. If you have any friends in any of the cities I’m playing who like mellow acoustic music, please encourage them to come to a show.

Click here for more details and most current tour dates.

Welcome to the new, redesigned jonsimons.com. In addition to sharing my work, my hope for his digital space is to inspire other likeminded artists and thinkers.

The SPARKS section will hopefully become a treasure trove of big gems and little flames. As a poet and musician, I am always searching for beauty and inpiration. In the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbala, there is a practice aimed at releasing divine energy through intentional acts of focused consciousness. This is called Releasing the Sparks and it is a lifelong practice.