Kahlil Gibran on How Storms Catalyze Creativity

“A storm always awakens whatever passion there is in me. I become eager, and seek relief in work.”

I am standing on my Brooklyn rooftop watching enormous raindrops make a xylophone out of the wood planks as lightning splits the Manhattan skyline across the river of lead. It thunders — a low, drawn-out bellow. Swirling across the sky, as if to wash clean the slate of daily worries, the storm comes down with its existential ablution, booming and total. I think of Georgia O’Keeffe, who wrote to he...