Although it does not happen so much any more, I used to get asked to jury art shows. This is sometimes sort of nice - you get to see the pieces before they are installed and often have plenty of time to yourself in the gallery, before it is open to the public.
The horrible thing is having to eliminate pieces from the show. I find this unbelievably painful. Everyone who has sent a piece of work to a show secretly believes that the piece they submitted is a seminal, important work - a piece that will engage the public in some way and confirm their hopes that they have some talent. Often, they pay a fee to submit work to a show. Rejecting those pieces is an awful duty - so awful that every time I have had to do it, I have sworn I would never do it again. But I always do do it again, and feel awful each time.
Part of the guilt is this: these people have at least finished something. I feel like I never finish anything and I sometimes admire anyone who does finish a project, regardless of its quality.
I also worry that the rejection will erroneously convince the artist that he or she has no talent. What a tragedy that would be; I have every confidence that I am capable of missing a masterpiece that was simply ahead of its time. With that in mind, I wrote the following introduction to my juror's remarks for a show I judged in Fredericksburg last winter. If I am ever asked to be a juror for anything again, I will recycle this, because it is my signature line on what it means to be eliminated from a show:
"Fragments"
Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts
7 March 2008
Juror’s Statement
Looking at art is a joy. I believe this is a sentiment that everyone in this room shares. To get to look at art and be asked to share what you think about it is a profound honor. Thank you very much for that privilege.
It is also a responsibility. Eliminating works from an exhibition is the most odious part of jurying an exhibition. If you or someone you know is an artist whose work was not selected for this show, I would like to say this: Congratulations.
You have joined the ranks of Gustave Courbet, Honore Daumier, Edouard Manet, James McNeil Whistler, and almost the entire art history canon, many of whose greatest members were also the most rejected. Some of those rejections were the result of taking a creative risk that did not work. Some were the result of not taking a risk when one should have. And a great many were risk-fueled flashes of brilliance that pushed an art form to a realm of expression that society would spend years catching up with.
What those artists had in common, and what artists today need even more than artists in the past did, is a belief in their own vision -- a passion for their art that is too strong to be silenced by an outsider’s assessment. So more than anything else, I hope that every artist who has created a work that was rejected (this is really just another way of saying “every artist”) went immediately, and defiantly, back into the studio. Your soul – and a weary world desperately in need of art, ideas, and expression – is waiting.
20080626
20080607
Fail Better Soon
Long-Distance Love-Interest (LDLI) posted something about JK Rowling's supurb commencement address at Harvard on HIS blog, so I will do the same.
While LDLI was struck by her thoughts on imagination, as was I, what stayed with me even more were her excellent observations on failure. She said:
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
This is so true and, to me, incredibly touching. In my vivid fantasy life, my Tony Award speech for "JDate: The Musical!" begins this way:
"Two thirds of the way through the worst year of my life - when my marriage had ended, and my museum career went down the toilet, and briefly I went broke - I looked up and said, 'That's it! I am going to write a musical!'"
Happiness fills up a lot of time. Failure frees up a lot of time. Because it is usually experienced as personal losses, failure is an absolute windfall, time-wise. No more husband? No more hours spent going to his work things or trying in vain to be attractive enough to save your marriage. No more money? Okay, no more recreational shopping, gym membership, or cable television - three losses that yielded roughly (in my case) an extra 18 hours a week to spend creating something. No longer relevant at work? No problem - toil steadfastly and invisibly in the office, and find that you no longer have to take work home, nor are you tired when you leave your job and come home to work at your avocation. Fail enough and - voila! - hours of unprogrammed time on your hands, plus the desire to reinvent yourself and your life. Something could happen.
I look back at that dark period as one of the most significant, pregnant periods of my life. I am so grateful for it. At the beginning of my downward spiral, I came up with the storyline for my play. And while I was nursing a monster hangover, I began to hear the notes that in a few weeks would become the melodies for the play's songs. As Garrison Keillor once said, "If I had not been so unhappy then, I would not be this happy now."
It's sort of a crazy story, isn't it? The kind that can only happen in the theater. Or life.
While LDLI was struck by her thoughts on imagination, as was I, what stayed with me even more were her excellent observations on failure. She said:
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
This is so true and, to me, incredibly touching. In my vivid fantasy life, my Tony Award speech for "JDate: The Musical!" begins this way:
"Two thirds of the way through the worst year of my life - when my marriage had ended, and my museum career went down the toilet, and briefly I went broke - I looked up and said, 'That's it! I am going to write a musical!'"
Happiness fills up a lot of time. Failure frees up a lot of time. Because it is usually experienced as personal losses, failure is an absolute windfall, time-wise. No more husband? No more hours spent going to his work things or trying in vain to be attractive enough to save your marriage. No more money? Okay, no more recreational shopping, gym membership, or cable television - three losses that yielded roughly (in my case) an extra 18 hours a week to spend creating something. No longer relevant at work? No problem - toil steadfastly and invisibly in the office, and find that you no longer have to take work home, nor are you tired when you leave your job and come home to work at your avocation. Fail enough and - voila! - hours of unprogrammed time on your hands, plus the desire to reinvent yourself and your life. Something could happen.
I look back at that dark period as one of the most significant, pregnant periods of my life. I am so grateful for it. At the beginning of my downward spiral, I came up with the storyline for my play. And while I was nursing a monster hangover, I began to hear the notes that in a few weeks would become the melodies for the play's songs. As Garrison Keillor once said, "If I had not been so unhappy then, I would not be this happy now."
It's sort of a crazy story, isn't it? The kind that can only happen in the theater. Or life.
20080603
Movie Review: Vexed in the City
The honeymoon is over, and the wedding hasn't even happened yet.
I waited for the Sex and the City movie with very few expectations. Let's face it - the show jumped the shark years ago when Carrie hooked up with Aiden, Miranda had a baby, Samantha had cancer, and Charlotte converted. Still, most of us (meaning world-weary-but-still-hopeful women over 40) saw the release of the movie the way we see a first date: novel, exciting, possibly fun, and not very likely to go anywhere.
The movie begins with establishing scenes that bring us up to date on the characters. Samantha has gone Hollywood but yearns for New York. Miranda combines two misogynist anachronisms, power-suit career gal AND domineering housefrau, and is as bitchy and emasculating as ever. Charlotte's back-story provided the greatest opportunities for laughs: WASP-goddess-turned-observant-Jew (sound familiar?) nesting with her darling husband (does he have a brother in Virginia?) and adopted daughter. Unfortunately, all of those opportunities were missed.
Unlike the writers, Carrie did not miss her opportunities. Mr. Big has, after some prompting, popped the question. We never really understand his appeal. Is it his enormous . . . bank account? Something else? One thing is for sure - it isn't his charisma. Actor Chris Noth is a graduate of Yale's revered drama department, yet I have never heard anyone say, "Baby" less believeably.
As I try to summarize why they don't get married, and then why they do, and how Samantha's and Miranda's storylines serve as doppelgangers to this complication in Carrie's, it dawns on me. This movie is the Oakland of romantic comedies. There is no "there" there. It's a television episode stretched into 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Except that a 23-minute television episode has to be crafted economically. This script just wanders around, setting up one unfunny joke after another. I really missed the signature device from the original television show: Carrie's essays that introduce and resolve episode themes. Adding those essay-sequences as transitions might have connected the events in the story. It certainly would have given the female audience what we wanted: the feeling of being there, in the conversation with the girlfriends.
For a movie that purports to be urban and sophisticated, it was strikingly racist at times. Jennifer Hudson, the only Academy Award winner in the cast, is brought in as Carrie's assistant. This is an upgrade from the domestic worker roles of the past, but not by much. Hudson's chemistry with Sarah Jessica Parker is considerable; had I written this script, I would have punched up that part of the story a lot.
Miranda decides, on the recommendation of someone from her office, to look for an apartment in Chinatown. As she walks the streets of lower Manhattan, she cries, "Look! A white man with a baby! Follow him!" I thought I heard wrong, but I didn't.
And then there is the de rigeur don't-drink-the-water joke when the gang goes to Mexico. Do people still laugh at those jokes? Or even get them? What year is this? 1965? And unfortunately, in order to punch up the alleged humor in that bit, there is actually a scene where (can I even say it?) Charlotte poops in her pants. What the hell am I watching? Shreck 2?
As I watched Sex and the City the Movie, I keep asking myself, "Where were the gay men?" Sure, they brought Carrie's gay friend Stanford Blatch in, but not as an insider, as he was on the show. And I can guarantee that, with poop-in-the-pants jokes, there were no gay writers on this script. The television show Sex and the City always felt more like a gay man's world than television-chick-lit. Fashion, clubs, upper-brackets real estate, social heirarchies, self-assured promiscuity, the art world and other urban tribes - those are the traditional (and, in my opinion, marvelous) purviews of gay men. Unlike the show, this movie is almost devoid of the finer things in life (it will come as a surprise to the writers that this is not synonymous with "expensive"). Sex and the City the Movie is all label and no style.
And for a movie with the word "sex" in the title, no one seems to be getting laid very much, either.
The writers forgot something that millions of women like me - single and living alone in a city - have known for a long time. The man that our survival depends on is not the uber-breadwinner like Carrie's Mr. Big, nor is it the uxorious help-meet like Miranda's Steve, or even the soul-mate like Charlotte's Harry. It is the gay friend, and the world he created in every city, who makes life bearable, stylish, and fun. Five years ago, Carrie lived in the gay man's world and had girlfriends who acted as their surrogates. Now she and her girls are on the fast-track to Wisteria Lane.
But at least there is some good news on the health front: no one is going to need a cigarette after this "Sex and the City."
I waited for the Sex and the City movie with very few expectations. Let's face it - the show jumped the shark years ago when Carrie hooked up with Aiden, Miranda had a baby, Samantha had cancer, and Charlotte converted. Still, most of us (meaning world-weary-but-still-hopeful women over 40) saw the release of the movie the way we see a first date: novel, exciting, possibly fun, and not very likely to go anywhere.
The movie begins with establishing scenes that bring us up to date on the characters. Samantha has gone Hollywood but yearns for New York. Miranda combines two misogynist anachronisms, power-suit career gal AND domineering housefrau, and is as bitchy and emasculating as ever. Charlotte's back-story provided the greatest opportunities for laughs: WASP-goddess-turned-observant-Jew (sound familiar?) nesting with her darling husband (does he have a brother in Virginia?) and adopted daughter. Unfortunately, all of those opportunities were missed.
Unlike the writers, Carrie did not miss her opportunities. Mr. Big has, after some prompting, popped the question. We never really understand his appeal. Is it his enormous . . . bank account? Something else? One thing is for sure - it isn't his charisma. Actor Chris Noth is a graduate of Yale's revered drama department, yet I have never heard anyone say, "Baby" less believeably.
As I try to summarize why they don't get married, and then why they do, and how Samantha's and Miranda's storylines serve as doppelgangers to this complication in Carrie's, it dawns on me. This movie is the Oakland of romantic comedies. There is no "there" there. It's a television episode stretched into 2 hours and 20 minutes.
Except that a 23-minute television episode has to be crafted economically. This script just wanders around, setting up one unfunny joke after another. I really missed the signature device from the original television show: Carrie's essays that introduce and resolve episode themes. Adding those essay-sequences as transitions might have connected the events in the story. It certainly would have given the female audience what we wanted: the feeling of being there, in the conversation with the girlfriends.
For a movie that purports to be urban and sophisticated, it was strikingly racist at times. Jennifer Hudson, the only Academy Award winner in the cast, is brought in as Carrie's assistant. This is an upgrade from the domestic worker roles of the past, but not by much. Hudson's chemistry with Sarah Jessica Parker is considerable; had I written this script, I would have punched up that part of the story a lot.
Miranda decides, on the recommendation of someone from her office, to look for an apartment in Chinatown. As she walks the streets of lower Manhattan, she cries, "Look! A white man with a baby! Follow him!" I thought I heard wrong, but I didn't.
And then there is the de rigeur don't-drink-the-water joke when the gang goes to Mexico. Do people still laugh at those jokes? Or even get them? What year is this? 1965? And unfortunately, in order to punch up the alleged humor in that bit, there is actually a scene where (can I even say it?) Charlotte poops in her pants. What the hell am I watching? Shreck 2?
As I watched Sex and the City the Movie, I keep asking myself, "Where were the gay men?" Sure, they brought Carrie's gay friend Stanford Blatch in, but not as an insider, as he was on the show. And I can guarantee that, with poop-in-the-pants jokes, there were no gay writers on this script. The television show Sex and the City always felt more like a gay man's world than television-chick-lit. Fashion, clubs, upper-brackets real estate, social heirarchies, self-assured promiscuity, the art world and other urban tribes - those are the traditional (and, in my opinion, marvelous) purviews of gay men. Unlike the show, this movie is almost devoid of the finer things in life (it will come as a surprise to the writers that this is not synonymous with "expensive"). Sex and the City the Movie is all label and no style.
And for a movie with the word "sex" in the title, no one seems to be getting laid very much, either.
The writers forgot something that millions of women like me - single and living alone in a city - have known for a long time. The man that our survival depends on is not the uber-breadwinner like Carrie's Mr. Big, nor is it the uxorious help-meet like Miranda's Steve, or even the soul-mate like Charlotte's Harry. It is the gay friend, and the world he created in every city, who makes life bearable, stylish, and fun. Five years ago, Carrie lived in the gay man's world and had girlfriends who acted as their surrogates. Now she and her girls are on the fast-track to Wisteria Lane.
But at least there is some good news on the health front: no one is going to need a cigarette after this "Sex and the City."
20080530
I Married My Blow-Dryer!
It was a sublimely beautiful late spring day and there I was: dressed in a white lace and light beige silk dress, embroidered with pearls, and standing at the Bima in one of the oldest and most beautiful synagogues in the country. I held a Torah scroll for the first time in my life and was surprised that it was no heavier than it was. The rabbi intoned the traditional statements, and after each, I affirmed "I do" and "I will,” just as we had rehearsed. My closest friends served as witnesses. Later we all celebrated at a small and tasteful reception.
“Mazel tov”? Well, thank you. But I should explain that I didn’t get married. I became Jewish. Believe me, I understand the confusion. In fact, I have experienced it myself.
Six months of attendance at Congregation Beth Ahabah, followed by close to a year of conversion and Hebrew language classes, and then my Tevilah. The Tevilah, or conversion ceremony, is preceded by a ritual immersion called the Mikvah. Mine was at Congregation Beth El, approximately ten minutes away from my place of worship, Congregation Beth Ahabah.
If only the rabbi, or I, had worked a little harder at eliminating my unbelievable vanity over the course of this past year, this would not have been a problem. But as it was, I knew that I was not now, nor had I ever been, a “wash-and-wear” girl and in order to make it on time to my own Tevilah, at Congregation Beth Ahabah, I was going to have to put my usually-meandering toilette into overdrive. This meant Herculean feat of trying to shower, dry my hair, get dressed, and put on lipstick in fifteen minutes. And that’s when it happened. In the process of rapidly drying my hair in the ladies room at Beth El, my blow-dryer's cord got caught around the pedestal of a glass bowl on the vanity table. The bowl fell to the floor and smashed to bits.
Sound familiar? Think about every “Jewish wedding” sequence you have ever seen in a movie that depicts a traditional Jewish wedding: broken glass, applause, Klezmer music. There was no applause or Klezmer music at my Tevilah, but there was plenty of broken glass in the ladies’ bathroom. I have been thinking about the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, under the Chuppah. At its conclusion, the bride and groom drink wine from the same glass. The glass is then placed under a cloth and the groom steps on it. This is said to symbolize many things - the broken state of the world and Jews' obligation to repair it, for example, or the sorrow of the Jewish people about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
So, with all of these wedding images lining up at my Tevilah (my own justice-of-the-peace wedding, long ago, was not half as bridal), I am now looking back and wondering. Did I just marry my blow-dryer? That's who broke the "glass", after all; it happened in a synagogue, too. And would that necessarily be such a bad thing? A blow-dryer has many excellent spousal qualities. It is helpful and versatile; like a perfect husband, it is handy with little household and car repairs (unfreezing a frozen door lock, for example, or heating up the glue on a piece of tape so you can pull it from the wall without ruining your paint or wallpaper). It travels well, with no audible complaints about having to go to your parent’s house again. It has intensity settings that range from “barely there” to “full blast.” It is always warm – and sometimes it’s hot. It is able to look at you at your very worst; instead of running away screaming, it blows into your ear and transforms you - well, if not into a raving beauty, at least into someone with straight hair. You could do worse.
Steady, dependable, predictable, and always ready for action. Never threatened by the occasional fling with air-drying for the curly look. Unintimidated by my brand new flat-iron, the youthful “bad boy” of the beauty appliance shelf.
Yes, I am happy to report that my blow-dryer and I have settled into a very happy life together, and now we are thinking long-term. I all I have to do now is see where it would like to retire, and what its 401K looks like.
“Mazel tov”? Well, thank you. But I should explain that I didn’t get married. I became Jewish. Believe me, I understand the confusion. In fact, I have experienced it myself.
Six months of attendance at Congregation Beth Ahabah, followed by close to a year of conversion and Hebrew language classes, and then my Tevilah. The Tevilah, or conversion ceremony, is preceded by a ritual immersion called the Mikvah. Mine was at Congregation Beth El, approximately ten minutes away from my place of worship, Congregation Beth Ahabah.
If only the rabbi, or I, had worked a little harder at eliminating my unbelievable vanity over the course of this past year, this would not have been a problem. But as it was, I knew that I was not now, nor had I ever been, a “wash-and-wear” girl and in order to make it on time to my own Tevilah, at Congregation Beth Ahabah, I was going to have to put my usually-meandering toilette into overdrive. This meant Herculean feat of trying to shower, dry my hair, get dressed, and put on lipstick in fifteen minutes. And that’s when it happened. In the process of rapidly drying my hair in the ladies room at Beth El, my blow-dryer's cord got caught around the pedestal of a glass bowl on the vanity table. The bowl fell to the floor and smashed to bits.
Sound familiar? Think about every “Jewish wedding” sequence you have ever seen in a movie that depicts a traditional Jewish wedding: broken glass, applause, Klezmer music. There was no applause or Klezmer music at my Tevilah, but there was plenty of broken glass in the ladies’ bathroom. I have been thinking about the traditional Jewish wedding ceremony, under the Chuppah. At its conclusion, the bride and groom drink wine from the same glass. The glass is then placed under a cloth and the groom steps on it. This is said to symbolize many things - the broken state of the world and Jews' obligation to repair it, for example, or the sorrow of the Jewish people about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.
So, with all of these wedding images lining up at my Tevilah (my own justice-of-the-peace wedding, long ago, was not half as bridal), I am now looking back and wondering. Did I just marry my blow-dryer? That's who broke the "glass", after all; it happened in a synagogue, too. And would that necessarily be such a bad thing? A blow-dryer has many excellent spousal qualities. It is helpful and versatile; like a perfect husband, it is handy with little household and car repairs (unfreezing a frozen door lock, for example, or heating up the glue on a piece of tape so you can pull it from the wall without ruining your paint or wallpaper). It travels well, with no audible complaints about having to go to your parent’s house again. It has intensity settings that range from “barely there” to “full blast.” It is always warm – and sometimes it’s hot. It is able to look at you at your very worst; instead of running away screaming, it blows into your ear and transforms you - well, if not into a raving beauty, at least into someone with straight hair. You could do worse.
Steady, dependable, predictable, and always ready for action. Never threatened by the occasional fling with air-drying for the curly look. Unintimidated by my brand new flat-iron, the youthful “bad boy” of the beauty appliance shelf.
Yes, I am happy to report that my blow-dryer and I have settled into a very happy life together, and now we are thinking long-term. I all I have to do now is see where it would like to retire, and what its 401K looks like.
20080528
Wave and Particle: Liza Lou's Garden, and the Light of Day
There is a remarkable young sculptor from California named Liza Lou. She creates installation sculptures in the form of everyday places constructed entirely from beads. The subject is usually commonplace, often a kitchen or a garden, but every three-dimensional piece is made of tiny, shimmering glass beads strung together. Once, I saw a garden created by Liza Lou. The part of the sculpture that most captured my imagination was also the most ordinary. I was drawn not to the dazzling bead-flowers, or the bead-constructed park bench. What I could not look away from was the grass. Each individual blade was made glass beads in various shades of green, strung on wires and moving exactly the way that grass moves in the breeze.
The Liza Lou sculpture made me think about the tiny amount I know about molecular physics. When I was a teenager, atoms were old-hat and quarks were the rage. Today, quarks are “so 1970’s,” and matter has been subdivided much further, down to components whose names read like an excerpt from Finnegan’s Wake or “Jabberwocky”: fermions, bosons, neutrinos. Every time scientists identify smaller components of physical existence, they subdivide again and slip through humanity’s fingers. More and more, it begins to look as if matter – everything that is deemed “real” by empiricists and materialists – is nothing more than ever-smaller particles, vibrating in a way that creates an illusion of solidity. The properties of light hint at this, as well; light is both wave and particle. Interestingly, light is an almost universal metaphor for God, as well.
I thought about that garden the only time was ever been with a person at the moment of death. It was at my aunt’s bedside at St. Mary’s Hospital in October of 2004. I lived with her when I was little and we were close all of my life. In 2004, she was 81 years old and knew that she was finally going to succumb to the combination of ailments that had gradually consumed the life of a formerly fiery and inexhaustible woman. As she was trying to speak in the last minutes, I could see that the effort was exhausting. I held her hand, which was as fragile as a dried flower. I told her not to say words, but instead to speak with her heart. She died in silence. At that moment, I was covered in goose bumps. My immediate, almost instinctual, thought was, “Well, somewhere in the world, a baby was just conceived. Aunt Day’s soul will come back again in that body to finish its work on earth.”
It’s a nice thought, I suppose, but I am not sure it's accurate. I have since begun to think of death as a release of the spirit as pure energy. No longer confined by the restraints of the body, the energy that once animated it goes . . . I don’t know where. Perhaps it goes into a new body. Maybe it moves to another realm. Maybe it stays in this realm and forms part of a spiritual vortex of powerful spiritual energy – the kind of thing that people describe sensing in Sedona, Arizona, or in holy sites like Angkor Wat, Chartres, or the Wailing Wall.
The moment of death seems to me the moment when the particles that form the matter of the body begin to slow down and stop vibrating. The energy within that had given motion and life to those specks is released, almost as if invisible spaces between the particles of our bodies are formed once they are stilled. Although it is no longer needed to animate our bodies, that energy is not destroyed; that would violate all of the laws of motion that we know. Instead it expands and moves, somewhere in the distance -- and that is closer than we think.
The Liza Lou sculpture made me think about the tiny amount I know about molecular physics. When I was a teenager, atoms were old-hat and quarks were the rage. Today, quarks are “so 1970’s,” and matter has been subdivided much further, down to components whose names read like an excerpt from Finnegan’s Wake or “Jabberwocky”: fermions, bosons, neutrinos. Every time scientists identify smaller components of physical existence, they subdivide again and slip through humanity’s fingers. More and more, it begins to look as if matter – everything that is deemed “real” by empiricists and materialists – is nothing more than ever-smaller particles, vibrating in a way that creates an illusion of solidity. The properties of light hint at this, as well; light is both wave and particle. Interestingly, light is an almost universal metaphor for God, as well.
I thought about that garden the only time was ever been with a person at the moment of death. It was at my aunt’s bedside at St. Mary’s Hospital in October of 2004. I lived with her when I was little and we were close all of my life. In 2004, she was 81 years old and knew that she was finally going to succumb to the combination of ailments that had gradually consumed the life of a formerly fiery and inexhaustible woman. As she was trying to speak in the last minutes, I could see that the effort was exhausting. I held her hand, which was as fragile as a dried flower. I told her not to say words, but instead to speak with her heart. She died in silence. At that moment, I was covered in goose bumps. My immediate, almost instinctual, thought was, “Well, somewhere in the world, a baby was just conceived. Aunt Day’s soul will come back again in that body to finish its work on earth.”
It’s a nice thought, I suppose, but I am not sure it's accurate. I have since begun to think of death as a release of the spirit as pure energy. No longer confined by the restraints of the body, the energy that once animated it goes . . . I don’t know where. Perhaps it goes into a new body. Maybe it moves to another realm. Maybe it stays in this realm and forms part of a spiritual vortex of powerful spiritual energy – the kind of thing that people describe sensing in Sedona, Arizona, or in holy sites like Angkor Wat, Chartres, or the Wailing Wall.
The moment of death seems to me the moment when the particles that form the matter of the body begin to slow down and stop vibrating. The energy within that had given motion and life to those specks is released, almost as if invisible spaces between the particles of our bodies are formed once they are stilled. Although it is no longer needed to animate our bodies, that energy is not destroyed; that would violate all of the laws of motion that we know. Instead it expands and moves, somewhere in the distance -- and that is closer than we think.
20080525
Watch Your Step! Life Lessons Learned from Swing Dancing in Richmond
In the six months since I last posted anything to this blog, I have been attempting to learn to swing dance. After two sublime adventures at the even more sublime Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park in Maryland, I decided to try the swing dance lesson at The Dance Space on West Broad Street, near the legendary Mekong restaurant. What follows, Gentle Reader, is the History of that event, titled:
Watch Your Step!
Being the Unexpurgated History of Two Sidetracked Swing Dancers and How They Navigated Their Remarkable Adventures on West Broad Street
Chapter the First
In which our Heroine discovers a somewhat unhappy mix-up
As part of my campaign to learn how to swing dance, I finally talked my friend Ginny, who is glamorous and savvy and whom I think of as The Rich Man's Fran Drescher, into going with me to The Dance Space. We had dinner at Mekong, and then went upstairs to the 7:30 Lindy Hop lesson. When we walked in, Ginny's Drescher-esque voice intoned, "I never knew Lindy was so slow." And I looked at the floor and said, "It isn't. This is a Tango lesson." I asked the people at the door what was going on, and they said, "Oh,we decided to mix it up tonight." I wasn't happy, but Ginny and I stayed for the lesson and for the dance afterward, which was a mix of swing and ballroom.
Chapter the Second
In which we learn of a previous misunderstanding that gave rise to the current one
The expert ballroom and swing dancers who run The Dance Space (which is modest to down-at-the-heels, but kind of nice, too, in a high-school-dance sort of way) have forgotten that a beginner can absorb maybe - at most - 5 new moves per event. If you have to learn two new dances to participate, you are overloaded after the first hour. Slack-jawed but determined, Ginny and I pressed on, in spite of one more challenge.
Chapter the Third
In which our Heroine stumbles upon the perfect place for boys who have trouble meeting girls
A swing/ballroom dance is exactly like a middle school sock hop -- if everyone at the sock hop has a 401K and/or an AARP membership. There are far more girls than boys, and most of the girls are standing around not dancing. At this event, the AARP contingent was fairly strong, and thank heaven. The old men were the only ones who (1) knew to ask other girls to dance and (2) knew how to dance in the first place). During the lesson, Ginny and I took turns being the boy. This has possibly made me a WORSE dancer. Henceforth, I can now be counted on to forget if I start on my left or my right because I can't remember if I am a boy or a girl this time. (Note to self: Remind long-distance love interest to pack his shin-guards when we go to the Spanish Ballroom next month.)
Chapter the Fourth
In which our Heroine reflects upon her less-than-joyful adolescence only to say "The hell with it" and take matters into her own hands
The "Couples Preferred" structure of the lesson set the tone for the dance, so - in another triumphant return to middle school - Ginny and I and roughly a dozen other girls sat around on folding chairs while NOBODY asked us to dance. I finally addressed the group of girls at large, "Well, ladies, I think the situation here is 'Dance with a girl, or don't dance.'" The less-confident ones began chattering and chanting, "I can't lead! I can't lead!" But Ginny and I and a couple of other risk-takers danced with each other, alternating taking the lead, with a minimum of injuries.
Chapter the Fifth
In which a surprise dance partner appears; happily, his upper arm does not
Exactly one week earlier, I had gone to a party where a most charming young artist told a tale so gruesome that I literally grew weak in the knees, dizzy, and nauseated. I went home shortly afterward. It was a perversely violent account of his being burned with a cattle brand while pledging a fraternity. Well, in a picaresque plot-twist and return-of-a-colorful-minor-character worthy of Candide or Tom Jones or Moll Flanders, I looked across the floor of The Dance Space, and there he was: the cattle-branded fellow from the party one week ago. At any rate, it turns out that he and his wife are absolutely great dancers. I danced with him several times, scrupulously avoiding any moves that might carry the risk of accidentally making his shirt sleeve fly up to reveal the cattle brand on his left arm. That was helpful.
Chapter the Last
In which the History is at last concluded
After the dance, Ginny and I went to the Jefferson Hotel for a drink. We resolved to go to the Dance Space again, and to drag our own partners this time. She is bringing her neighbor, Steve. I am bringing my dear old friend Chris. I have known Chris for 24 years and have been trying to find him a girlfriend for at LEAST that long. This way, we can all participate more, and who knows? Ginny and Chris might end up dancing with each other.
Life Lessons:
1. Lonely guys will do well at The Dance Space, but lonely girls will only feel more so
2. The bad news: life changes very little after middle school. The good news: you do.
3. It is better to be ACTIVELY embarrassed stepping on your girlfriend's foot on the dance floor than to be PASSIVELY embarrassed as you sit around on a metal chair hoping for a chance to step on a boy's foot.
4. You might conclude that you know the character of a person just because he told you about being branded, but you would be wrong.
5. You would be wrong to draw similar conclusions about The Dance Space, which is actually charming in its own way, and serves a vital function.
6. Screw the feminist propaganda about Ginger Rogers having it tough because she was going backward in high heels. In dancing, it is more challenging to lead. Period.
7. Step up, big guy! Be a man! Go to The Dance Space and ask someone to dance already!
Watch Your Step!
Being the Unexpurgated History of Two Sidetracked Swing Dancers and How They Navigated Their Remarkable Adventures on West Broad Street
Chapter the First
In which our Heroine discovers a somewhat unhappy mix-up
As part of my campaign to learn how to swing dance, I finally talked my friend Ginny, who is glamorous and savvy and whom I think of as The Rich Man's Fran Drescher, into going with me to The Dance Space. We had dinner at Mekong, and then went upstairs to the 7:30 Lindy Hop lesson. When we walked in, Ginny's Drescher-esque voice intoned, "I never knew Lindy was so slow." And I looked at the floor and said, "It isn't. This is a Tango lesson." I asked the people at the door what was going on, and they said, "Oh,we decided to mix it up tonight." I wasn't happy, but Ginny and I stayed for the lesson and for the dance afterward, which was a mix of swing and ballroom.
Chapter the Second
In which we learn of a previous misunderstanding that gave rise to the current one
The expert ballroom and swing dancers who run The Dance Space (which is modest to down-at-the-heels, but kind of nice, too, in a high-school-dance sort of way) have forgotten that a beginner can absorb maybe - at most - 5 new moves per event. If you have to learn two new dances to participate, you are overloaded after the first hour. Slack-jawed but determined, Ginny and I pressed on, in spite of one more challenge.
Chapter the Third
In which our Heroine stumbles upon the perfect place for boys who have trouble meeting girls
A swing/ballroom dance is exactly like a middle school sock hop -- if everyone at the sock hop has a 401K and/or an AARP membership. There are far more girls than boys, and most of the girls are standing around not dancing. At this event, the AARP contingent was fairly strong, and thank heaven. The old men were the only ones who (1) knew to ask other girls to dance and (2) knew how to dance in the first place). During the lesson, Ginny and I took turns being the boy. This has possibly made me a WORSE dancer. Henceforth, I can now be counted on to forget if I start on my left or my right because I can't remember if I am a boy or a girl this time. (Note to self: Remind long-distance love interest to pack his shin-guards when we go to the Spanish Ballroom next month.)
Chapter the Fourth
In which our Heroine reflects upon her less-than-joyful adolescence only to say "The hell with it" and take matters into her own hands
The "Couples Preferred" structure of the lesson set the tone for the dance, so - in another triumphant return to middle school - Ginny and I and roughly a dozen other girls sat around on folding chairs while NOBODY asked us to dance. I finally addressed the group of girls at large, "Well, ladies, I think the situation here is 'Dance with a girl, or don't dance.'" The less-confident ones began chattering and chanting, "I can't lead! I can't lead!" But Ginny and I and a couple of other risk-takers danced with each other, alternating taking the lead, with a minimum of injuries.
Chapter the Fifth
In which a surprise dance partner appears; happily, his upper arm does not
Exactly one week earlier, I had gone to a party where a most charming young artist told a tale so gruesome that I literally grew weak in the knees, dizzy, and nauseated. I went home shortly afterward. It was a perversely violent account of his being burned with a cattle brand while pledging a fraternity. Well, in a picaresque plot-twist and return-of-a-colorful-minor-character worthy of Candide or Tom Jones or Moll Flanders, I looked across the floor of The Dance Space, and there he was: the cattle-branded fellow from the party one week ago. At any rate, it turns out that he and his wife are absolutely great dancers. I danced with him several times, scrupulously avoiding any moves that might carry the risk of accidentally making his shirt sleeve fly up to reveal the cattle brand on his left arm. That was helpful.
Chapter the Last
In which the History is at last concluded
After the dance, Ginny and I went to the Jefferson Hotel for a drink. We resolved to go to the Dance Space again, and to drag our own partners this time. She is bringing her neighbor, Steve. I am bringing my dear old friend Chris. I have known Chris for 24 years and have been trying to find him a girlfriend for at LEAST that long. This way, we can all participate more, and who knows? Ginny and Chris might end up dancing with each other.
Life Lessons:
1. Lonely guys will do well at The Dance Space, but lonely girls will only feel more so
2. The bad news: life changes very little after middle school. The good news: you do.
3. It is better to be ACTIVELY embarrassed stepping on your girlfriend's foot on the dance floor than to be PASSIVELY embarrassed as you sit around on a metal chair hoping for a chance to step on a boy's foot.
4. You might conclude that you know the character of a person just because he told you about being branded, but you would be wrong.
5. You would be wrong to draw similar conclusions about The Dance Space, which is actually charming in its own way, and serves a vital function.
6. Screw the feminist propaganda about Ginger Rogers having it tough because she was going backward in high heels. In dancing, it is more challenging to lead. Period.
7. Step up, big guy! Be a man! Go to The Dance Space and ask someone to dance already!
20071231
Keeper of the Light: JMW Turner at the National Gallery
Keeper of the Light
JMW Turner at the National Gallery
30 December 2007
James Wright's 1963 poem "A Blessing" ends with these lines:
If I stepped out of my body
I would break into blossom.
This image also describes the dynamics of JMW Turner's paintings and their effect on the viewer. His canvases contain so much emotion and complexity that their piercing light looks like a grand, majestic soul breaking into flower.
The Turner retrospective at the National Gallery achieves the impossible: it shows those of us who have always loved Turner that we hardly knew him. His large and small oils, watercolor and graphite sketches, and spontaneous oil studies, perfectly showcase a talent that, like the light in Turner's paintings, is unable to contain itself.
Like most visitors to this exhibition, I was prepared to be transfixed by his large-scale landscapes and seascapes, and I was. Having seen Turner largely through slides projected onto screens in art history lecture rooms, though, I was struck by the irony that projected light of a slide actually robs Turner's paintings of their light-dappled brilliance.
What I was not prepared for was the impact of his smaller works and works in other media. In this thoughtfully arranged, salon-style installation, small sketches sit alongside large works and allow us to see the full range of his genius. In his graphites and watercolors, many of them no larger than a sheet of notebook paper, we learn that in addition to being one of the greatest masters of the oil medium, Turner was also a peerless draftsman.
Coming as it did at the turn of the nineteenth century, his gestural, spontaneous use of oil paint was at least 65 years ahead of its time. But in the careful studies that preceeded the large works, we learn that precise structure and geometry buttress their endlessly seductive luminosity. This level of artistry is particularly notable in his watercolors, a largely disreputable medium in early 19th century Europe, considered by many to be less-than-serious, more the purview of well-bred young ladies than of England's greatest living artist.
The exhibition also features some of Turner's less familiar cathedral interiors. In these smaller works, church frescoes and mosaics impart a liquid energy that is similar to the famous skies in his landscapes. Like the searing rays that penetrate the clouds, the religious scenes in his church interiors are a jeweled, spiritual realm that elevates the worshipper and restores him to an ancient past.
What keeps Turner's paintings from becoming too beautiful? I think it is the edge of violence that lurks in most of them. His illustrations of disastrous contemporary events - the fire that destroyed Parliament, for example, or a doomed ship of female prisoners (and their young children) allowed to perish by a captain who feared being fined should any escape - are rendered in unbearably glorious colors and sensual brushstrokes. Even in his calmer subjects, Turner's roiling, black ocean waves; sharply jagged cliffs; and steep roads that fail to hold all anchor beauty in the dramatic wholeness of life. Ever-present reminders of blood, danger, and death sharpen our delight in beauty's pleasures. Turner's compatriate, Alfred Lord Tennyson termed nature, "red in tooth and claw," but we are shocked at how seductive that red can be. The inherent beauty found in pain and violence is examined in Nietzche's "The Birth of Tragedy". Turner's paintings approach the edge of pleasure/pain that Nietzche explored, but leave the viewer's imagination to cross it - alone and in its own way.
Turner's own position is articulated in a painting of a shipwreck that claimed the life of a close friend. Here, Turner places a solitary waterbird in the foreground. This black-silhouetted bird sadly skims the surface of now-peaceful waters that rest like a sleepy lion that has just consumed its prey and is ready for a long nap. The bird may be a pun on Turner's name; "M" = "Mallord," which alludes to "mallard". It is certainly an expression of Turner's place: the vigilant witness who, having just seen beauty and violence almost impossible to record, enters a realm between earth, sky, and water. Having someplace else to go, he moves quietly along. We watch until he disappears into the light.
JMW Turner at the National Gallery
30 December 2007
James Wright's 1963 poem "A Blessing" ends with these lines:
If I stepped out of my body
I would break into blossom.
This image also describes the dynamics of JMW Turner's paintings and their effect on the viewer. His canvases contain so much emotion and complexity that their piercing light looks like a grand, majestic soul breaking into flower.
The Turner retrospective at the National Gallery achieves the impossible: it shows those of us who have always loved Turner that we hardly knew him. His large and small oils, watercolor and graphite sketches, and spontaneous oil studies, perfectly showcase a talent that, like the light in Turner's paintings, is unable to contain itself.
Like most visitors to this exhibition, I was prepared to be transfixed by his large-scale landscapes and seascapes, and I was. Having seen Turner largely through slides projected onto screens in art history lecture rooms, though, I was struck by the irony that projected light of a slide actually robs Turner's paintings of their light-dappled brilliance.
What I was not prepared for was the impact of his smaller works and works in other media. In this thoughtfully arranged, salon-style installation, small sketches sit alongside large works and allow us to see the full range of his genius. In his graphites and watercolors, many of them no larger than a sheet of notebook paper, we learn that in addition to being one of the greatest masters of the oil medium, Turner was also a peerless draftsman.
Coming as it did at the turn of the nineteenth century, his gestural, spontaneous use of oil paint was at least 65 years ahead of its time. But in the careful studies that preceeded the large works, we learn that precise structure and geometry buttress their endlessly seductive luminosity. This level of artistry is particularly notable in his watercolors, a largely disreputable medium in early 19th century Europe, considered by many to be less-than-serious, more the purview of well-bred young ladies than of England's greatest living artist.
The exhibition also features some of Turner's less familiar cathedral interiors. In these smaller works, church frescoes and mosaics impart a liquid energy that is similar to the famous skies in his landscapes. Like the searing rays that penetrate the clouds, the religious scenes in his church interiors are a jeweled, spiritual realm that elevates the worshipper and restores him to an ancient past.
What keeps Turner's paintings from becoming too beautiful? I think it is the edge of violence that lurks in most of them. His illustrations of disastrous contemporary events - the fire that destroyed Parliament, for example, or a doomed ship of female prisoners (and their young children) allowed to perish by a captain who feared being fined should any escape - are rendered in unbearably glorious colors and sensual brushstrokes. Even in his calmer subjects, Turner's roiling, black ocean waves; sharply jagged cliffs; and steep roads that fail to hold all anchor beauty in the dramatic wholeness of life. Ever-present reminders of blood, danger, and death sharpen our delight in beauty's pleasures. Turner's compatriate, Alfred Lord Tennyson termed nature, "red in tooth and claw," but we are shocked at how seductive that red can be. The inherent beauty found in pain and violence is examined in Nietzche's "The Birth of Tragedy". Turner's paintings approach the edge of pleasure/pain that Nietzche explored, but leave the viewer's imagination to cross it - alone and in its own way.
Turner's own position is articulated in a painting of a shipwreck that claimed the life of a close friend. Here, Turner places a solitary waterbird in the foreground. This black-silhouetted bird sadly skims the surface of now-peaceful waters that rest like a sleepy lion that has just consumed its prey and is ready for a long nap. The bird may be a pun on Turner's name; "M" = "Mallord," which alludes to "mallard". It is certainly an expression of Turner's place: the vigilant witness who, having just seen beauty and violence almost impossible to record, enters a realm between earth, sky, and water. Having someplace else to go, he moves quietly along. We watch until he disappears into the light.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
