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Category: Art

Meditation

I've been off-balance, wondering how to write about happy frivolous things in a world that feels far away from happy and frivolous. Even as I write that I know it is not so simple and that frivolity must exist even in the face of despair, love in the face of grief and great pain. That statement feels like nothing, a platitude, a feather in the wind. And yet that same dichotomy exists in my own life in the balancing of the despair, the pain and grief of the world, with the very present joys and consolations of the everyday interactions that fill my days.

Yet despite the peace of my own bubble, here it is laid out before me, a slap in the face, a reminder to my kinder nature that wishes to believe that we have evolved into a kinder species. But no: our brutal history, a history it seems we never quite escape, even sometimes within ourselves — the urge to meet rage with rage, to fling more pain on top of our own, to cause hurt when we are hurting — is ever present, and apparently still uncontrolled. Of course much of the horror is driven by greed and lust for power, by those who would fuel division. Pain and horror sells, grabs our attention, diverts us from the good. The people of the world do not deserve this.

When I am distraught and distracted, I am drawn to music and to art. Both remind me that life is a double-edged sword, that joy heals pain. I despair for humanity, and yet I see awe in the face of a baby and smile, I watch the new buds of an azalea unfurl as the dry leaves of autumn swirl about them. I know that I can offer arms of comfort but I do not always know how. And yet, for all the power of our darker underbelly, we also have a gift for healing, for transcendence. I cannot resolve the dichotomy of human existence, but sometimes I think that artists, and I include musicians in this, point me in the right direction.

At the end of September I attended a chamber concert by the Aubade Trio that was lovely indeed. Yet there was one piece that stole my heart, still holds my heart, a piece by Ernest Bloch — concertina for flute, viola and piano. In those innocent days in late September the pieces felt joyous, prayerful, full of laughter. Today it still feels joyous but my awareness has shifted slightly. At the time that music danced in my head, and combined in my thoughts with an artist's exhibit I had seen the previous week, of waves and water, an immersive experience. Those two sensory experiences still swirl in my heart, and although I don't see them differently per se, the way they resonate in my soul has shifted.

I cannot exactly hear the music as it was played that evening. There are recordings. I've listened to two versions streamed on Amazon, and two on YouTube. Neither is quite the same, but that is the way of music, interpretation is always present, the conversational understanding between the artist performing the music and the artist who composed the framework. But listening to variations reminds me of what I have heard. Perhaps that is a curse, the specific nature of my memory. No other performance is the same as the one by the Aubade trio. It plagues me in concerts sometimes, to remember specific sequences of notes, of sounds, but it also rewards me with new insights. Besides, even if the Aubade trio performed that work today, it is unlikely that it would be performed exactly as it was that night in late September, and I too am different today than I was two weeks ago. There are no absolutes.

What I do know is that at the time of the concert, there were moments in the music when I was transported to moments at the Knoxville Museum of Art, where I was immersed in Jane Cassidy's piece You Never Forget The Swim. The exhibit is visual, aural, experiential. One sits in a dark room, sound from outside is muted but not absent. And one is immersed in an experience of water that is everything but the actual wetness. Water in the abstract, the spiritual basis of water. At different moments during that concert I would simultaneously be in that room, experiencing the joy of lightly rolling waves at the shore, remembering the way sometimes the light reflecting on water reminds me of the way light reflects on silk charmeuse, and through the sound of music. The concluding movement reminded me of a carnival, but the good sides of a carnival, joy and sparkling lights, the bubbles in a glass of champagne, the frothy light bubbles that sometimes appear in waves, buoyant, almost ephemeral.

Although I cannot recreate the experience of the concert, I can return to the museum, to the experience. And yet every time it is different, just as every time I am different. Sometimes it is comforting, like a warm bath or a soft caress. At other times the swirling seems out of control. For the most part I find the experience calming, elemental even, much the same way I find music calming and elemental. Both tie me to darker things. The dark side is always present, but when faced with music, or art, I am not lost in that darkness but transformed.

After my first experience of You Never Forget the Swim, this is what I wrote in my journal "caressing, stroking, smooth, comforting, enveloping, engulfing, drowning, strangling, suffocating, calming, eternal, love."

Ernest Bloch and Jane Cassidy both might be horrified by my comparisons, or not, but this is how they have been captured in my experience in this particular space and time. Each thing we create, each word we say even, these words included, once uttered, once created, flow out into the world creating new experiences beyond our control and our intent. I hope my words overall are good, but I too am human and my feelings and run the gamut of human experience.

I wish I could share the experience of Jane Cassidy's work. I highly recommend seeking her out. I can, however, include a performance of the Bloch. The first time I heard it I thought one thing. The second another. I might have found another version more prayerful, yet another more joyous. It doesn't really matter. When I listen again this morning, just before posting this, I am compelled to tears during the slow movement, and then slowly, as if the music is tickling my toes, slowly first, but just enough. And despite the tears, a smile rises and I know there is hope. There is always hope.

October 17, 2023
Four: A reentry

I'm back!

Am I? For real this time? The difference between saying I will write and actually writing is like a giant chasm, a chasm that must be bridged, that can only be bridged by actually writing. I realize my priorities have shifted. I am not at all certain how that shift will manifest itself. And yet I can spend time trying to figure it out but not writing, or I can simply hope for the best and toss my words into the void. I'll never start unless I start, as messy as that might prove to be.

Let's begin with three weekends and four events:

First there was the Knoxville Symphony's April performance of the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society. Most of the audience was there for the requiem, and it was indeed beautifully performed, even one of the more enjoyable performances I have heard. The highlight of the evening, however, for me at least, was a contemporary piece by young American composer T. J. Cole, Death of the Poet. Cole had been inspired by a painting by Conrad Felixmüller titled Death of the Poet Walter Reiner, which she had seen at the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was created as a kind of a requiem of its own, an obituary or memorial for a friend, the expressionist poet, who died of a drug overdose. The painting is shown below:

When I looked up the painting after the concert, I felt strongly that I've seen it before, although I don't believe I've ever blogged about it. Perhaps I should seek the painting out and take another look. Of course, if I do that I will also want to listen to the music again. At least there are recordings online, and I will link to one below.

Both pieces, music and painting, seem filled a sense of loss and ascendance, suitable requiem material, as well as confusion and a sense of worlds on the cusp, of one world fading away and a new one being born. Perhaps it is this overlapping sense of grief and hope, entangled together that has settled into my mind. The music and the painting seem very dreamlike to me. In the painting one doesn't really know if the artist is falling or perhaps flying, and I do think that is part of the point, as well as the use of intense colors and cubist images, of a world turned topsy turvy, despair intermingled with homey windows filled with pots of flowers. The music was very lush and poignant and yet also unsettling. I find it interesting that both works were created by artists in their 20s; both also created at times of political and social upheaval. I suspect this will be haunting my thoughts for a while.

https://soundcloud.com/tjcole/death-of-the-poet?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

The following weekend I went on a knitting retreat. It was small, we ended up with 14 women, and the focus was on brioche knitting, although I would have gone whatever the focus, as I was mostly just interested in the idea of knitting community. But I was game to up my brioche knitting skills. Now I am smitten. Prior to the retreat I was in a fairly monogamous knitting stage, with 1 project on the needles, 1 project in hibernation, and 1 project waiting to be seamed. At the end of the weekend, I had four active projects on needles. Needless to say I've been knitting a lot but nothing has yet been finished. As I write this I have three projects on the needles and two awaiting finishing. There will be finished knitting to share soon.

The time at the retreat helped me rekindle my focus and refine my priorities, both in terms of giving myself permission to allow hours to be spent exploring process without worrying about having something specific to show for any particular stretch of time, as well as giving myself permission to claim time for solitude. Yes, I was exhausted after a weekend of music at Big Ears. I was exhausted after Holy Week, and those all involved too much time spent in public spaces where I was overwhelmed with constant stimulation. But I was also exhausted by a quiet weekend with 13 other women. Before the retreat, I did not realize that even in this quiet setting, I would still require significant solitary decompression time. Although I can, in fact, tune out much of what is going on around me, I cannot block it completely. Some part of my brain is always watching, feeling, observing the minute changes in energy around me, and I need time to decompress. Without that time I have no energy for either the social or the creative. If anything, this retreat was the final seal of approval on accepting the need for not just silence but solitude.

After a calming weekend and a few days rest, I was prepared for another weekend feast for the senses.

On Friday evening I attended the opening night performance of Knoxville Opera's The Marriage of Figaro, which I felt was a complete and stunning success. A friend called it "world class" and I agree if one thinks of the production as a whole. The company pulled off that almost magical feat of creating a cohesive, emotionally rich, enveloping world within the theater. The singers were very good, some excellent. The musicians were good, the acting excellent, but mostly it all just came together in a sparkling and satisfying experience. Nothing jarred, nothing triggered that critical, comparative part of my brain. That, to my mind is always the difficult part. The best performances somehow always come together from the heart. The finest orchestra, truly world-class voices, none of this matters if everything doesn't mesh together, and I've attended far to many operas that should have been great, but which have left me bored or disappointed. Figaro has sometimes become such a part of the common experience that it fails to rise above its own history. This production rose, it danced and sparkled — Figaro reborn. I think I would call it a stunning production and one that has me yearning for more.

Then on Sunday I went to the Clarence Brown Theater's production of Hair, which I also thoroughly loved. I was too young when Hair first came out on Broadway, but I did see an amateur production of it in the mid-seventies, after we had abolished the draft, after we had finally pulled out of Vietnam, after I too had my turn shouting "Hell, no! We won't go!". Even now I look at how those changes were shaping the world, shaping my own youth, and also the world the youth of today live in and experience. The youth of 1968, the ones portrayed in this play, are the grandparents of the youth of today, the students who were performing in this play. But that sense of both harmony and communal safety, as well as connection across generations was infectious. It seemed to me like this was an apt time to reintroduce this musical to a new generation, even as I am reminded that as much as the linearity of time is a foundational principle of western culture, there is also a cyclical aspect to time and growth and human evolution.

I always want to be enchanted, to be carried away, to be connected to some essential part of human nature; all of these events enchanted me in some sense or another. In the three performances, there is a common thread, of youth, of age, of love, of loss and hope, or hope and loss (not quite the same but inextricably tied together). Even in my retreat, in the experience of coming together and later of rest is connected to this cycle. As the body needs sleep however, so to the heart, the head, the creative and intellectual spirit. It seems my weekends are not time of rest but of massive input, and when the working world returns to its tasks, I need time to slow down and take it all in.

Perhaps retirement is also a period of turning the world topsy turvy, of the hero coming home from the wars of work and success and rediscovering the simple acts of breath and life which are essential to us all.

May 3, 2023
Art Starved

The Knoxville Museum of Art opened to the public, by appointment only, this week. It opened to members last week, and I was there, desperate as I was to for an art fix. My intention had been to look at the Delaney/Baldwin exhibit, but I thought I would take a “quick whirl” through part of the permanent collection and found myself lost there, completely absorbed by the experience of what I was seeing.

It started when i walked into the Currents gallery, where I was stunned by the vibrancy of this painting by Jered Sprecher, A Plane Is A Pocket In The Corner of The Mind. The painting had been in the gallery for some time, but its previous location, on an end wall, made a different kind of statement. Here, with the light striking it in a way I cannot really capture in a photograph it seemed to leap out and envelop this observer, filling the mind with an overwhelming sense of both chaos and light-within-chaos or hope.

I spent most of my time in that gallery, and I am certain that my focus was shaped by many things: My joy at being able to return to the museum, one of my favorite calming spots in Knoxville; the general tumult and uncertainty roiling about in the greater world right now combined and contrasted with the sense of solitude shaped by sheltering-at-home; the flash that seeing the Sprecher provoked in my heart upon turning the corner into the gallery. So many things influence what we see and how we react to what is seen. I constantly wonder about this conversation with the soul that art, in its many forms (painting, sculpture, music, dance), provokes. I wonder about the process, but also about the artist, what the process of creating something that can provoke reactions that one may not anticipate, or perhaps even desire, evokes.

I cannot say. I can only write about the experience of one person, one day, fully recognizing that even this viewer might find herself experiencing the same work of art in a completely different way on a different day, the new experience shaped by the previous, but also by all of the experiences that come together in that moment of time. This painting, Green Picture In My Meadow, by Jim Dine snuck up on me. It was not new to me, I can’t say that I saw anything on that visit that I had not seen before. And I am not certain that any idea that struck me about that painting was new either, was anything that I had not thought before, but on that day somehow, the impact was more profound.

I have long been fond of Dine, finding his works simultaneously elementally simple and present but also complexly layered and enlightening. I like the way they seem to reference the pop art movement, but without the sarcasm, almost as if they are both inside and on the fringe, looking in. I find myself constantly challenged by the use of the quotidien, by symbols, referenced in ways that make them simultaneously fading-toward-invisible, while at the same time brought forward in sometimes shocking ways. I like the sneaky emotional resonance which is not necessarily overt, but which seems to slip in sideways, almost unnoticed.

I suppose that is how I first approached this painting, beginning not with the whole but with the small, approaching from the side, noticing the detail as seen in the photo above, the layers of paint and straw and the way they reference a field and nature, layers of grass and soil, new and old, the dying back of old grass overtopped with new leaves, and the layers of soil and matter that make up everything. The way the surface, what we see, is only that, a gloss on something deeper. It was only then that I stepped back and looked again at the entire painting. Noticing the heart in the field, the many layers of meaning, from the very simple and unremarkable to that which could be deeply unearthed.

Then I noticed other smaller bits. This bright eye, in the center of the picture above, shining out, filled with light, like the eye of the divine if one is so inclined, or light and hope, shining out.

When I stepped back, I saw that, to me at least on that day, there were two eyes, a face even, in the heart of the heart, in the center of the painting. The light eye balanced and contrasted by the dark eye, less overtly obvious perhaps but no less presence once my mind decided it was there. This eye is slanted, shaded, almost hidden, the way we hide the darkness within ourselves, but no less present. Ego, fear, darkness are always present, even in the midst of light. These things I see: A field; the earth in all its bounty; cycles of death and life hidden in the behind the initial impression of green; the heart; the soul of earth and of humanity; the contrast of shadow-self and true-self, of ego and id, of hope and despair.

Poor Jim Dine might be despairing of what I think of his painting. Hopefully not. As I said earlier these reflections might simply be a bubbling up of all the things going on in my own inner world in this time of what feels like two pandemics, one of the body and another of the soul. Perhaps the painting is only a trigger, but I think art is always more than that, that the artist is more than that as well. A conduit perhaps to some greater truth, and who knows how each of us may confront, or avoid, that truth.

Then, as I turned to leave the gallery I was struck by something else, another contrasting of images. Next to the exuberant, world-filled outburst that is the Sprecher painting seen at the top of this post is a quiet painting of two people embracing in a room. I thought I took a photo of the plaque identifying the painting, but if so it is lost. I do not know the name of the artist; I believe the painting was named for the pattern on the carpet. My failure. But what struck me then, still, was the contrast of inner and personal versus the outer and public, but also of the mental turmoil vs inner peace, of the contrasting yet simultaneous needs for creation and safety that make up the human condition. I applaud the curatorial impulse that can layer meaning in this way.

I tried to take pictures that captured my own feelings about this pairing, but I failed. I tried to make a collage in photoshop and instead I somehow I accidentally created this overlapped transparency. I apologize to the artists for bastardizing their work and yet somehow this captures my own overlapping and confused feelings about the juxtaposition of the two works: Public and private existing both separately and simultaneously. Perhaps all these random bits are just the flotsam created by the various wreckages of this unusual year. But also perhaps, through art, we can also find our way to new pathways.

July 3, 2020
Monday Miscellany

A little bit of this and that to start the week:

I picked up three books from the local library on Sunday. Those plus the two new books I purchased, and which both arrived last week, are shown above. I had planned to read both Open Season and Death In Her Hands over the weekend, but did not get that far. Open Season is turning out to be a rather wrenching read and I am, therefore, proceeding slowly. I am also simultaneously reading Mick Herron’s London Rules, which I have on digital download from the library and which is due back this week. Will I get through all six books this week? Who knows. Sometimes I finish a book a day, sometimes I struggle with a book a week.

The sauerkraut is happily bubbling away, on a shelf in the basement, where the temperature is currently averaging abut 65 degrees. I had originally packed the cabbage in the one-gallon jar shown, and it was doing nicely, but was really over-full, with cabbage almost to the top. As fermentation progressed, and gases escaped, the jar was constantly overflowing. So I had to drag up the large 3-gallon fermentation crock, wash and sanitize it, repack the cabbage and get it back downstairs. That thing is heavy, and crocks don’t really seem to come with useful handles. I figured out I could carry it up and down the stairs using the red trug tub shown. Even so it was a bit of a struggle.

The experience reminded me that I really like the using the water-sealed crock, although this one is too large for most of my ferments. It was the only crock I could find locally, and generally my sauerkraut batches have been the only thing made in a large enough quantity to use it. But, since I have now made about 6 batches of sauerkraut and even more batches of kimchi and other pickles, it is past time to start acquiring crocks in sizes more appropriate to my most common ferments. These will be my birthday gift to myself, although they will probably be acquired over a period of months. Should I need the 3 gallon crock in the future, I will pack it downstairs in the basement pantry. Of course, if I make a gallon or more of anything, I will also need larger mixing bowls…

The art museum is reopening to the public this week. It opened for members last week and I went once, in a timed slot. It felt like coming home in a way, and I was both calmed and overwhelmed just by being able to see the actual art, as opposed to just an image. I will be back in the coming week, and there will probably be a blog post, or posts.

I have driven 196 miles in June. Since I don’t plan on driving anywhere before Wednesday, that would be the final accounting. I actually didn’t drive much the first three months of this slow-down either, but I didn’t note monthly totals. Given that driving is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases, and Americans as a whole drive far more than anyone else, it has been one goal to cut my miles driven by at least one-third and I am well on my way, for this year at least. But I am hoping that this little interruption in the flow of normal life will actually lead to a reset, to reconsidering of priorities that will be more lasting. I know I will eventually drive more than I am now, but the process of questioning my underlying assumptions seems to be high on my mind at the moment. Who knows where the process will lead.

It looks like another partly overcast day, with more rain. The garden is not complaining, and it is good weather for letting the new plants establish themselves. As for me, the cloud cover means I can spend more time in the garden, so it promises to be a good day and a good beginning to the week. What good things are you hoping for this week?

June 29, 2020
Delaney and Baldwin, Redux

This morning I awoke to find my brain filled with images of this painting by Beauford Delaney:

Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, 1968. Delaney had never met Fitzgerald, explaining that he “just painted something I saw in my mind” and that, exactly, is the beauty of this painting, one of a few paintings that has jostled about in my thoughts since I last saw the Delaney Exhibit in the Knoxville Museum of Art in February. I always thought I would go back and see more of that exhibit, felt that I only had only managed to just begin to plumb the depths, when everything shut down. I wrote about those first impressions in a blog post on February 22nd, over three months ago now. And then the world changed. I didn’t forget, but somehow in this whole slowing down, this worldwide introversion, my thoughts have meandered only slowly back into place.

As I wrote in February, one of the aspects of Delaney’s portraits was his abstraction and modernism, and his use of light and color to explore something deeper than just the image of a person. Delaney’s portraits of Baldwin’s for example explore human relationship and each painting feels simultaneously like a complete conversation but also a part of an ongoing and open-ended relationship. This is also what I see captured in this portrait of Fitzgerald, although it is admittedly difficult to get the sense of the painting itself from a photographic image.

At the time, I experimented with attempting to take pictures of the physicality of the paint, the brushstrokes, the layers, the addition and subtraction of color. I am not convinced that it was successful, but the images remind me of the sense of rhythm that seemed to emanate from the painting, as if Delaney had managed to visually render something essential about music. Yes, one sees Fitzgerald’s face in the center, but not clearly, more of a memory of the person as it is interwoven with her music. I heard the music as soon as I saw the painting, felt its harmonic vibration, felt Fitzgerald even before I knew the subject matter — a visual representation of Jazz and Blues, melody and harmony, tragedy and joy. This is the thing we cannot capture, cannot explain, and the reason art is so elemental, universal, and necessary to human experience. It has always been so.

Admittedly. I don’t exactly get that sense from these photos. They serve as reminders, visual cues that my brain can link to specific experiences. But that is much the way memory and experience work. The more literate we are, the more we experience art, music, literature, philosophy, science, the more we explore the complex emotional and physical makeup of humanity, the more we are able to see and experience the world with depth and consideration and even conscience. Literacy is more than book-learning. The more we know, the more we experience, the more we can see that the seeming contradictions that define our human experiences aren’t always so much oppositional as they are representative of our inability to express complexity in a straightforward manner. These things all speak to very real aspects of our lives and our beings; they speak to expereiences and feelings that we cannot easily put into words, but which are no less valid, if not more so, than that which is easily explained away.

Delaney has also resurfaced in my thoughts this week because Marble City Opera is hosting a watch party tomorrow night, Friday May 29th, at 7PM on Facebook live where they are showing Shadowlight, an opera by Larry Delinger and Emily Anderson about Beauford Delaney, which premiered here in February. Above is a preview, and I hope you will be enchanted and encouraged to watch with me.

I saw the opening night performance of Shadowlight, and it was one of the most beautiful and emotionally powerful opera experiences I can currently recall. Everything seemed to come together: Anderson’s poetic libretto, Delinger’s score, alternating between dissonance and soothing jazz riffs, the exploration of art and madness as Delaney, confined to St. Anne’s Hospital in Paris, sings of longing, of light, but also of lifelong struggles with internal demons and schizophrenia. Delaney’s random, sometimes erratic and jerked movements, sometimes alternating between softness and turmoil are offset by the sparely geometric and angular movements of the chorus, a spareness that is often emphasized by the angles created by images of paintings projected onto the set, highlighting and obscuring facial features. Order, erraticism, tragedy and love, yes, love, in James Baldwin’s words as he delivers the eulogy for his friend. The magic of this piece was how it captured and transmitted emotion, of love, of art, even of madness, in a way that made it all palpably real. One left stunned, perhaps transformed. I never reviewed this piece, feeling emotionally overwhelmed until well after my thoughts had settled into other grooves.

The actual experience of this performance felt like audience and artists were all of a piece, much the same way I feel that Delaney’s art vibrates, blurring the lines between music, art, literature, and experience. I do not think I was the only person in that audience who felt emotionally pulled into the vortex of that experience. I also do not believe the experience of the video will carry that same sense of envelopment, but I do believe it will still be a powerful experience, and I am highly looking forward to it. I hope you will join me.,

May 28, 2020
Standing in the Doorway, Perhaps Passing Through, Perhaps Still on the Threshold

It has been two weeks already since Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door opened at the Knoxville Museum of Art, part of a celebration of native son Beauford Delaney. I have been to the exhibit three times and still I feel like I haven’t seen it. I’ve looked but i haven’t seen.

Inevitably my eyes focus on a few paintings, the same few paintings that struck me initially that first viewing, the evening of the VIP preview reception. Of course I was unable to focus amidst the crowds and general hubbub. There were over 100 people in the rooms, and I would dash into one of the exhibition rooms, become overwhelmed by the energy in the paintings and drift back out to the reception, my nerves already tingling from the melee. And melee is the apt term here: The art vibrated at its own frequency, and usually I find the energy of a social setting exhausting in its own flow, but this night the energy of cocktail hour conversation seemed placid next to the vibration of the art, and what felt like almost clashing energies where art met social scene in the galleries. But perhaps I was simply too wired to my social self, and my quiet side needed to take in these paintings in peace. And, rare for me, I usually want at least a small opportunity to take in the works before listening to a curatorial discussion, I wished for some kind of talk about the works, something to focus my scattered attention. I find it overwhelming, and I struggle with my inability to absorb, my inability to focus or to articulate, although images of the art continue still to drift through my sleeping and waking mind.

I met the charming and fascinating Dr. Monique Y Wells, whose blog Les Amis de Beauford Delaney, I have since begun to read. Therein lies more information about Delaney and the exhibit and events in Knoxville. I actually did not speak to her as much as I would have liked. In my normal fashion, I flit at parties and am not good at striking up conversations with new people. I do occasionally regret this, my lack of small talk, that on-spark that might lead to further things. Instead I listen, and I flitter about. I dance around, occasionally looking for a place to land and what is, for me, the repose of a deeper conversation, but more often carried around on the energy of the evening. And as friends ask me, “did you meet X?” I sometimes regret my skittishness, my introspection combined with this restless social instinct and failure to connect on a broader scale, but I also realize that the key to this is something I consider essential to myself, and so I am content.

I returned to the exhibit two days later for a brief visit with the paintings. I had hoped to spend more time, but I found myself overwhelmed and unable to focus for more than a short period. I do wonder about that sometimes, my inability to spend time in museums, my short attention span and inability to focus, to absorb, to transform my thoughts and reactions into a coherent flow of words. Or perhaps I want to absorb too much, to crawl inside the painting and find my way out again, and each such experience drains me and I retreat. This act of articulation remains a problem. In fact it seems I look at art, perhaps in all its forms, music, painting, writing, in much the same way I go through parties. I flit and alight to stay and absorb something. I miss much, but occasionally I see something.

Of course we are all that way. What we see isn’t really so much about where we are or even what we are looking at, but about us, about how openly we are able to engage, and then about our own personal histories with all their biases and vulnerabilities. What art does of course, is strip all that away and cut to something deeply essential beneath the layers we have padded onto our souls over the course of our lives. It doesn’t really matter what the art is — it is the way it strips us bare and brings us to a new viewing and understanding of ourselves and the world.

In fact I was having a conversation with a fascinating woman about just that, about the power of art, and about how sometimes we do not really want to be cut and bleeding, our hearts laid bare, we just want to look. And this is true about painting but also about words, and music, they all tap into some essential melody of life. Fitting I think for an exhibit about painting, but also about words, about Delaney and Baldwin, in an exhibit that captures the way painting itself has its own rhythm and melody, like writing, and music. Fitting I think also because I was speaking with Carole Weinstein, sister-in-law of the late James Baldwin, although our conversation was cut short as others sought her out and I drifted away.

When I was talking to Carol she was sitting in front of the painting shown above, Dark Rapture (James Baldwin) 1941. One of the paintings that drew me, even though I struggled against its pull as it was such a bright beacon in the room simultaneously deep and dark and filled with light — the depths of human emotions and potential captured in a painting. Not the only one, of course, but still. I was held. There is so much in this painting, much beyond the obvious, the glowing naked boy. Baldwin was still a teenager, Delaney was in his 30s. This was early in a lifelong friendship. Was Delaney “in love” with Baldwin? Perhaps. That sense of potential, of eros, of both the sexual and the romantic is there, the way the world glows and simultaneously retreats back, the way the body of the boy floats above the surface of the painting, a body in all its complex erotic potential. But being in love is as much about the self as it is about the person one loves, perhaps more so. What I find fascinating about this painting is that it is both about the yearning and objectifying of desire, but also about moving beyond that, about coming to a somehow greater communion of two minds, a conversation that blurs the understanding of self and other, making each better at seeing themselves. This painting comes from an awareness far beyond that first flush of love. Both Delaney and Baldwin, at least the young Baldwin, struggled with their sexuality. Both were sons of preachers. Both were black, gay, artists in a culture that truly accepts none of those things. Still. We pay lip service to art, admire it even, put art and artists on a pedestal, but do we treasure our artists? Love our artists? Care for them?

The problems with photos of paintings is that you cannot capture the depth of the color, the way color deepens, and reveals itself, leaks out like little flashes of light. You cannot see the brushstrokes, feel the energy, the movement of the work. Notice the depth of contrast and color in Baldwin’s flesh. The complexity, the wonder, but also the struggle of both beauty and despair, the desired and yet the forbidden. The colors are strong here, the feeling as well, but it is not feeling without struggle. And yet compare it to the background. Swirling and wild and yet happy, as if this sitting, this relationship painter with sitter, is the source of something greater than either. Notice the changes in the direction of the brushstrokes, they way thy create a small gap around Baldwin, giving him the appearance of floating. The way the struggle, the relationship, which I will say seems to initially speak of something physical but is actually something greater than that, the burgeoning awareness of a communion of souls, the way a deep friendship can grow and make each participant more themselves than they would be alone.

Look at the contrast between head and body. I am not an art critic. i regret deeply that I never took Vassar’s acclaimed art history class, never studied art, and often feel adrift trying to put words to feelings. But look at the way the face is surrounded by pastel light, the face itself in contrast to the body, a body that speaks of struggles for selfhood and understanding, and yet a head also filled with fierce intelligence, with light of spirit, simultaneously young, yet filled with sight and yearning beyond its years. Mind and Body. Head and Heart.

I still do not understand this painting. I think the eyes are important. Baldwin’s eyes, Delaney’s eyes. I need to study the portraits. Sometimes, although the two individuals are quite distinct, the eyes confuse me, as if they are twin mirrors. But I have no photos of Delaney’s self portraits, yet.

Look at this portrait of James Baldwin made 16 years later. Baldwin middle aged now, and the portrait softer, and yet still intense. The same eyes. Deeply seeing. The same fierce, deeply seeing, intelligent face. But also contrast the portraits. The whole portrait is at the top of this post, James Baldwin 1957. Baldwin is now middle-aged. And yet in this portrait too he floats above the background, in a similar position, except this time more contained within himself. Do not fool yourself that this portrait is less powerful, or has less energy. The young Baldwin is blistering with the energy of youth, of unrestrained potential and its power. The older Baldwin seen here, clothed, more pulled into himself, legs crossed in a more enclosing way, is just as powerful, with just as much energy, but this time more controlled by self-awareness, perhaps even more powerful due to its control. I still see explosive power here, but it is a power lurking behind the veneer, leaking out like layers of colors in paint. In fact I think I need to go back and look at this painting again.

I haven’t even gotten to the second painting that seared itself into my memory that first night. But the exhibit will be here until May, and I, like a moth to a flame, will undoubtedly find myself returning again and again. If you have any reason to be near Knoxville, please come take a look.

February 22, 2020
Monday Miscellaney
1. Candles lit at the end of the Celtic Service last night at Church of the Ascension.
2. I am still reading Churchill. Nothing else at the moment. Still impressed at the genius, the impetuousness, the naïveté. We forget this, that no one is brilliant at everything, that one can be wise and still a child, at any age. But then who is not complex? Brilliant people as much as the rest of us, except that perhaps their complexities seem more glaring simply because we fear what we do not understand. This is, was, and probably always will be true — this tendency of humans to judge “as through a glass darkly” without seeing or understanding what they are judging.

3. I went to a concert Wednesday night, not so much a formal concert, but a working-through of a piece the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra is commissioning from composer Michael Schachter, titled Cycle of Life The piece will premier in May and is based on a large scale work of the same title by Richard Jolley. This concert was very much a working through and it was fascinating. I sat very close, in the front row between the cello and bass and I loved being in the middle of the flow of the music, the working through. The musicians would play fragments of a work still very much in progress, with alternate selections, and one could hear the differences in the ways the music would take shape, hear and feel the difference in the playing between the musicians, a give and take, sometimes joyous, sometimes reserved, some things working for one musician but not for others, coming together and pulling apart.

I have no real musical ability or talent, merely ears, so this kind of experience was new to me. I had never been in anything quite like it, well except for that Phillip Glass premier nearly two years ago, that rehearsal and working-through of the final piece with composer and musicians. I wrote about that here. I loved it but it was also different than this as this work is still at least partially nebulous. I could hear and feel the tensions in the playing, and of course this is so because even though I do not play, one can hear, and sitting so closely, even feel at times the vibrations of the music, hear the difference in playing with passion or reserve. And of course this very give and take of conversation, of communion almost — meaning a communal sharing — combined with an antagonism, not meaning that in a negative way, this, this sound of coming together and pulling apart is what I always look for in chamber music concerts, this melding of the music with the person playing the music, structure, abstraction and humanity intertwined. It is an indescribable thing that one knows when one hears it, and misses when it is absent.

The entire evening took on the atmosphere of a great and exciting conversation, with moments of coalescence, and where even those elements that did not work added to the sense of excited tension in the room, the growing of something new and beautiful. I am very much looking forward to this work, filled with eager anticipation and excitement, like a good mystery, I do not know what is going to happen. But snippets remain dancing in my head, adding to that sense of fulfillment to come. Above the composer and KSO Music Director Aram Demirjian conferring about a section, the musicians briefly pausing.

4. From the sublime to the mundane. I have a large second-cut piece of brisket in the fridge which I hope to start curing/brining this afternoon with hopes of having a lovely piece of corned beef in a few weeks.

5. And now I am running, this post unedited, as the day is about to run away without me.
February 3, 2020
Monday Miscellany

A few highlights, diversions and meandering thoughts from last week…

Radish Greens Soup

I had purchased radishes, as much for their beautiful greens as for the radishes themselves at the farmer's market the Saturday before I burned my hand, and since I did not want those gorgeous greens to go to waste I managed to make soup, despite the burn, although it was a more time-consuming process than I might usually expect. I was using Béatrice Peltre's recipe from My French Family Table, which I had used a year and half ago, before the book was packed away. That first time I had noted that the soup was too redolent of potato for me, and needed more onion and so this time I halved the potato and added a leek to the shallot that was called for in the recipe, mostly because I had a leek on hand. I also sweated the leek, shallot, and celery slowly over very low heat, rather than sautéing them over medium heat as directed. Although I probably did not need to, I used homemade chicken stock in the soup, and given that I tend to make a rich bone-broth-type of stock, my final soup is really more of a green chicken soup than was intended. I probably didn't need the chicken stock at all, of perhaps only one cup of stock and three cups of water. The soup was delicious though, and a good thing to have on hand.

Downton Abbey

It will come as no surprise that I loved Downton Abbey and am ready to see it again anytime. I loved the series after all. Perhaps my mom would like to go see it, although I've had difficulty getting her out to movies in the recent past. At the same time perhaps my affection is surprising given that, aside from British literature, I am not an anglophile and care not a flip for the hoopla over royal weddings and babies, but there you are. I am nothing if not inconsistent, and although I love the costumes, I also love the story lines, and the idea of fine acting around smaller themes, the idea that one can float ideas without blowing things up, that one can participate in a system even while knowing it is doomed. Perhaps I just grow tired of darkness and harshness. Perhaps I too just want to look at a pretty dress and smile, relish the witty asides and 15-second references to all too human foibles, perhaps even a hint of nostalgia for something I am well aware was never really the way we imagine it have been.

Garden

General planting and landscaping is delayed by the continued heat and drought, the good news being that although I am surrounded by clay and dirt, at least I am not surrounded by mud. Nonetheless I was thrilled to look outside and see the that the two remaining lace cap hydrangeas are showing signs of budding. I shall enjoy the flowers and hope that this is not an all-out last ditch attempt at replicating themselves before giving up the ghost. Perhaps it is part of my concerted effort to water the existing shrubs, running slow trickles around the few surviving specimens, for long hours, hoping that the water will be absorbed rather than running off. I wonder that even this may not be enough, wonder if my attempts at watering are actually helping or prolonging the agony, although I take comfort in the fact that the plants that once looked peaked and weary seem to have perked up a good bit. Perhaps this is all worth the call from KUB informing me that my water usage has been high… yes, I know. If I had to give up showering in order to water the plants I would do so. I am tired of losing things, not that my own feelings will affect the outcome in any way. I only hope it is enough to keep everything going while I run off to Texas. I will have contractors in the house, but I can't expect them to water the garden.

The Planets

The symphony season opened Thursday with a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets, which was accompanied by a video presentation of images compiled and collated from NASA. Admittedly I had mixed feelings going in, but felt it worked beautifully, the powerful images mostly playing well with the music and riffing off cultural references (such as Star Wars) that probably 80% of the audience, if not more, was simultaneously running through their heads. The concert hall was almost full on Thursday, when I went, and apparently sold out on Friday, and the music was powerfully and beautifully performed.

And despite all that, perhaps as much because of the pictures as due to the fact that I know the music so well, my mind did wander a little bit. Mostly I was thinking of the music and it's cultural associations, and not just because of Star Wars, and other film and television references. Themes and ideas from the Planets show up in religious music, school songs, popular music, so many places. And of course this is not unique to Holst. I always think that there is a world of educational opportunity out there, that although we have lost a certain degree of musical literacy, much of this strong tradition exists in our cultural memory, although it may be hidden and not overtly recognized. Much the same can be said for Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, early polyphony…. but during the performance of the Holst, I was thrilling to the music and imagining the possibilities of uniting the world, the music of Holst, and Star Wars, Christian Hymns, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath all running through my head. The music has its own weight and presence, but all experience builds on previous experience, and a performance is never just itself, but always this fusion of all that has come before it with al that is happening in the present. A fine evening.

Science in Motion

The same evening that I attended the symphony I also went to an opening reception for a new exhibit at the McClung museum of photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Berenice Abbot and Harold Edgerton. The exhibit was lovely and well worth attending. I was already familiar with most of the work by Muybridge and Abbot, less familiar with Edgerton, although some of the images are very well known. I found myself as fascinated by reading about the techniques and processes as in viewing the images themselves, thinking about the intersection of art and science, and the radical changes that the world has seen in the past 100 to 150 years. I was also taken with the camera cookies, even though I couldn't eat a one of them.

September 23, 2019
Inside, Outside, InsideOut

Sunset at the Knoxville Museum of Art, the evening light reflecting on Richard Jolley's Cycle of Life. I was at the museum for a fund-raising event and the way the light reflected on the glass, particularly the light passing through the two pieces of the final stage, Contemplation, really stuck in my head that particular evening, seeming to draw attention to both inner and outer light, the balance, or lack of it that illuminates our humanity, needing both the interior and the exterior stimuli to feed our creativity and wholeness of self. As I enjoyed the evening, caught up in that externally extroverted sense of social hubbub, I was reminded of this inner light, and the way it sustains us, sometimes glowing from within, other times hidden.

The social season has begun again and the next two weeks will be filled with music and art, some literature, another play, as well as social interaction. I am reminded of how the external or the social also feeds our creativity, or at least, my own creativity — reminded that as much as I need the interior, and feel stressed and drawn when time for necessary quiet is not available, the same can be said for the social aspect of life as well. I need both for balance, and wonder if perhaps the summer was, in itself, perhaps a bit too isolating, a bit too deeply mired in the internal slough of excess introspection.

Or perhaps this is simply the story I tell myself. It increasingly seems to me that as much as well need our stories, both personal and cultural, in order to find our own place in the world, those same stories also have a tendency to mask truth, which always requires communication and a meeting of perspectives. As soon as one claims some hold on truth, "my truth", one is already on a slippery slope.

And yet I continue to feel unsettled, both exuberant, this sense of buzz and excitement fed by the social milieu, while simultaneously feeling overwhelmed. Like Tikka when she wanders around in circles, pawing at the carpet or a chair cushion trying to make just the right spot to settle in comfortably, I feel like I've not yet found that comfortable place where the inner and he outer can meet.

Look at this photo above, of a painting by Karla Wozniak called Synchronous Fireflies in the Knoxville Museum. I was at the museum again yesterday for another event, and I took this photo with an entirely different narrative in mind from the one in which I find myself this morning. I love the exuberance of the painting, the sense of light, of motion and also lushness. It. reminds me of the giddy interaction of social setting, of surprise connections, of this dance of interconnectedness. And yet the lushness, and perhaps this is just the way I am looking at this painting this morning, also holds a hint of danger. It reminds me of how light and perception can change, and the way something that can seem lush, rich, and exuberant in one moment can be transformed in an instant, suddenly becoming dark, dangerous, and overwhelming.

I am reminded of when I first moved to New York state from Texas, of the way I was enamored of the tall trees and the lush sense of greenness, but how at certain times in my yard, in the flush of rain and humidity and summer heat, I would dream that I was being devoured by that very excessive growth. I still feel that way sometimes in Tennessee, although not particularly this summer with my flat brown yard, which bare as it is, also holds a comforting sense of promise. And yet there is still that sense of celebration combined with the fear, (is it fear?) of being overwhelmed, of going too far in one direction or the other. And I wonder if this very feeling is something shared by others, or if I am just being presumptuous, attempting to project my own mistruth onto the world. I wonder if I am obsessing over "my story" or if there is some connection there to something more human and universal.

The flash of the fireflies, the light of the painting reminds me of how social interaction sparks creativity and pulls me out of the overgrowth, the strangling vines and deep much of self-indulgent introspection.

Two other pictures, also viewed yesterday, reminded me of the opposite extreme, at least for me. The photo above if of a print made from the cancelled plate of an engraving by Lester George Hornby called London Bridge. The crosshatched marks are added to the plate to prevent further prints from being made and passed off as originals. But I also find it interesting in and of itself. The pattern of the crosshatching seems to me to add a sense of distance, and even disengagement from the view seen in the print, as if one is standing behind a window with heavy leaded panes looking at the world. For me, this is the danger of too much extroversion, too much social engagement without the requisite private interior time. I feel like a fly trapped in some sticky surface atop the glass, unable to fully become a part of the scene, present but disengaged.

Here is the official print. Notice how we are much more deeply drawn in here, much more a part of the scene. I look at this print and feel palpably drawn into this world, into the detail. This print engenders a sense of connection, as opposed to the sense of separation in the previous print. Perhaps this is what I am trying to articulate, the struggle to find the balance that is needed in order to live in this world, to function on a daily basis in a world that is basically imposed upon me both externally and by my own psyche, and the ability to look beyond that, to be neither mired in the mud or trapped on the surface, to create the life I want, a life that in the end requires that I look beyond myself and into the whole of the community, a communion, in a sense, with the world.

September 11, 2019
48 Hours: Part Two — Seeing

Friday afternoon in Chicago, mid-April. My friend Patti, her husband Norm, and I are at the Art Institute of Chicago. I have asked that we see the new modern art wing, and we have been wending our way through the galleries, finally arriving on the third floor. Looming ahead of us in all its majesty is a painting, Bathers By A River, (1909/1910, 1913 and 1916-19170 Henri Matisse. Photo courtesy of Wikiart.org, here.

The painting is huge. These figures are far taller than I. At first, my mind already beginning to be overflow with sensory input, I pause, slightly as if unable to completely register what I am seeing. I haven't read the plaque. I see a blending of images, I see reflections of the lush tenderness seen in Three Bathers with a Turtle, I see echoes of the lyricism of Dance; But I also see cubism, and intense feeling of danger. I wonder if it is a modern painting "after Matisse" but of course it is not. I've seen pictures of this painting before. I should recognize it from that alone, but I am unprepared for the impact of the painting itself. The painting seems to overwhelm me with the fractured lines of human experience, the sharp edges of innocence and experience overlapping each other. I try to back up far enough to take a photo but I cannot get the right perspective. I want to stop here, not to rest exactly, but to be pulled in, to simply exist for a moment in the space this painting creates. The finish on the canvas itself, the depth of the colors — the pure presence of the piece is far more overwhelming than a mere picture can convey. But of course I cannot stop here. The gallery is just beginning. There is no place to sit, no wall upon which to brace myself, only the doors, which keep opening when I want nothing more than for time to stop.

So of course I wander. Eventually I find a room with a bench. I see paintings by artists whose work I love, but, having already been in the galleries for some time, I am dangerously close to being overwhelmed, close, in fact, being inundated in a tide of sensory overload. There is too much beauty, too much power and I feel like a small child in a candy store, my eyes unable to find a suitable place to rest, as everything around me is competing for their attention. I momentarily catch a glimpse of an ethereal Picasso, although I am not quite sure that "ethereal" and "Picaso", have ever merged so coherently in my imagination before. I need to stop and I find a place to sit, briefly, calmed by this landscape by Heinrich Campendonk. My nerve endings feel slightly less frayed, but I realize I can absorb nothing further, so I leave the gallery to sit and wait by the elevators.

It has been a good visit to the museum. We started with Rembrandt portraits. I am not a lover of portraits generally, but these are exceptional, each with a character, and a point of view, each subjects gaze filled with humanity, either inviting you in or holding you at bay. Either way the portraits are compellingly human, and one wishes to get to know each of these characters better. Aside from the portraits themselves however, I was struck by a comment in one of the notes. Tthe curator was discussing Rembrandt's use of costumes, and mentioned that in the artist's time, painters were considered mere craftsmen, not artists, and this struck me in light of my own recent post on self-definition, art and the role of art and craft in creation. I was struck by the idea that Rembrandt also might have struggled with that idea of artist vs craftsman. Of course this should be no surprise, because Rembrandt was also human, because this struggle is one of the basic human struggles, just as it is a basic human characteristic to judge and categorize, and perhaps to idolize the past, forgetting that our heroes were indeed just like us. Today, I think I am not alone in thinking of painters as artists, and yet I am also pretty confident that there are layers of perception and categorization, and we too categorize painting into "craft" and "art", dismissing out of hand broad categories that we deem closer to the former than the later. It seems that this is one of those questions to which there are no firm answers.

(Barbara Hepworth, Two Figures (Menhirs), 1954/1955.

After Rembrandt we had moved over to the modern wing and starting with contemporary works, some of which seemed breathtakingly beautiful while others were more puzzling. Some pieces seemed very dependent on having a basic understanding of the intent and process. Other pieces were more transparent. I took more pictures downstairs, mostly to remember, but I learned long ago that taking photos and actually looking are often mutually exclusive. The struggle to find the balance point between recording and experiencing, between movement and stillness seems to be the ongoing struggle. How does one manage? I remain uncertain.

Sometimes what really struck me, and what I remember, cannot be captured by photographs at all; the photographs simply serve as a memory cue of sorts. The Brice Marden above, (Study for the Muses, Eaglesmere Version 1991-94/1997-990) seems to float in space, to almost dance across the room. In my photo you can see some of the layers of paint, of color of movement. But the effect in the afternoon sunlight is magical. And yet, as much as this painting alone is worth entry into this gallery, it is only one player in a complex dance. As Brice Marden's painting shimmers and floats, it shares a space with the sculpture shown below (Katharina Fritsch, A Woman With Her Dog, 2004). At first the light softness of the painting and the feminine pink sculpture seem to go together, at least upon initial impression, perhaps merely due to color alone and subject matter, but where the painting is soft and yielding, the woman is simultaneously soft and yielding in color and form but hard and brittle, like the shells from which she appears to be formed. Easily broken perhaps, but not without causing pain.

And yet there is more. Also in this room are some smaller works, strong and singular in their line and impact, occasionally stark. Although there may have been works by other artists, I specifically remember two works by Gerhard Richter, Davos, 1981, and Venice, Staircase (1985). The harsh simplicity and tension in the smaller Richter works stood both in opposition and in harmony to the Marden and Fritsch. Standing in this room I felt challenged by the contrast of permanence and impermanence, hard and soft, yielding and unyielding, dance and isolation. It is exactly this, this conversation, this play of art and ideas, of emotion and space that struck me about that particular afternoon, that I remember to this day. In retrospect, I wonder how the effect of this room, these works affected my reaction to the Matisse seen at the top of this post, as shortly after this we left the second floor and rose to the third. Next time I walk into the gallery and see the Matisse, will my reaction be different? How does the conversation between art and viewer evolve over time? Echoes of previous encounters remain a part of us, but time shifts, our emotions and understandings change, and yet art to continues to pierce through our defenses.

May 18, 2019