Glenda Burgess's Blog, page 25
April 11, 2013
Deconstruction
copper pennies, cattle bones, pavers, wafers, black cloth
The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
The image in this essay is of an art installation at The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas that occupies an entire space of its own. A room within a room, in which the art, "How to Build a Cathedral," fills the entirety of the subdued space.
The visitor is permitted to step inside the installation, curtained on four sides by ceiling to floor black mesh curtains (filmy and weighty), and stand or walk the square perimeter of the installation on an interior border of simple gray pavers. The ceiling within is a stalactite "chandelier" of cow bone: white bones suspended in uniform order from the ceiling and lit from above. The bones funnel visually into a thin cord of stacked Eucharist wafers falling into a sculptural sea of shiny new pennies. The space has the sacramental hush and reverence we associate with the interiors of cathedrals and the metaphoric elements with which we erect them: rock, money, sweat and death, sacrament, obscurity, light. It is a beautiful space. It feels sacred. The meaning, if one can say such exists outside the visual, feels immediately and profoundly understood. We make the profound from the material, we imbue the simple with meaning. What is sacred is born of the ordinary.
Does a poem enlarge the world,
or only our idea of the world?
- from "Mathematics" by Jane Hirschfield
The Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin
The image in this essay is of an art installation at The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas that occupies an entire space of its own. A room within a room, in which the art, "How to Build a Cathedral," fills the entirety of the subdued space.
The visitor is permitted to step inside the installation, curtained on four sides by ceiling to floor black mesh curtains (filmy and weighty), and stand or walk the square perimeter of the installation on an interior border of simple gray pavers. The ceiling within is a stalactite "chandelier" of cow bone: white bones suspended in uniform order from the ceiling and lit from above. The bones funnel visually into a thin cord of stacked Eucharist wafers falling into a sculptural sea of shiny new pennies. The space has the sacramental hush and reverence we associate with the interiors of cathedrals and the metaphoric elements with which we erect them: rock, money, sweat and death, sacrament, obscurity, light. It is a beautiful space. It feels sacred. The meaning, if one can say such exists outside the visual, feels immediately and profoundly understood. We make the profound from the material, we imbue the simple with meaning. What is sacred is born of the ordinary.
Does a poem enlarge the world,
or only our idea of the world?
- from "Mathematics" by Jane Hirschfield
April 3, 2013
Art Where You Are
Why not? Why not? Why should my poems not imitate my life?
Whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning
is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond -
surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects
to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.
I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived -
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
- from "Summer Night" by Louise Gluck
The Blanton Art Museum, located on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas, is a playground for the mind and spirit. Here, soaring open interior spaces lit by diffused skylights permit art to breathe, allow the mind to break formation, to wander and make stunning, exciting associations between paintings and sculpture, colors and form. Three specific pieces of art will be explored in upcoming blog essays that moved me in different ways. Pieces that somehow charged my sensibilities, as atoms ellipse around an idea whose time has yet to come.
I found myself longest in the Contemporary wing. The several large installations in this space shocked, astounded, and poked me fully awake. I had to look, walk around and then away, and then circle back once more. I stood immobilized by ideas that floated into my head as though the artists uncapped my skull and held a gravy boat of thoughts poured into my brain.
The photograph above is of a piece by El Anatsui, of Nigeria, called simply "City Plot 2010." The sculpture is a wall-sized installation; wholly composed of aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire. These crude components weave unexpected visual shapes of varied color mobile to the eye from a distance like the scales of river trout or flags whipping in wind. A woman's profile is suggested in yellow lashes, red lips, an exotic headdress. Or do we see a street dog? A flag form registers with the viewer as both anthem and political identification and irony. More sculptural shape-shifting might suggest tribal dress; look again and see the flap and tear of trash caught in fencing along city freeways.
Anatsui's work is deliberate; delicately formed of debris collected from the streets and empty city lots of Nigeria. The project components, simple yet lofty in association, prompt unfamiliar wonder. Obliquely we see even city garbage carries the rich stamp of civilization in unexpected ways. That the ordinary is the everyday extraordinary. Or can be...if we but look and see differently.
Take time to glance around your daily landscape. What do you see of an essential, hidden belongingness in human culture?
Whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning
is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond -
surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects
to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.
I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived -
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
- from "Summer Night" by Louise Gluck
The Blanton Art Museum, located on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas, is a playground for the mind and spirit. Here, soaring open interior spaces lit by diffused skylights permit art to breathe, allow the mind to break formation, to wander and make stunning, exciting associations between paintings and sculpture, colors and form. Three specific pieces of art will be explored in upcoming blog essays that moved me in different ways. Pieces that somehow charged my sensibilities, as atoms ellipse around an idea whose time has yet to come.
I found myself longest in the Contemporary wing. The several large installations in this space shocked, astounded, and poked me fully awake. I had to look, walk around and then away, and then circle back once more. I stood immobilized by ideas that floated into my head as though the artists uncapped my skull and held a gravy boat of thoughts poured into my brain.
The photograph above is of a piece by El Anatsui, of Nigeria, called simply "City Plot 2010." The sculpture is a wall-sized installation; wholly composed of aluminum liquor bottle caps and copper wire. These crude components weave unexpected visual shapes of varied color mobile to the eye from a distance like the scales of river trout or flags whipping in wind. A woman's profile is suggested in yellow lashes, red lips, an exotic headdress. Or do we see a street dog? A flag form registers with the viewer as both anthem and political identification and irony. More sculptural shape-shifting might suggest tribal dress; look again and see the flap and tear of trash caught in fencing along city freeways.
Anatsui's work is deliberate; delicately formed of debris collected from the streets and empty city lots of Nigeria. The project components, simple yet lofty in association, prompt unfamiliar wonder. Obliquely we see even city garbage carries the rich stamp of civilization in unexpected ways. That the ordinary is the everyday extraordinary. Or can be...if we but look and see differently.
Take time to glance around your daily landscape. What do you see of an essential, hidden belongingness in human culture?
March 26, 2013
What Love Is
On Friday, my husband and I are flying to Houston to attend the wedding of his middle son. It is the second wedding within a year's time, and as his sons walk through this very singular, personal, and deeply spiritual threshold into their own adulthood, it is profoundly moving for a parent to witness.
They start out small, and look where they end... Our work as parents seems to conclude as they let go of one hand and take another, cleave as Ruth said, to the hand of another. Mark 10:7-9 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Bless the beginning, release with love, and let the moment mark the years. They start out so small.
Originally posted, November 25, 2012:
Some things
you know all your life. They are simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter, and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
- from "The Simple Truth," Philip Levine
The beauty of love is that it is capable of great patience, tremendous tenacity, it stretches, it attaches, it slowly builds like bone in the new body. It has been a journey, for me, this life. And in the coming...the gestating of new forms of connection and partnership, of family. Evolving in new ways of being, new shapes to the lives we lead. It is the simple truth to say that living is a cycle of ever-becoming. And while neither easy, nor pristinely beautiful, not perfect in process, the becoming is perfect in intent. It is perfect in joy, grounded in the earth, heavens, and self. The human heart is a warrior and a monk. And it speaks a simple truth. Belong.
They start out small, and look where they end... Our work as parents seems to conclude as they let go of one hand and take another, cleave as Ruth said, to the hand of another. Mark 10:7-9 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." Bless the beginning, release with love, and let the moment mark the years. They start out so small.
Originally posted, November 25, 2012:
Some things
you know all your life. They are simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter, and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.
- from "The Simple Truth," Philip Levine
The beauty of love is that it is capable of great patience, tremendous tenacity, it stretches, it attaches, it slowly builds like bone in the new body. It has been a journey, for me, this life. And in the coming...the gestating of new forms of connection and partnership, of family. Evolving in new ways of being, new shapes to the lives we lead. It is the simple truth to say that living is a cycle of ever-becoming. And while neither easy, nor pristinely beautiful, not perfect in process, the becoming is perfect in intent. It is perfect in joy, grounded in the earth, heavens, and self. The human heart is a warrior and a monk. And it speaks a simple truth. Belong.
March 19, 2013
Sojourners
We could do worse.
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden- and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Today I favor the latter view. The word "sojourner" occurs often in the English Old Testament. It invokes a nomadic people's knowledge of estrangement, a thinking people's intuition of sharp loss. "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."
We don't know where we belong, but in times of sorrow it doesn't seem to be here, here with these silly pansies and witless mountains, here with sponges and hard-eyed birds. In times of sorrow the innocence of the other creatures - from whom and with whom we evolved - seems a mockery. Their ways are not our ways. We seem set among them as among lifelike props for a tragedy - or a broad lampoon - on a thrust rock stage.
- Annie Dillard, "Teaching a Stone to Talk"
The weather is harsh today. A spin cycle of winds, driving rains, brief stillnesses and spots of sun followed by steely skies. The way in which winter fights the incremental arrival of spring, today the first day of spring, is played out in the heavens. Tender green grass and flower stems break earth, but the skies battle on a galactic level for dominance between light and dark, cold and warm, still and push.
My writer's thoughts are also caught between still and push. There is a lull toward stillness: to invite in the transitions in the seasons with reflection and awareness, and yet there is a strong sense of push. To birth the change in day, daylight, and energies now. There is much to do, more to accomplish, and time is a precious gift to waste.
Annie Dillard's timeless work "Teaching a Stone to Talk" is subtitled "Expeditions and Encounters." Her essays explore nature, they tease out subtleties, lift the skin on human dislocation. Her thoughts on solitude as "sojourners of spirit" on a harshly physical planet come to mind as I watch the wind and rain hammer the young weeping cherry. A hint of new bud on its branches, barely limned green, the slight tree bends to the lashing winds. I observe its travails, think about what I am, the "I" that is spirit and mind, and what I am trying to do here in my study, my words and thoughts weaving these works of imaginary tapestry. Out there beyond my window, earth expresses the hard unambiguous truth of the elements. Wind, rain, dark, light. Whereas inside, literally and metaphorically, I live and work in another realm.
I am a sojourner in one world, traveling the days and seasons, defined by my humanity yet essentially animal, a living being - and an alchemist in the other, an artist, inventing and imagining, seeking meaning. Which is more true? Or am I both in both? Is it any wonder we find ourselves uncertain of home?
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden- and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners. Today I favor the latter view. The word "sojourner" occurs often in the English Old Testament. It invokes a nomadic people's knowledge of estrangement, a thinking people's intuition of sharp loss. "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."
We don't know where we belong, but in times of sorrow it doesn't seem to be here, here with these silly pansies and witless mountains, here with sponges and hard-eyed birds. In times of sorrow the innocence of the other creatures - from whom and with whom we evolved - seems a mockery. Their ways are not our ways. We seem set among them as among lifelike props for a tragedy - or a broad lampoon - on a thrust rock stage.
- Annie Dillard, "Teaching a Stone to Talk"
The weather is harsh today. A spin cycle of winds, driving rains, brief stillnesses and spots of sun followed by steely skies. The way in which winter fights the incremental arrival of spring, today the first day of spring, is played out in the heavens. Tender green grass and flower stems break earth, but the skies battle on a galactic level for dominance between light and dark, cold and warm, still and push.
My writer's thoughts are also caught between still and push. There is a lull toward stillness: to invite in the transitions in the seasons with reflection and awareness, and yet there is a strong sense of push. To birth the change in day, daylight, and energies now. There is much to do, more to accomplish, and time is a precious gift to waste.
Annie Dillard's timeless work "Teaching a Stone to Talk" is subtitled "Expeditions and Encounters." Her essays explore nature, they tease out subtleties, lift the skin on human dislocation. Her thoughts on solitude as "sojourners of spirit" on a harshly physical planet come to mind as I watch the wind and rain hammer the young weeping cherry. A hint of new bud on its branches, barely limned green, the slight tree bends to the lashing winds. I observe its travails, think about what I am, the "I" that is spirit and mind, and what I am trying to do here in my study, my words and thoughts weaving these works of imaginary tapestry. Out there beyond my window, earth expresses the hard unambiguous truth of the elements. Wind, rain, dark, light. Whereas inside, literally and metaphorically, I live and work in another realm.
I am a sojourner in one world, traveling the days and seasons, defined by my humanity yet essentially animal, a living being - and an alchemist in the other, an artist, inventing and imagining, seeking meaning. Which is more true? Or am I both in both? Is it any wonder we find ourselves uncertain of home?
March 12, 2013
Simplicity, Pope Francis, and Philosophical Authenticity
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.
- Walt Whitman
My thoughts were swept away today. I abandoned working on my writing project to witness the choosing of a new pope in the great city of Rome. Perhaps the last time in my life this ancient religious event, a papal conclave of 114 Cardinals gathered from the farthest corners of the globe, will occur. For me, the great wonder of Roma lies in the rich intersection of Roman history in ruin and architecture, the artistic wonders present in every fountain, church, and piazza, in the venerable Jewish Ghetto, and in the Vatican's artistic and religious treasures. Within this city mingle centuries of letters, art, and the great philosophical ideals of human history.
3/13/13...a day of significance.
The rituals of faith have once more brought forth change. Cloistered deep within the Vatican, where Judeo-Christian spiritual history may be felt in the worn stones of St. Peter's Basilica, seen glorified in Michelangelo's great artistic homage to human faith in the Sistine Chapel, found written on ancient Aramaic burial stones protected in the Vatican's Judaic collection, a new leader has been chosen for the Catholic Church. An elder of the South American faithful, a Jesuit known for his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, this humble man represents virtues of simplicity of faith, tending to the needs of the poor, and building a strong - and honest - church. His chosen name as Pope is Francesco: Francis, for St. Francis of Assisi, the historical voice of the poor and great reformer of the church. A declaration that faith is not about power but purpose.
What destroys faith most fully is hypocrisy. All of us, I believe, want faith to begin in spiritual honesty, to be lived genuinely, and defended in truth. This humble man, who has re-christened himself after the most plain of saints, offers hope; dedication to the reforms and healing needed within Catholicism around the world. As Pope Francis led the faithful from the balcony of the Vatican tonight in the Lord's Prayer, I could not help but feel deeply moved. His simplicity is authentic : there is an experience of purity in his humble smile, in his joy in the people, in his obvious love of his church. The moment stands as a great sweep of fresh air through the spiritual work of humanity on this planet. I wish Pope Francis many blessings in bringing forth meaningful change.
Habemus Papam Franciscum.
- Walt Whitman
My thoughts were swept away today. I abandoned working on my writing project to witness the choosing of a new pope in the great city of Rome. Perhaps the last time in my life this ancient religious event, a papal conclave of 114 Cardinals gathered from the farthest corners of the globe, will occur. For me, the great wonder of Roma lies in the rich intersection of Roman history in ruin and architecture, the artistic wonders present in every fountain, church, and piazza, in the venerable Jewish Ghetto, and in the Vatican's artistic and religious treasures. Within this city mingle centuries of letters, art, and the great philosophical ideals of human history.
3/13/13...a day of significance.
The rituals of faith have once more brought forth change. Cloistered deep within the Vatican, where Judeo-Christian spiritual history may be felt in the worn stones of St. Peter's Basilica, seen glorified in Michelangelo's great artistic homage to human faith in the Sistine Chapel, found written on ancient Aramaic burial stones protected in the Vatican's Judaic collection, a new leader has been chosen for the Catholic Church. An elder of the South American faithful, a Jesuit known for his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, this humble man represents virtues of simplicity of faith, tending to the needs of the poor, and building a strong - and honest - church. His chosen name as Pope is Francesco: Francis, for St. Francis of Assisi, the historical voice of the poor and great reformer of the church. A declaration that faith is not about power but purpose.
What destroys faith most fully is hypocrisy. All of us, I believe, want faith to begin in spiritual honesty, to be lived genuinely, and defended in truth. This humble man, who has re-christened himself after the most plain of saints, offers hope; dedication to the reforms and healing needed within Catholicism around the world. As Pope Francis led the faithful from the balcony of the Vatican tonight in the Lord's Prayer, I could not help but feel deeply moved. His simplicity is authentic : there is an experience of purity in his humble smile, in his joy in the people, in his obvious love of his church. The moment stands as a great sweep of fresh air through the spiritual work of humanity on this planet. I wish Pope Francis many blessings in bringing forth meaningful change.
Habemus Papam Franciscum.
March 5, 2013
The Art of Care
Technology and life only become complex if you let it be so.
~ John Maeda, "The Laws of Simplicity"
WOMEN IN MEDICINE
Saturday, March 16, 2012
Bozarth Center, Spokane Washington
Breakfast meeting & 9:00am talk on The Geography of Love,
"Compassion as a Pillar of Medicine: the Art of Care."
This upcoming Saturday the 16th of March, I will have the joy and privilege of addressing the Spokane County Medical Society. In particular, the women physicians of the SCMS, gathered at the Bozarth Center in Spokane, Washington, for their annual retreat.
This is an honor for me on many levels. To begin with, these busy and generally overworked physicians have made time for reading, and not just the professional journals and scientific work necessary to keep current in their specialities. These physicians also read for discovery, to engage in new ideas, for pleasure. These medical professionals, many who are also in book clubs, are terrific examples for all of us who feel that our lives have become impossible to tame - slaves to our calendars - and wonder where the days have gone where we used to get "lost in a book." Yes, we can still find time for reading: through a book club, a book event, e-readers on our exercise bikes, a book last thing we dip into before sleep. It takes commitment.
But all of life takes commitment, right? In my upcoming talk with these medical professionals, for whom "commitment" is organic to their ethic and calling, the concept of committing to care about the experiences of patients, the importance of compassion in scientific practice, and one's own emotional life in and out of medicine...all these ideas are both familiar and difficult. Who has the time? What will be the pushback from health care organizations slicing away minutes and hours; or insurance practices imposed on medical practitioners unable to spend that extra moment with a sorrowing, shocked, or uncertain patient or their family?
I recently finished a book by John Maeda, MIT professor and digital artist, called "The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life" (MIT Press, 2006), wherein he tells a story regarding the importance of balancing meaning and clarity. The story goes loosely as follows: A wealthy socialite in Italy, given the news of a terminal cancer diagnosis (certainly clarity of message), was then told by her physician, "I have a ten minute limit per patient." In her fragile state this woman left her doctor's office in understandable shock, without either a sense of support or life options. In her last five months this brave woman decided to address this glaring gap in compassionate care and created a foundation to build beautiful, intensely artful areas in oncology centers where patients receiving this kind of life changing/shattering news would have a place to, as Maeda so gently puts it, "soak their minds and hearts." Maeda's point was that art gives a reason to live, and design, clarity of message. In the practice of medicine (design devoted to clarity of diagnosis and treatment), the art of care, compassion, is one pillar of patient care that addresses a genuine human spiritual need but is often overlooked.
I am deeply grateful to this gathering of physicians for their interest in my memoir, The Geography of Love, and my individual journey through the harrowing and enlightening experience of terminal illness with a loved one. But I especially love the strong energy of their personal commitment to the art of care, to literature, reading, and renewal. What we do says so much about who we are.
~ John Maeda, "The Laws of Simplicity"
WOMEN IN MEDICINE
Saturday, March 16, 2012
Bozarth Center, Spokane Washington
Breakfast meeting & 9:00am talk on The Geography of Love,
"Compassion as a Pillar of Medicine: the Art of Care."
This upcoming Saturday the 16th of March, I will have the joy and privilege of addressing the Spokane County Medical Society. In particular, the women physicians of the SCMS, gathered at the Bozarth Center in Spokane, Washington, for their annual retreat.
This is an honor for me on many levels. To begin with, these busy and generally overworked physicians have made time for reading, and not just the professional journals and scientific work necessary to keep current in their specialities. These physicians also read for discovery, to engage in new ideas, for pleasure. These medical professionals, many who are also in book clubs, are terrific examples for all of us who feel that our lives have become impossible to tame - slaves to our calendars - and wonder where the days have gone where we used to get "lost in a book." Yes, we can still find time for reading: through a book club, a book event, e-readers on our exercise bikes, a book last thing we dip into before sleep. It takes commitment.
But all of life takes commitment, right? In my upcoming talk with these medical professionals, for whom "commitment" is organic to their ethic and calling, the concept of committing to care about the experiences of patients, the importance of compassion in scientific practice, and one's own emotional life in and out of medicine...all these ideas are both familiar and difficult. Who has the time? What will be the pushback from health care organizations slicing away minutes and hours; or insurance practices imposed on medical practitioners unable to spend that extra moment with a sorrowing, shocked, or uncertain patient or their family?
I recently finished a book by John Maeda, MIT professor and digital artist, called "The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life" (MIT Press, 2006), wherein he tells a story regarding the importance of balancing meaning and clarity. The story goes loosely as follows: A wealthy socialite in Italy, given the news of a terminal cancer diagnosis (certainly clarity of message), was then told by her physician, "I have a ten minute limit per patient." In her fragile state this woman left her doctor's office in understandable shock, without either a sense of support or life options. In her last five months this brave woman decided to address this glaring gap in compassionate care and created a foundation to build beautiful, intensely artful areas in oncology centers where patients receiving this kind of life changing/shattering news would have a place to, as Maeda so gently puts it, "soak their minds and hearts." Maeda's point was that art gives a reason to live, and design, clarity of message. In the practice of medicine (design devoted to clarity of diagnosis and treatment), the art of care, compassion, is one pillar of patient care that addresses a genuine human spiritual need but is often overlooked.
I am deeply grateful to this gathering of physicians for their interest in my memoir, The Geography of Love, and my individual journey through the harrowing and enlightening experience of terminal illness with a loved one. But I especially love the strong energy of their personal commitment to the art of care, to literature, reading, and renewal. What we do says so much about who we are.
February 25, 2013
Creative Focus
STUDIO GHOSTS
When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you. Your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics...and one by one, if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting, you walk out.
~ from a talk with Philip Guston
I sat in on several interesting lectures at Stanford University recently for Parents Weekend - a generous welcome into the academic richness that Stanford offers, like many great schools, to parents of students. An opportunity to dip a toe in the deep waters our children swim in intellectually. I learned about physics research in the search for the nature of deep matter, the inability of our brains to genuinely multitask efficiently and what that means in a distracted-attention world of technology versus face to face interaction, and the importance of making information on healthy living part of learning about global community ecosystems.
Most remarkable of all I had the unforgettable experience, with a handful of other parents in a small acoustic studio, of hearing the Hagia Sofia given virtual voice after a hundred years of silence through the collaboration of Capella Romana, the ancient choral music chant group, with the Stanford Art and Art History Department, and the Stanford CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) facility. This project captured and replicated the unique, extended, reverberating wave patterns of pure sound possible only in the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, the largest stone and marble structure of its kind even today. Early monastic chant music, sung by Cappella Romana, was recorded through advanced technical audio patterns, defined and matched to that of the Hagia Sofia. Listening to this collaboration of history, human voice, and audio science, was to experience the recreation of the visceral unearthly beauty that once filled an ancient Byzantine mosque. The soul of the Basilica of Holy Wisdom, long silenced, filled space like light itself.
How does this link to "creative focus"? Simply. I listened to my son and his friends speak with engaging passion about their studies, of the intimate questions of their lives, and the linkage of these experiences to the Great Questions of our times. It became clear getting from "interested to expert" is a journey of FOCUS. Focus, in balance with the many polycentric obligations of life. We cannot delve into one thing to the exclusion of other commitments. Nor can we attend only to a universe of opportunities and truly experience anything deeply. A balance point is key. What is truly important is learning where balance lies within.
The quote above from Philip Guston, on painting, reflects the natural progression of social learning to personal expression. We move from the intellectual to the creative, from repetition to inspiration, from without to within, and from the known to the unique. We begin in knowledge of our greater culture and its gifts. We then learn through the able mentoring of others. We practice in the structure of training. We take flight in the space that is our own. This weekend was a deep reminder of the importance of focus in creative, and vice versa.
I recommend the recordings of Cappella Romana for inspiration. I wish I had been there earlier this month for the recreation of the Hagia Sofia recordings as part of the inauguration of the new acoustic wonder that is Bing Concert Hall at Stanford. But it pleases me nonetheless to know that great beauty is out there, everywhere. All the time.
When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you. Your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics...and one by one, if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting, you walk out.
~ from a talk with Philip Guston
I sat in on several interesting lectures at Stanford University recently for Parents Weekend - a generous welcome into the academic richness that Stanford offers, like many great schools, to parents of students. An opportunity to dip a toe in the deep waters our children swim in intellectually. I learned about physics research in the search for the nature of deep matter, the inability of our brains to genuinely multitask efficiently and what that means in a distracted-attention world of technology versus face to face interaction, and the importance of making information on healthy living part of learning about global community ecosystems.
Most remarkable of all I had the unforgettable experience, with a handful of other parents in a small acoustic studio, of hearing the Hagia Sofia given virtual voice after a hundred years of silence through the collaboration of Capella Romana, the ancient choral music chant group, with the Stanford Art and Art History Department, and the Stanford CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) facility. This project captured and replicated the unique, extended, reverberating wave patterns of pure sound possible only in the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, the largest stone and marble structure of its kind even today. Early monastic chant music, sung by Cappella Romana, was recorded through advanced technical audio patterns, defined and matched to that of the Hagia Sofia. Listening to this collaboration of history, human voice, and audio science, was to experience the recreation of the visceral unearthly beauty that once filled an ancient Byzantine mosque. The soul of the Basilica of Holy Wisdom, long silenced, filled space like light itself.
How does this link to "creative focus"? Simply. I listened to my son and his friends speak with engaging passion about their studies, of the intimate questions of their lives, and the linkage of these experiences to the Great Questions of our times. It became clear getting from "interested to expert" is a journey of FOCUS. Focus, in balance with the many polycentric obligations of life. We cannot delve into one thing to the exclusion of other commitments. Nor can we attend only to a universe of opportunities and truly experience anything deeply. A balance point is key. What is truly important is learning where balance lies within.
The quote above from Philip Guston, on painting, reflects the natural progression of social learning to personal expression. We move from the intellectual to the creative, from repetition to inspiration, from without to within, and from the known to the unique. We begin in knowledge of our greater culture and its gifts. We then learn through the able mentoring of others. We practice in the structure of training. We take flight in the space that is our own. This weekend was a deep reminder of the importance of focus in creative, and vice versa.
I recommend the recordings of Cappella Romana for inspiration. I wish I had been there earlier this month for the recreation of the Hagia Sofia recordings as part of the inauguration of the new acoustic wonder that is Bing Concert Hall at Stanford. But it pleases me nonetheless to know that great beauty is out there, everywhere. All the time.
February 18, 2013
Pocket of my Mind
Today would be Kenneth Alan Grunzweig's 70th birthday. If he had lived to see it. Yesterday was our 25th anniversary. Had he lived to share it with me. My favorite work of anything I have yet written or conceived, remains the memoir dedicated to Ken published by Broadway Books in 2008, simply titled, "The Geography of Love." For that's what it was, the landscape of a relationship. Ours.
Ken's charm and brilliant wit were legendary. His grace and capacity for compassion and loyalty enduring. His life remains a great teacher to the many who knew him, called him friend. I take comfort in the knowledge our children walk a path today he would be proud of. His love of life carried me on. In the same vein that I love to run, the spirit moves forward. I am grateful, every day, for the beautiful life he left me and led me through and to. He is the presence, the faith beneath the wings of my new marriage that lifts us both I believe.
In the ten years since Ken's death, I have grown stronger in my conviction that all is connected, nothing truly lost, memory indelible like a scent in the air. Last night I dreamed a sweet dream of a day with McDuff, my wheaten Scottie dog, gone a year now. A loyal, funny, adoring animal, McDuff was "the true friend." Companion of the early years of grief. Alone on the pine trails, the Scottie and me. Waking from that dream of walking with Duffy, and thinking of Ken, and my mother whose birthday is this Sunday, I realized the only things that ever truly do matter are imprinted on our hearts. We live in our thoughts and our thoughts are a continuous media mix of moment and dream, memory and experience. We have only to know to love.
In honor of our Ken,
A LETTER FROM THE CARIBBEAN
by Barbara Howes
Breezeways in the tropics winnow the air,
Are ajar to its least breath
But hold back, in a feint of architecture,
The boisterous sun
Pouring down upon
The island like a cloudburst. They
Slant to loft air, they curve, they screen
The wind's wild gaiety
Which tosses palm
Branches about like a marshal's plumes.
Within this filtered, latticed
World, where spools of shadow
Form, lift and change,
The triumph of incoming air
Is that it is there,
Cooling and salving us. Louvres,
Trellises, vines -music also-
Shape the arboreal wind, make skeins
Of it, and a maze
To catch shade. The days
Are all variety, blowing;
Aswirl in a perpetual current
Of wind, shadow, sun,
I marvel at the capacity
Of memory
Which, in some deep pocket
Of my mind, preserves you whole-
As a wind is wind, as the lion-taming
Sun is sun, you are, you stay;
Nothing is lost, nothing has blown away.
Ken's charm and brilliant wit were legendary. His grace and capacity for compassion and loyalty enduring. His life remains a great teacher to the many who knew him, called him friend. I take comfort in the knowledge our children walk a path today he would be proud of. His love of life carried me on. In the same vein that I love to run, the spirit moves forward. I am grateful, every day, for the beautiful life he left me and led me through and to. He is the presence, the faith beneath the wings of my new marriage that lifts us both I believe.
In the ten years since Ken's death, I have grown stronger in my conviction that all is connected, nothing truly lost, memory indelible like a scent in the air. Last night I dreamed a sweet dream of a day with McDuff, my wheaten Scottie dog, gone a year now. A loyal, funny, adoring animal, McDuff was "the true friend." Companion of the early years of grief. Alone on the pine trails, the Scottie and me. Waking from that dream of walking with Duffy, and thinking of Ken, and my mother whose birthday is this Sunday, I realized the only things that ever truly do matter are imprinted on our hearts. We live in our thoughts and our thoughts are a continuous media mix of moment and dream, memory and experience. We have only to know to love.
In honor of our Ken,
A LETTER FROM THE CARIBBEAN
by Barbara Howes
Breezeways in the tropics winnow the air,
Are ajar to its least breath
But hold back, in a feint of architecture,
The boisterous sun
Pouring down upon
The island like a cloudburst. They
Slant to loft air, they curve, they screen
The wind's wild gaiety
Which tosses palm
Branches about like a marshal's plumes.
Within this filtered, latticed
World, where spools of shadow
Form, lift and change,
The triumph of incoming air
Is that it is there,
Cooling and salving us. Louvres,
Trellises, vines -music also-
Shape the arboreal wind, make skeins
Of it, and a maze
To catch shade. The days
Are all variety, blowing;
Aswirl in a perpetual current
Of wind, shadow, sun,
I marvel at the capacity
Of memory
Which, in some deep pocket
Of my mind, preserves you whole-
As a wind is wind, as the lion-taming
Sun is sun, you are, you stay;
Nothing is lost, nothing has blown away.
February 11, 2013
Claim Your Voice
We have trouble connecting with our own confident writing voice that is inside all of us, and even when we do connect and write well, we don't claim it. I am not saying that everyone is Shakespeare, but I am saying that everyone has a genuine voice that can express his or her life with honest dignity and detail. There seems to be a gap between the greatness we are capable of and the way we see ourselves and, therefore, see our work.
~ from "Writing Down the Bones," Natalie Goldberg
I believe this observation, by beloved creative writing guru Natalie Goldberg, can be extrapolated to apply to almost any form of endeavor. Art is work, work is art. Our perception of our personal capabilities is often hobbled by our fears of inadequacy. It is hard to produce good work if before we even commence we don't believe we can. Even harder in the wake of actual failure. How can I do better when I did so horribly before? Goldberg's observation contains two important stumbling blocks - when we do connect and do something well, we don't claim it. And second, heed the gap between capability and confidence. And confidence, my friends, is one leaky boat in need of constant repair.
Anyone who has endured the ravages of a critique group, work review, unkind agent or editor, boss, or bad public reviews, knows only too well the two-edged sword which divides confidence from the critical importance of consensus. How can we be aware and supportive of our own developing inner voice when the room is shouting in unison for us to do better, differently, or altogether stop? (Or as more is often the case, to mimic work known and approved.) We can't. But somewhere in our inner selves is the door that keeps the outside world out. We need to find it and make sure it swings both ways. Any artist, any person, needs to be able to tune in and tune out, as well as listen in when the world really has something to say.
How do we know when to listen? I don't really have the answer to that. It's almost instinctive I think, an inner reflex beyond fight or flight that says, "Heh, wait. That made sense." Our genuine selves are always in hot pursuit of stellar expressions of being; creative breakthroughs that nearly blind or light the night. We love the spectacular within ourselves and within others indivisibly. To do our own best work is mostly about staying out of the traffic intersection of public comment as long as possible. As Goldberg advises, first find and own the strong voice that is yours alone. Then be confident of a place in the room.
I generally urge new writers in my workshops to go slow moving from a "work in progress" to feeling a work is substantially formed and ready for critique. I think supportive and positive critique groups are useful in any form of project development, including writing, but they can also dismember an idea, strangle innovation, strip the twinkle right out of pizazz. The importance - way down the road - of positive consensus, critical praise, group approval or industry preference (This is the year of vampire novels, oh wait, that was last year...) cannot be dismissed. IF you are going public with your work. Not everyone should or will choose to be public. Emily Dickinson is often the star of this debate. Would the poet's work have been as strong, as confident and fresh, if she had been writing for a-farthing-a-day press? While we may or may not ever intend to take our work into the world, the first step remains the same: be genuine. Identify and nurture. Silence the inner (or outer) critic, and create until creating is one and the same as the voice in your head.
We all have something to say about this world. Paint, sing, dance, play, design, innovate. There's but one of the each of us. (Generally speaking, cloning efforts aside.) Begin here. Begin within. Pursue the genuine.
~ from "Writing Down the Bones," Natalie Goldberg
I believe this observation, by beloved creative writing guru Natalie Goldberg, can be extrapolated to apply to almost any form of endeavor. Art is work, work is art. Our perception of our personal capabilities is often hobbled by our fears of inadequacy. It is hard to produce good work if before we even commence we don't believe we can. Even harder in the wake of actual failure. How can I do better when I did so horribly before? Goldberg's observation contains two important stumbling blocks - when we do connect and do something well, we don't claim it. And second, heed the gap between capability and confidence. And confidence, my friends, is one leaky boat in need of constant repair.
Anyone who has endured the ravages of a critique group, work review, unkind agent or editor, boss, or bad public reviews, knows only too well the two-edged sword which divides confidence from the critical importance of consensus. How can we be aware and supportive of our own developing inner voice when the room is shouting in unison for us to do better, differently, or altogether stop? (Or as more is often the case, to mimic work known and approved.) We can't. But somewhere in our inner selves is the door that keeps the outside world out. We need to find it and make sure it swings both ways. Any artist, any person, needs to be able to tune in and tune out, as well as listen in when the world really has something to say.
How do we know when to listen? I don't really have the answer to that. It's almost instinctive I think, an inner reflex beyond fight or flight that says, "Heh, wait. That made sense." Our genuine selves are always in hot pursuit of stellar expressions of being; creative breakthroughs that nearly blind or light the night. We love the spectacular within ourselves and within others indivisibly. To do our own best work is mostly about staying out of the traffic intersection of public comment as long as possible. As Goldberg advises, first find and own the strong voice that is yours alone. Then be confident of a place in the room.
I generally urge new writers in my workshops to go slow moving from a "work in progress" to feeling a work is substantially formed and ready for critique. I think supportive and positive critique groups are useful in any form of project development, including writing, but they can also dismember an idea, strangle innovation, strip the twinkle right out of pizazz. The importance - way down the road - of positive consensus, critical praise, group approval or industry preference (This is the year of vampire novels, oh wait, that was last year...) cannot be dismissed. IF you are going public with your work. Not everyone should or will choose to be public. Emily Dickinson is often the star of this debate. Would the poet's work have been as strong, as confident and fresh, if she had been writing for a-farthing-a-day press? While we may or may not ever intend to take our work into the world, the first step remains the same: be genuine. Identify and nurture. Silence the inner (or outer) critic, and create until creating is one and the same as the voice in your head.
We all have something to say about this world. Paint, sing, dance, play, design, innovate. There's but one of the each of us. (Generally speaking, cloning efforts aside.) Begin here. Begin within. Pursue the genuine.
February 4, 2013
Taking Risks
Cherish your own emotions and never under value them.
We are not here to do what has already been done.
~ Robert Henri
There is a famous essay by Robert Henri in the collection of his essays and letters, "The Art Spirit," which begins with the words Age need not destroy beauty.
Henri, a painter, was speaking of the spirit within people that makes them engaging subjects, as well as addressing the importance of freeing art from the cliche, the facile elements of likability or familiarity. Henri then explains to his students,
There are people who grow more beautiful as they grow older. If age means to them an expansion and development of character this mental and spiritual state will have its affect on the physical. A face which in the early days was only pretty or even dull, will be transformed. The eyes will attain mysterious depths, there will be a gesture in the whole face of greater sensibility... About the portrait of Whistler painted of his mother I have always had a great feeling of beauty. She is old. But there is something in her face and gesture that tells of the integrity of her life... There she sits, and in her poise one reads the history of a splendid personality. She is at once so gentle, so experienced, and so womanly strong."
He ends by saying, Beauty is an intangible thing.
The reason for the inclusion of this excerpt is not to launch a beauty campaign in celebration of the aged, but to highlight within Henri's words the exquisite inviolable nature of what is fundamental. For example, besides the intangibility of beauty, how about the qualities of integrity, courage, wisdom, embracing risk? For the artist, a great deal of process is taking the intangible and making of it something present, material on the page, depicted on canvas, conveyed in song, movement or stone. I think it is incredibly important to respect the emotional and intuitive side of work, to know our muses and our process, to let the permeable elements of character and the patina of experience soak through us. To invite in the transient, that we might filter the firmament for inspiration and then make something marvelous of it.
I wrote about creative blocks last week, and have been fortunate (Hallelujah!) to have had a good week of creative work in the wake of that self-exposed essay. I think a word about "risk" is important here as I go on exploring creative blocks and address elements of process that work for me. And I do mean good old-fashioned risk: uncertainty, openness to failure, likelihood of setback, unprecedented, undetermined, ideas or work as yet un- or undervalued. Those in the arts risk every day they commit to be original. Originality is the hardest and most time-consuming and risky of any impetus toward creativity. Another print of a successful painting is not a risk. A year or three spent in a studio working with a fragile medium toward an original goal, is.
So why risk? Because in the fateful moments following a personal commitment to be original, risk floods in: immediately the powerful ebb of doubt sucks us back toward uncertainty. But if we stop flailing around and accept the powerful fear we feel in the surge, we become instantly unblocked. The worst creative block anyone can face is the fear of taking a risk. This is the dreaded fear of the second-time author, the painter who wants to try something entirely new, the dancer without a mentor or description, the story that cannot be indexed. We curl inside, quaking. What if my time ends up wasted, I never publish, I'm thought a fool, my work is loathed, I can't get it done? What if it doesn't sell? We believe that art, like beauty, rests in consensus. Not true. Genuine beauty and talent lie in the unique. No two of us see or appreciate wonder alike.
The thing is, we succeed by taking the risk. As if risk were a mirage that dissolves when confronted with commitment.
Making a decision has launched a thousand pieces of work for me. I imagine this, I want to do this, I will. I try and disconnect any expectation for the project other than beginning and committing to a natural follow through. I am accepting, if not thrilled, if the work dies on the vine. Sometimes you can only experiment with an idea to know if it will work. Failure is a draft, nothing more. And, sometimes originality is not good, it's just...original. I think of those outcomes as practice of craft, honing the creative vision. Now and then everything about the work is right, but its place in the world is not now. Whereas once I used to deplore the post-mortem success, now I view it as a kind of bow from the grave. Good one world, you finally got it.
The point is, just begin. Decide to begin. Before you'll know it, you will have something beautiful, tangible...and yours.
We are not here to do what has already been done.
~ Robert Henri
There is a famous essay by Robert Henri in the collection of his essays and letters, "The Art Spirit," which begins with the words Age need not destroy beauty.
Henri, a painter, was speaking of the spirit within people that makes them engaging subjects, as well as addressing the importance of freeing art from the cliche, the facile elements of likability or familiarity. Henri then explains to his students,
There are people who grow more beautiful as they grow older. If age means to them an expansion and development of character this mental and spiritual state will have its affect on the physical. A face which in the early days was only pretty or even dull, will be transformed. The eyes will attain mysterious depths, there will be a gesture in the whole face of greater sensibility... About the portrait of Whistler painted of his mother I have always had a great feeling of beauty. She is old. But there is something in her face and gesture that tells of the integrity of her life... There she sits, and in her poise one reads the history of a splendid personality. She is at once so gentle, so experienced, and so womanly strong."
He ends by saying, Beauty is an intangible thing.
The reason for the inclusion of this excerpt is not to launch a beauty campaign in celebration of the aged, but to highlight within Henri's words the exquisite inviolable nature of what is fundamental. For example, besides the intangibility of beauty, how about the qualities of integrity, courage, wisdom, embracing risk? For the artist, a great deal of process is taking the intangible and making of it something present, material on the page, depicted on canvas, conveyed in song, movement or stone. I think it is incredibly important to respect the emotional and intuitive side of work, to know our muses and our process, to let the permeable elements of character and the patina of experience soak through us. To invite in the transient, that we might filter the firmament for inspiration and then make something marvelous of it.
I wrote about creative blocks last week, and have been fortunate (Hallelujah!) to have had a good week of creative work in the wake of that self-exposed essay. I think a word about "risk" is important here as I go on exploring creative blocks and address elements of process that work for me. And I do mean good old-fashioned risk: uncertainty, openness to failure, likelihood of setback, unprecedented, undetermined, ideas or work as yet un- or undervalued. Those in the arts risk every day they commit to be original. Originality is the hardest and most time-consuming and risky of any impetus toward creativity. Another print of a successful painting is not a risk. A year or three spent in a studio working with a fragile medium toward an original goal, is.
So why risk? Because in the fateful moments following a personal commitment to be original, risk floods in: immediately the powerful ebb of doubt sucks us back toward uncertainty. But if we stop flailing around and accept the powerful fear we feel in the surge, we become instantly unblocked. The worst creative block anyone can face is the fear of taking a risk. This is the dreaded fear of the second-time author, the painter who wants to try something entirely new, the dancer without a mentor or description, the story that cannot be indexed. We curl inside, quaking. What if my time ends up wasted, I never publish, I'm thought a fool, my work is loathed, I can't get it done? What if it doesn't sell? We believe that art, like beauty, rests in consensus. Not true. Genuine beauty and talent lie in the unique. No two of us see or appreciate wonder alike.
The thing is, we succeed by taking the risk. As if risk were a mirage that dissolves when confronted with commitment.
Making a decision has launched a thousand pieces of work for me. I imagine this, I want to do this, I will. I try and disconnect any expectation for the project other than beginning and committing to a natural follow through. I am accepting, if not thrilled, if the work dies on the vine. Sometimes you can only experiment with an idea to know if it will work. Failure is a draft, nothing more. And, sometimes originality is not good, it's just...original. I think of those outcomes as practice of craft, honing the creative vision. Now and then everything about the work is right, but its place in the world is not now. Whereas once I used to deplore the post-mortem success, now I view it as a kind of bow from the grave. Good one world, you finally got it.
The point is, just begin. Decide to begin. Before you'll know it, you will have something beautiful, tangible...and yours.
