That Which Moves You
My notions of art were formed during high school. Three years of art history as part of a core of humanities classes made me something of an art snob. We memorized paintings and artists the way chemistry students memorize elements and atomic weights1. It took decades to shake the snobbery, decades to go from “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” to “art is that which moves you.”
And since just about anything can move someone, just about anything can be art. I have read within the depths of a scientific paper, a sentence that moved me. That sentence was art. I have sat through a Sunday mass with a mediocre choir, only to hear a few perfect notes from a violin added to the performance—those notes lifting the whole thing to the level of art. I have seen elegant computer code that made me pause in wonder and admiration, something I imagine akin to elegance in mathematics or a brilliant chess move. All of them moving, all of them art.
I was thinking of this because of two recent performances I saw. The first was a high school performance of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” My son, no longer the little man, had the role of the Wolf. He’d been doing community theater for a few years now, but this was his first musical. He’d also been taking voice lessons. I’d never heard him sing until the night of the performance. I was blown away. I sat slack-jawed in the darkness as he sang, took choreographed steps, performed, became his character, creepily following Little Red Riding Hood on a stroll through the woods. In fact, it was not only his performance but the entire 2-1/2 hour performance, the actors, the musicians in the live orchestra, the perfect timing of the special effects, all of it moving me. It did not seem like a high school performance but something you’d see on a bigger stage. There was a level of professionalism and confidence that transcended the age of the performers. The art snob of my youth had seen performances of The Phantom of the Opera in Los Angeles. I’d seen performances of Les Mis; I’d seen a wonderful performance of Henry V at Shakespeare in the Park. I had never been more moved by the performing arts than when I sat in stunned silence, watching high school students perform Into the Woods.
This weekend, I went with my wife and mother-in-law to see The High Kings play at the Birchmere. This was my second time seeing The High Kings perform. My mother-in-law has become something of a groupie of this Irish band. I like both the band and the venue. Like the first time I saw them, we got seats at a table right at the foot of the stage. Unlike the first time I saw the band, this time, they had an opening act—two really—Mary Black, and opening for Mary Black was Róisín O—who turned out to be her daughter.
The High Kings on Friday night.Róisín O did a short, 4-song set, but did it in an incredibly clever way that told a story without seeming to tell a story. Sometimes it is hard to know if art moves you, but this wasn’t one of those times. Even after her first song, I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks, hard to reach tears because of my glasses. What an incredible voice she has, strong clear, pitch-perfect. I was sad to see her leave after such a short set2.
Mary Black performed 10 songs, after which the High Kings took the stage. Their secret sauce is their harmonizing. It is incredible, especially when they are just three feet in front of you. It helps, too, that they play well, have great songs, and occasionally fall back on a traditional favorite. Perhaps because of the opening acts, they played a shorter set than the last time I saw them.
It had been a long day. It had been a long week. I was tired as we approached show time. But these artists and the art they created on stage revitalized me. And it moved me.
Isn’t that what art is really about?
I was going to say elements and their discoverers, to maintain parallelism, but the sad fact is that in all my chemistry classes in high school and college, I never once learned the name of a scientist who discovered an element. I had to wait a few years for Isaac Asimov to teach me that.
︎But delighted when she returned to the stage at the very end for a group encore. ︎Did you enjoy this post?
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