restingmotion

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.

 

 

The Good, The Bad, and the Merely Meh....

It is possible I am coming down with a cold.  It is also possible that I merely have a sore throat due to sinus drainage from allergies.  I am hoping for the later, but am not yet convinced.  I have had more colds this winter-into-spring-that an any time since the first winter I moved to Knoxville and started spending more time with a certain 5-year old, un-accustomed as I was to school-yard germs.  I am ready to be home, and in my mind that alone, the fact that I am not home, is the source of all these niggly little upsets.  Perhaps not, but please don't burst my bubble.  The thought of home is a good reward.

Despite my scratchy throat, today is a good day. Despite my tendency toward petulant self-pity, I cannot help but smile. The sun is shining.  I went for a walk.  I've scanned, shredded, and carted away several boxes of old paperwork that I refuse to move one more time. I had a bowl of red curry soup for lunch and the spice of the curry cleared my sinus while the creaminess of the coconut milk base soothed my scratchy throat.

I read quite a few good books in April although not perhaps books that led me into deep thought.  Sometimes thinking is overrated.  One needs simply to be allowed to enjoy.  I had not read anything by Kate Morton or Belinda Bauer before, but I shall seek out their other novels.   I thought that Ta-Nehisi Coates managed the almost impossible in The Beautiful Struggle.  There is one point where he seemed to encapsulate perfectly in poetic prose that moment of self-realization and actualization, when a child begins to come into him- (or her-) self, when a person stands on the cusp of knowing who they are in the world.  He does this, and he reminded this reader of her own childhood and the childhood of her friends, touching on the universality of humanity, while also laying bare the fragility of childhood and the fragility of experience.  Coates childhood was not my childhood, could never be, and yet in one moment he simultaneously tied us all together and shredded all my myths.  By making me feel what we had in common, he also made me feel the shattering differences of our experiences and what we can never share. A book worth reading again.

 

But not all the book were keepers. I took a couple of bags of books I don't think I will want to look at again to the second-hand book store, including a few items from my April reading list. Included were  the Dan Brown, which was entertaining enough (meh), the Mary Higgins Clark, which I found to be the weakest of the Under Suspicion series.  But then I am really not a Mary Higgins Clark fan to begin with, so I am probably also not a good judge.  I also sold Master and Margarita, which was good, and may well be one of the great books of the 20th century, but which didn't really resonate with me.  I won't read it again, unlike the other "great" satiric 20th century novel The Tin Drum, which I adored and will read again and again.  Also on the "meh" list is  The Beautiful Edible Garden.  It is one of three books I have been reading as I think about my garden and my dreams for its evolution, and it has pretty pictures, and great bones if one doesn't know much about garden design, but it doesn't really offer enough substance to be useful, nor does it offer any options or information for readers in areas other than the author's California planting zone.  

Otherwise construction and planning and packing continue apace.  The first Saturday Market Square Farmer's market was last weekend.  I tried to go early but only partially succeeded.  It was already crowded when I arrived at 9:15, but I still enjoyed walking around and shopping.   

I didn't buy the bread, although I ran into a friend, who did.  We chatted and shopped and decided to go to brunch.  I intended to return to that first stand to purchase some of those wonderful white Japanese turnips you see in the top picture but instead we dawdled and chatted and by the time I got back, all the Japanese turnips were gone.  Alas.  I tried some small red turnips instead, which I had never had before. They were delicious, a mild turnip with an almost buttery roundness to their flavor..

Here is my small haul.  The red turnips are on the right with the beautiful greens.  I also bought rainbow radishes, which I am still eating.  The radish greens got a little wilted while we chatted and brunched, but it didn't really matter as I prefer them cooked anyway. The beef knuckle bone went into a pot of stock, which simmered away in the slow cooker most of yesterday.  In fact, a ladle of fresh stock, the remainder of the greens, and some left-over steak made for a lovely soup when I finally returned home for a late dinner.  I had worried about over-buying.  Instead I may have not purchased enough as everything is now gone, except a couple of radishes and some eggs. 

One final good thing.  The tile installers finished the tile in the powder room.  The painters  need to return and repaint the trim, which is supposed to be black and not blue.  The schedule calls for black.  But even that cannot dim my enthusiasm.  Trim can be repainted.  The tile and the sink make me very happy. Eventually, the black trim and the wallpaper will make me even happier.  

 

 

 

 

Necessary Accounting and an Update

April has been an interesting month.  I have been looking forward to the arrival of May, mostly because it signaled, in my mind at least, the beginning of the end, the countdown to returning home.  Of course things are never quite so simple.  I learned yesterday that my return will be delayed, and so I ended April with a bit of a whimper, and a need to pull inward for a bit, a need to resettle my rapidly fraying nerves.

 

But there were good things in April as well.

1. I reconnected with this blog after a month-long sabbatical.  I believe the break, and may own process of remodeling and reconstruction, of uprooting and reconsidering, has given me new focus that is reflected here as well as elsewhere in my life.  
2. I committed to posting daily, or almost daily, updates on Instagram.  This works for me personally, as a way to focus on good things happening, and occasionally not so good.  I see the two formats, Instagram and Blog, as different aspects of a personal journal/blog/scrapbook and I keep that I will maintain this format at least for a while.  I am trying to avoid duplication between the two sites, but so far that has not happened, and avoiding all duplication may be an unrealistic expectation, just as avoiding duplication and repetition in life is unrealistic. 
3. I finally removed the old subscribe button and added a "subscribe by email' on the side of this blog.  I should probably add a link to Instagram as well.
4. I've settled more into being comfortable with myself, who I am and who I want to be.  This means that I am also far less concerned with what anyone else thinks.  That realization and self-acceptance, has allowed me to become something more of a social butterfly than I had ever thought possible.   I'm still an introvert, but I'm also definitely a social introvert.  And no that is not a contradiction in terms. 
5. Many plants that I put in last spring, unsuspecting as I was of the impending disaster area that my yard would become, survived the winter and the demolition and reappeared this year, a joyful reminder that life carries on. 

I planted the both the iris tectorum (at the rear) and the other plant with purple flowers last spring.  I don't know what the busy plant in front is, with the small purple flowers, but I love it.  Luckily I know where I got it, so I may have to take a snippet of the plant with me when I go shopping for more.  Much as I would like to be playing in the small garden bed now, I have been forcing myself to hols back.  As you will see below, too much is yet to happen.  And yet the blooming of the garden gives me great joy, and this small side bed is the one off-limits area of the garden, a constant source of renewal, and a reminder of both what my garden once was, and what my new garden might be.

 

In fact, I was actually looking at a photo of last year's garden earlier this week, when I was re-reading a post from April 2018.  I remember the garden fondly. and I suppose it is a good sign, a sign of my increasingly equanimity and recovery from the shock of upsets that started this project, that I no longer despair at what was lost but am beginning to look forward to what may someday be.  (a long someday in the future I might add).

But of course that garden disappeared in November and much has changed in the intervening months, and although I am thrilled with my contractors and the increasingly evident results, the process has been more than challenging.  I am now at the point where I sometimes feel stretched thin, nigh unto snapping, balancing my joy with the results against my own almost permanent state of high-strung nervous overwhelm.  Of course I won't snap.  I am more resourceful than that.  But my limits have been tested, and, at this point, I occasionally feel like every nerve ending, physical, emotional, psychological is at the point where it will soon vibrate at some frequency that I cannot control.  And then I calm.  The garden helps me calm.  The small progresses. Instagram is good for that.  An ongoing record of my happy places. 

 

This was the front yard Monday morning.  A little over half of the driveway had been removed.  The remainder was removed Monday afternoon (shown below).  And now we start the process of replacing the hardscaping.  To me this looks like progress.  The house is no longer surrounded by a shattered driveway, deep clay-filled trenches, and piles of gravel.    The outside work will not be finished by the time I move in.  The house itself is closing in on finishing time, but the yard is just beginning.  I have come to terms with the idea that my five-year plan became a one-year plan.  I may need four years in recovery.

If I had known all this, would I have started this project?  The kitchen appliances were failing and needed to be replaced.  One reason I bought this house was to marry my love an old house with the kitchen of my dreams.  Still, had I known, would I have bought this house?  Probably yes.  I fell in love with this house and I wanted to do this.   I have no one to blame but myself.  That said, there is a big difference between knowing in one's head that things may get out of hand, and actually living through the experience when they do. The entire experience is certainly forcing me to focus far more closely on what is important and what, quite simply, is not.  We'll see where that leads in the long run.

At the same time, exciting things are happening, and I hope the excitement begins to overtakes the overwhelm.   Between the time I started this post and the time I finished, I was once again at the house.  The countertop was installed in the guest bathroom. I love how it is turning out, love how the warm matte black of the soapstone fits with the black cabinet and the Mexican tile.  I love the texture of the stone surface itself, it just calls out to be touched, to be caressed.  I wanted to just stand there and pet it.  I find the tactile appeal of the stone itself, its textured surface, its veins and lines to be very warm and calming.  It may not be the most practical of vanity surfaces, but this is just a guest room, not the main bathroom, so it will not get heavy use.

When I don't have guests, this may just be one of my calm places.  I can stand here, fingers gliding across the sensuous warmth of the stone, looking out the windows on the neighborhood I love, at my neighbors walking their dogs, and let my tensions melt away.

 

 

Listening

Bard Music Festival.  Is it 1999? or 2004?  Are we listening to Shostakovich or Schoenberg?  I don't remember.  I simply remember being asked "but can you hum it?".  Whatever it was that we had been listening to on that particular afternoon, the answer was "probably not".  I wanted to respond that "you can't really hum Beethoven's 5th Symphony either" or at least I can't, at least not large parts of it.  But I worried that perhaps that was just me.  Perhaps I still worry, worry about whether I am forgetting, or if I truly never paid attention.    

 

This memory comes to mind because my friend Patti asked me a question over dinner, before we attended a recital featuring Paul Barnes at Roosevelt University, a recital featuring the music of Philip Glass, including the new (2018) Piano Quintet.  Patti asked me if I could describe the quintet, and I am embarrassed to say I could not.  I could not describe the Beethoven either although I know it intimately, almost as if it resides in my bones.  I knew I wrote about the Piano Quintet last April, and although I may have described the work, at least partially, I probably mostly referred to its emotional weight and resonance simply because this is what draws me into music.  I am more interested in the way listening to music feels, the way the experience of listening shapes and alters space and perception and the emotional resonance of the conversation between musician and artist.  And because it seems to me that each experience is unique, I am reluctant to read that blog post before writing this post as I fear it will alter my memory and understanding of what I heard.  

 

Nonetheless, I was startled by my simple inability to describe the music itself.  I felt I had fallen short, and I wondered why I bother writing about music at all, if I cannot remember it, or describe it, or hum it.  I wondered if my memory has become so flawed, or if it was always thus.  I wonder if it matters.  I admit I've intentionally been trying to let go of the critical aspects of memory, the critically-comparative way of "so and so played x in a particular way, and since you do not you are not good enough" side of listening with my head instead of my heart.  I wonder then, if I've lost something, and if so, if I have gained something else in return?

 

 

Then, later that same evening, with the opening notes of the quintet, memory came flooding in and I remembered the entire piece, as if I had just stepped into a deeply familiar well.  All my memories descended and filled me up.  I could hear the entire piece swirling around me, before it was played on stage and as it was played on stage, like a familiar old friend.  And the music, this music, this performance, pulled me into its own space, the same sense of being enveloped in a space that was both simultaneously inclusive and expansive, the same feeling I had during those first two performances.  Of course even as my head acknowledged that the music was the same, the conversation was different.  Nothing, certainly not performance, is ever the same twice, and this performance, in this hall, with a different group of musicians, was not the same as my first experience of the piece.  Yet it was equally satisfying.  I heard the music and felt lifted and engulfed in open arms.  And yet, in this hall, which was smaller than the Lied Center, the work took on a more brooding and meditative feel, similar to the feelings evoked listening to the rehearsal before the concert in Nebraska, and yet somehow more rounded, more comfortable with its own edges.  The strings of the Chiara Quartet had sounded lighter and brighter to me, more airy, as if I was being lifted on wings, whereas in this performance the music felt closer.  Once again I felt enveloped and carried upward, wrapped in cashmere and released into the light rather than carried on wings of air.

 

Barnes' playing was at once familiar and new, as it should be in a different setting, and I was once again entranced. All these things were running through my mind and my heart, but my thoughts were also at least partially shaded by a painting I had seen earlier in the afternoon, a painting by Jay DeFeo, a painting titled "The Annunciation" just as Glass's Piano Quintet is titled "Annunciation".  During the brief intermission, I sat in the concert hall, reveling in the memory of the music, and thinking how wonderful it was that here I was in a concert hall on the first night of Passover, on Good Friday, the opposite end of the Christian calendar from the event called the Annunciation, and yet experiencing this confluence of art and music.  I am sure that my reaction to the painting influenced my reaction to the music, just as I am sure that the way the first notes of the quintet resurrected my memory, wrapping me in its own cloud-like layer, also influenced my reaction to music I was hearing. I am not sure we can separate these things out of our experiences, nor that we should even try, every performance is a complexly layered conversation between artist and listener, of art, impulse, understanding, and experience, and it is this very layering that makes music, well, art. 

 

So I suppose I no longer feel bad about not being able to describe the music.  My ability to describe things may be poor. But my interest seems to remain solidly in the realm of feelings evoked, rather than the details of the thing itself, and apparently my head has limited capacity for things.  Until I started writing this piece the music that most came to mind was the song of the birds when I stepped outside my door this morning.  That Friday in Chicago, the music that filled my soul before the visit to the concert hall, before the museum, was the lilting sounds of high school students in the hotel restaurant and the sound of the street: wind and cars, tenor and bass, whispering altos, and the ringing high call of the wind.  It is enough.  I continue to be more interested in the conversation with the music, the bubble of space-time that music creates, than in the actual notes themselves.  Ah yes, you may say, I am obviously not a musician.

 

The rest of the concert was wonderful as well.  I had not heard any of the other pieces before, or at least if I had I did not remember them. But I think I had not.  This has always been a struggle, describing something I have only heard once, and this time is no different.  Through repetition my initial reactions are revealed and I become more invested in the music. In that sense, listening is like writing. I don't really know what I think until I write it down.  I don't really understand what I heard until I hear it again, until I find a pattern in which to organize my own understanding.  

 

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the entire concert, the only other part of the concert about which I can really say anything was a piece from 2008, Four Movements for Two Pianos, the last piece. Perhaps I recall it as much because I was fascinated by the musicians, the intstruments, and the way these three aspects -- music, artists, instrument -- combined in distinct ways to produce something that seemed satisfyingly whole and beautiful.  As for the music itself, once again I can't describe exactly what I heard, only that the music felt very introspective and personal to me, not so much music inspired by an idea, as in the Annunciation Quintet, but as music simply for its own sake.  The two pianists, Winston Choi and Paul Barnes were completely different in the method, style, and temperament of their playing, and simply watching them play was fascinating.  The instruments also were quite different:  The piano played by Barnes was bright, sharp and clear,  and he made the piano sing with a dancing lyricism. The other piano had a softer timbre, a more rounded and rolling sound to its tones and Choi elevated its sound into an alternating dance of harmony and melody with Barnes.  It seemed like music of opposites, of contrast merging into one single voice.  Old and new, soft and sharp, round and jagged.  Harmony.

 

 

48 Hours: Part One -- Savoring

I took a quick trip to Chicago last week, 48 hours from the time I left the ground in Knoxville until the time I returned 2 days later, give or take 5 minutes. I was inspired to book the trip when I learned that Paul Barnes would be performing the Phillip Glass Piano Quintet at Roosevelt University on Friday April 19th.  I heard the word premier in Lincoln Nebraska, last year in April, but I had yearned to hear it again.  But I am not writing about the music now.  I am writing the first, of what appears to be a couple of potential posts, about how a small trip, taken on a whim, can become a time of peaceful recalibration,

 

The original plan had been modified slightly.  Although I had booked my trip specifically to hear Barnes, I had, admittedly, been thrilled to learn that Emmanual Ax would be performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the same weekend, and I planned for a musically intense interlude:  Two pianists; two entirely different programs; with a trip to the Art Institute Thursday night.  That isn't what happened,  The Chicago Symphony cancelled their April programming, and, when I spoke to my friend Patti, we decided to meet at the Art Institute Friday afternoon before going to dinner and the Glass concert.

 

Sometimes, all we really need is a little serendipity.  And so, with Thursday evening now free, I decided to go out to eat.  Luckily my hotel was a block from Mercat a la Planxa, a tapas bar where I had dined with friends several years previously and a perfect place for solo dining. I began with a plate of house-marinated olives and a glass of my favorite sherry, Tio Pepe, by Gonzalez Byass, which is not available in Tennessee. (Well I almost always have some on hand, necessitating occasional driving trips to Texas, or Atlanta in a pinch.)

 

Although I love dining with friends, the conversations over food, the connections, dining alone can also be the perfect sybaritic experience.   I could savor the sherry, allow the salty richness of the olives to roll on my tongue, to savor the refreshing bite of the dry mineral-sweetness of the sherry.  I could sit back and watch the room.  Sometimes I really want to just experience the sybaritic pleasure of the food.  This is not always a shared priority in dinner with friends, and I have, in fact, been criticized on more than one occasion for caring too much about the food itself, and the experience of eating it.  In fact, I do not think the food is more important than the conversations around the food, only that the food should create its own space, enhancing and enriching the experience.

Anyway.  I was very happy.  I followed the olives with some Pulpo a la Gallega, which was savory and beautifully prepared, the just toothsome tenderness of the pulpo contrasting with the soft bed of potatoes beneath.  Admittedly I have become increasingly spoiled about pulpo as I get perfectly prepared octopus regularly in Knoxville at my favorite restaurant, Emilia.  It is one of those surprising little treats in my small city, the kind of thing that makes me smile as I think how far this country has come.  I remember eating octopus and squid as a child the year we lived in Spain,  just as I remember my parents buying squid on trips to Houston and Galveston after we returned, where it was not found in the fish market, but sold fresh, for bait.

 

I followed by pulpo with Butifarra; admittedly a rich dinner.  But butifarra is something I do not see often in my part of the country, and this was excellent, summoning all kinds of sybaritic taste-neurons and their associated memories.  Mercat's butifarra is stuffed with cepes, and the soft gentle seasoning of the pork melded perfectly with the creamy earthiness of the mushrooms as well as  the bed of simultaneously creamy and foamy white beans on which the sausage was served.

This all took me several hours.  And perhaps, much as I enjoyed simply sitting and experiencing the room, watching and savoring, there was an added dimension as well.  After the sherry, I ordered a glass of Ribera del Duero, one of my favorite wines, and one I haven't had often, not since I lived in Hyde Park, not since we had a wine cellar, not since I had someone to share a bottle of wine with on a regular basis.  I've had Rioja, a more commonly found temperanillo blend, but rarely a Ribera.  I admit that for the first 10 or 15 minutes I was content to simply sit and swirl the wine, watching the pattern of the wine on the glass, inhaling and absorbing the aroma.  With that first inward breath, I was filled with contentment.  Memory swelled and I thought, Ribera del Duero.  Well, I new what it was, but some part of my brain remembered something else, a familiar scent, completely different from the aroma of a Rioja, more fruity, still earthy and mineral-laden, but less obviously so.  In a moment's breath it was like reconnecting with a long-forgotten memory, a part of myself and my experiences;  other tastes, other scents, and yet still there, in that moment.  In fact, although the wine was delicious, its minerally-tannic fruitiness perfect to offset the pulpo and the butifarra, I didn't finish it.  The aroma of wine was my dessert, all I needed to round-out the memory and close a perfectly satisfactory evening.

 

Who Am I? Writer? Artist?...Maybe. Does it even Matter?

A few months back someone referred to me as an artist.  I paused, perhaps a little surprised.  But I did not object.  It was, in fact, an idea I had been toying with for quite some time.  But as is typical for me, nothing is ever simple.  Increasingly I think and dream about creating daily.  Increasingly I think about art, about craft, about living, and about the way, the act of living itself can be about art, can be art itself.  

 

But, me? An artist?  

I am not asking for affirmation, or denial here.  I am simply exploring an idea.  We all have a say in how we define ourselves, and at least partially in how the wold defines us.  I love math but I am not a mathematician.  I do not think like a scientist.  I never have and I never will.  I have been a businessperson, and I have strong organization and managerial skills, but they are only a small part of how I define myself. I struggled with this when I was younger, but not so much anymore.  I suppose I could say I am a writer.  At one point I did, but the idea didn't mesh well in my mind.  I do write, although I've never published a book, in fact I've never had the desire. But there are tons of writers of all stripes. And yet, I have been blogging consistently for 14 years.  I've published nearly 2300 blog posts, and although I've never tried to build an audience, to stick to a theme, or even particularly cared about how many people read what I write, those assorted mutterings have garnered over a million page views.  Tiny.  Really tiny.  But still there, a statistic, in a world that is obsessed with measurements and statistics.  But I write because it is a part of how I see the world, it is part, but only a part of the act of creation.

When I was in California a few weeks ago, one of the places the group went was the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.  I was entranced with this small space, particularly taken with the work of a couple of the artists but one of the things that has really remained in my head, and my dreams, was the art produced by local schoolchildren.  There were truly amazing things there, and I don't believe I was the only one who felt this way.  But what particularly struck me is that I think that art, the need to create, the need to compress and express something about life that is intangible in a tangible way is part of human nature.  Art.  Music.  Creation.  The yearning for meaning.  These are the things that make us human.  They are a part of all of us, although that is not to say we are all musicians, artists, philosophers, etc.  But perhaps also, we don't allow ourselves to flourish.

Mark Rothko said "A painting is not a picture of an experience.  It is an experience."  I love this statement because it gets right at the heart of something elemental and essential.  It also reminds me that although we classify and judge, it is the experience itself, the experience felt, that makes art important.  We can judge.  But experience itself is true. An artist translates something ephemeral into something tangible.  We humans are complex beings, and we all express and experience and feel in different ways.  Each and every experience is true.  Just because something speaks to you, and speaks deeply, does not mean that it will speak to me.  We like to judge things, even art.  And I am not saying there are not geniuses, people who create things that speak to millions and generations.  Rothko was one of those geniuses.  But art isn't about being Mark Rothko, or even about selling or publishing or whatever.  It is a way of looking at the world, of experiencing it, and a compulsion to start that conversation and share that experience

But back to my own question.  The person who called me an artist was one of the contractors I am working with.  This person has never seen anything I have made, at least not knowingly.  I've worn clothing I've made but more about that later.  My initial assumption was that I was being called an artist because I am creating a "studio" or a glorified sewing room, although I intend to do far more than sew, knit, and weave in that space.  But I think it was more than that.  I think that person sees my choices in redoing the house as something creative. And I am of the mind that life itself can be art, that the act of living can be a kind of creative dialog with time and space and the people we choose to share that time and space with.  Can one be a artist of one's space? Of one's life?  I don't know.

Artist.  If I tell people I am an artist they assume I paint.  Well, I actually dream about painting, although I have no training and no skill.  Occasionally I modify that by saying I am a fiber artist.  Which may be partially true, but to me it feels the same way saying I am a writer feels.  It describes something I do but not who I am.   I may be an artist who works with fiber.  I may also simply be a craftsperson.  I struggle with the lines between things.  I always have.  Lines are so arbitrary and I always want to merge them, to cross over and outside, to look at things differently.

On this subject, this quote, from Jean-Claude Ellena's The Diary of a Nose, resonates particularly strongly with my own thoughts:

Craftsman, artist: I have never managed to settle for one or other of these definitions for myself. I feel like a craftsman when I am completely wrapped up in making a perfume; I feel like an artist when I imagine the perfume I need to make. In fact, I constantly juggle with the two standpoints. If perfume is first and foremost a creation of the mind, it cannot actually be created without the mastery of true skill.

I feel like an artist when I imagine:  I feel like an artist when I imagine making something, imagine creating an experience, a space to be experienced.  I feel like an artist when I see that the way what we see as known or fixed really isn't fixed at all, it is just the framework we have designated for ourselves.  I feel like an artist because I want to translate that feeling into an experience. I feel like a craftsman when I am making something.  For a long time, most of my sewing or knitting was purely about need or want, about copying something I wanted and making it.  It was mildly creative, perhaps.  It was craft. Increasingly what I make starts with an idea in my head, or a material, or something I see on the street, and that somehow gets translated into something else, something I want to create:  a taste, a garment, an embroidery, a picture.  It is never about the thing itself but about the experience the thing helps create.  But all of that also requires skill, and skill is craft.  All artists are craftsmen.  They have to be in order to become good at their art, to to create that dialogue that translates an idea into something that can be experienced by others.   The trick is in being able to create the bridge from imagination to experience. One needs vision plus craft.  Perhaps I am just an artist-in-training, an apprentice who has yet to learn what might suit me.  

When I was in California with my museum group these questions of art and conversations and design were floating around, almost as if they were in the air we breathed.  Or maybe that was the wine.  One of the conversations was about the first piece in a room that drew you in, and whether or not that was the piece, if you were going to buy, that you would buy.  For me, that is not the case.  The first thing that captures my attention in a room draws me in yes.  But that first thing is rarely the thing that sticks with me, the thing I am drawn into conversation with.  Donald Hess, of the Hess Collection in Napa, buys art that speaks to him, that keeps him up at night.  That is what has always drawn me....that sense of conversation.  That is what I see as important, things not merely as things, but as a conversation, and meaning.  I can't buy all or even most of the art that haunts my dreams.  The pieces shown in this post are a few of those items though.  All are my photos, from the Napa trip and my favorite museum in San Antonio, the McNay.

 

 

 

A Little Experimentation

Still a little scattered here.  Expect this state of randomness to continue for the next two months.  I will be posting, but don't think a fixed schedule works for me during this liminal stage, and it is liminal: a period of yes but not yet; a period between what was and what will be;  an amorphous space bridging the person I both am and am-becoming, and the space that both sparks and reflects.

 

In the meantime, I shall entertain you with more mundane efforts.

I've been playing in the kitchen.  It all started on a whim.  Somewhere in my travels, I saw this jar of artichoke cream by Les Moulins Majoub and was intrigued.  It ends up that I adore this stuff. It is wonderful on toast, with crudités, with an avocado for lunch.  I could eat it by the spoonful.

 

Frankly however, it is a bit too expensive for my budget to accommodate it as a daily indulgence.  I've looked up buying it online and the prices range from $12 to $17 a jar, not including shipping and/or tax, or not quite $2/ounce up to about $3/ounce.    A rare indulgence then.  I bought a second jar with an order of other pantry items from an online retailer.  I love Knoxville but there are still things I consider essential that I cannot get locally.  Some of things I can make myself. And yet there are other things I continue to order in, although far fewer than I originally anticipated.

 

I have never said I was not spoiled and privileged. But I also realize that life is a matter of choice.  There are things each of us choose to emphasize, and things that are irrelevant in our personal priorities.  I tend to opt for really good food, not necessarily always fancy, but high in quality.  My food, music, and book budgets are high. Not so much the rest.  Well, scratch that.  At the moment my construction budget is high and everything else is scraping by.

But back to artichoke spread.  One evening I scraped the last bits of my jar of artichoke spread onto a bowl of chili.  I topped it with minced onion and bell pepper.  I was in heaven.  I eat chili regularly, at least during the fall and winter, but the artichoke made it seem more spring-like, more season-less.  The truth is that although I now eat my chili plain, well sometimes with avocado or onion or peppers, I truly miss topping my chili with a dollop of sour cream. It is the one dairy item I actually miss on a regular basis.  Artichoke cream might be a close second, and it will probably work as a dollop of something savory and creamy on top of other dishes as well

 

And so the experimentations began. I now produce my own artichoke cream.  It may not be quite as good as the original.  It may be better -- already my memory fails me.  I suspect that Les Moulins Majoub uses locally grown artichokes at the peak of flavor and good local olive oil. I use frozen organic artichoke hearts.  They add garlic; I do not.  I use preserved lemon; they do not. Two pounds of frozen artichoke hearts, 16 ounces of a good fruity olive oil (I do not skimp here), preserved lemon, thyme, bay leaf, vinegar yields about a quart of artichoke cream.  It works out to about 65 cents an ounce, still a treat, because I indulge myself with a generous spoonful, but a treat I can justify.   This is beginning to become a staple in my pantry.

But it is not yet perfect.  My artichoke puree is not quite as smooth as the original.  I only brought a fine mesh chinois with me to the apartment.  I need a coarser mesh, in either a chinois or Tamis, or perhaps a food mill, to produce a smoother cream.  I have all those things, but they are in storage.  So the final refinements are yet to come.  But in the meantime, my artichoke cream is good.  I am happy in the kitchen and in the dining room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sumer is icumen in.......and I am not prepared

ARGHHHHH!

 

That is exactly how I felt yesterday morning.  I settled down.  A period of morning meditation, or at least stillness and deep breathing, helped, as it always does.  I don't necessarily expect profound thoughts, or even necessarily anything akin to medication or prayer on a daily basis, but I do feel that even those mornings  when all I can do is be still and quiet have a profound effect on my equilibrium during the course of the day.

 

But still.  We are getting into crunch time.  In roughly seven  weeks the house will be finished, at least, supposedly, finished enough for me to move in.  In 8 weeks I will be home, fully home.  I need to start packing.  There are still tons of things that need to be decided, chosen, tended to and so forth and so on, and even so, in my head "move-in" remained some amorphous future goal, not yet fully formed, distant and obscure.  Until yesterday morning, when I awoke in a panic.

The kitchen cabinets were (are) being installed.  Having seen them I knew my first choices for pulls and knobs were not going to work and I was jolted awake, filled with nervous, buzzy, vibrant, jittery energy.  I swooped around the web, looking at cabinet hardware, simultaneously worried but oddly calm.  Calm because for the first time, at least in terms of doors and knobs and pulls, I knew exactly what I wanted, knew the feelings that cabinets and their hardware should evoke.  I had vision.  

 

I had been asked to select cabinet hardware a few weeks ago, but at the time there were no cabinets in the rooms, just empty spaces.  Selections and choices had been made but those choices held only an ephemeral place in my thoughts.  Too many choices and decisions had been made but had not yet materialized.  My brain felt simultaneously overflowing and empty.  So my initial choices were made based on an abstract vision.  Some of those initial choices were good, others not so much.  I had a better sense of the library, for example, or the guest bathroom, than the kitchen.  But both of those rooms were evolving steadily, whereas the kitchen remained a blank box, white and empty. And then, with the appearance of cabinets, even standing around like awkward teenagers unsure where they were to go in life, clarity descended like a clichéd vision of clouds opening, and I pulled together a new hardware list.  It is not yet final, there are still a few samples to see on site, and final decisions to made.

 

Bur hardware was not my only source of panic.  Summer seems to have suddenly peeked its head around the corner.  The weather went from cool to hot, at least according to my mind.  I am not a good southerner. 80° is hot; it is my ideal of the perfect (maximum) summer temperature.  Alas, I have never lived somewhere where this was the reality of summer and it may exist only in my imagination.  Come August I will look back and think how pleasant the world was when it was only 80°.  Yesterday morning I pulled out a step-stool and climbed to the top of my closet, pulling own boxes of summer clothes.  Piles materialized as I struggled with questions.  What fits? What doesn't? What can I wear now?   Eventually I found something to wear but my summer wardrobe, with all its unanswered questions, remains, waiting for answers and yet more decisions, in piles around my bedroom.

 

The good news is that I have scheduled the movers.  I need to start packing.  As I shift my closet, my winter things can be packed for the move.  I shan't need them.  Well, I am going to Chicago, so I can keep one or two outfits.  

 

Actually many of my winter clothes are showing substantial wear.  They may not last another season.  I was thinking of making something new, but I see no point in that now, at least not in making cool-weather clothes.  The hot season beckons.  If I make something it will be for wear in this season.  Right now, I simply need to balance my thoughts of making with my thoughts of moving.  My dreams remain in creation mode, imagining art and craft and a world of possibilities, while the reality is that I need to be pulling in and putting away. I am moving into make-do time. I can make things for current use with the materials at hand. Nothing new comes in unless it is specifically needed for the house, but my time really needs to be in preparation, not creation.

 

It is morning again.  I am not in as much of a tizzy as yesterday morning.  I have a plan.  I have boxes, although some of them are still in my car.  If I want to pack the apartment and remain sane, if I want to pack without excessive back pain, I need to start now. I need to work slowly and steadily throughout all the other decisions and activities that are yet to come.  I am not yet quite calm, but I have taken that all-important first step.

 

A Catch Up Post

It seems that a month-long break did not quite eliminate my indecision regarding book posts, and now I feel the overwhelming need to catch up, to post not merely an update on March reading, but February as well.  Actually I suppose I just want to make collages of all the covers, and I feel no need to write reviews or synopses.  It seems I can live with that.  Sometimes pretty sparkly things, pictures and surfaces are enough to hold the memories that lie beneath.

 

I did think that I the reprieve would allow me time to explore purpose and intention, to come up with some kind of coherent plan or theme for this blog, but all I really learned was that I am really not interested in limiting myself to any specific set of topics or themes.  So much for that.  Increasingly, it appears to me that there is a time for plans for schedules and goals, a time for "forward motion" and a time to just go with the flow.  I'm opting for the flow, whatever that means.  Frankly all I decided is that I don't have to decide.

 

And so I had fun playing with collages.

As you can see, I read five really good books in February and a lot of popcorn fiction.  I'd rather spend 2 hours with a simple bit of fictional fluff, than watching an average movie or television show, but that is just me.  And a good bit of this reading was accomplished on the treadmill, in the time I have devoted to slowly walking and teaching myself how to breathe properly, engaging in this tediously slow pursuit of this health-more-than-fitness project I decided to take on for this year.  My trainer, and yes I have consulted one, told me it would take at least six months before I saw real results, possibly a year, which isn't much when I think that I am probably trying to reverse 45 years worth of bad habits.  Nonetheless, I tend to grow depressed and think it is all a waste of time, and then I notice that I actually see improvement in little but profoundly telling ways. Besides which, we all know that fitness does not necessarily imply health.  We see evidence of this all around us, though we try to convince ourselves otherwise.  The obverse is, of course, also true.  And so, onward.

 

The light reading also offered me a lot of quiet time to absorb the other, simultaneous and more transformative, reading.  The five good books all challenged my basic assumptions and views of the world in one way or another and those tumultuous feelings always need time to seep through the intersteces of one's neurological make-up.  Nothing earth-shakingly new in terms of basic information, more just an aspect of turning a corner and seeing something through new eyes.  Yes, I am writing in oblique fragments.

 

Ahh, I see somehow my March collage is more linear, with the best books at the bottom and the most frivolous on top.  The Elena ranks as the fluffiest book of the month.  I don't believe it even filled the available time in a flight from Knoxville to Atlanta, therefore less than an hour. Mostly easily forgettable, but with scattered jewels of thoughts.    There seems to have been less popcorn fiction in March, but there was also less treadmill work due to travel, adventure and a sinus infection.  A couple of these books showed up on my Instagram feed, and I like that format as a way of sharing impressions and passing thoughts, snapshots of a day, once again without a particular plan, or any need for explanation or consistency.

 

I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was purchased on a whim and donated to the Children's Diversity and Justice Library.  Ordinary People and Solar Bones will remain on my shelves.  Channeling Italo Calvino, who said "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say", it seems like these two novels offer the promise of a longer conversation.  I've never been a person who reads a book only once, which is, of course, also why I am building a library.  Classics and personal favorites, the promise of books yet unread, the familiarity and ongoing conversations with beloved words.  I miss my library.  That reunion will be quite sweet.

 

Looking at Knoxville Through Visitor’s Eyes

Sometimes it is good to pretend like one is a visitor to one’s own town.  One might note things, previously noticed perhaps, but quickly forgotten.  One might find magic in that which otherwise seems ordinary.

 

I engaged in a little such activity a couple of weekends past, becoming a visitor in my own town during the Big Ears Festival.  

 

Yes I listened to a lot of music.  Although I think that generally I may not have been as adventurous in some of my selections as some years, I also think I heard more performance than at any prior festival. It was the first year I was truly comfortable with the “sampling” mentality, of walking in or out of something that wasn’t grabbing my attention.  It was also the first year that I didn’t worry about what I might be missing, rather just allowing myself to enjoy whatever I was listening to at the time.

And although I walked around town a lot, averaging 7 to 10 miles most days, I also took the new trolley service to some venues, and this proved to be better for my back as well as my stamina.  I think previous years I would walk 14 miles or more a day, if I was able to do so.  An added benefit of the  trolley proved to be the way it allowed me to engage in conversations with other attendees, to meet people, to observe and explore opinions and attitudes other than my own.  

The fact that the trolley was available, as well as other options such as Uber and Joyride Mobile, I was also able to relax more during my walks up and down Gay street and around downtown.  I was able to stop and pay attention.  Hence the collages above, from the three full days I spent at Big Ears.  None of the photos are of anything particularly significant in and of itself, but I am also realizing that is the way I take photos, not necessarily of significant things, but of details that catch my eye.

 

When I left he festival my head was filled with music and a new appreciation for this little city I call home.