I'm back!
Am I? For real this time? The difference between saying I will write and actually writing is like a giant chasm, a chasm that must be bridged, that can only be bridged by actually writing. I realize my priorities have shifted. I am not at all certain how that shift will manifest itself. And yet I can spend time trying to figure it out but not writing, or I can simply hope for the best and toss my words into the void. I'll never start unless I start, as messy as that might prove to be.
Let's begin with three weekends and four events:
First there was the Knoxville Symphony's April performance of the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society. Most of the audience was there for the requiem, and it was indeed beautifully performed, even one of the more enjoyable performances I have heard. The highlight of the evening, however, for me at least, was a contemporary piece by young American composer T. J. Cole, Death of the Poet. Cole had been inspired by a painting by Conrad Felixmüller titled Death of the Poet Walter Reiner, which she had seen at the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting was created as a kind of a requiem of its own, an obituary or memorial for a friend, the expressionist poet, who died of a drug overdose. The painting is shown below:
When I looked up the painting after the concert, I felt strongly that I've seen it before, although I don't believe I've ever blogged about it. Perhaps I should seek the painting out and take another look. Of course, if I do that I will also want to listen to the music again. At least there are recordings online, and I will link to one below.
Both pieces, music and painting, seem filled a sense of loss and ascendance, suitable requiem material, as well as confusion and a sense of worlds on the cusp, of one world fading away and a new one being born. Perhaps it is this overlapping sense of grief and hope, entangled together that has settled into my mind. The music and the painting seem very dreamlike to me. In the painting one doesn't really know if the artist is falling or perhaps flying, and I do think that is part of the point, as well as the use of intense colors and cubist images, of a world turned topsy turvy, despair intermingled with homey windows filled with pots of flowers. The music was very lush and poignant and yet also unsettling. I find it interesting that both works were created by artists in their 20s; both also created at times of political and social upheaval. I suspect this will be haunting my thoughts for a while.
The following weekend I went on a knitting retreat. It was small, we ended up with 14 women, and the focus was on brioche knitting, although I would have gone whatever the focus, as I was mostly just interested in the idea of knitting community. But I was game to up my brioche knitting skills. Now I am smitten. Prior to the retreat I was in a fairly monogamous knitting stage, with 1 project on the needles, 1 project in hibernation, and 1 project waiting to be seamed. At the end of the weekend, I had four active projects on needles. Needless to say I've been knitting a lot but nothing has yet been finished. As I write this I have three projects on the needles and two awaiting finishing. There will be finished knitting to share soon.
The time at the retreat helped me rekindle my focus and refine my priorities, both in terms of giving myself permission to allow hours to be spent exploring process without worrying about having something specific to show for any particular stretch of time, as well as giving myself permission to claim time for solitude. Yes, I was exhausted after a weekend of music at Big Ears. I was exhausted after Holy Week, and those all involved too much time spent in public spaces where I was overwhelmed with constant stimulation. But I was also exhausted by a quiet weekend with 13 other women. Before the retreat, I did not realize that even in this quiet setting, I would still require significant solitary decompression time. Although I can, in fact, tune out much of what is going on around me, I cannot block it completely. Some part of my brain is always watching, feeling, observing the minute changes in energy around me, and I need time to decompress. Without that time I have no energy for either the social or the creative. If anything, this retreat was the final seal of approval on accepting the need for not just silence but solitude.
After a calming weekend and a few days rest, I was prepared for another weekend feast for the senses.
On Friday evening I attended the opening night performance of Knoxville Opera's The Marriage of Figaro, which I felt was a complete and stunning success. A friend called it "world class" and I agree if one thinks of the production as a whole. The company pulled off that almost magical feat of creating a cohesive, emotionally rich, enveloping world within the theater. The singers were very good, some excellent. The musicians were good, the acting excellent, but mostly it all just came together in a sparkling and satisfying experience. Nothing jarred, nothing triggered that critical, comparative part of my brain. That, to my mind is always the difficult part. The best performances somehow always come together from the heart. The finest orchestra, truly world-class voices, none of this matters if everything doesn't mesh together, and I've attended far to many operas that should have been great, but which have left me bored or disappointed. Figaro has sometimes become such a part of the common experience that it fails to rise above its own history. This production rose, it danced and sparkled -- Figaro reborn. I think I would call it a stunning production and one that has me yearning for more.
Then on Sunday I went to the Clarence Brown Theater's production of Hair, which I also thoroughly loved. I was too young when Hair first came out on Broadway, but I did see an amateur production of it in the mid-seventies, after we had abolished the draft, after we had finally pulled out of Vietnam, after I too had my turn shouting "Hell, no! We won't go!". Even now I look at how those changes were shaping the world, shaping my own youth, and also the world the youth of today live in and experience. The youth of 1968, the ones portrayed in this play, are the grandparents of the youth of today, the students who were performing in this play. But that sense of both harmony and communal safety, as well as connection across generations was infectious. It seemed to me like this was an apt time to reintroduce this musical to a new generation, even as I am reminded that as much as the linearity of time is a foundational principle of western culture, there is also a cyclical aspect to time and growth and human evolution.
I always want to be enchanted, to be carried away, to be connected to some essential part of human nature; all of these events enchanted me in some sense or another. In the three performances, there is a common thread, of youth, of age, of love, of loss and hope, or hope and loss (not quite the same but inextricably tied together). Even in my retreat, in the experience of coming together and later of rest is connected to this cycle. As the body needs sleep however, so to the heart, the head, the creative and intellectual spirit. It seems my weekends are not time of rest but of massive input, and when the working world returns to its tasks, I need time to slow down and take it all in.
Perhaps retirement is also a period of turning the world topsy turvy, of the hero coming home from the wars of work and success and rediscovering the simple acts of breath and life which are essential to us all.
