Define art

Somewhere over the past several days a quote skittered before my eyes.  Had to have been on a computer screen, come to think of it, part of an email message.  Finger poised, I'd had to stop myself from pressing DELETE.  In fact, I stopped all together for the time it took me to decide not only not to delete the page but to reread, to really read the quote.  I wrote it down.  Then came the click of death.

Today.  Going through the images I made while Tal and I traveled earlier this summer.  Images of the Hudson River.  I thought of that quote again, now several pages back in the journal.  Find it.  Find it. 

And, get this, 9th grade English at Winyah High School in Georgetown SC came to mind.  Our text book was "American Literature," a 1965 Houghton Mifflin publication, edited by Schorer, Jewett, Havighurst and Kirschner.  I know that because, moments ago, I plucked it from the shelf above my desk.  I could make such an easy grab because I loved that volume so much my mother gave me the money to buy it at the end of the school year.

Photographed at the Hudson River
Maritime Museum, Kingston NY

It was that delight-filled class period which introduced me not only to the likes of James Fennimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving, but to the Hudson River artists of roughly the same era -- Frederic Edwin Church and Asher B Durrand perhaps the most recognizable names.  I remember being smitten with the quality of the light in their paintings and wondering if it really could be so.  I didn't see the Hudson River in person until the mid-1990s.  The light they depicted some 150 years earlier was just as I'd held it in my 9th-grade memory.

So, this week, today.  Holding in tension a quote, my memory of some 40 years ago, images from late May just passed.

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.  -- Seth Godin

Art.  I grew up in a fabulous place filled with art -- representative American sculpture.  None of those 300+ works changed me, inspired me like what I saw in my treasured textbook.*  Part of that is the fact of living with all those bronze, aluminum, stone sculptures.  Too familiar.  And, for a creatively, artistically challenged child, completely out of reach.  Those hugely idealized landscapes (also unattainable for someone like me), on the other hand, were of places I'd never been.  There's a certain amount of romance in the faraway. 

What's ultimately true, however, is that one changed me, another didn't.

That's why there's all kinds of art, I suppose.  The creators -- courageous as they are -- produce something that is part of themselves and put it out there for others to look at, to like or not, even to disparage.  I think that is the reason Godin's definition of art kept me from an hasty delete.  There's nothing about beauty in it, or it having to be aesthetically pleasing or to be generally within some set of rules.  Art, whether it pleases or not, has the capacity to change. 

Recall that scene in "Mona Lisa Smile" when Julia Roberts' character, teacher Katherine Ann Watson, introduces her students to a Jackson Pollock painting.  It's wasn't of something, so it was somehow wrong, even unacceptable.  Look closely at the scene.  The students look confused.  Their lips even curl.

Art can change the viewer, changes us.  It's no wonder controlling art and the tussle over who controls art is such a hot (and grim?) topic.

The Hudson River at the Storm King

Ballet afloat

Tal and I are watching Lake Erie from the open fantail of the Grande Mariner as we make our way to Cleveland.  There's a honeybee out here with us.  It lights on the back of a chair, flies up level with the upper deck or to one side of the ship or the other only to retreat, returning to the unbuffeted safely of the chair.  Again and again.  In much the same patterned route.

We left Buffalo's boat basin before supper yesterday, some 13 hours ago, and I am assuming that our pollen-laden visitor has been with us since, trapped in this boat-wide block of still air.  I wonder if it will be surprised when it emerges in Cleveland.  Will it know it's in new territory?  Where will it deposit the bright yellow pollen?

The two of us are not exactly bewildered as to our location from day to day -- there's a schedule posted on the bulletin board outside the lounge after all.  But, where we find ourselves is something of a marvel when reality casts a beam on us, a wonderfully frequent occurrence since we moved into 57B last Monday.  Sailing Lake Erie at dawn on a Tuesday in late May?  Really?  I guess we are not entirely unlike the bee who continues checking out the edges here at the back of the boat.

Unlike the bee, however, we have settled into a calm and leisurely routine.  Our cabin is small and terribly efficient, if we're careful.  While getting up, showered, dressed in the morning requires very few steps, having put everything away is essential, as is only one person going through the process at a time.  That keeps frustration and jostling to a minimum.  The routine we have developed includes my rising first and arriving in the lounge for early bird coffee just about the time the gurgling stops and the light on the urn flicks to red.  On the upper deck at dawn that hot coffee searing my throat I am guaranteed a period of solitude.  Once I get that bit of time, on board togetherness doesn't cost me over much psychic energy.

Making all this possible is the Grande Mariner's crew and staff.  Meals produced in a snug galley by two chefs and served by four stewardesses are as good as I have ever eaten.  The entire crew sees and attends to our needs almost before any of us realize we have a need at all.  And, watching the captain maneuver the vessel in tight places inspires awe even in the seasoned sailors among us.  In the background of all our leisure is washing and cleaning, scraping and painting, fueling and waste removal, the arrival of coaches for shore excursions and of performers and lecturers coming aboard to entertain or to instruct.

One way to describe what I am observing is a delicate balance among us as our little ship moves river to canal to lake.  The balance is not precarious.  It is not overly promoted.  But, it is careful, a deliberate set of steps, a dance that -- along with two 750 horsepower Caterpillar engines -- allows and defines our progress toward Chicago.

As I watch the honey bee take another breather before resuming its patrol of this air space, I have to wonder what getting to Chicago is going to be like.  Pondering that is likely a more worthwhile focus for me than wondering about a bewildered bee's arrival in Cleveland.  Harder work, too, I daresay.  Am I going to be the same person I was in Warren the first time a walked up the gang way?  After participating in this graceful dance along these historic waterways, I feel certain I'll recognize Chicago, but will I recognize myself?    

A new favorite quote

Carolyn Hax, a columnist for The Washington Post, offered this sage comment in an advice column in yesterday's edition of The State newspaper:

From the minute we leave the womb, life is about making the best of an unwelcome change in circumstances.

Ah, kicking and screaming through life we go ...

Maybe this is the essence of what I was wondering about in my post day before yesterday.