Back again

Back in time to see the bales of hay strike long shadows at sunset.
Back in time for the apples falling off the trees. For the deer to forage what’s left. For the blackberries barely hanging on. 
For the late afternoon light to glimmer a warm amber on everything, but especially the tree trunks.
For the chinese pistache leaves to glow from within.
Back again for a few clear, warm days before it starts raining.
Back to see the fog rolling over a moon-like sun.
Back for the anniversary of …….
Back for the memorial of …….
Back to hear the beat of the crow’s wings, just overhead.
Back. But still kinda gone.

What’s alive and what isn’t.

The actress stood two feet in front of me. She was feeding her chickens in the yard, lifting her invisible apron to hold grain that doesn’t exist. She scattered imaginary pellets along her path between viewers. This was her morning chore, every morning, just after the breakfast dishes were done. I could smell the condensation in the early morning air. I could feel the grass strafe against my ankles. She chattered to this side and then to that side, clucking to the little mothers in the yard, swinging her arm against a woman in a cashmere sweater. And then she stopped suddenly, looking down. Her eyes softened and her voice mellowed. “You don’t belong to me. What are you doing here?” She leaned down towards a lady’s purse and cooed a little something unintelligible.  Warm, loving words.

I’ve been in that garden and seen those chickens and gathered those eggs. I’ve encouraged the hens to lay, and scolded the dog for harassing them.

I started to cry. I couldn’t help it any more than I can help crying in front of the Rembrandt self-portrait at the Frick. Crying about a fowl that isn’t there. Crying about a man leaving mark of himself.

Crying about what’s alive and what isn’t.

Some people go to church.

I go to the temples of worship to the creativity of individual human beings.  Oh hell, we’ll just call it what it is: art museum.

Art museums are silent, no matter what age the art might be. Ok, some contemporary art might make noise, but it usually does so in a confined area, so that no one confuses it with theater, its poorer cousin.

Actually, the visitors do talk a little, but it’s under their breath and if a guide with a group comes along everyone nearby hushes and leans in. Maybe we will find out some truth we didn’t know before. We act like we’re not listening, but we really are. And the priest/docents are benevolent, in a limited way. They know we want to be privy to their knowledge, but we didn’t meet them at the front desk. We may listen for a few moments, but when the group moves on, we are clearly not allowed to join.

With some art you know what you’re looking at. Other art, it’s not so easy. Sometimes, there’s no understanding it at all. You are flummoxed, but you feel improved somehow.

I’m pretty sure I was converted in Firenze. I could make the case that the whole town is a museum, and that when I stood at dawn in front of the glowing tiles of the Baptistry the angels sang a song only for my ears. But probably it was the Uffizi galleries that initially brought me to my knees… at sixteen, Botticelli and Jim Morrison were my main men. They kind of look alike, come to think of it. I also loved the idea that a museum would develop out of the family business’ company offices.

Ah, but that is the part of the charm of the art museum. The Louvre is a castle, for god’s sake.  And the first time I was there that’s what I was looking for: a castle. “Ou est la louvre?”. People kept pointing this wall out to me: “Ici! Ici!“. (Insert Angry French Person’s Voice) I didn’t get it. Finally an English speaker found me, the wall was the Louvre. I was just a neophyte in the museum world, and on my way toward the abolishment of my sins. But now Pei’s glass pyramid points the way like a burning bush. Except you go down into its bowels instead of up a mountain.  And what you find down there is a REALLY OLD castle! Exactly the one I was looking for, back in 1970!

Peggy Guggenheim’s stuff is in a half-finished palazzo on the Grand Canal. Peggy was certainly an apostle of art, in her ranch style digs where her happy dogs are laid to rest. Peggy inspires me to be an artist. “Do anything”, she seems to say, wearing her winged sunglasses and placing a soft hand upon my head.  “It’s new, it’s alive, whatever it is, it’s art! I will appreciate its worth by buying it and placing upon it my stamp of approval. Go in peace, my child, and be an artist. You are now famous by your very proximity to me.”

Now that I’m older, I find it’s also important to take communion in my various houses of worship: a cappuccino in the Pitti Palace, a latte under the big clock in the D’Orsay, even a lukewarm American coffee in the sculpture garden at the Norton Simon. Then I can return to the Rothko on the wall, and I understand what God is trying to tell me.

Hey... that Guggenheim in New York looks like an espresso cup.

Another man's noise

I’m walking away from leaving Coral at work. I cross the street. And I walk.
This section of roadway is being repaired. A jackhammer blasts near me.
A couple of trucks are delivering a load, their engines idle.
The men roll their squeaking handtrucks past.
Another worker closes the back door of his delivery van, it rolls and slams hard.
Yet another truck inches backwards… beep beep beep beep beep.
In the distance a siren.
The sounds are layered into each other, they make a strange music. Something atonal and rhythmic. Really loud, really in my face, really forceful. And amplified by the tall canyon of buildings surrounding me. It’s too much all at once. It’s a parody of itself, and it makes me laugh.
Then, a pop. Slap-pop. Slap-pop. Pop. Pop.
I’ve ventured accidentally into greenery and shade, and a cement wall and a ball.
Tennis anyone?

closing matinee

The closing performance.

Maybe it’s what you expect. Maybe not. After all, it’s Broadway, the pinnacle of the art. The pinnacle of professionalism. You expect them to stay true to the show, even though they have personal emotions on a sidebar, running concurrent to the parts they play and the feelings they convey. Maybe they will find more to give to the character, thinking it’s the only avenue available. But, it’s not impossible that they will meander wildly from the script. Or even throw something out as an inside joke among only those onstage. And if they play little jokes on each other, will we be able to know it? Is professionalism, then, keeping the jokes from us while giggling at them silently? After all, they are people. Just people playing people. Just people telling a little story about these other people, and we are the people getting the story and its message.

But at the closing performance the whole thing has so many layers, you can hardly think straight. In the third row there is a woman who seems to know a scattering of most everyone in the theater, like pepper in a salad. She stands above her seat, turns toward us and surveys the crowd. (I watch her and I feel like I’ve been standing in that place before, looking at the audience, wondering who came for the ending. I suddenly have that lonely feeling another loss. It’s not even my show.)

Even at the closing performance you try and figure things out even before it starts. You look at the set for its signs of the future three hours. Can you see the theme? The plot? The characters? Where are we and why are we there, instead of someplace else?

At the intermission the crowd is oohing and ahhing, everybody is somebody because we all know that this is the last show, and we MUST be somebody because we are here. And I swear, everybody in this audience knows someone in the show. (I’m thinking about the stagehands, and how, for god’s sake, now they have to find another job, too. Certainly there must be people in the audience supporting them, as well. And does another, different crew come in to strike? Just a question.)

When the show is over, the standing ovation is immediate and we are swept up in the sad reality of a Broadway show coming to an end. Flowers, bows, more flowers, more bows. The child of one of the actors brings a bouquet up to her mom, and another wave of applause. I guess everybody just wants to make this sad moment better somehow. But the actor/mom smiles broadly with an arm around the girl, and the ensemble looks on like the aunts and uncles they have become. Everyone smiles, everyone waves, everyone casually makes their way off the stage.

They were just people telling a little story.