We were in D.C. for Thanksgiving, where my daughter Kelly and son-in-law Doron live, with their last child, Abby, still at home. Their “boys” came by train. Jerry’s daughters were there, with some of their children. And Scott and his friend Adriana. There we were, there we are, bundles of unsolved life, working our way through, imagining things better, worrying that things will get worse. It is all quite glorious, which might seem like denial, but try to imagine a rose without the dark spots, the few bent petals. You’d be imagining a plastic rose.
“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there hope for them. ”
Those of us still in town the day after Thanksgiving went to the Artechhouse, a high-tech media exhibit. In one room you can use an IPad to watch a virtual figure dance on the surface of an actual block in front of you. In other rooms, you can be the dancer and watch the images on the wall abstractly mirror your dancing. “Is this art?” Also, what is a real rose in relation to a plastic one? I think about stuff probably no one else cares about.
Then we walked around the World War II memorial, which Jerry didn’t remember ever having seen. I think it’s the most impressive of them all, even more so than the Lincoln memorial. It is deeply symbolic and emotional—the quotations, the spread of countries and states from Atlantic to Pacific, the granite blocks, the circle with fountains in the middle.
Those two little adventures, with a Starbucks in between. And then when we got back home to Traverse City, the new issue of Poetry Magazine had come. I opened it and immediately found some poems I don’t like at all. I don’t think “Like” and “Art” necessarily need to share the same breath. Just because I like something doesn’t necessarily make it art. And vice versa.
To me, the World War II memorial is art. It has range, drawing from many human sources. It is never maudlin. It requires my participation. It asks me to see the War differently: as a whole, and equally as individual people. It is elegant. I get a lump in my throat.
A lot of new art is made with computer technology. That doesn’t make it good or bad. The fact that little figures can seem to be dancing on a block is clever. I might call it “Artainment.” A lot of paintings could be described the same. Kind of pretty, clever, or catchy.
Nothing wrong with that.
I know nothing about animated movies, because we don’t seem to go to them. I’m sure the potential is there to explore the nuances of the human heart and to step over the edges of our perceptions, maybe as fully as in War and Peace or Moby Dick. It may take a long while, or it may not happen at all. Words seem eternally superior to me. But what do I know?
Art is always unsettled. That’s about all I know to say about it for sure.