Paris was Paris, a city I love beyond words. London snowed. And the City literally stopped. The conference I planned to attend, cancelled. Buses and underground--shut down. Theaters went dark. The night of the snow, I paid 35 GBP, or about $50 to watch the superbowl in a building that once housed the offices of the Titanic Shipping Company, where families of the perished came to find out if anything remained of those they loved. It is now a bar called the Republic of Texas.
Then, New York City and my son Josh. Bitter cold--14 degrees one night roaming with Josh in the East Village, my face feeling as if it would break in small, frozen, glass pieces onto the ground. But then, 48 hours later, a mystical spring thaw--NYC reached almost 60 degrees. Josh took me to the Guggenheim for my birthday, to see the current show The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia 1860-1989.
"We learned from oriental thought that those divine influences are, in fact, the environment in which we are. A sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of things that come in through the senses and up through one's dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this." --John Cage
Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this. Why does this matter to me, this particular quote? For the same reason that I want Danah Boyd to explain social networks to me.
I am an artist, and my sense of the world is constructed from the inside to the outside. Solitude is my way of connecting with important moments of my life. I tell myself that I am ill at ease with the explosion of social networks, and what feels like a reversal of my way of being in the world--the notion that one approaches the world from the outside to the inside seems foreign to me.
But then Josh took me to the Guggenheim. When I read the quote by John Cage, and wandered through this truly remarkable show, sat in the Dream House or watched Warhol's sleep movie or work by Georgia O'Keefe, I began to think perhaps I was limiting myself--perhaps this is a false construct I have in my mind.
Next post--exploring if this is a false construct, tying together social networks and more of The Third Mind. You think I can do it?
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