“You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
–Rumi
On a recent visit to the Renwick Gallery I wandered through the enormous room displaying Janet Echelman‘s Renwick 1.8 art piece. Gargantuan fabric nets draped across the vaulted ceiling and hung in giant latticed ladles drooping in transparent overlapping layers of vibrant, ever-changing colors. The description on the wall states, the art piece is Echelman’s way of examining the “complex interconnections between humankind and our physical world, and reveals the artist’s fascination with the measurement of time.” The piece was “inspired by the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami…The lines on the carpet trace the topographic patterns of the three dimensional form above.” Whether standing in the middle of the room or circling the room’s edges, I felt both grounded and suspended at the same time–alternately shifting between the earth’s surface and under the sea or, as the colors in the room changed, drifting over the earth and through waves of sunlight.
Topographic carpet pattern under changing colors of light
Echelman’s piece is meant to be a meditation on the “contrast between forces we understand and those we cannot, and the concerns of our daily existence within the larger cycle of time.” I felt I’d entered a magical door and was floating inside an enchanted room. The prodigious size of the work, both mammoth pendulous nets as well as the massive length of contoured lines reaching across the carpet, everything bathed in prismatic color, carried me into a place of awe where beauty’s presence suspended time and wrapped me in wonder. Indeed, I felt a power at work in the art piece that can be experienced but not fully described.
In our every day world, we move through time responding to needs and concerns, following rings of repeated activity and the topographical patterns outlining the shape of our culture and the ground we build our lives on. Moving between and within waves of sound, light and energy, we live and walk inside layers of physical wonder. As in Echelman’s dangling nets bathed in light, everything in the physical world steeps in a spectrum of moods, actions and reactions, our own, as well as that of the world around us. Eichelman’s piece allows viewers to observe and experience a relationship between physical form, light and energy. As the folds and shadows in the layers of nets suggest, there is a lot of subtleties and mystery in what we experience as well.
Like visual art, music and poetry can also take us to a place where through heightened sensory awareness time seems to suspend movement. Akin to Echelman’s art piece Renwick 1.8, Michael L. Newell’s poem, “Spiritual: Listening to Charlie Haden and Pat Methany” in response to Haden and Methany’s piece, “Beyond The Missouri Sky, – Spiritual,” (worth listening to while reading this post) carries readers into a space of deeply felt attentiveness. The first portion of Newell’s poem describes a journey on a “boundless sea,” and “a never ending progression of waves,” and lengthening night
…as we
bob up and down and up again
the only sounds the slap and splash
of water and our breathing hushed
though it may be seems sacrilegious
time loses all meaning we forget our names
to be certain our flesh still exists we touch
our faces our arms our legs
As Newell writes, carried away by the music, we touch ourselves and know we are fully physically present, but we are also in a world beyond physicality or words. As Newell goes on to write,
This journey is beyond comprehension
this is a world whose existence
does not lead to prayer it is prayer
the ending silence of the music
is the definition of awe and we sit silently
for a time and then dive again deep
into this world beyond words
Enveloped in the prayer of music, we enter into and become part of the prayer itself. Music can transport and transform us, bring us into a state of rebalance and peace, as does Newell’s poem.
The exchange and transformation of energy is integral to the creative process. Often in the natural world, something is destroyed or dies allowing something new to come into existence. Natural events often demonstrate this. The 2011 Tohuku quake created a tsunami whose effects were felt all the way across the Pacific and Echelman’s piece illustrates this interactive process in the waves of netting and waves of topographic curves on the carpet. As an art piece, we can see the exchange of energy in dramatic events with equanimity. Emerging from the experience of beauty great art immerses us in, however, we often step back into an unpredictable world and are faced with challenges. Imperfect beings as we are, we’re not always certain how to respond effectively or compassionately to great change and difficulties we encounter. We tumble, fall, make mistakes. Sometimes we harm others unknowingly, and sometimes because in our own incompleteness we can’t help it. When such challenging events occur, music, art, and poetry are there to remind us that while we carry out our daily activities, we also participate in a wider plain of existence, a larger field of grace that holds and enfolds us, even though we may sense a part of us dying or falling apart. As Arundhati Roy writes, “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget… another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
“Spiritual: Listening to Charlie Haden and Pat Methany” appears in Michael L. Newell’s newest book, Diddley-Bop-She-Bop, published by Bellowing Ark Press.
Anna Citrino---Poetry, Place, Pilgrimage 