The Cure for Light
Salmon, Oil Paint, and Full-Bellied Crows
Well, I’ve been absent from this space for some time. I have a few thoughts in the works that aren’t quite ready for any social-life, but in the meantime I thought I’d post about some of the goings on in my world.
We are a month back from our time in North Carolina at The Breath and the Clay and I feel that I’m only really beginning to unpack the week. Our beloved friends Stephen and Sarah Roach and the team provide such a beautiful opportunity for a hospitality within the confluence of idiosyncrasy. It is an enormous gift. And it happens every March, so if you don’t know, you should know.
From that weekend I’m chewing on themes like embodiment and the somatic, how consciousness reaches beyond the body and intertwines with the world around us, how creativity ties into this, the necessity of misunderstanding and what that means for intimacy. I also was turned on to the music of Molly Parden, the book East of Eden (which I’m sinking my teeth into as we speak!) and the amazing artists in our Breath and Clay Art Gallery. Lots and lots and lots to chew on!
THE CURE FOR LIGHT
I thought I would take a minute to mention an upcoming art exhibition I have slated for March of next year at the Mary Condon Hodgson Art Gallery at Frederick Community College here in Maryland. Of all that I’m chewing on this has become the cud (so to speak). The exhibition’s working title has landed at The Cure for Light. You see, my grandfather at a young age was playing with some other boys one Summer’s eve with some fireworks and one prematurely engaged right in front of his eyes. All extremities in tact, he nearly went blind. The doctor who examined the effects prescribed darkness. For several weeks my grandfather had to sit in a room in their house, each window of which was sealed and all bulbs removed from their sockets. I can’t image the madness induction of this as a young boy.
I don’t know any other details really other than I remember my grandfather seeing things! So, it worked! But it’s always struck me—it’s as if there was too much light in too little duration and the time of his eyes needed to stretch out the saturation.
TARVAA
Once, a great sickness swept through Mongolia, killing entire villages. A young boy named Tarvaa was stricken by the disease and lay unconscious in his tent. Thinking their son was dead his family fled with others from the village trying to outrun the plight. The boy’s sweltering skin and aching bones, chased his soul from his body. It slipped down through his back through the tent floor, the compacted grasses, roots and soil and dropped into the underworld.
Surprised by this intruder the Khan of the underworld asked you have not yet died, what has brought you here? The boy replied, my family has left and my heart has broken along with my body in illness, where else would I go? The Khan gestured the boy’s following and showed him rooms filled with treasures of gold, luxurious fabrics and gems, piles of riches beyond his imagination. He said you cannot stay here with breath in your lungs, I’m must send you back, but before you go I will grant you one wish. The glint of riches appeal wore away as the boy thought and after some time he said with a warmth, give me the gift of myth, story and legend.
Through some imperceivable gesture of will the Khan made it so and just as the deal was struck two crows breached Tarvaa’s tent door and took out his eyes.
Instantaneously the boy was back in his body and the world was black and Tarvaa was frightened but soon he began seeing story and myth unfold before him in a tapestry too glorious to silence. First, he told them to the air of his tent but as passersby caught the eloquence of the murmurs within, crowds began to gather.
Blind Tarvaa lived a long time. Traveling throughout the land, stories vibrated his vision, leeched from the particularities of place, people and beasts of his travels and he became a bit of a legend himself, one of the greatest story tellers the land had ever known.
There anostories in the world of the necessity of pain for wisdom that we, in our opulence and ease, should start to pay attention. But particularly blindness: Saul to St. Paul, it is rumored that Homer was blind, crows (yet again) taking the eyes of the wise salmon of Assaroe, the often omitted blindness of the prince in the story of Rapunzel, the prince falling from the tower in the despair of losing his love, lands in briars which tear his eyes to darkness.
What is it about the need for darkness?
I’ve written before about the book In Praise of Shadow by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and the problem he sees with Western culture’s penchant for light. It’s worth the read because so many signs of the times are hinting that the metaphor has caught up with us.
So, that’s what I’ll be exploring in this coming exhibition. As per usual, these ideas roll around in my brain but are a point of departure for whatever works out in the springing up of ideas. So we’ll see where it all lands.
I’m excited about some other projects and thoughts that I look forward to sharing soon. But I hope you all are well and finding wisdom’s appeal despite the cost.
