U2 priorities

The U2 concert in Raleigh is tonight!! We’re very excited and are going to try our hand at getting into the pit. From what Katie P has said and from what we saw during the last tour, that’s the place to be. In an effort to increase our chances, I’ve been reading “Joe’s Unofficial Guide to the U2 Queue.” I found this part particularly hilarious about eating and drinking light so that you don’t have to go to the bathroom:

Most venues will have portable toilets, so having to go to the toilet is not an issue in the morning. However, when it gets closer to show time, you only want to drink enough water to sustain life, but not too much where you will have to leave and possibly lose your spot at the front of the stage.

LOL.

Filed under: Around town, Art, In the world

you can’t go back

I’m currently obsessed with two things: Henry VIII (more on that later) and the life, poetry, and stories of  George MacDonald. I just finished MacDonald’s lovely, The Princess and the Goblin, and will boldly state that I liked it better than the Chronicles of Narnia… I think. Well… maybe I can’t say it so boldly after all. I liked it as much, if not more than Narnia… How’s that?

The tale follows Princess Irena and her friend Curdie in a fantastical tale filled with goblins, silver threads, and grandmothers. A journey that takes them through fear, courage, disbelief, and faith — the kind seen and unseen. While the story isn’t fully allegorical (think Narnia), God’s hand is woven throughout.

At one point, Princess Irena has followed the silver thread– which only those with faith could see– to what seems to be a dead end filled with rocks. While the reader knows that she’s been led to the pile of rocks for good reason, she does not and considers turning back:

At length the thought struck her, that at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She rose at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led her hand up to the heap of stones — backwards it seemed nowhere.

I was struck by the message of you can’t go back. You can’t turn back from hard things. You can’t turn back to ignorance once wisdom is gained. You can’t turn back to innocence once it’s lost…The story continues:

As the princess lay and sobbed, she kept feeling the thread mechanically, following it with her finger many times up to the stones in which it disappeared… All at once it came into her head that she might remove some of the stones and see where the thread went next. Almost laughing at herself for never having thought of this before, she jumped to her feet. Her fear vanished; once more she was certain her grandmother’s thread could not have brought her there just to leave her there…

The last line struck me. God doesn’t bring us to scary spots or dark corners to leave us there. There’s a silver thread guiding us through it.

Filed under: Art

tattered sails

Bry was reading A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald over Labor Day Weekend and I just received my own copy yesterday. It’s a book of poems/prayers that MacDonald wrote for each day of the year where he lays his soul to bare.  It’s made me think about what it means to be an “old soul”… My thoughts aren’t formed yet, but hope to write more about it soon. Until then, I’ll leave you with my favorite poem/prayer so far:

January 12

Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!

My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,

Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;

In calm, ’tis but a limp and flapping thing:

Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing, –

To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind

Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.

Filed under: Art

art gazing

After reading an article recently on what it looks like to be a consumer of art, I started to think more about my museum experiences. I’ve been privileged to have seen some of the world’s most famous pieces of art in some of the world’s most beautiful museums. But I’ve always been perplexed on how to really appreciate what I’m seeing. In places like the Met or the Louvre, there are numerous floors and wings of art seeking your attention. Other than the Mona Lisa, there was only one painting out of the hundreds I saw at the Louvre that I have a crisp memory of.

Probably, my favorite museum is the Musee Rodin. I think it resonates with me because it’s relatively small and focused. Whereas places like the Met or the Louvre are giant showcases with many collections, the Musee Rodin is focused on one artist and the variations of him and his craft. You see the sketches that led to the sculptures. And the sculptures that led to the final piece. I remember that museum well. The Kiss. The Thinker. The Gates. The Hands. The gardens.

One of the ways the author of the article really observed a piece of art was by trying to sketch it. I like that idea. It’s not about whether or not the sketch is good, but how it helps you to see details and subtleties of the piece you’re looking at, whether it’s art, architecture, or even people.

I’ve often thought that if I lived somewhere with a great museum, I’d go there often to just sit and stare. Yet, I’m reminded that there’s an art museum just down the street and another one just down the highway that I don’t spend time at. Maybe now’s the time for that to change.

Filed under: Art, in process

jonathan strange & mr. norrell

I’ve jumped (meaning I read a lot, but skimmed some too) through my second summer reading book: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I had more hope for the book than it delivered. For some reason, I kept reading all 800 pages, but am not sure if I knew how dissatisfied I would be at the end if I would have chosen to make the journey.

The story is of two magicians in 19th century England. One who wants to keep magic within his “safe” hands and the other who sees magic as something to be available to the masses. While the two quarrel about the appropriate role of magic in society, there are other people and beings choosing to use magic and the idea of magic for their own purposes.

The author also makes a good attempt to create an actual history of English magic within the context of true English history through lots of lengthy footnotes, that, for the most part I skipped. But the way she interwove magic into English life was actually quite convincing.

While the premise seemed interesting, I never felt invested in Jonathan Strange or Mr. Norrell, though there were secondary characters such as Lady Pole that I was more intrigued with. Unfortunately, when those storylines came to an end, my expectation to be able to peer deeper into the lives of the characters never happened. I didn’t walk away feeling like I learned something new about the world or people or saw the world in a different way. Rather it was a winding story that ended.

Filed under: Art

finishing anna karenina

I finished the last page of Anna Karenina as we pulled up to the gate at RDU last night. In this second reading I was delighted to find passages that I had forgotten and excited to reread my favorite exchanges again.

The heart of the book, for me, are the two primary relationships running parallel to each other. As one relationship blossoms, the other unravels. What is beautiful about the relationship that blossoms is that it does so because jealousies, hurt, and anger are confessed and forgiven. The other unravels under the pressures of mistrust, manipulation, and selfishness. These relationships aren’t as cut and dry as I portray them to be, as Tolstoy’s characters are too deep for that. But the observation is true nonetheless.

Filed under: Art

passage from A.K. IV

Levin is working through his heart where he got the notion of loving thy neighbor and at the same time seeing God’s revelation:

Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one’s neighbor reason could never discover, because it’s irrational.

Filed under: Art

passage from A.K. III

Konstantin Levin struggles with the thought of death as he listens to his brother struggle to live:

Levin could not sleep for a long while, hearing him (his brother). His thoughts were of the most various but the end of all his thoughts was the same –death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him…

“I work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten –death.”

He sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact — that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so…

The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble questions presented itself — death.

Filed under: Art

passage from A.K. II

In the following passage, Kitty reflects on why she’s drawn to Mademoiselle Varenka:

She (Varenka) always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka. Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life — apart from the worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser.

Filed under: Art

passage from A.K.

My first summer reading list book is Anna Karenina. I devoured the book last year and am doing so again. Tolstoy’s knowledge of the human heart amazes me. I’ll be posting my favorite passages as I go. In this passage Konstantin Levin has just arrived at his home in the country after a number of days in Moscow:

The study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag’s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father’s sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ash-tray, a manuscript-book with his handwritings. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and say to him: “No, you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation of happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.”

This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the say of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the corner where stood his two heavey dumb-bells, and began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumb-bells.

Filed under: Art