First of all, it’s finally warmed up a bit here in Chicago. By warm, I mean low 90s, which, by comparison to where I grew up (New Orleans), is like a nice late fall day. It’s really not hot at all, y’all. I think it’s appropriate to pay homage to Chicago summer weather to atone for my snide attacks this winter (1, 2). It has been, by far, the most comfortable summer of my life. Frankly, I think it makes the winters worth enduring.
Work is going well for me, although between my working and Karen dancing I have very little time to spend in the studio. I’m OK with this, actually. Summer has always been a slow time for me regarding production of work, but I tend to do a bit of the important reading and thinking that make fall and winter my most productive seasons. One very exciting part of my summer job has been learning to use some of the advanced fabrication equipment at the school. Had I not taken this job, I would have had to take a class to learn some of these things — and probably not as thoroughly. I actually conducted a CNC orientation yesterday. Here’s the machine we use. To know it well enough to teach it is very exciting. And I’m getting paid!
Karen is out of town right now, for a dance workshop in Houston. Karen’s folks are here while she’s gone. It’s a great exchange: they get to spend lots of time with Anna, and I get to retain my sanity. I can remember how difficult it was surviving without Karen while she was traveling with Momix, and I’m happy that Anna is spared being subjected to life as the daughter of a bachelor, if even for one week. She does like mac and cheese and “Ronald Donald,” but no healthy, growing kid deserves cuisine like that for an entire week. She already generally looks a bit like Ronald McDonald when I get her dressed. That is, like a clown. A final note on having help this week: I’m a pretty good craftsman, and I can build, or learn to build/fabricate most things while working pretty naturally with a variety of materials, but I think God created long, silky hair to keep folks like me very humble. I have NO idea how the women in this family install a hair clip so that it won’t fall out within five minutes. I’m in awe, and I’m grateful Grammy is around!
Sometimes I second-guess my frequent sports posts. (how’s that for a non sequitur…) I think that perhaps it’s not good to follow a sports team so closely. Professional sports really is a fantasy world. That’s why I can’t wait for college football season. Seriously, my main reservation about following sports is the time it takes up to listen, watch and to read about. If I spent all of that time reading good literature, exploring the library, and doing other kinds of research, I’d probably be better off as an artist. To tell you the truth, I just don’t know. Part of me wants to respond that this makes me more well-rounded, but that’s probably hogwash. I’m sure there are plenty of well-rounded people out there who become well rounded by learning to play the piano, not listening to ball games. The Romans had a phrase that I remember from high school latin, Panem et Circenses: Bread and Circuses. I remember it vaguely as referring to the means by which the Roman ruling authority was able to keep the citizens pacified. As long as you keep the people fed, and keep the people entertained, then you can do what you will. I think fed and distracted is even more accurate. The one thing an artist cannot afford to be for any long period of time, is distracted. I willingly distract myself far too frequently with infinite, meaningless rabbit trails (”reading the news”) on the internet, and keeping up with baseball, football, golf, auto racing, cycling, etc… I so willingly and easily distract myself with all of the distracting offerings that life in America affords. Panem et Circenses… gotta give that one some thought.
I’m currently reading Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, on my brother’s recommendation. I’m finding it fascinating, and very enjoyable to read. It’s an imagined account of Jesus as a seven year-old. I think I’m enjoying it so much because, as a former atheist, Rice explicitly affirms the incarnation in her introduction. It’s allowed me to relax reading it and know that I’m not reading some veiled attack on orthodox Christian theology.
I’m currently listening to Bach arrangements by Leopold Stokowski. Karen is currently rehearsing a reconstructed Doris Humphrey modern dance work titled Passacaglia, set to Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. We searched iTunes to find the piece so that I could listen to it, and stumbled across Stokowski, who arranged the version the dance it set to. I love Bach, but I have never heard Bach played like Stokowski conducts it. I’m tempted to say that I’ve never heard Bach before. It’s just unbelievable to have heard a particular piece of music so many times, to have loved it, and then hear it one more time and marvel at the fact that it can become so completely brand new, so completely, completely sublime.
I’m off to the studio today, for a bit. I need to begin cleaning and organizing for the school year. I also might try to go to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute to see some shows that I’ve neglected seeing yet.
