Beyond all the individual churches I have known, New York City is my church. It is always deep, it always evokes joy, reverence and gratitude in me. Boom, the second I got off the train at Penn Station. New life, new vision, fresh perspective. “Mommy’s going hunting sermons,” I remember telling my congregation before I went on sabbatical. And they laughed, because they get it. How can our ministries be fresh and relevant and relate to the world when we never get OUT?
Get out! See art! Attend the theatre! Hear live music with other breathing, reacting human beings! Go people-watch, even if it’s just at the mall! Excuse yourself from yourself and be Emerson’s transparent eyeball! Get your face out of the books and smell new smells! Eat new foods! How can we speak for God’s creation if we’re never out in it, being dazzled and spun around by it?
Just to rant for a moment, do we really need ONE more book about meditation and the spiritual life? Will no one speak for participation in the arts and its benefits for the spiritual life? Jeepers. So many religious people think that the arts are this “other” thing that we might do when we have a day off, like it’s they’re a luxury. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t experience God any more deeply reading the Bible, praying, or hiking in the woods than I do standing in Times Square listening to a man play the saxophone in front of the Duane Read Drugstore. That’s just me.
I find God standing in the line for the Ladies Room at the Met with all the fapitzed women, some of whom are bored and doing due diligence by using their subscribers seasons tickets, others who are, like me, grinning from ear to ear and high as a kite from the magnificence of the human voice. We’re going to be stumbling around for days with the French horn and a final tenor note ringing in our ears.
So when I decided to take a few days of study leave to prepare for the summer and heard that the Metropolitan Museum of Art was going to be showing 100 pieces of deceased designer Alexander McQueen’s work in a retrospective exhibit, I just tossed some things in a bag and got on a train. I got more work done in ten uninterrupted hours en route than I would have had at home. I got a little room at the Seafarers And International House in Union Square (clergy discount!), and I got to the Met for opening day of the exhibit. I was standing in one of the galleries feeling stoned on beauty when a PeaceBang reader found me and rescued me, keeping my feet tethered to earth. I LOVE blind dates with PB friends! There isn’t one of you I’ve met in person that I didn’t instantly adore.
Feast your eyes (as always, click on images to enlarge):
Glorious vision. I’m very drawn to art that features antlers and horns – very pagan of me, I know (and no, I don’t mean taxidermy). The wildness of the antlers tearing that lace is just… well, it’s just wild. Don’t expect me to be articulate about this. It’s art.
So I’m ogling this tragic, glorious gown and these two yentas are standing behind me going, “Oh, I don’t know. That looks so uncomfortable. I don’t get it.” I heard a lot of that sort of thing throughout the entire show. Made me want to use my umbrella like a billy club on some thick skulls.
McQueen had a thing for feathers.
And here’s this beautiful, kind of horrific piece, evocative of the Raven, the Victorian symbol of death. McQueen was enamored of the Romantic movement and its obsession with the relationship between transient beauty and Death. Some of you may know that he died a suicide:
The famous “armadillo shoes.” I am agog at McQueen’s ability to blend a totally unique, futuristic vision with elements from fashion’s past, in this case, the little Elizabethan pouf.
McQueen could cut a coat like nobody’s business:
He isn’t totally to credit for the popularity of military jackets but he did certainly contribute to the “moment” that military jackets are having right now (and have been having for a couple of years). What’s fun and exciting is to see how a designer’s work trickles down to the ordinary consciousness of someone like me, who knows nothing about fashion (I’m learning fast, thanks to all of you and your response to this blog!) and who doesn’t think she has any earthly connection whatsoever to the fashion industry.
Here’s one of the designs from McQueen’s commercial label…
… and here’s your average American woman who just happens to see this military style jacket in the fall of 2011 and feels that she just HAS to have it.
From a couture piece that costs thousands of dollars to the McQueen line’s $400 version to Victoria Weinstein’s $40 knock-off of a knock-off of a knock-off.
You may consider this the manipulation of a consumer by great brains at the top of the economic food chain. Yes, it’s that. It’s also the way that art infects people, the way great artists translate the zeitgeist in clothing or food or design and start a trend, and how the interconnectedness of the human species causes that trend to spread. Is it derivative or is it synchronicity? Is it commerce or the Muse or the Holy Spirit?
Whatever it is, I think it’s marvelous and I’m always happy and willing to be infected by beauty. Life would be so dull without it.
For a hilarious and scathing take on the subject for those of you who think you’re above or beyond such “infection,” enjoy one of my favorite clips from “The Devil Wears Prada.” The incomparable Meryl Street plays Miranda Priestley, a magazine editrix based on the infamous Vogue editor Anna Wintour who was, perhaps not at all coincidentally, a dear friend of Alexander McQueen’s.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/13046/the-devil-wears-prada-cerulean-sweater
And I say to myself, “what a Wonderful World…”
Thank you, PB.
LOVE! I’m hoping to get to that exhibit soon!
Smallwundr in Queens.
“It’s also the way that art infects people, the way great artists translate the zeitgeist in clothing or food or design and start a trend, and how the interconnectedness of the human species causes that trend to spread.”
And part of the wonder of how we are made is that some people are so attuned to the wonder of Creation in what they see, hear, feel, and taste, that they are called to create. In architecture school I learned that my talents were not vision or design; however I learned to see and understand those who had the gift for vision and design. I found that the excitement of working with those talented people fed what I was called to do.
I feel that way about nature – there’s a beautiful bird carolling away outside and a bit of sunshine shining through the leaves of trees after the rain…
With any issues that I have with God, at least I can be grateful for the beauty of the natural world.
you inspire me — blessings!