Arts Mediocrity in a World of Change

Muse on Pegasus by Odilon Redon

"Rejoice in this: Seeds of futurity require the darkness within soil to dream."

Source: Nation of Change

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She attends a Sikh dance ceremony. Ladies in elaborate jewelry and glorious headdresses dance to an electro-pop Banghra. Three ladies stick out, as they wear differentiating clothing. One is fully covered, from head to toe in black, another appears only through the eyes, and yet another wears a colorful headscarf. This is unusual, as the Sikh women would not be known to wear Islamic hijab or burka coverings. To her, they seem as transformer figures.  

I am in a field that at once changes into a warehouse meant for music rehearsals. Standing across from a legendary local musician, a classical percussionist and kit drummer, he asks me to play drums. “Every American kid must have banged on a drumset, eh?” he asks. To which I respond, “Actually, my brother used to play all day long, I’d only listen. Now he’s graduated from Berklee!” “How do you think he did there” again, he interrogates softly. My mother appears as from nowhere, “He was kind of depressed, so he didn’t do as well as he wished.” My shape-shifting surroundings turn from warehouse to field, as I sit to a small drumset of snare, high-hat and ride, only when I sit down, the snare inches away, and the two cymbals spread far apart. I look down, and all I have for sticks are pieces of asparagus and cilantro, and thin pieces of balsa wood. I try to use this delicate craft wood and these flimsy vegetables, and the musician and teacher begins walking away. He looks at me, trying to navigate this moving drumset in an open field and simply tells me a story of decadence in New York, about a lesbian soiree that he once hosted at his house after a celebrity gig of some kind. 

________

with a most subtle whisper

behind a fantastic passion

eager to express unity

with perfect awe in a world that dreams

Up, a new way to be

for the moment

and its own living mystery,

questioning

“what is before?”

- excerpt from "all rivers have one source"