I strolled down to the Allentown Art Festival today. Art Festivals aren't always my thing - lots of people, plenty of kitsch, pickpockets, annoying salesmen. In fact, I usually go to watch the people. People-watching is a pastime of mine, has been with me as long as I can remember. You see the darndest things, sometimes, too. Today, I saw:
A hideously burnt woman with barely healed skin in a very revealing dress. Maybe the dress was necessary to prevent infection in her wounds, maybe she had been burnt for so long she was no longer self-conscious about it. I really don't know. But I would love to know how she got in that fire, why she survived, how she dealt with surviving. In short, I want to know her story.
There was also the poor college student who couldn't play guitar very well but was out with a hat and a guitar anyway. I wonder - did he pick up guitar in order to play outside, or did he play outside in order to practice guitar? Or is he an amazing virtuoso whose voice was damaged after a long weekend of rehearsal, and he was resting? He wasn't bad, he was just simply very quiet and simplistic in his chord structures.
I also noticed that most fast food owners are rather large people. I wonder, do they eat their own food? There is something remarkably dangerous about eating your own poison (or delicacies, for that matter). It gives one a god-delusion, I think, for I also noticed that the vast majority of them were loud, foul-mouthed and impatient.
Please don't take this post to be me criticizing the world for my own amusement. There is some of that, true. There is also something else going on.
All of those people were beautiful.
Sure, they were burnt, or not particularly musical, or fat and foul. But they were images of a far-distant Creator. They were our kindred. Taken in the aggregate, humanity is overwhelming. Taken in the individual, each person is a work of art from God Himself. There was artwork all around me, but little of it was for sale.
Or are we?
Some of us may think we're kitsch, valuable only because of the whims of others. Others of us don't see how we are like art at all, because we think we are so worthless. But the truth is that worth is not something measured by the crowds, or the experts, or even the other people in our lives. It is not something learned about in books, seen on TV, or even the result of comparative analysis with the rest of humanity.
The Mona Lisa would be great art even if it was hiding in a dim corner of a dilapidated bar in Patagonia. Picasso was art before anyone discovered him. And each person is precious because our lives were painted by the Master Painter. Don't fit in? You're probably the beginning of a new movement by the Master Painter. Feel like no one takes you seriously? Yeah, that was Van Gogh's problem.
Wow, I've wound up with God again. This is why it is unwise to leave me alone for two hours at an arts festival.
A hideously burnt woman with barely healed skin in a very revealing dress. Maybe the dress was necessary to prevent infection in her wounds, maybe she had been burnt for so long she was no longer self-conscious about it. I really don't know. But I would love to know how she got in that fire, why she survived, how she dealt with surviving. In short, I want to know her story.
There was also the poor college student who couldn't play guitar very well but was out with a hat and a guitar anyway. I wonder - did he pick up guitar in order to play outside, or did he play outside in order to practice guitar? Or is he an amazing virtuoso whose voice was damaged after a long weekend of rehearsal, and he was resting? He wasn't bad, he was just simply very quiet and simplistic in his chord structures.
I also noticed that most fast food owners are rather large people. I wonder, do they eat their own food? There is something remarkably dangerous about eating your own poison (or delicacies, for that matter). It gives one a god-delusion, I think, for I also noticed that the vast majority of them were loud, foul-mouthed and impatient.
Please don't take this post to be me criticizing the world for my own amusement. There is some of that, true. There is also something else going on.
All of those people were beautiful.
Sure, they were burnt, or not particularly musical, or fat and foul. But they were images of a far-distant Creator. They were our kindred. Taken in the aggregate, humanity is overwhelming. Taken in the individual, each person is a work of art from God Himself. There was artwork all around me, but little of it was for sale.
Or are we?
Some of us may think we're kitsch, valuable only because of the whims of others. Others of us don't see how we are like art at all, because we think we are so worthless. But the truth is that worth is not something measured by the crowds, or the experts, or even the other people in our lives. It is not something learned about in books, seen on TV, or even the result of comparative analysis with the rest of humanity.
The Mona Lisa would be great art even if it was hiding in a dim corner of a dilapidated bar in Patagonia. Picasso was art before anyone discovered him. And each person is precious because our lives were painted by the Master Painter. Don't fit in? You're probably the beginning of a new movement by the Master Painter. Feel like no one takes you seriously? Yeah, that was Van Gogh's problem.
Wow, I've wound up with God again. This is why it is unwise to leave me alone for two hours at an arts festival.
No comments:
Post a Comment