~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~
 |
at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
by Installation Artist James Turrell (b 1943)
One of the charms of taking a trip -- or even walking out into your own backyard (just ask Dorothy) -- is the opportunity to look up and see the sky in a whole new way. I can promise you this is what happens when you enter the little indoor - outdoor alcove at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and gaze upward through Turrell's oval Skyspace. There you have a little piece of the Arizona sky, perfectly sized for for you alone.
Not only does the Scottsdale Museum have its own skyspace, it has its own poem. Arizona Poet Laureate Alberto Rios was commissioned to write a celebratory poem when the museum opened on February 14 (Valentine's Day!) 1999. Upon the occasion, Rios observed:
“I know many poems about things in museums, but few about the museum itself. This writing, then, is a hopeful act of stark public purpose, a poem about museums, museums as themselves, these simple houses that hold and keep our lives, and into whose living rooms we welcome each other.”
The Museum Heart
We, each of us, keep what we remember in our hearts.
We, all of us, keep what we remember in museums.
In this way, museums beat inside us.
What we have seen and been fed,
What we have smelled and then wanted,
What hair we have touched
And what hands have touched our own;
What fires have burned red,
What rifles-fire echoes still,
What blue mountains rise
On the horizon’s orange and gray spine;
What day-moon mornings, what June beetled evenings,
Simple heat moving, finally, into simple coolness,
A single long drink of good water,
My mother’s yes, your father’s chin.
What we remember,
What we have remembered to keep,
Where we put what we keep:
Sometimes in buildings we find
Pieces of the heart.
Sometimes in a heart we find
The shelter of a building.
Alberto Rios (b 1952)
Arizona Poet Laureate
Such an empty place; so vague.
Just a country where the thunder goes.”
~ Truman Capote ~ "Breakfast at Tiffany's" ~
As I returned to the hotel, over - warm and over - tired at the close of each museum adventure, I thought of Truman Capote's description of the perfect traveling companion. In my determination to absorb the Sonoran ambience, no matter what the daily temperatures, I was like Mrs. Williams, while Gerry embodied the opposite disposition:
"Mrs. Williams and I got along extravagantly well, and as a result became lifelong friends. We had only one point of disagreement. She had read a considerable number of books in preparation for our journey and, regardless of the August Turkish heat ashore, was an unflagging, totally dedicated sightseer. I hate sightseeing; one old rock is just another old rock -- I'm probably one of the few people who has visited Athens, not once but many times, and never once ventured near the Parthenon.
[Not like Keats who
" . . . mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time . . . "]
So, when my companion wandered off into the broiling Turkish interiors to inspect a crumbling mosque or a bunch of old graves, I simply refused to accompany her. Instead, I swam, sunbathed, swam some more, fished, read, ate delicious trifles prepared by the jolly chef, kept my diary up to date, swam some more, and so, in consequence, was fresh as a daisy when Mrs. Williams, sweat-soaked and heat-crazed, returned from her cultural excursions."
from the essay "Yachts and Things"
by Truman Capote (1924 - 1984)
reading Capote, fresh as a daisy in the
ZuZu Restaurant at the Hotel Tally Ho
 |
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, March 28th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Groundscape & Skyscape
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
your bracelet -- and the Upholstery!
 |
Good one!
ReplyDeleteThanks to Antoinette Whittingham for these related reflections:
ReplyDelete'To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.' These lines to me represent the quintessence of creativity, and they were what came to my mind on reading your excellent blog, 'Rios and Capote in Scottsdale,' Kitti. What amazes me is how in your recent trip to Arizona, you have whilst visiting museums there, seamlessly connected, poetry, the novel, art installations and photography using sky as the recurrent image, or symbol.
You present us with the different ways in which the artists mentioned in your blog sense, define and interpret the sky. The art installation, 'Knight Rise,' by the artist James Turrell is both a physical and symbolic representation of the sky. As readers we feel compelled to look up in wonder and attempt to interpret it. You then introduce us to 'Museum Heart,' a poem by Albert Rios, about a museum itself, viewed through the eyes of the poet. In it the contents of the building itself is part of the human heart, it's an amphora of the senses, in the lines 'What day-moon mornings, what June beetled evenings. Thus the sky symbol persists. Both the poem and the art installation pave the way to the observations of Truman Capote, in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' about what the sky means to him. 'It's better to look at the sky than live there, such an empty place, so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.'
Now here we find the poetic and literary genius of Truman Capote. Finally to his and to your vision of the attributes of a good travelling companion. For him it's the Mrs Williams, in his essay, 'Yachts and Things.' Leads me to the conclusion, there are a lot of great William's out there, Mr's and Mrs, Blake, Yeats, Whittingham, ,mc Cartney. If Gerry is Capote, downing chilled gins at the bar, you are Holly Golightly, Travelling.