i love sooouup! (and NY, too!)

JD's parents came to visit this weekend. They like to take pictures. Lots of pictures. Even when they do not travel, they take pictures of the sunset from their house, of the snow outside in their yard...you get the [picture]. They are always eager to show us their photos, and to view ours (of which there are few). Since Thanksgiving, we have traveled to Atlanta for Christmas/New Year's, and to New York for a fun weekend. Including the shots we took with JD's parents at the aquarium, the count on the camera for 1st quarter 2007 is about 15. Approximately 2 of these photos feature JD, as I do not particularly enjoy wielding the camera. I am probably doomed by both nature and nurture, as when my parents "go on holiday" they will probably return with a disposable camera, on which 3 shots have been taken (all of alligators on the golf course and perhaps a crane [the bird, not the heavy machinery]). Very rarely are they themselves featured in a shot.

While I lamented that we were not able to see more in New York (I, for one, could have happily parked it in MoMA for a couple of days) JD explained to his parents that, pretty much all we manage to do on trips is to keep ourselves fed. This is true. And it's okay with me. I prefer to see places through the built-in lenses of my own eyes, and to keep as souvenirs the smells and tastes of particular locales.

I'm certainly not knocking sight--I'm very thankful for that gift. And I like watching tv (both the hilarious and the hilariously bad) as much as the next person. (Sweet Moses, I love Go Fug Yourself!) But I appreciate print culture more, and I like the imagination it requires. I recently re-read a book by that dame Iris Murdoch (she really was a dame of the Royal British Order; though she may have slept her way to the top...) in which she argues that visual art plays an important moral function, and that the greatest artists are charged with viewing humanity with justice and compassion, and that they have the ability to show us the world as it really is. I was conscious of this claim for the whole New York trip, and I was on the lookout to recognize such art. I felt both challenged and frustrated...and dumb. I was trying to avoid too-literal interpretations, but found myself caught in interpretive circles:

What was the artist trying to convey? Is s/he mocking us? What does s/he want me to see? Maybe I'm supposed to figure it out on my own? No, I think he's mocking us--somebody was really stupid to pay millions for this solid-colored canvas. I think I can paint that one at home. Yes, Mark Rothko, we get it; you like stripes. Yes, we see the variety of horizons this world has to offer, and the crushing weight of social stratification. What? That's not it at all? Whatever.

But then suddenly, I came face to face with van Gogh's Starry Night and Dali's Persistence of Time, and it was pretty amazing--right next to a painting by some artist I've never heard of, and so much smaller than I imagined--and I got a glimpse of what (an often posthumous) reputation gets you in the art world, and then I realized again how little I understand. But I appreciated that there were so many different people walking around in the museum, looking at these pieces that some cultural elites decided were important--and sharing something together--and I felt like a slightly more enlightened outsider. And I wanted to stay, and try to figure it out.

Murdoch talks about the virtues of "attending"--to seeing, and focusing on people, and places. As a good Platonist, for her, vision reigns. There is something noble about really looking, even at the things and people we see every day. And if it's not noble, it's at least funny:

JD's parents to JD after a day of sightseeing:

...and here's a picture of the building where you work!