What Do You See When You Look Through Me

We, as human beings, are innately attuned to appearances.  It's hard not to make general assumptions based on what we see.  It is our nature.  How that information gets mulled over in the brain is the important part.  For many, a judgment is made, with not much being "mulled over".  This is where prejudges of all kinds live.  There is no thought beyond the judgmental reaction.  THIS is informing too many people's thoughts today.

I would surmise this is the most crucial of times to realize how this "sense" is helping or destroying us. My lens is unique in many ways, I'll stick to a few.  Being a child of southern white teenage parents, and being male certain assumptions can be made. If you met me on the street your sense of sight would inform you to make these typical assumptions.  Things that happened in my life, however, will not be available for you in this short meeting.  There are things I still can't talk about.

By the age of six my mother was remarried to a Mexican American from California.  My mother can be described best as an intellectual hippie who never found her way in the south.  My conservative grandparents were raising me, yet my Mom and step-dad were in and out of my life.  I spent many weekends and summers living with them and my younger twin sisters who were 1/2 Mexican, who never knew if they would have food to eat or whether their parents would drink what little money they had for food away.
My wife is 1/2 Vietnamese.  Born in Saigon during the turbulence of the Vietnam War.  My sister-in-law has 3 children who are 1/2 black, 1/4 Vietnamese, 1/4 American.  We have a smorgasbord of a family. I lived the first half of my life in the south and moved North to stay in the second half, where I'm likely to remain.  So who do you see?  Do you see any of this reflected in my eyes?

I have mulled over this my entire life which has informed me to be who I am.  I realize daily that this is not necessarily normal, but it's becoming more common.  I remember not being taught Spanish in the house because assimilation was the norm. My step-dad didn't speak Spanish.  I missed out, but mostly my sisters missed out on valuing their heritage.  My step-father had issues that I now look back on and ask myself how his self esteem was crushed by a devaluing of who he was, then pile that onto my sisters.  My twin sisters had a rough time of it, getting out of the poverty that my family left them to wallow in.  I was lucky, I was white.  What do you see?  Do you see this family reflected in my eyes?  Do you see the guilt I carry for them?

My wife was born in Vietnam during the war, her father an American.  Her mother was married to a man previously, with whom she had 4 children, who was not good to her (let's leave it at that).  I believe my mother-in-law sought a way out (what choices does a woman in a bad marriage with children have during a war that is ravaging your existence), but her "American" had pledged his love to another, got both of them pregnant and left for America.  He later chose to return, for the other woman and his son, only to find her married to someone else.  I guess he  felt guilty enough to find my wife and her mother and bring them back to America with him.  Once here, my wife's mother took her and ran away, which says a lot.  My mother, apparently, tried many times to whisk me away from my grandparents.  My wife doesn't even look Vietnamese.   What do you see when you look at her? Do you see her reflected in my eyes?

My nephews are 1/2 black and beautiful boys.  My little niece is gorgeous and 1/2 black.  They are all black in appearance.  What do you see when you look at them?  Do you see them reflected in my eyes?

There is more in my life that I chose not to share yet, that informs my life.  But, with this story you may get a picture of the lens for which I see through.  I am very flawed and make horrible judgments, BUT I do try to remember my lens when I see you and wonder what will reflect back at me.  Who do you see when you look at me?  Who do you see when you look in the mirror?  That person in the mirror needs your undivided kindness so you can see the depth of humanity in others.

My reflexion for the day!

DEFINING ART THROUGH MY GROWING LENS

Only recently in life have I found that the term “Art” has much more depth of meaning than I ever imagined.  I have been a highly-trained musician for the better part of my life, always knowing, clearly, what was and wasn’t art.  This allowed my world to be confined to music, painters/sculptors, etc., dance, and contemporary photography, etc.  Thus, my world view was small, yet I thought vastly large. What changed?

The epiphany for me was when I discovered history and philosophy, yet in my mind I could compartmentalize this discovery apart from art. I was so very wrong.

“Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers – and never succeeding”.  Plato

Now, before I lose you completely, I have come to understand that “study”; that which requires expanding knowledge of self, the past, the present, and the possible future; belongs in the Art category. How can it not?

Why?  I love the Plato quote above as it is precise.  When I study history, a direct purpose is begun that rarely resembles the end, if there is an end.  When it transforms into writing, thought on paper, the same passion I have in music is transformed by as deep a passion for expanding that unobtainable flower blossoming. Thank you, Plato!

This leads me to such amazing beauty in historical study.  It challenges my preconceptions of people, time periods, and events leaving me with no definitive answers, but more questions.  Sometimes this is frustrating, but recently I have passed that milestone into joy of discovery and beautiful dialogue.  It’s the same emotional high that I feel while listening to Chopin or Mahler, and when, at its sublime, matches performing a Mahler Symphony. The latter is something musicians feel when the music you are playing, surrounded by other musicians, engulfs your being to a point that you can hardly contain your emotions.  You fight back your tears for elation, because who wants to see everyone on stage stop playing and weep.  The audience doesn’t experience the same performance in this way, nor can a recording duplicate the experience.  There is a purity in truth, be it music or history.

I have now found that same experience when I discover something profound to me in historical context that no one, that I have found, has discovered or thought of in quite the same way. This feeling, during the discovery, is not something you can completely share.   

Why does this matter??  We are struggling, in the United States, to discard the instanced past, see it’s glaring mistakes, and accept the ugly truths of the past which devastate our impressions of American History. Historians, for the most part, are leading the charge into the future, yet they are attacked from every angle, especially from those who want so desperately to hold on to how the collective US history has been taught to us all.  We, as a nation, can no longer remain neutral, thus the tremendous growing pains.  Many proud patriotic Americans want to cherish that feeling of superiority over other nations and “others” in general.  Nationalism, whether US or any other country, is only viable if it’s realistic and true. It can be used so horribly, and has in the past, as to crumple the same society that flaunts their belief in greatness. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love this flawed country, but I do so as a father or sibling, yet not a child, realizing that admiration does not replace fact about the horrors committed by the same country. All nations are inherently flawed.  

Back to “Art”.  The parallels in artistic study and the humanities, which includes historical study in my book, is stunning.  Musicians, painters, sculptors, photographers, etc. all know that the moments of sublime are few and fleeting.  Yet, we work hours upon hours of honing our craft to visit these fleeting, highly addictive moments because our souls cannot endure less.  How is historical or philosophical study and writing any different?  It is not, we are comrades seeking the same thing.  Yet, we divide our worlds. 

Why should we care about this distinction? NOW, like pivotal times in history, more than ever, we need absolute unity where we are pushed to divide. I was disappointed in my music history courses because they did little to correlate the rest of history with music history.  I need not know less about the contents of the Bamberg codex than the Plantagenet dynasty during this same period.  Bach’s dates are used to codify the baroque period, 1685-1750.  There’s a LOT of history happening during this period.  Large German migration to America.  Did this impact Bach in any way?  Did these same German immigrants (many to Pennsylvania) bring German influences, musically, to America? One of the great writers of what color means for the artist was Eugene Delacroix who just so happened to be friends with Frederick Chopin, Franz Lizst, and the fiction author George Sand (the crossdressing woman).  The same can be said for the study of history that does not include what is happening in the Art world.

These sample questions are just a stepping point to get students, and all of us, to think differently about historical context, especially in Art. I believe this makes the study more fascinating, likely to spark more interest, and more ability to absorb how both intertwine beautifully.  Memorization of dates and details become unnecessary as it happens naturally in the bigger understanding of it all.

That’s what hit me today.  Let’s just wait to see which direction I go next!

Let us not forget. Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King

On this somber day of the 50th anniversary of the death of MLK, 

I'm reminded we will continue to suffer under 
the self involved ego "I", 

that slams down the collective spirit of the "We" until we say 

"never more, never more" 

for "WE" are the raven