What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

The first day of the new year, and one of the first things I read is this article in the NYTimes about an artist, Tobi Kahn, who uses his art in much the same sort of way I want to use mine:  "Art Intended to Make the End of Life Beautiful" (by Samuel G. Freedman). Or the way I already do use mine, albeit in a more limited way.  Art created for others, not for myself.  Art that creates a place of beauty and peace, of safety where one can be vulnerable, open to the deepest truths. I've found my outlet so far mostly in liturgical spaces, draping fabrics in sanctuaries, using colors and textures to help people move out of everyday structures into a flowing, unbounded yet protected, spiritual space.

Last night I finished reading Just Kids, by Patti Smith (a Christmas present to James that I appropriated!), a memoir of her early years in NY with Robert Mapplethorpe, both of them struggling to discern their artistic calling.  She mentions how her mother used to say that "what you do on New Year's Day will foretell what you'll be doing the rest of the year," or, in her mother's words, "So as today, the rest of the year."  To then come upon this article about an artist who is doing "just what I want to do!" first thing January 1, 2011—does this foretell the rest of my year?  Will I spend my time creating beautiful, unbounded yet protected, spaces for others to encounter truth?

I'm also reading books on jazz music and listening to jazz classics in preparation for our trip to Istanbul in June.  As I write the words "unbounded yet protected," I realize that it's a very good description of jazz music as well.  Being forced to grapple with jazz singing, something I've never done before, has forced me to grapple with my classically trained prejudices against it.  Jazz musicians have a strong tendency to think of their music as the "hardest," the music that "real" musicians go to when they get "bored" with the rest.  That kind of snobbery has always raised my hackles—"Oh yeah? Have you sung Hindemith? Stravinsky? Bach, in German?  How about Joni Mitchell?  She's no piece of cake, either."  OK, so I've spent my life engaged with difficult music as well, music that requires "real" skill and musicality.  Let's get over the competition between musical forms.  As of January 1, 2011, I am tossing out all preconceived notions about jazz, or any other kind of music, and entering this new study as a journey into a new and different (not harder or easier or anything else but different) way to create beautiful, flowing, unbounded yet protected, spaces for people to connect with themselves, with others, and with the deepest truths of our life together.  I know how to infuse other forms of music with my sincere self—now I get to learn how to do that with jazz.  More on this to come...