I was in a graduate seminar at Columbia University. I forget the name of the course and even the professor's name (though he, to a degree, changed my life.)
I was just 21 and it was the first time I had a literature teacher make me look past the words on the page into the tectonic happenings of the world and how those happenings were influencing everything around them.
The painting was "Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway." And I had never seen anything like it.
Have you?
All at once we could see the tumult of the industrial age.
The New York Times runs a periodic column called "10-Minute Challenge." In it they ask you to look, closely, at a painting without distraction for a full ten-minutes. Here's their piece on Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow."
The thinking behind the Times' column is a useful reminder of how rare it is to actually focus, and think, and examine, and think some more and then, importantly, to follow the interstices of your thinking. You know, where one thing leads to another, like falling in love.
I remember back to the hot of 1979, New York falling apart, four years after bankruptcy, two years after the violence and burning of the 1977 black-out riots. I remember listening to the great Columbia radio station, WKCR, and their disc jockey Phil Schap. He was the world's leading authority on Yardbird Parker. Schap's show "Bird Flight," provided the soundtrack for the crazy, runaway train of New York when I was a boy.
I realized then, you can't listen to Bach in New York. It's too orderly. It has to be Bird.
Today, as I write this, I am an old man. Prior to my cataract surgeries, which take place on April 9 and 16, I am practically blind in my left eye. My right eye is holding out, but I'm having it done on the second date, before the trump cataclysm takes away the healthcare I've been paying taxes for since 1962, when I, as a "child star" in TV commercials, joined SAG-AFTRA and paid my own way for coverage before Medicare was even passed.
I came back from a seaside walk last week, soaking from a light drizzle that turned heavy. My wool baseball cap taunted me. Its brim held the rain, and when I least expected it, a cold drop would land on my face. It made me crile--cringe and smile at the same time.
When I entered our small house I ran downstairs into my book-lined office and grabbed my copy of Turner's notebooks. I leafed through it.
Yep.
Fifty years after my first Turner, Turner is how my cataracts occlude my world.
I see now in JMW Turner.
I've never seen with such clarity.
Drip.
