an afternoon of art

I am awed. I am ashamed I'd never heard of him before. I am officially a fan of Anselm Kiefer. I caught Heaven and Earth at SFMOMA during its last weeks, and although I had to take in most of the paintings from the benches to rest my leg, the works were mostly of monumental enough size, savagery in stroke and texture, and power and yet complexity of message to reach me no matter where I was standing. Born in Germany in the final months of World War II, Kiefer fashions works that confront/question/challenge/reshape not only his country's psychological and spritual response to the war, but also raise existential questions about religion, redemption, recovery, and humanity's place in the cosmos. His massive paintings of deserted grandiose manmade spaces, apocalyptic landscapes and forests, and visions of hope and despair charge the viewing experience with emotion and questions. It is easy to ignore even brilliant art, but impossible to ignore his, tempting to believe the statement by a critic that he "melted a frozen curse on German civilization." His art is the work of a thinker and an introvert deeply philosophically involved with humanity, fascinated by the past and the future, heaven and earth, at once horrifying and beautiful.

Another unlikely memorable work was a film by British artist Phil Collins, dünya dinlemiyor ("the world won't listen"). Collins postered Istanbul calling the misfits, the disgruntled, anyone at all to perform karaoke covers of The Smiths songs for the camera. The entrance to the exhibit was plastered with these posters in all their variations, the only one in English blaring "KILL THE DJ." Watching these sincere, poignant, often painfully embarrassing performances, I had difficultly chosing a reaction -- should I feel closer to the Turkish after hearing them belt out these English songs by heart and discovering an unexpected cultural commonality, or should I be disturbed as usual by the cultural imperialism of the West?

Afterwards Doris took me out to dinner at an Indian restaurant and I took her out to dessert at the Canvas Gallery. It was wonderful to reconnect after two years and to share the turns our lives have taken. I'm starting to realize that, despite having been out of college for a year, I'm only now learning what it's like to be a graduate student, to connect and be able to talk about it, and to realize that in a sense, whether we're working in music or medicine, the challenges we face have a common thread. A study found that best friends tend to only stay best friends as long as they share similar problems. Chicken or the egg -- my friends and I continue to share problems even as those problems change. To ramble more, I'm struck by the balance my friends have found between pursuing crazy dreams around the globe and taking on serious long-term programs. So many are in doctoral programs already; everything that's happened is wonderful and puzzling and contradictory and logical.

Scanning through my Google alerts for "carillon," I got a surreal surprise from the following excerpt (having skipped over the headline, which contained important info): "They have also started advertising more in The Carillon, the U of R student newspaper. Judging by the first half of the season, it just might be working."

I wondered if at any time in the history of the universe I would have missed a student publication at the UR named after my obsession, but of course the article was about the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. Whew.