Les jours de pluie je devais décider entre le petit parc à sculptures ou bien passer des heures à l’Âne Comblé, un petit bistrot non loin du parc, et plus près du Métro. On me reconnaissait là, et j’avais l’habitude de me planquer près de la vitrine, derrière les lettres givrées, avec mon bouquin, et de prendre une tasse après l’autre, enfoncé dans mon imper comme un franciscain, à bouquiner tranquillement sauf pour examiner chacun ou chacune qui entrait pour sortir de la pluie, prendre un verre, discuter, bavarder. J’avais toujours avec moi mon journal pour y inscrire une description vive des gens qui inspiraient des couleurs d’imagination. Ça servirait un jour pour décorer mon roman. Tout ce qu’il me fallait c’était l’intrigue. Et des personnages, mes sei personaggi en cerca d’autore. J’avais déjà mes adjectifs (on se montre puérile par ses adjectifs), mes descriptions, mes exclamations ; il fallait seulement quelque raison.
Salva me, ars…
I have noticed something lately. Things have been stressful—I think that’s a fair use of the word—and I have drawn great solace from the pages of the Book of Mormon. (I have been reading it in French.) But also, and in no way comparably, I have noticed that I have drawn great comfort and pleasure from art. My experience with art is limited to listening to CDs of music and turning the pages of art books. But that’s enough. I have been inspired by my new Vivaldi CD that Steve got for me, listening to the scordatura of the cellos, and by Patrick Casaday’s Famine: Remembrance, and other beautiful things. But in a very parallel way I have loved turning the pages of my art books, picture after picture of great paintings. And I have loved reading my new Paul Johnson book, Art: a New History. It’s a reflection as much as a history, and I like how he sees it. I recently purchased Painters of the Wasatch Mountains, collected and edited by three people, but mainly Robert Olpin, who was on late nights on the Utah Education Channel that nobody watches. He was a prof at the UofU, and Utah born, probably a back-slid Mormon, but knew Utah arts and artists from Dan to Beersheba, or Snowville to St George. It has some pretty good paintings, some really great paintings, and some paintings that are incredible. And many of the paintings are of mountains I recognize… which means I’ve seen that mountain, and the artist did it up well enough that I recognize it. Like one called “Lazy Afternoon,” or something, but I could drive you up to the Midway turnoff right before Heber and stop by the river, by Kohler’s dairy farm, and you would see that exact view of Timp. And then to go through a cheap art book called Masters of Modern Painting, or something like that, that I got at TJMaxx when Marlyn was shopping for clothes, and they pick up these odd lot books and sell them for $6.99. And then, for my Humanities class I have been presenting the greats, and talking about them: Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Fragonard, Gainsborough, then on to the Luminists, the Romantics, the Impressionists, etc. That Modern Painting book has many artists and pictures that I have not seen before, some from famous artists—Caneletto, Caravaggio—but canvases I have not seen before. There has been something soothing and uplifting about searching one corner of a painting to the other, taking it all in for minutes, not seconds, before turning the page, and then going back to it a day later and savoring it again. It has not just been entertaining (“Entertainment is the happiness of those who cannot think”—Alexander Pope), it has been exhilarating, uplifting, and even spiritual. Now that word is so misused today that it begs defining in context, so I mean spiritual in the sense of the New-Age ommm-groaner, but more so spiritual in the sense of uplifting the spirit, giving joy to the soul. As Elder Maxwell said, “After all, brothers and sisters, when we rejoice in beautiful scenery, great art, and great music, it is but the flexing of instincts acquired in another place and another time.” Ars longa, vita brevis, said Goethe, after he read it in Montaigne, who got it from Cicero. There is a rock foundation in art that endures. It may not endure beyond the time of the telestial phase of the world, especially those paintings that are actually untoward, and even those that are perfectly moral, but nevertheless portray the nude, or scenes of a telestial world. But for as long as this level of our existence endures, art will provide exhilaration and elevation. Proust said friendships, love, even family, may fade—only art endures. I’m not of that opinion, or don’t see that what he saw is necessarily so, but in fact many human relations can turn, where art is always there, always what it is.
