Remembering Andy Warhol

I just realized I never posted this. Oops.

So here it is. A bunch of people who knew Andy Warhol recalling different things about him for Interview. Andy Warhol fascinates me. He's something completely different from anything, really, that I've ever seen or known. That's why hearing what other people had to say about him and his work really interested me.

Glenn O'Brien: What did you learn from Andy?
Pat Hackett: Throw everything away! It only gives people material to build their misconceptions of you on.


WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF ANDY?
Betsey Johnson: A silent, mysterious spirit.
John Giorno: I took hold of his limp hand, squeezed and held it, and we looked into each other's eyes. Andy hummed, "Ohhh!"

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM ANDY?
Irving Blum: The importance of going forward and keeping your focus.
Chris Stein: To relax. that might sound odd, but I always thought that he somehow managed to let things roll off him. And he could be invisible and a celebrity simultaneously.

That's something that I find particularly interesting: everyone seems to remember Andy as being a huge public figure, yet a willow-the-wisp who did more observing and listening than anything else.

Jill Selsman: Always listen, even if it seems like you're not listening, because there are some pretty good ideas out there from the most unlikely sources.
Paloma Picasso: Not to worry if people like you for the wrong reason. Just use that energy to build on it.
Nick Rhodes: To surround yourself with inspirational people.

Sigh. We do what we can. I guess you should be able to find inspiration in everything, but it's not always as easy as I think it should be, and sometimes finding the people that will inspire you the most is the hard part.

Robert Hawkins: Graciousness and humility equal beauty. How to pain the "kinetic cliche" brushstroke. (Swooshy S-shapes)
John Waters: To always have a sense of humor and to never brag and to make sure to praise what everyone else hates.
Debbie Harry: To be a good listener.
Francesco Clemente: That painting is alive. The notion of masterpiece is dead.
Stephen Shore: I watched him make aesthetic decisions. It was my first real exposure to aesthetic thinking. I also appreciated his sense of detached enjoyment of American culture.
Bebe Buell: That presentation is key. He was magical in his delivery.
Walter Steding: To have faith.
Patty D'Arbanville: To sit back and watch.
Cornelia Guest: To be interested in everyone and everything.
Ronnie Cutrone: 1) That art is a job like everything else; 2) That romantic love is all illusion; 3) That it's really hard to be famous and that everybody famous must deserve it even if I can't see it; 4) Don't waste time defining art (you can't), just do it; 5) That there are no bosses--we all serve art if we're good enough to get the job of making it.

At first I didn't understand what Shore meant, but I think I know now. The conscious framing of a photograph is an aesthetic decision. The choice of color, style, arrangement of anything - the clothes you choose to wear in the morning - I think I'd consider those aesthetic decisions.

I'll get back to Cutrone's comments another time. Too much to say to those. I think they're all interesting if not universally applicable lessons though.

Haha, also. It's so easy to demand someone to have faith. To actually have it is a whole different matter completely.

WHAT DID ANDY LEARN FROM YOU?
Benjamin Liu: Not all Asians are like Yoko Ono.

HAHAHA, love it.

Ivy Nicholson: He learned that a woman could love him. He once told me that he loved me more than his male friends because I was more masculine than them.
John Wilcock: ...Over the years I have noticed echoes of other things I said [in Andy's work]. Andy was like all true poets--bad poets imitate, good poets steal. He incorporated ideas from everywhere and everyone.

Creation is nice, but I think pure, completely original creation is extremely rare these days. But I do also think that reinterpretation is an offshoot of creation.

WHAT'S YOUR MOST VIVID MENTAL IMAGE OF ANDY?
Farrah Fawcett: What I remember most about Andy is that he was the only person I had ever met who seemed even more shy than I am around strangers.
Diane von Furstenberg: He was never alone. He was always surrounded by a group. At the time it was Fred Hughes, Candy Darling, Jane Worth (who became my first model). Andy was a voyeur. He did not communicate much, but made people pose and act in front of him. He always had a tape recorder or a camera on hand.
Ultra Violet: The first time I saw him lose his wig, I was unable to pull my eyes away when I saw a metallic metal snap embedded in the front part of his skull.

Yeah, that just freaks me out. :: Shudder ::
But I think it's so interesting that he was never alone, because I think he was perpetually lonely.

DID ANDY SAY ANYTHING THAT STUCK WITH YOU?
Walter Steding: "You're not the one who decides what's good."
Bob Colacello: "If I let myself have feelings, I'd commit suicide."
Nick Rhodes: "If you don't go, you won't know." He could easily become more enthusiastic about going to a dull event than a grand affair and it usually paid off.
Patti D'Arbanville: "Pretty will get you pretty far." He was right.
Vincent Fremont: "If you are not having fun with the work you are doing, then don't do it."

That's going to go on my wall.

TELL US SOMETHING MOST PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ANDY.
Ivy Nicholson: We were threatened by one of his boyfriends, Rod la Rod. Andy took my hand and led me to the backseat of his car. He was on L.S.D. We soul kissed for one hour and a half. 100 percent love.
Chuck Close: Andy seemed to be part of that cliche, "What you see is what you get." But he was actually more than what people expected. I think he was earnest and serious.

Some people are more than what you expect. Some people are less. Some are just what you see. I think I'd always like to be more than what people expect. I mean, I don't think I would ever consciously try for that. I wouldn't try to not be myself. But it'd be nice if it just worked out that I was more than people expected. I would like that.

Ultra Violet: One time, alone on the fire escape at the Factory, I grabbed him and said, "Let's make love." He got stiff and cold as he resisted me. He let out a loud moan as he wriggled out of my embrace. I thought he was afraid of heights, but I realized he was afraid of me.
Francesco Clemente: He was lonely.
Stephen Shore: One day, when he came into the Factory, he asked me if I had happened to watch a certain movie that was on channel 2 late the previous night. It was a terrible 1930s tearjerker starring Priscilla Lane. I said that, in fact, I had. He asked me to tell him the story, because he said he had started to watch it but had begun to cry and cried himself to sleep. He added that when he woke up, the TV was off. His mother had looked in, saw Andy sleeping with the TV on, and turned it off.

I love that story. I don't know why, but there's something wonderful about it. I may figure it out day, but I don't think I want to. I think I'd just like to leave it as a little sketch like that.

Nick Rhodes: He sometimes liked to carry a fistful of loose diamonds in his inside jacket pocket. He was excited by the fact that nobody knew they were there.

I would have liked to meet Andy Warhol. No, not even. I would have liked to observe him. My dad says he saw him with Ultra Violet in the Village one day when he was young. I can't even fathom what it would be like to bump into that man on the street.

Robert Hawkins: Andy loved them more than they knew.
Susan Blond: He returned phone calls. Andy might buy a painting with a woman with her eyes crossed. He liked the mistakes in things.

I feel like that Robert Hawkins bit is true of a lot of people, though. I think most people love others more than they know. I love everyone more than they know. But in the big picture, isn't it kind of silly that they shouldn't know? Everyone should know how much they're loved. Yeah.

I also like the mistakes in things. I like the mistakes in people, too.

DID ANDY CHANGE THE WORLD? IF SO, HOW?
Elizabeth Taylor: Andy saw the world through different-colored glasses, ones that we will never imagine. He was fortunate but tortured. Torture of his kind seems to plague all great artists because of their vision. They see deeper, they think deeper, and they translate their ideas from the mundane to the realistic. Not that there will ever be anything realistic about Andy's vision. It will never be conceived as mundane or realistic--only poetic, and visionary, and mind-blowing.

I don't think you could ever really ask for more than that. I don't think I could, at least. Though, at the same time, I feel like he probably sacrificed so many basic human experiences - not consciously, I mean - to be that way. Rather, I feel like he probably lost out on so many basic human experiences in being that way. I like that contradiction in how I view him, though - I'm not sure if I should admire and respect what he did as an artist, or if I should pity him for missing out on so much.

Palomma Picasso: I'm not sure he changed the world. But he certainly figured out where it was going before anybody else.
Francesco Clemente: Real artists leave the world alone.
Walter Steding: No, he let it happen.

I like that. Those. All 3. It's a different perspective, a way I never thought about art and the world before.

Bob Colacello: Not as much as Ronald Reagan, but quite a bit. He identified the 20th-century cult of fame and promoted it. He legitimized photography, pornography, and television as art. I'm not sure if this was good or bad.

I don't know either, but I sure appreciate the first and last parts, and I definitely know others appreciate the middle, haha.

Bryan Ferry: He was the prime mover in opening the doors of the art-world to a much greater public.
Chris Stein: He changed the relationship between art and commerce, uptown and downtown.

That idea still blows my mind. I guess I got caught in that trap of thinking of art as something non-profitable, of thinking of artists as independent spirits who either are true to themselves or sell out for money, and that it's anathema for it to be otherwise. But Warhol really believed that art and business could - should, really - go hand in hand, that the best art was business art, commercial art. I still don't know if I can personally think that way, though.

Betsey Johnson: He brought art to the masses that the masses enjoyed.
Kenny Scharf: He redefined what it meant to be an artist and opened up all the boundaries that were so in place at the time. He made it okay to exist in the world outside the art world--the world at large.

I'm sure there are people who still can't handle that idea, that art is for everyone and everyone can appreciate art, and that "art" has a much broader definition than the one critics assign it. I'm not even sure if I fully can. But shouldn't it be that way? Shouldn't as many people as possible experience beauty and art and culture in whichever ways they can?

Even if you don't like Andy Warhol or his work or what he did or anything about him, you can't deny that if he'd never existed, today's world would be a vastly different place.

Marc Jacobs by Glenn O'Brien

So I'm aware that it's been a while, and I don't have much to say, I just want to share this and something else since I never got around to writing about it. Maybe I will in the future.

"The only time anything ever changes is really when you're respectful and disrespectful at the same time."
- Marc Jacobs

"I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I wanted and like whatever I wanted."
- Marc Jacobs

"But it took a really long time for Pop to happen fully. Because the art world thinks one way and the artists think another way."
- Glenn O'Brien

"Pop said, 'Art is for everybody.' And then the dealers said, 'No, art is to sell for $100,000.' And so the mechanism of the market fought against what Pop was saying. Or pretending to, anyway. But I think now we're finally finding a way that art can be both that incredibly precious object and also something that everybody can have."
- Glenn O'Brien

MJ: Art critics are like every other critic. I mean, I'm not judging. Well, I guess I am judging.
GO: It's okay to judge the judges.
MJ: I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change--people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas--I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about. Whether you like Damien Hirst's work, whether you like Takashi's work or Jeff Koons's work or Richard Prince's work or whatever great artist you're talking about, they are doing something that has changed the perception of today's culture. Whether you like it or not, there's a validity to it. For all the critics who made fun of this installation of a Vuitton shop within Takashi's MOCA exhibition . . . I saw it as like Martin Kippenberger's subway grate, you know? It challenged this sort of categorizing. Like, what is the art here? is it what's on the bag? Is it the action of buying the bag--that's the art? Is it watching the people buying the art? Because it's installed in an exhibition in a museum, is it some kind of conceptual performance piece? It operates on so many levels that it's hard to categorize.

I thought, Well, isn't that what the state of art is right now? It's not so easy to define. "Oh yeah, they're a painter, they're a sculptor. . . ." It's just labels. When you go into a record store and it says "alternative" to describe a sort of music, isn't every music an alternative to another type of music? These labels are ridiculous. I think the need to label things and have things fit so nicely into their boxes is just old.
... [Discussion of Pop art.]
MJ: ...I had a conversation with Elizabeth Peyton and I told her that I tend to think of artists as being divinely inspired somehow. In terms of creativity, part of my intimidation was, "I'm a designer. I make clothes and bags and shoes. I have a job that involves making creative choices, but I'm not a divinely inspired human being like an artist!" And she said, "You can still like what you like, and, you know, we like clothes, too!" Stuff like that has made me lose my intimidation about art and putting something up on a pedestal. I realized, I don't have to look at it that way. I can like it, but it doesn't have to be this precious thing full of pretense. I saw this documentary on Jeff Koons, and his attitude about art being generous and people not having to have this highly cultured or educated background in order to appreciate it, what a relief! You know? And I think, going back to what you said about Pop, that was so much of a relief to me. It was good to look at it. It felt like mine.
...
GO: One of the things that people really didn't get was when Andy talked about business art. He was saying, "I think if I were starting all over, I would do business." When I went to L.A. for the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and then saw the Murakami show at MOCA, I thought, Wow, Andy would be so jealous. he'd be so jealous that Koons and Murakami have, like, 200 people working for them--Andy never had more than 50.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: They are the fulfillment of everything he was talking about. He saw that we live in a corporate world and that there's nothing wrong with an artist using corporate techniques to work. You don't have to starve at your easel alone in the garret.
MJ: Yeah!
GO: You've managed to come into a multinational corporation and bring a real artistic approach to it. That's a breakthrough.
MJ: Well, yeah. Again, I didn't mean to do it.
GO: That's all right. We forgive you.

Scarlett Johansson by Stephen Mooallem

Interview, part 2. Scarlett Johansson is a fantastic young actress, even if her private life is a bit sketchy, and she's just recorded a bunch of Tom Waits songs. She also happens to have starred in 3 out of Woody Allen's past 4 films: Match Point, Scoop, and just out now, Vicky Cristina Barcelona with Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. The interviewer is Stephen Mooallem, exec editor at Interview.

SM: So, you know, Tom Waits and Woody Allen are very different kinds of artists, but there are some similarities there. I mean, one is all whiskey and cigarettes and beatnik melancholy, and the other is about sort of nebbish, modernist neurosis . . . but still there's an existential-pain sort of thing happening in both of their work. Do you think you are attracted to that kind of material on some level?
SJ: Well, existential questioning and suffering--that's what makes art interesting, right? I mean, it's all about trying to figure out what the hell we're doing on this crazy spinning ball of water and sand. . . . I don't know . . . I think that anything that I do relates to that sort of cerebral questioning. Discomfort. As well as satisfaction. And, you know, I think both artists are sort of appreciative of small, satisfying things as well. . . . That sort of slice of life, in a way. You probably can't decipher an answer out of that. [laughs]
SM: No, I can.
SJ: You know, that's what I think attracts me to both of them--and every artist that I've worked with, in a way. Even if it's Frank Miller, whose mind is wandering everywhere. He knows what it's like to have your first cigarette of the day, and that's, like, what he can appreciate. Those little moments, he makes a big deal out of, even if it's in a noirish, bloody massacre.

Scarlett Johansson's body of work in film is fairly consistent and pretty impressive, especially for a 24-year-old. One of her first more notable movies was Ghost World, in 2001, with Thora Birch, who next did American Beauty, and Steve Buscemi. She did Lost in Translation with Bill Murray in 2003, which gained a lot of notice, then Girl With a Pearl Earring, A Love Song for Bobby Long, and In Good Company (one of my favorites), and The Prestige right after that. Then, she's done the three Woody Allen movies, and probably more soon. Yeah, she did Eight Legged Freaks, and The Other Boleyn Girl, and The Island and The Black Dahlia, none of which were supposed to be very good. But for the most part, she's got pretty discerning taste in roles, and she kind of does her own thing. Ghost World is a cult favorite, and just a great movie. As an actress, she commands respect, as far as I'm concerned, and that questioning nature that she comes out in her interview definitely surfaces in her work.

----------------
Now playing: The Fratellis - Whistle for the Choir

Clarity.

So I don't have it on me, because I lent it to a friend, but I read recently a book by the film director David Lynch (Mulholland Dr., Eraserhead, etc.) about his film career and his fascination with transcendental meditation. In the second chapter (each is only a couple of pages long), he writes about the "Rubber Clown Suit":

When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger.

I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, “What is going on?” I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “This anger, where did it go?” And I hadn’t even realized that it had lifted.

I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It’s suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom.

Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vise grip on creativity. If you’re in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.

There's more that I liked, but like I said, I don't have the book on me. He mentions something else about how he never was into drugs because that would ruin his clarity. It made me think how that's just another reason not to smoke, drink excessively, or use any other kind of substance. I want my work to be purely the result of my thoughts, not the result of an altered state of mind.

It also made me think of how we ruin the clarity of our experience of everything in life by hiding. There are so many things we hide behind, whether it's through substance use, a facade of toughness, fictional worlds, materialism, or fear. I suppose in some ways these things could heighten our experiences, but more than anything else, I think they lessen it. In excess, at least. In small doses, in moments, I guess they're merely isolated experiences in and of themselves. But if you make a habit of hiding behind these things, they become a way of life, and a way of cheapening life. If that makes any sense.

In that sense, part of me is determined to live with as much clarity as possible, as much strength as possible - embracing pain and fear instead of relying on something else to numb it, take it away, to dull it, to soften the blow. Because really, that's what all that stuff does. It makes it easier. And I guess in some ways, we have natural defenses to help us through life, and it's okay to rely on them when the going gets tough, but at the same time, I can't help feeling like I'd rather either fight or embrace everything that comes than try to make it go away without facing it. And hiding behind these things, that's not facing the pain. It's running away.

I'm fairly certain tomorrow I'll reread this and disagree with myself entirely. Well, maybe not entirely, but I think I'll feel differently. After all, "I know that night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started." One of the two parts of A Farewell to Arms that I liked. Haha.

Speaking of literature. I'm presently finishing up Edward Albee's Three Tall Women, and it's absolutely fabulous, like everything I've ever read by him. I'll probably write more about it soon.

----------------
Now playing: John Mayer - New Deep

Random quotes floating through my mind.

Barbara: Fuck love, what a crock of shit. People can convince themselves they love a painted rock.
(August: Osage County)

Karen: I'm not defending him. He's not perfect. Just like all the rest of us, down here in the muck. I'm no angel myself. I've done some things that I'm not proud of. Things you'll never know about. Know what? I may even have to do some things I'm not proud of again. 'Cause sometimes life puts you in a corner that way. And I am a human being, after all.
(August: Osage County)

Astrov: A human being should be entirely beautiful: the face, the clothes, the mind, the thoughts. Your step-mother is, of course, beautiful to look at, but don't you see? she does nothing but sleep and eat and walk and bewitch us, and that is all. She has no responsibilities, everything is done for her--am I not right? And an idle life can never be a pure one.
(Uncle Vanya)

Yelena: The truth, no matter how bad, is better than an uncertainty.
Sonya: Not knowing is better, because then there is still hope.
(Uncle Vanya)

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
(A Farewell to Arms)

An obnoxious article.

Will the humanities save us?

So, I posted this link on my Facebook a few days ago, and when I reread it, I got annoyed. Really annoyed. It's a discussion on the significance of the humanities in academia and in life, and what the justification for continuing to teach them is, if it's even necessary. Here's an excerpt:

"At one time justification of the arts and humanities was unnecessary because, as Anthony Kronman puts it in a new book, “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” it was assumed that “a college was above all a place for the training of character, for the nurturing of those intellectual and moral habits that together from the basis for living the best life one can.” It followed that the realization of this goal required an immersion in the great texts of literature, philosophy and history even to the extent of memorizing them, for “to acquire a text by memory is to fix in one’s mind the image and example of the author and his subject.”

"...[Kronman] believes that only the humanities can address “the crisis of spirit we now confront” and “restore the wonder which those who have glimpsed the human condition have always felt, and which our scientific civilization, with its gadgets and discoveries, obscures.”

"...Kronman, however, identifies science, technology and careerism as impediments to living a life with meaning. The real enemies, he declares, are “the careerism that distracts from life as a whole” and “the blind acceptance of science and technology that disguise and deny our human condition.” These false idols, he says, block the way to understanding. We must turn to the humanities if we are to “meet the need for meaning in an age of vast but pointless powers,” for only the humanities can help us recover the urgency of “the question of what living is for.”

Okay. So the guy writing the article, a Professor Fish, argues that this is wrong. That the humanities are actual more valuable when you resist justifying them. That they really do serve no purpose. And that if you really did learn more about life from them, humanities scholars and professors would be the best people on earth. In short, he was incredibly short-sighted and narrow-minded and pretentiously intellectual about the topic as a whole.

Then, while the guy whose ideas he was demeaning, though some of his thoughts were interesting, he, too was short-sighted in his attack of science and technology. A friend of mine put it like this:

"...For me, the humanities are not concerned with mere emulation. The point of reading Hamlet is not to "be as Hamlet is." Art in general is not as utilitarian as that. No good literature, anyway, is as didactic as that, as preachy as having a concrete moral to take away and apply to your own life.

"But, nonetheless, there is definitely something enriching about it. The author of the article fails to distinguish between objective facts learned from literature and the skills that one learns from experiencing it. Rather than applying the 'morals' of literature to one's own life, the fact that you have read the literature (or experienced any other form of art) allows you to observe life itself in a far more complex manner."

In general, I don’t think there needs to be an obvious, didactic message in order for a person to take something away from any kind of art. I don’t think something has to have an obvious message in it in order to be beautiful, either - in order to have an impact on people. Hell, if you had to derive meaning from Jack Kerouac's poetry in order for it to have an effect, in order for it to move you, then most people are screwed - especially if it has to be his intended meaning. But his poems (though, I guess, some would also argue that it's not poetry) are beautiful.

The article bothered me a little in what at least some of the people who commented upon it mentioned – Fish only used a few specific examples, and it weakened his argument – to me, at least. He indirectly defined “humanities” as literature, philosophy, and history, when I feel like it’s a much broader term than that. In a way, I feel like you can’t talk about the “humanities” without talking about “art,” and though he makes a brief mention of it at the beginning, Fish completely abandons it throughout the rest of his article. That bothers me because literature is as much art as music and film and the other areas lumped under the “fine and performing arts.” Then, someone else commented upon the “social sciences” and how you can’t really completely separate humanities and science, and that makes sense too – which is why so many schools have interdisciplinary cores and general education requirements.

In reference to his comment about how literature and philosophy professors aren't actually better people, like with everything else, I feel like it just depends on the person you are. You can be a completely cold-hearted, unsympathetic humanities professor, yet still be able to teach the mechanics of literature, philosophy, the arts, etc. Unless you embrace whatever feelings you let them inspire, whatever understanding or ways of thinking or seeing things they encourage, the humanities are going to be useless to you.

Then Fish's ending, saying how justification "diminishes the object of the supposed praise", bothered me too. It just seemed like a cop-out - an avoidance of the question. Though I wouldn’t exactly call it their “meaning,” I’d say that art and the humanities are capable of nothing if not their ability to cultivate empathy and sympathy and new ways of seeing life – greater understanding of not the physical, but the more abstract. What good is a world where all that we understand is the physical nature of everything, where all we see is one perspective of the concrete?

I really should sleep. More another time maybe. It's a pity I'm only productive between the hours of midnight and 8 a.m.

You know, my grandfather was an egg farmer...

...I used to candle eggs at his farm. Do you know what that is? You hold an egg up to the light of a candle and you look for imperfections. The first time I did it he told me to put all the eggs that were cracked or flawed into a bucket for the bakery. And he came back an hour later, and there were 300 eggs in the bakery bucket. He asked me what the hell I was doing. I found a flaw in every single one of them – you know, thin places in the shell; fine, hairline cracks. You look closely enough, you’ll find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.
- Ted Crawford, Fracture

So I'm really not going where you think I'm going with this. Logically, I'd start a long bit about people's weaknesses, finding them, and what people choose to do when they find each other's weaknesses. That'd be interesting, but perhaps another day. No, I'm going into something I thought about today while driving to Island Heights to take pictures of the sunset.

My favorite days to takes pictures of the sunset in Island Heights are the days that are slightly overcast, with a few clouds but not enough to cover the sky or block the horizon. They add color to the sky as the sun sinks, and add character. I was excited because I could tell, even from home, that it was going to be lovely, and it was. The river was all frozen over and the sky was reflected on the ice.



On my way, I wondered how it is that people can watch the sun set and fail to be moved deeply by it. I am not a "religious" person, but there have been evenings when I see the sunset and mornings when I watch the sunrise, that I feel like that those moments are God. I see waves crashing and clouds parting, and brilliant streams of color and light flooding the sky, and sometimes, at a certain moment, I'll feel like I've gotten a glimpse of a higher power - of evidence of a higher power, because so much beauty cannot exist on its own. I wondered, though, how someone could see what I see, and not feel divinely inspired, or at the very least, full of warmth and life and love.

Then I thought about everything else I revel in: a good song or piece of music, a well-done film, a good book or poem, certain plays and musicals, performances of anything good, photographs and paintings and statues and pretty much anything artistic. Including style (yes, I mean clothes) and architecture (the Chrysler Building in New York is my favorite, though I have a soft spot for the old cathedrals of France). And certain feats of athleticism, too. And I wondered how people can not, at the very least, simply appreciate the beauty in them, or even see it. But then I decided that it's not true.

I realize that not everyone is going to appreciate everything that I do, because let's face it, I see beauty in a ton of things that few others would even notice, much less think about. But I decided that everyone has something - there is a way to reach everyone. Everyone has a sensitive spot, everyone has something that will move them. Even if it's as simple as getting choked up during a cliche pop song, or experiencing a change of heart after watching a soap opera, there is a way to everyone - which, to me, means that there's beauty in everything. And I'd much rather look for the beauty in people, for the sensitive spots, the places where they are vulnerable and open to feeling deeply, than look for their weaknesses.

Take my hand and lead me to salvation.
Take my love, for love is everlasting,
And remember the truth that once was spoken:
To love another person is to see the face of God.

----------------
Now playing: Les Miserables Original Broadway Cast Recording - Finale