Thoughts Provoked by Thought-provoking Photograpy - and other Matters

Wednesday evening we saw a thought-provoking photo show; next morning, making notes on fictional characters, I realized why everyone should write fiction; then a cousin called from California, dismayed about changes at the community college where she teaches art.

David Sorensen’s “Beautiful Barbarism” is at Art Obscura, a Mesilla Park gallery we really like. I took my time viewing the images.

David moved to New Mexico for its peace and natural beauty, then noticed how we treat this land we love. One image eloquently juxtaposes a sunset storm/rainbow with colorful graffiti on the roofless adobe walls of an abandoned bar. In another, the sun highlights a freshly-killed coyote strung up on a mesquite. A third shows a child’s pink sandal atop hundreds of spent shells in the desert.

David hopes to please and provoke us, encouraging us “to think about what we do to our environment in New Mexico,” adding, “I’ve also tried to show that there can be beauty in almost anything, depending on how you see it, not just our majestic landscapes. . . There can be a beauty and aesthetic to even the grubbiest of things.” (I thoroughly agree.) J. Paul Taylor received a private showing because of his age and vulnerability – a privilege for both Paul and David. I understand why his daughter wanted to bring a class to the show. Or shouldn’t I mention that? Are we still allowed to share glimpses of reality with schoolkids? Provoke reflection?

At twenty, I wouldn’t have picked up my bullet-shells either. “Hey, man, it’s the desert.” But we go out into the desert to escape town and people. Why make others seeking wildness stroll through our garbage? (Unless that’s the point.)

It would be healthy to think about what we do to our Earth. It would be healthy to consider that we share it with many others. And that our carelessness hurts more than aesthetics. It costs lives.

My cousin says her college is discontinuing her art program. One administrator complained that “People keep taking that class over and over. They must not be learning anything.” How about, maybe, they love it, I say to my cousin; and love your help deepening their vision. I think of the Seven Samurai character who wanted only to perfect his swordsmanship. Later I tell a high school senior that everything we study involves new ways of thinking, which sharpens the weird tool inside our skulls.

Writing fiction is a form of play and exploration I stumbled on early and never grew out of; but articulating others’ very different points of view is a tough task that demands you open your mind to let stuff flow freely in. Try, during a tense moment in a marriage, to write your spouse’s thoughts vividly. If kids were encouraged to write stories portraying kids with vastly different lives, just the effort might help.

I interrupt my reverie to take the dog to the river to run. The dog runs with joy, and likely no memory of her previous life in a crate. (And, yes, we pick up her droppings, something I’d not have dreamed of doing decades ago.) I pause to marvel at a spindly-legged Great Blue Heron, who quickly lifts her long wings and flies North along the largely dry riverbed, also bent on escaping human contact. The Organ Mountains redden, the sun disappears, and, despite us, everything must be all right.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 14 November 2021, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[ I do want to say a word more about Art Obscura, a favorite haunt that the pandemic and other matters had denied us for awhile. It’s a gallery and curio shop, with an upstairs gallery with a variety of interesting art and a featured show in the downstairs gallery pictured in some images David sent me Saturday. One shows David with Paula in front of some of his work. (By the way, here’s Mike Cook's take on the show.)]

[Gallery owner Deret Roberts is a fine artist in his own right; and Art Obscura is one of those places that’s not pretentious, just real and enjoyable. Some interesting art. Some old stuff. I was sad not to see the old pinball machine. Because this was a “pre-opening” with few people, we got to take our time; and as I wandered around the small gallery looking at David’s work, I could listen to his conversation with Dael; but there was no food truck, no energetic young crowd, and we never took time to go upstairs this trip.]

[My big insight that “everyone should write fiction,” is typical, in that I often think everyone should try something I happen to be into. As a young cabdriver, I thought everyone should have that experience; and as a first-year law student I thought most everyone could benefit from learning the language of the law. (Both propositions still seem true.) I also think everyone should have the experience of being a newcomer / complete foreigner in a country. You learn a lot.

Anyway, I was making some notes, primarily about two characters who know each other slightly in high school, go their separate ways, but eventually meet each other again, decades later, and get together. In the notes, she’s recognizing some things about them, as folks do who think about psychology and such. But what occurred to me was not how satisfying that is and how good it feels sometimes to get a slightly better fix on fictional characters, or portray something they think or feel or do, but what it demands of one: stifling a lot of personal bullshit, concentrating on that other person and his or her mind and heart and memories and experience, in a wholly different time and place, while staying open to memories or experiences of one’s own that, transformed, may contribute to the character. Publish or not, “succeed” or not in drawing a realistic and/or moving portrait, the exercise is beneficial, and could be even more so in the kinds of situations I mention in the column. If you agree, try it some time!]

[Anyway, sorry if it’s sort of a goofy column. It doesn’t expose any scandals or take our leaders to task for their misdeeds and stupidities.

Maybe it takes us to task. All of us, surely including me.]