My friend JoAnn O’Rear is doing a lovely project. It is called 40 Cows for Peace. I have two of JoAnn’s cows and one of her donkeys hanging in my study. They bring the right kind of whimsy to the day.
JoAnn is one of a number of artists in the Hudson Valley/Northeast Corner region who are creating out of the box. Another one is Maria Wulf. A cold kept me from her recent show at the Pig Gallery at Bedlam Farm, but she said that it was a Wonderful Day.
Whose art are you loving? Tell me about it!
When we first adopted our daughters we lived on Martha’s Island. It was a wonderful, safe, sea-bound nest. One thing the girls quickly learned was that whenever we went somewhere that required traveling on a ferry or a plane, we were heading “off island.”
Even after we moved back to the mainland, they would still talk about going off island. It was a funny, quirky remnant of island time.
One thing we found when we moved to the mainland is that there were many, many roads. Not just North Road, South Road and Middle Road. (There are others, but you do travel the same paths a lot.) I spent the first couple years, meandering. Particularly after my Mom died, I would leave the stable and just drive – the Hudson River region is endlessly beautiful – I got deeply lost and I loved it. It was a way of working out my geography – the new landscape of where we physically lived and where I was in the world without my parents.
For me, off island has come to mean other things. I feel that my work is taking me off island. That I am headed out to open water, sometimes without any sense of purposeful navigation. Perilous, adrift. Mostly though, going off island feel pretty exhilarating.
My writing, which has been focused for the past few years on writing a book, is starting to morph and shift, and I find I am bringing more of myself “on the mainland.” Meaning I am writing in a public forum, and am hungry for a different kinds of connection. When I started planning the blog, my friend, Jon Katz, said “Do it.” And I am doing it. Every day.
What is taking you off island?
I watched the second half of Martin Scorcese’s HBO documentary on George Harrison last night. Inscrutable, whimsical, beautiful. The dark horse, the spiritual man.
My take away is that he lived the improvisation life – he let himself be moved, changed, followed the call, dove deep, came up different. The through line was looking for the deepest place that his music could take him.
I loved the image of him pulling Ravi Shankar along a path through the brush to the edge of the thrashing Pacific, and both of them gazing down into that wildness.
Have you found the deepest place that your _________(fill in the blank)__________ can take you? Are you on the path?
I cannot imagine my life without the brilliant gifts of Steve Jobs. His Great Work makes mine possible.
What John Scully said about him is what i love about my Mac. It is a beautiful thing.
“I remember going into Steve’s house and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around but he was incredibly careful in what he selected. The same thing was true with Apple. Here’s someone who starts with the user experience, who believes that industrial design shouldn’t be compared to what other people were doing with technology products but it should be compared to people were doing with jewelry… Go back to my lock example, and hinges and a door with beautiful brass, finely machined, mechanical devices. And I think that reflects everything that I have ever seen that Steve has touched.”
Here it is from Steve himself: