As de Botton guidelines that make up a beautiful city, I thought about applying them to the composition of a beautiful song, full of lyrics and different instruments playing harmonies, multiple vocalists singing. Each song is a moment of clarity, with brutal honesty, it is raw beauty, there is visible life not just in the lyrical message but in each strum of a guitar, the rhythm kept by the hand beating the drum and the life travels from those performing to the dancing decades around them. Tapping of toes from feet that have yet to take their first step to those that have walked a thousand miles. Mysterious chaos brought together on a scale of organized complexity creating a true circle of life. As the performance ends we show gratitude by clapping and cheering erratically as if it were a celebration and just as quick as they came together, united by the song, they are carried away in a gust of wind like cherry blossoms in early April…Until the next song.
Wednesday I danced to the beat of another song. An entire class of 50 people came together as one. We moved in chaotic unison. Artistically following, once a student of a wise musician, a family sharing theses sacred movements; 1+1=3. I have began to cherish these times of sacred movement. Movement that, at one time, intimidated me. Movement is something I lose a little of each day beginning the day I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Movement I will lose a lot faster by not moving at all. When I first began my journey at Evergreen I was told I could opt out of dancing seminars and workshops because of my ‘disability’. I spent the first few classes watching this wide variety of people, ages 18-76, feel completely comfortable moving and dancing together. A sense of peace and harmony came over the room that was absent seconds before. Awareness blanketed the students and professors dancing followed by excitement, joy and laughter—they would center the energy and then share it. Immediately I experienced and over abundance of energy and truly found it hard to not join this sense of togetherness. I came to Evergreen after losing my career to MS, and MS had dictated more aspects in my life than I anticipated. I caught myself 3 years after my diagnosis being defined by the little blue placard hanging from my review. Hirsh Diamant helped change my perspective, Evergreen was my vehicle and class would be the path to my redefinition, my new perspective of me. A woman, a mother, and I can. I may not be who I was or who I planned to be, but I still am. In this blog I will share my journey and interactions of with MS, Music, Connections, and The City.
While reading The Art of Travel these are a few passages that I related to-
“Stupidity is something immovable you can’t be try to tack it with out be broken by it.” Gustave Flaubert insisted he was not French. After his emotional connection with Egypt which he then had a new view of nationality, in fact it is not country or family defined by lines but which region was attractive, and full of feeling should nationality and identity.
National Identity; the country I love and makes me feel well. Narrow minded to not be a soul brother to the giraffe and crocodile than to man. Sorcrates said not from Athens but from the world.”
This passage made me compare Flaubert to a man much like my father as he would introduce himself as Rick Montana to any person he meets. I AM from Montana, a small town with no stoplights, no hospital. The Rocky Mountains are beautiful with at least one 30 point buck. The Kootenai River flows swift and strong with the clearest water and biggest brightest fish. A place where living is easy, everything goes right, and everyday is a great day to be outdoors, alive with all the land, water and wildlife. “I want to buy myself a beautiful bear and below it write here is a portrait of Gustave Flaubert.” My father loathes Washington, especially Olympia. It would make one curious as to why he picked up and left Montana in 1987, just to settle 13 miles west of Olympia in rural Steamboat Island. He doesn’t have any answers to that, but can detour the answer into a 30 minute (at least) plan to get back to Big Sky Country. I didn’t meet my father until May 31, 1996; my mother never told him of my existence, so I was a packet of paternity papers and a knock on his Olympia Washington door from a County Sheriff earlier that year. From the day I met my father (he picked me up from school on my last day of 3rd grade in Troy Montana) he has been moving back to Montana, just shy of 19 years. I can only imagine he has been planning to move back since he first crossed that state line. Interestingly enough my father, Rick Smith Sr was born in Aberdeen Washington. I am the only one out of my entire family that was truly born in Montana. I assume that my father, has somewhat of the same view in heritage as Flaubert.
unedited notes class notes:
The music is a language; each rhythm is lyrical; understood only by locals or those who truly engaged in the specific rituals and song of that heritage.
We all dance to the beat of our own drum.
Wherever he goes is where ever he is.
Travel can facilitate thinking.
Funding, art, idea’s, embrace, repetition, culture, elite are not only capable, broad generalization, stereo typical, superior extremes, divided (stage/crowd) myths of american music culture examples (I can’t do math) connecting “building a beautiful city, writing a beautiful song,” can you apply the same set of guidelines to different music cultures, poly-rhythm,
We love values missing from our own culture, desire of a place may fuel desire for people in it. Flaubert in Egypt (descriptively describes woman) we told each other so much through touch. She fell asleep with her hand in mine, face was mostly in shadow. Then continues to discuss coming back and feeling of melancholy and sadness because now it would be a goodbye, the last time he would see the woman.
Pg 116 bored by nothing
pg 167
Pg It always seems to me I’ll be well
Pg. 14 which explains the curious phenomenons art and reality
Pg. 25 we are sad at home and blame the art on the wall or he buildings
Pg 20 slow curiosity bordem or dispear
Boring time useful and enjoyable
Pg 54-thinking properly
Pg. 111
Pg 56 tethered to life at home