I kept a wide circle of friends during my undergraduate years, from scientists to historians and philosophers, as well as plenty of now-business professionals and even professors. But one common thread among that group was a love of the arts. For some, it was visual—sculpture, 2D painting, prints, or sketches—but many had a love for music, from listening to playing, structured classical to free-form jazz. It wasn’t surprising to find and collect lovers of art, particularly music, given my own love of it, but even more so because Aquinas College is a liberal arts college tucked away in Grand Rapid, MI and those who chose to attend a liberal arts college either were told they were going there by someone who was paying for it or, like many, chose to be there because of the breadth and depth of personalized learning that came from it.
So art.
At its core, art is the expression of what it means to be human. As Kaveh Akbar’s poem The Palace, which I found in his book Martyr, so pointily summarizes, art is where what we survive survives. And so, it is not surprising that art is dark, somber, and melancholy to a point of despair. But that expression serves as an outlet for all our troubles. It’s the place where we can retreat from people, from ourselves, and from the turmoil of everyday life.
Perhaps one of the greatest examples of this is Stephen Sondheim's work. A genius playwright and librettist, his entire body of work is DARK. I first encountered it in high school with the production of Into the Woods that opened our new Henry Ford II Performing Arts Center. The brothers Grimm had nothing on Sondheim’s ability to capture children’s joy and humor and drive it quickly to despair. An early line from the more hopeful first act “Your father cried, and your mother died…” It wasn’t until another decade, when listening to Sondheim on Sondheim at the Boston Pops, that I fully understood Sondheim, his work, and the connection many have to expressing themselves through art.
Sitting in the loge of the rather poorly laid-out shoebox hall, quite a disappointment after a near lifetime of listening to them on cassette and then CD, expecting the Boston hall to be just as good as Detroit’s famed Orchestra Hall, I finally learned what fueled Sondheim's genius. The program was done in collaboration with Sondheim. He would narrate a part of his life, and then the musicians would play and sing a few pieces from that stage. In one segment, he talked about his relationship with his mother. She was going in for surgery. Not that it was major surgery, but surgery nonetheless. She called him up beforehand to tell him one message. Mind you, this message was delivered after he had become a commercial, award-winning success. You were my biggest regret in life, and I wish you had never been born. If I don’t make it through this surgery, I need you to know that. Now, this is what was told in the moment of this performance; I can only imagine all the events leading up to this moment that would have given the great Stephen Sondheim material and inspiration for five lifetimes.
So with all that in mind, back to undergrad.
One of my friends in college was a guitarist by love and hobby, a theologian by education, and a computer programmer and front-end web developer by the need to make a living, and, like many, had become disillusioned with academia.
While sitting, sipping tea, and chatting, we got to talking about music. I have always been envious of those whose instruments are portable—playing piano and organ means needing to go to the instrument instead of carrying them along with you. I had never heard him play, so I asked if he wouldn’t mind taking out his guitar and playing something. He was great at improvisation and composition, which I always admired in others, as they are difficult for me.
Listening to the off-the-cuff work, which had amazing flow and structure for an ad libbed piece, contained the weight of the world borne by the person sitting next to me at the kitchen table. That was beautiful. But do you ever play when you are joyful, happy, or in a random spare moment? Or is this your outlet to express your deepest sorrows? I inquired. Tears began to run down his face and then mine, carried over from the emotion contained within what I had just heard. Never. It was only an outlet in life’s darkest moments.
While art and music are amazing outlets for that, it’s hard to come back renewed without also infusing them with life’s joy and pleasure—the moments of euphoria and celebration.
For it is these moments of jubilation that get us through the darkest of doorways, the moments in life where a future is dim.
A long embrace ensued. A great release, and art took on a different meaning for both of us.