Saturday, October 29, 2011

Seeds of Enlightenment


April 1969, Cologne, Germany
            What are those books on your shelves? I ask, pointing at a rainbow-colored row of paperbacks.
            It’s a series published by Suhrkamp: Brecht, Marcuse, Benjamin, Adorno, Bloch. Do you know them?
            Not yet.
            Before the week is out I am carrying a slim purple edition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, bending over the dialect-strewn text on the streetcar, reading my way into a radical new world, savoring the vinegary words on my tongue: “Eia popeia / Was raschelt im Stroh? / Nachbars Bälg greinen / Und meine sind froh.”


Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag -- my shelf 40 years later


May 1969, Cologne
            My missionary companion agrees to spend the morning in the Wallraf Richartz Museum. It will be my first art museum, just as the Cologne performances of Aida and Lohengrin have been my first operas.
            In the entrance, an oversized, bulbous, winged and brightly colored woman balances on one leg. She makes me smile. Niki de Saint Phalle is the artist.
We look around. The sheer number of works begins to overwhelm me. How does one experience all this?
A flash of blue and yellow draws me across the room. The bright blue is from sky and water, the light yellow from grasses and reflections on the river or canal. A delicate drawbridge spans the water, its counterweights reaching back like wings. A woman carrying an umbrella crosses the bridge.
I stand in front of the painting, struggle with unexpected emotions.
The paint has been daubed onto the canvas in yellow slashes to form the grass and the reflections on the water. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen this way. I feel like Moses standing before the burning bush.
The label says “Zugbrücke,” Vincent van Gogh. May 1888.
Wallraf-Richardtz Museum, Cologne




7 comments:

michael morrow said...

I have had such a sheltered life...in spite of many cool experiences....all of which allow me to thoroughly enjoy sharing in your experiences...

I love when I can assimilate ideas, information, and wisdom of another...at this stage of life, sorting through and accepting life perspective of others is very fun and rewarding...

thx scott..ever a student

Scott Abbott said...

Sheltered life? A submariner's life sheltered? Okay, maybe tightly contained, but not sheltered. Not if it led you to modern dance at the age of 60. No way. As the German saying goes: Man wird alt wie eine Kuh, und lernt immer noch dazu. A non-rhyming English translation: You get old like a cow and keep on learning.

Ever a student. As Peter Handke quotes Bob Dylan: If you're not busy being born you're busy dying.

michael morrow said...

ya know scott,,,sitting here at work,(computer tech...illinois farm boy made good...mom's so proud....retired, decrepit, old high school buddies scratch their head in wonderment) ....Thinking more about your yesterday...It wasnt all that long ago...maybe 8-10 years... when I went back to school at UVU, which led me to your classroom...that I continued to experience the emotional hives you get at the thought of byu,

for me it was organized religion in general, and what I have come to know as "Utah Mormonism" specifically that brought on emotional creepy crawlies...Although I willingly say, 30 years as an active mormon serve me very well in efforts to shuck residual shit left from contradictory societal confusion, including catholic childhood fear...and prepared me for further education..which I embrace with gusto...

just to clarify, having the mormon experience as an adult, and thanks in part to preparation of catholic upbringing, in addition to lots and lots of the best hawaiian home grown cannabis (yes thats correct grass brought me to mormonism, and then showed me to the organized religion exit)..long term exposure to mormonism forced me to bust out of the catholic cocoon i was born into...for that I am thankful.

Just to reiterate for anyone wondering if there is life after religion ...,,allowing religious experience to be mainly about education in the form self-discovery is critical to surviving organized religion.....gets rid of inherited blinders IF focus is on learning how to learn rather than a peripheral elements such as learning how to get a job.... I have finally stepped away from traditional organized religion all together...I embrace yoga.... it is not church..spiritual experiences have become very personal and expansive as I use yoga movement to go below cognitive surface, yoga is not religion either..no dogma...and the difference is all about me..yoga fits onto my creative pallet very well, providing structure for my very free spirited movement signature....and I dance, and I dance...and I live..... ongoing shit around me nourishes heart and soul,,just like it nourishes lovely, fragrant roses..

So now, at 64, I am proud to acknowledge beauty and fulfilling interpersonal experience and access to very powerful personal gifts. I can read, I can write, I enjoy rhetorical analysis..I can think and decide. Creative, conscious movement surface personal philosophy...these two elemental factors are vital for mental and emotional stability.

I even have a library thanks to UVU (oh yes and also thx to unemployment insurance and 2 years of books and tuition provided by Micron)...after reading my first book at 20 years old in the bunk of a nuclear powered submarine...at 200 feet below the pacific ocean....far removed from people more interested in religion than me....I see clearly,,I dance for freedom...

I have finally learned how to learn, and you have played an important part in that growth, scott..at UVU and now as I chew on your blog ....thank you..

oh i'm glad I read your response...this is poetry in manure...You get old like a cow and keep on learning...and the old bull continues...

* said...

the real nerd would sort them according suhrkamp wissenschaft and suhrkamp edition (i think these are the ones making the rainbow when sorted according their numbers) and the normal ones... i looked at your picture and thought of which books of yours i also have and then pondered whether i should reciprocate witha picture of all my suhrkamp ones and then looked at my shelf and found the whole process too daunting :) i haven't sorted all my books according publisher. but some i did, it's interesting how that changes, how one sorts ones books.... 10 years ago i never even thought of having them sorted by publisher but now it becomes a possibility, reclam all together, tindal street, insel....

Scott Abbott said...

I love the Suhrkamp rainbow. Makes me happy when I enter the room. Once I realized that, I gathered the Luchterhand books together, then Insel, then Fischer, and it seemed right. I even went so far as to gather all my orange English-language books together, regardless of topic or publisher.

Still, I like the philosophy books ordered alphabetically. And when I'm working on something, I bring the books together (for instance, I've got all my books related to German romanticism snuggled up together, and will soon gather German Enlightenment books -- each time in response to a class I'm offering.

Is the color thing like choosing a painting because it matches the colors of your couch? Hope not. I love these books, singularly and in groups alike.

Finally, I loved the photos of the Aufbau book, of the poems that became fragments in the photos, of the paper that felt richly textured to the eye.

Scott Abbott said...

Just looked at this post again, seeing the bright colors and sun on the Suhrkamp books and the two other brightly colored works of art. This morning it is dark, except when there's lightning, and snow is falling and the gloom of short winter days is settling in (der verdammte bleierene Morgen eines Winterregentages -- Steppenwolf).

Wonder if I wasn't counteracting that on the last day of sunny warmth with this post?

* said...

that;s what i do too, when i work on something, i bring the books together. alphabetically i only did when i was a teenager. i think i mostly order them according their inner neighbourhood, proust next to vermeer and so on...

there is always colour. even in winter.

i thjought the aufbau book, good old eastgerman paper, they have an own charme to it, those eastgerman books...

i am not sure what this colourthing is about. i know a couple of people to whom this is important when sorting their books... to me not so much. but if you like it this way and it cheers you up, why not?