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Comrades,

I know, I know, I know…I haven’t updated in a very long while. And the last post was kinda frivolous. That’s because the last couple weeks have been rather scary; distractingly scary. You see, I’ve been waiting for today’s meeting with an oncologist.

I have a carcinoma in my esophagus. It seems that esophageal carcinoma is very, very nasty. There seems to be some spreading into some lymph nodes.

The good news is that, outside of the cancer thing, I’m young, healthy and have great support systems. This means that we can get aggressive with this thing. And aggressive I intend to get.

The bad news is that I can no longer point to my hair, claiming to be younger than my follicularly challenged but similarly middle-aged friends. The chemo will probably take care of that. I’ll probably start the chemo next week.

Other bad news is that Maryanna is making me get back to exercising and intends to change our diet.

So, a student of mine at the museum asked me the other day why I wore an eye patch. I ‘m pretty relaxed about saying I lost my eye to a tumor. When she asked if she could see it (under the patch) I said no, of course. Besides the fact that that would be terribly unprofessional, there are some things I need to keep for myself.; how I look missing an eye for one. I know she meant no disrespect, just a healthy, honest curiosity. Kids come to me to learn how to see. I love that, just as I love having friends that want to empathize, sympathize, support and love.

So I know you mean no discomfort when you ask how I’m doing. I know it is something much more real than idle curiosity or chit-chat to ask for details. However, for now, I want to keep this for myself. Myself and Maryanna. It’s not that I don’t want things to be shared. There just things I don’t personally want to share. If Maryanna wants to talk about things, she is free to. But forgive and please respect her if she doesn’t want to talk too much.

For instance, I know she thinks I’m, like, totally hot with the eye patch, but that’s the kind of thing she keeps to herself. And when I’m skinny and bald, she may not want to talk to you at all.

Seriously, I feel great. I have a nasty cancer, but I feel great. So please go with that. I’d rather talk about football. And I hate football.

You know, I finally got enough of a personal, conceptual grasp of the Hindu belief of Samsara and how it might relate to Hindu sculpture, so that I could talk about it with teens. I was watching and listening to Ravi Shankar jamming with George Harrison. I got the sense that Ravi was truly jamming, improvising, trying his best to listen to George, respond to him while expressing as much grace and love as possible. And I sensed that he never played the same passage the same way more than once, cycling around, listening, learning, responding. Just as, as I understand it (please correct if I’m off), a Hindu learns to lose his ego with each successive trip through life. This is what I feel when I look at the dancing Shiva Nataraja at the Musuem. I see a circular reminder to listen, learn and lose ego.

Really, that is analogous to how I feel about looking at art, except that we are looking, rather than listening. What’s important though, as we look and listen and learn, is to drop preconceptions, drop personal needs to interpret and evaluate, and just look.

Meaning will come, while you are busy looking at other things.

In other words, rather than talking about cancer, you’ll probably learn more about how I’m really feeling by asking me to talk about football.

Peace, love,

d

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Awright Mike! I knew I could count on you.  So we agree that the essential elements of of sound are; transmitter, medium, and a perceiving receiver (elephnat, human, whatever).  Because cancer articles have been jumping out at me lately, I read recently about a new treatment for prostate cancer that uses super high-frequency sound waves to heat the tumor up to near boiling.  So I wonder what should we call this kind of vibration that is so high frequency that, presumably, it can’t be heard as it boils you alive?  Why do we call an ultrasound an ultrasound?  I’m pretty sure nobody hears that.

A friend of mine signs all of his emails with a quote from Samuel Beckett, “The danger lies in the neatness of definitions.”

Okay, on to the topic at hand.  I’ve gotten a ton of calls from friends too timid to comment on the blog, wondering what’s become of the friggen’ lost eye.  They found it.  Apparently it was delivered just after xmas when the  hospital labs and offices were all  near empty, and it got delivered  (have I told  you that  body parts are shipped Fed-Ex?)  to the wrong desk.   So they’ve had it  for two weeks now and still I have no word on test results.   You see,  this is why pirates, with their missing eyes and limbs are so nasty.  First their hands and legs get lost by Fed-Ex, and then the lab takes forever with them.  It’s enough to drive me to rum.

My friend Mike is now thinking, “Dave, it never took much to drive you to rum.”

I’ve also within the past two weeks had a scope-down-the-gut thing, and a PET scan.  No word from those either.  “ARRRRRGGGGHHHH!”

peace,

d

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 They lost my friggen’ eye!

The hospital here in KC says they sent it to the hospital in SL on the 24th, xmas eve, and the hospital in SL just called and said they haven’t received it yet.  Today is Tuesday, January friggen’ 8th.

So…

This how I start every first presentation to students, in their school classroom, before their first museum visit to introduce the project they are about to embark on:

They see a photo of a close-up of the hood of a red sports car, not the whole car, just a small part of it that shows some line and shape. Of course they can tell right away it’s a car but I ask them to forget that for a moment and imagine it is just an abstract painting. Now, give me single-word adjectives describing feelings this shape gives you…where, how…? Of course they soon find themselves describing an abstract object in terms of physical responses to elements of art; line, shape space, color, and texture. The objective is to see all designs as naturally and physiologically communicative through the basic visual symbols of art.

Looking at a diagonal line I ask for a volunteer to try to make that line with his body. “I can’t.” Why not? “I fall.” Of course you do. And everytime you see a diagonal line your body feels motion, tension, depth. That’s why perspective lines make you believe you see distance.  Other demonstrations try to get them to realize that the abstract elements of what you see effects you physiologically, and therefore psychically, emotionally, in the gut, in your memory.  That is how art can communicate with you regardless of when, where, or by whom it was made.

I say it communicates WITH you, as opposed to TO you, because this way of looking at art asks you to bring your own memories and psyche to the experience to, in a sense, complete the work.  If a tree falls and no one hears it does it make a sound sound? No.  Because of the technical definition of sound requiring a receiver.  Is art art if no one looks at it? Does it need us?  Do we complete it?

In my book, no, yes, yes.  It’s kind of a quantum mechanical situation;  the state of the thing is dependant on our experience of it.

Unfortunately, this doen’t apply to everything.  Wherever my missing eye is, there is something in it that I need to know about. Wouldn’t it be great if getting lost in the friggen’ mail made the cancer disappear?
peace, love, patience,

d