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I have a love/hate relationship with irony.

The irony of a Claes Oldenburg sculpture, where what a thing is, is not what it is, or what you think it should be, pushes you toward a new way of thinking about the things you take for granted in your everyday life. I love the irony in an abstract painting or instrumental piece of music having at least as much meaning as a detailed depiction or verbal description.

I recently worked with an eight-grade girl making a movie about the power, pride and passion communicated by the black slashes of Franz Kline’s Turin. Feelings of strength, eternity, death and decay all came out of the dozen or so quickly made strokes on the white canvass and spoke to her, moved her. Yet this is the painting I hear most often provoking the,”My child could make that…” response from viewers.

How can a thing so shallow and meaningless be so deep and meaningful? Gotta love the irony.

What I hate is when God gets ironic.

The two activities that most define me are music and art. I’ve been a drummer and a drawer and looker my whole life. About ten years ago while climbing a tree to get an apple for a neighbor kid, I tore a tendon in my left wrist. I’m doing a mitzva, right? The doctors realized it was torn a year later, when it was too late to repair. The worst injury I have had till now was to my wrist. To this drummer, who works pretty damn hard trying to get to know God, that’s a very un-funny irony.

Now have this wonder job, looking at, talking about, and connecting others with art. A tumor in the eye is ironic.

So, Let’s think about this… It seems that irony, whether intentional or unintentional that is man-made, is revealing, transcendent, at least funny. Irony on the part of Nature is pretty ugly.

My MRI came back negative; there’s nothing to worry about in my brain (except maybe to some authority figures). The doctor still doesn’t know what this tumor is though. Tomorrow I go to Saint Louis to a specialist in needle biopsies.

I plan to be back in KC in time for my kid’s band concert. He’s a pretty promising horn player. Just the kind of guy God would give a fat lip.

(cont.)