Paying Attention
Here are a couple of quotes from What Light Can Do, collected essays by American poet, translator, and critic Robert Hass (2012).
"One of the things I love about the essay as a form--both as a reader and a writer--is that it is an act of attention. An essay, like a photograph, is an inquiry, a search....There are a lot of different ways to write essays, a lot of different ways to say thing, so the pleasure and frustration of writing essays is that you are often discovering the object of inquiry and the shape of the search at the same time...."
And later: "The deepest response to a work of art is, in fact, another work of art."
I've been thinking a lot about attention. Times when giving attention to something grants it power. And other times, when something gains power through our inattention, when we deliberately ignore it or maintain ignorance about it.
For the past few months, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery has hosted a national touring exhibition of Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth, images by celebrated Métis artist Christi Belcourt with artist and storyteller Isaac Murdoch.
The exhibition is important for many reasons, and it's worth reading the museum's page about the exhibit (linked above) if you can't experience it first-hand.
The images are breathtaking. The number of images allows you, wandering through a space, to see how her work has changed. You can see where she has placed her attention and how she directs your attention. How backgrounds, even away from "the action" of a piece, can reward your attention. How she considers elements many times in different forms, saying something (or allowing you to see or hear something) different every time.
I've been thinking about the quotes and the exhibit in relation to attention. Specifically, where I put my attention.
Where do I direct my attention? Where should I?
"One of the things I love about the essay as a form--both as a reader and a writer--is that it is an act of attention. An essay, like a photograph, is an inquiry, a search....There are a lot of different ways to write essays, a lot of different ways to say thing, so the pleasure and frustration of writing essays is that you are often discovering the object of inquiry and the shape of the search at the same time...."
And later: "The deepest response to a work of art is, in fact, another work of art."
I've been thinking a lot about attention. Times when giving attention to something grants it power. And other times, when something gains power through our inattention, when we deliberately ignore it or maintain ignorance about it.
For the past few months, the Thunder Bay Art Gallery has hosted a national touring exhibition of Uprising: The Power of Mother Earth, images by celebrated Métis artist Christi Belcourt with artist and storyteller Isaac Murdoch.
The exhibition is important for many reasons, and it's worth reading the museum's page about the exhibit (linked above) if you can't experience it first-hand.
The images are breathtaking. The number of images allows you, wandering through a space, to see how her work has changed. You can see where she has placed her attention and how she directs your attention. How backgrounds, even away from "the action" of a piece, can reward your attention. How she considers elements many times in different forms, saying something (or allowing you to see or hear something) different every time.
I've been thinking about the quotes and the exhibit in relation to attention. Specifically, where I put my attention.
Where do I direct my attention? Where should I?