Art, Democracy, and the Abstract

Next to my hotel in Virginia was a sculpture park dedicated to celebrating the military experience in America. I stood and gazed at the sculptures for a time before I figured out what was bothering me about them: there was nothing even vaguely abstract about the sculptures at all.

Now, I will admit that occasionally I have difficulty deciphering abstract art and its meaning and, at times, I wonder if the splotches of paint strewn across the wall are nothing more than an artist's fiendish prank to fool the pretentious among us into believing that they are analyzing meaningful art, when, in fact, they are merely looking at paint splotches. I have to remind myself that the fact I can't decipher a piece of art doesn't mean that the work is indecipherable; instead, it could be that I haven't the tools or knowledge inside me to do the deciphering or maybe my imagination isn't sufficiently expansive to see what the artist is able to imagine more clearly than me.

I have captured the images of two of the sculptures. Can you guess what the title of the first sculpture is? Why, it's called "The Homecoming." But, what else could it be titled? No one, except perhaps someone completely lacking the sense of vision, could misunderstand the scene that is being depicted, and I suspect that the meaning is so obvious and overt that even the blind can sense that they are in the presence of "The Homecoming" when they walk by it unsuspectingly, while conducting their daily errands.

The second sculpture called "Pilots, Man Your Planes," of course, depicts pilots running to man their planes. Again, almost nothing is left to the viewer's imagination, except perhaps the identity of the enemy who might be forcing these two pilots to dash so quickly toward their airplanes. And even that doesn't matter as the viewer need only fill in the "enemy of the day" and assume that it is that enemy who is being responded to.

Come to think of it, there are few military monuments that are abstract in nature. When war is the topic, there is no gray area, nothing is abstract, imagination is not required--there are enemies and there is the valor of "our" side. The abstract and the ambiguous are the enemy of those who want to force nations and their people into bloody battle. After all justice, ecumenicism, tolerance, and peace are abstractions, in a sense, that do not lend themselves to such clear-cut depictions and easy sculpting.

If we consider historical example, the abstract is also the enemy of dictators and totalitarian regimes. The Nazis of Germany took great lengths to condemn and destroy what they termed "decadent art," almost all of it abstract, almost all of it deviating from the clear propaganda the state wanted its citizens to take in without thought. Not much in Soviet Art was abstract either, particularly if the dozens of Soviet sculptures I saw in the old Kyrgyz Historical museum are a guide. And now in the U.S., more and more of those from the right wing, Trump supporters, and Republicans lash out against "decadent" art, and abstraction they don't understand or that they find threatening; these groups cut funding from the arts and insist that art fit their narrow conception of the truth. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this assault upon abstraction and the concept of art as a whole has taken place at the same time our democracy has begun to collapse. A democratic society that cannot cope with alternative visions and with the abstract is one that is danger of being overrun by the undemocratic vision of those in power.

I left the non-abstract sculpture park after listening to my fellow park visitors gush expansively at how wonderful and patriotic the sculptures were and how refreshing it was to have public art that everyone can understand--none of that horrible, indecipherable trash, they cheered. The failure of civic imagination, tolerance of only dominant and clearly understood messages, hostility toward alternate visions, and identification of the "decadent"--all are hallmarks of societies where democracy is imperiled or absent altogether. It seemed that only I left the sculpture park that day lacking a warm glow in my heart and possessing a deeper understanding of the descent into darkness into which our society has embarked.

The Homecoming

Pilots, Man your Planes!!!

The Sea

I reside deep in the Kyrgyz mountains, far from the sea. In fact, I have heard that none of the water in Kyrgyzstan even ends up draining into any ocean; every drop of rain that falls or snowflake that melts there stays contained in the highland basins of Central Asia. That is how distant the sea is from the Kyrgyz experience. The moon seems closer and more real to me, though it is not a part of this planet, because I see it almost every night, whereas I feel the sea almost does not exist when I gaze out into the Kyrgyz sky.

This week I am staying meters away from the sea. I hear its rhythmic song as I open my hotel room window and observe the gulls diving across the water in search of food. The Kyrgyz mountains are impressive and I am in awe of their imposing heights, yet the sea is a greater source of mystery as one can trace the point where a mountain touches the sky, but the depth of the ocean cannot ever be perceived from any vantage point, especially from the shore. No wonder tales of mermaids and sea monsters have inhabited the human imagination for so long. Those sorts of creatures are what we humans conjure up when we cannot observe what exists deep beyond our sight.

It is also the expanse and magnitude of the sea that confounds us: it is as close to infinity as we can experience on this planet as the endless heavens are really beyond our earthly capacity to experience and comprehend. When I stand on the shore, I am overwhelmed and feel hopelessly small when facing the largest and greatest feature of our planet as nothing is more immense than the enormous mass of ocean that covers this earth. Each wave that rolls upon the sand is a child of the wave that preceded it and is related to all the ancestors that have rolled upon the land in the billions of years prior to when any of us were here. This cycle of wave after wave has never stopped, has never ceased. Each wave is like a grain in an almost infinite hourglass that measures time almost endlessly. It is a reminder that the sea is the mother of almost everything that exists here on our planet.

Walking along the ocean and inhaling the salty, thick, and heavy air is the greatest joy I experience away from the thin atmosphere of the mountains. But, I will only be able to enjoy a few more days of this luxury before I return to the heights and to life in the giant yellow spaceship in which I live. Sea and sky, earth and mountain, air and water, sun and moon--the elements of life, so seldom do I consider them, yet each day they affect me in ways I do not always comprehend. Before I leave the sea, I will let the freezing salt water wash over my feet, sand between my toes, to remind me of the place in the great infinity in which I've had the good fortune to reside.

What I Found a Short Walk from our Nation's Capitol

While I was in Washington D.C. waiting for my train for Virginia, I took a walk near Union Station and the Capitol Building. Just six blocks from the capitol I stumbled across this small tent village for homeless people.

Six blocks away from the Capitol Building, where just weeks ago Congress passed a tax cut that put billions and billions of dollars into the pockets of the richest Americans, I found a group of my fellow citizens with not much more than the clothes on their backs living on the streets. Thank goodness Congress has its priorities straight, passing a tax bill where well over half the benefits of the bill go to the richest 1% of Americans.

Donald Trump and his Republican minions have passed a tax bill that increases their personal fortunes dramatically, while ignoring poor Americans completely. We live in a country where there are homeless on the streets, almost inside the shadow cast by the building where these unjust laws are made.

Time was running short, so I had to return to Union Station to catch my train. As I boarded the southbound Northeast Regional, I realized I am from a country that has lost its soul and concern for the common good and I wondered if it is even possible for us to regain what has, for the moment, disappeared.

The Meaning of Accepting Pineapple

Often when I post highly political topics on Facebook, I barely get a response. When I mention the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who have been persecuted, raped, and killed in Myanmar and the refugee crisis that has followed and the responsibility each of us has to help, I hear silence. Or I note that millions of American children could lose their health care (causing many children to potentially die), because of Trump's budget...barely a whisper.

That's OK, I suppose. We have enough to deal with in our lives; it's difficult to comprehend and cope with such depressing topics that seem so beyond the ability of one person to impact upon.

There is one pressing social topic, however, that, when it is brought up on social media, it is guaranteed to set off a firestorm of debate: should pineapple ever be placed on pizza? This is one debate that never goes uncommented upon.

I, of course, count myself among those who relishes pineapple on my pizza, especially when paired with Canadian bacon or ham. I have lived in Italy and know that it is an offense to all Italians and many others who live throughout the world. Still, I cannot resist the culinary goodness that comes from pairing pineapple with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and Canadian bacon, upon a platform of crispy crust. The howls of protest and indignation and, sometimes even, condemnation I have received for my pineapple love are really quite surprising in their intensity. But it does not matter. I do not cast moral judgment upon those who cover their pizzas with wretched anchovies or the Japanese for smothering their pizzas with tuna, mayonnaise, and corn. And I will continue to eat my pizzas with pineapple, as it harms no one and provides me with great pleasure.

Recently, I committed my joyful offense at Mario's the trendy Italian restaurant in Bishkek. They have a wonderful wood furnace in which they bake their handcrafted pizzas. And as certain as the sun rises I ordered a ham and pineapple pizza, unashamed by my unorthodox choice. I could feel the judgment of the American couple seated near me as they gazed upon what I ordered, the scowls I could detect out of the corner of my eye was evidence of that. "You eat pineapple on your pizza?" the woman asked me, from her table, with a haughty tone of superiority. "No," I replied. "I just order it to start unwanted conversations with annoying people like you."

Strangely, for some reason, my comment ended the conversation. I don't know why. Despite the awkward silence that ensued, oh how I enjoyed the culinary delight of pineapple on my taste buds, combined with all the goodness of that which makes a perfect pizza.

Pineapple on pizza. It is a metaphor. I consider all the many aspects of life we disapprove of in others. Some of us detest the music of younger generations. Others don't like the clothing or language or mannerisms of various groups they encounter. We are offended when people don't place ice in our beverages, or when they do. Or if someone doesn't believe in God. Or hates Manchester United. Or everything. Most of these discomforts and disapprovals are so trivial, and matter so little, and advance nothing in the world, and don't help us achieve understanding with anyone. OK, so most of these items I have listed are more significant than pineapple on pizza. Yet, it is the same concept: so many of our disapprovals and cultural displeasures aren't cosmically important, but we hold them anyway, even if they divide us. No one is asking anyone else to eat pineapple on their pizza; instead, why don't we all just appreciate the diversity of toppings that we find in this diverse world?

When I had finished my pizza and the wait person had taken my plate away, the remainder of the restaurant breathed a sigh of relief that my offending order had been removed. My taste buds remained content, yet I was saddened when I realized that I lived on a planet where pineapple on a pizza created such trouble and where the Rohingya people go to bed tonight in as desperate misery as they did the night before.

The Failure of "Thoughts and Prayers"

(This essay was originally posted on Facebook a few days after the Parkland school shootings.)

A couple days ago I posted something where I condemned Republicans for only offering "thoughts and prayers" as a response to the latest mass shooting in the U.S. A college student friend of mine responded to my post by writing, "I wonder if thoughts and prayers would work instead of me studying."

That was actually an extremely brilliant piece of snarky writing. Of course, if any student I had ever taught had come to me with an explanation for their poor test score, that they had not studied, but had instead simply "thought and prayed" I would have laughed them out of my classroom. Students have a responsibility to study and work to get their grades and we would never expect God to intervene to help Alice or Bob get a better grade on the test I'd given to my class on Macbeth. Then why do we think prayers are the answer to other, even more serious, problems we face?

Prayer is something that people expect too much from. They think that God sits in the sky and sorts through every request, like Santa Claus, and grants the wishes of those whose prayers are the most sincere or of those who are the best behaved. But, remember, there is no Santa in reality, and no Santa-like God. Prayer is far more complicated than that.

I think the Holocaust should have put an end to the idea that thoughts and prayers can overturn great evil simply by being spoken. Were there no prayers sent to God by the millions who found themselves in concentration camps? I would expect there were multitudes of nightly prayers launched from Auschwitz, Dachau, and other similarly horrifying places. What kind of God ignores those prayers? A "Christian" I knew answered that question by saying their prayers were not answered because those prayers were not sent by Christians who had been saved. What kind of God ignores those prayers, regardless of who they are from? A God who ignores the prayers of the Holocaust because of the beliefs of the senders is not a God worthy any sort of worship.

But, the problems is not God, it is with humans. We don't realize that if God intervenes on the behalf of one, He/She must intervene on behalf of all. And the fact the world does not work in this way is abundantly clear. Some who pray end up dying of cancer and some are cured. There is no way of knowing the reasons why the mysterious occurs and why it often doesn't--the answers have not yet been discovered and they probably never will be. Perhaps the answer is related, though, to the idea that God, if there is such an entity, has given us the precious gift of free will, and when we possess the gift of free will, there is no puppeteer to fall back on when life takes a dismal turn. With free will we are left to take our faith in God, use our free will, and put God's will into action, that is the human fate. It is our responsibility to be doers, going beyond simple utterance of thoughts and prayers.
Prayer, rather than being a plea to some cosmic Santa, is, instead, a way for humans to meditate and to try to find a sense of the spiritual to help guide us to discover the path of truth and light and to discern what God's will might be: prayer is not begging for God to do something, it is establishing a dialogue where we work to seek the truth that exists in what is transcendent. Then, after this process, it is our responsibility, just like it is the responsibility of the student to study to pass their test, to do the work needed to put what is right and good and true into practice into the world in which we find ourselves. The world will never become transformed until those who possess faith realize that WE are usually the answer to our prayers.

Thoughts and prayers. They have their place. But when we face great horrors in the world, whether it be the Holocaust or endless slaughter of our fellow humans because of guns being prevalent everywhere, we then have a duty to take our thoughts and prayers and put them into action so that we do whatever we can to eliminate the harm to our brothers and sisters around us. To do anything less is an affront to those who have perished and indeed is an affront to God, who expects far more from us than mouthing hopeful words that simply evaporate into the sky.