the reflecting pool

"beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... he is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
-KV, Cat's Cradle

at 3:15 on a sunny March day, you will find yourself squinting if you stare at my favorite wing in the Met head on. the glare shoots back at you if you're on the outside. natural light pours through the slanted glass ceiling as it bathes in sunlight. the contradictory soothing relief is on the inside of this wing as you enjoy an open space with a reflecting pool. the temperature and surrounding stone are cool no matter the outside conditions. you can find reprieve from whatever physical or emotional heat is escaping you're pores, calming your core and letting you exhale.

i've been fascinated by Egyptian art since i took a course in college. unfortunately, it turns out ancient Egypt is REALLY old, and this was the first chapter of the class. nonetheless, it was a captivating piece of my semester.

i was not mystified by color usage or evolving depth and perceptions within paintings or even the myths behind all of the Gods and Goddesses portrayed in Grecco-Roman art. in the Egyptian world, i did not care about the animal-human combination statues and what they represent, though they made for some great tigerblood jokes. i fell in love with the power stances of Egyptian sculptures and the jagged lines and square edges and how these, the most ancient works of the world, withstood the test of time. the most fascinating thing was the amount of storytelling that laid the groundwork for all the art that was produced, and unintentionally, every society to come.

this is the human in humanities. the combination of art and practicality (religious ceremony, death, harvest, jewelry, the invention of the wheel, etc) shows that culture does not exist without art, and why it's more valuable to me than any math proof i've done or any chemistry moles i've ever converted. these are obviously valuable and have their own place and even make sense to some people. but to me, these are not accessible.

the amount of art stamped by hieroglyphics is amazing. incorporating reading into what we hold most sacred always seems like a good idea. but it wasn't until this trip that i realized that visual and performance art are a way of reading--of interpreting a message and digesting it; of conveying human experience and unraveling the commonthreads we hold simply to regrasp them with a different grip. it started here.

women and men had what we consider traditional duties to an extent in ancient Egypt, the good ole hunter-gatherer typecasting. but women were allowed to be musicians and dancers, which shows what a basic point of human connectivity art is. they even had love letters and practiced the art of double entendre. and today, we still make that's what she said jokes. these expressed emotion and religion and sex. it's the first set of historical records that prove art is innately human.

if you catch yourself not thinking by the reflecting pool, you're missing the damn point. if you go into a museum and memorize the dates off of every gold engraved plaque, you aren't getting it. don't think; let it come to you. ride each wave and grab each ripple of the reflecting pool. see value and not facts. remember we aren't that far from ancient Egypt.

one artist who does this today is alex grey. check him out immediately at www.alexgrey.com

-k.