A very nice day
My wife had a work-related event in Manhattan (we live in NJ) Saturday morning, and I had an afternoon rehearsal. Having just finished Ron Chernow's very interesting and very readable biography of Alexander Hamilton, I thought I'd catch the last weekend of an exhibit of his life at the NY Historical Society. This also enabled me to take a nice stroll through the park to visit The Gates.
Cynic that I am, I thought I'd subscribe to the view that The Gates was a colossal waste of $23 million and a blight on the beautiful Central Park. Parks are my favorite places to visit when I'm in a new city and being a born and bred NYer, I'm very proud of Central Park (although I'm also very partial to Prospect Park in Brooklyn). I view any attempt to commercialize, exploit or deface the park (like the Disney event of a number of years ago) as sacrilege.
Well, to my surprise, I came away with a somewhat different view. I ended up enjoying The Gates much more than I expected, although maybe not for reasons that the artists intended. I'm no art expert, but to me each individual gate wasn't much (kind of ugly and utilitarian), but eventually, after viewing them from a variety of different locations and angles, I was quite taken with the changing form and colors. Depending on how, where and when you looked, the various permutations of orange were quite striking and the variety of shapes formed by the groups along the path made each step a new experience.
But the thing I enjoyed the most was watching the people. The park was full to brimming on a rather cold Saturday morning, with tourists and NYers, singles, couples, families, old and young alike. I love to people-watch and I was very interested in their expressions, and their reactions. One couple I saw, just standing there, watching a "gate", looking as if they expected something to happen. Some people just strolled, somewhat oblivous. Others took lots of pictures, some jumped up to touch the fabric. And other walked and talked, paused to look and take it the sights and then continued on. My pastor told the story of an 80 year lady, who over the two weeks of the exhibition walked all of the "gate" paths (there are some 23 miles of them) thinking of the various gates in her life.
Despite my initial cynicism, I think it did bring more people into the city and into the park in particular. I'm told that it was hard to get a hotel room in NY during the 2 weeks (17 days actually) of the display. I only visited a small area of the park, but friends who were in various locations said that it was full throughout and that tourists ventured into locations they might not have otherwise. Ultimately, I found the whole experience rather exhilirating.
After my brief look at the Hamilton exhibit (very interesting to see the source documents I had just read about), I went to my rehearsal. I suppose it was unremarkable, except that I was singing a song by Hugo Wolf, a composer who had hitherto not figured in my repertoire. What have I been missing? I'd heard the Italienisches Liederbuch and Spanisches Liederbuch, but for some reason I'd never sung any of his songs. In rehearsal of my allotted lied, Gebet from the Mörike-Lieder I was struck with the genius that allowed him to encapsulate a whole range of emotion into a relative short, deceptively simple song. It is a prayer, accepting pain or happiness, realizing that life generally falls somewhere in the middle. But the end, unresolved (a colleague called it a "Tristan moment"), seems to represent the quest and lack of finality in life. While there is life, there is no end and always the chance for something new.
This was a nice day.
Cynic that I am, I thought I'd subscribe to the view that The Gates was a colossal waste of $23 million and a blight on the beautiful Central Park. Parks are my favorite places to visit when I'm in a new city and being a born and bred NYer, I'm very proud of Central Park (although I'm also very partial to Prospect Park in Brooklyn). I view any attempt to commercialize, exploit or deface the park (like the Disney event of a number of years ago) as sacrilege.
Well, to my surprise, I came away with a somewhat different view. I ended up enjoying The Gates much more than I expected, although maybe not for reasons that the artists intended. I'm no art expert, but to me each individual gate wasn't much (kind of ugly and utilitarian), but eventually, after viewing them from a variety of different locations and angles, I was quite taken with the changing form and colors. Depending on how, where and when you looked, the various permutations of orange were quite striking and the variety of shapes formed by the groups along the path made each step a new experience.
But the thing I enjoyed the most was watching the people. The park was full to brimming on a rather cold Saturday morning, with tourists and NYers, singles, couples, families, old and young alike. I love to people-watch and I was very interested in their expressions, and their reactions. One couple I saw, just standing there, watching a "gate", looking as if they expected something to happen. Some people just strolled, somewhat oblivous. Others took lots of pictures, some jumped up to touch the fabric. And other walked and talked, paused to look and take it the sights and then continued on. My pastor told the story of an 80 year lady, who over the two weeks of the exhibition walked all of the "gate" paths (there are some 23 miles of them) thinking of the various gates in her life.
Despite my initial cynicism, I think it did bring more people into the city and into the park in particular. I'm told that it was hard to get a hotel room in NY during the 2 weeks (17 days actually) of the display. I only visited a small area of the park, but friends who were in various locations said that it was full throughout and that tourists ventured into locations they might not have otherwise. Ultimately, I found the whole experience rather exhilirating.
After my brief look at the Hamilton exhibit (very interesting to see the source documents I had just read about), I went to my rehearsal. I suppose it was unremarkable, except that I was singing a song by Hugo Wolf, a composer who had hitherto not figured in my repertoire. What have I been missing? I'd heard the Italienisches Liederbuch and Spanisches Liederbuch, but for some reason I'd never sung any of his songs. In rehearsal of my allotted lied, Gebet from the Mörike-Lieder I was struck with the genius that allowed him to encapsulate a whole range of emotion into a relative short, deceptively simple song. It is a prayer, accepting pain or happiness, realizing that life generally falls somewhere in the middle. But the end, unresolved (a colleague called it a "Tristan moment"), seems to represent the quest and lack of finality in life. While there is life, there is no end and always the chance for something new.
This was a nice day.
posted by Rich Russell at
10:47 PM
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