Ok, so I found out today that a Sentinel is available.
If you want to catch up on the Sentinel, a sculpture by Leonard Baskin, you can read my previous blog.
Notice, I said "a" Sentinel is available. Apparently, Baskin made a few from that mold. I don't know how many yet, since I haven't had a chance to ask.
I haven't had a chance to ask, because the gallery wants ... $26,000 for this piece. My god (to quote my words from yesterday) that is the price of car!
Ok, let's park the contemplation of the Sentinel right there for now. So more thought needs to go into this before I act.
Today, my property manager and I pulled the side off my old manufacturing building and pulled my 25-foot Cape Dory sailboat inside. That is a major accomplishment. It usually wintered at the boatyard. This winter, I am thinking of making her look "purty." Varnishing, buffing the fiberglass, painting lazarettes, those kinds of things.
My friend, Joel (see link on main page) has been quite clear with me: Sell the boat. That will get you a good way's toward the Sentinel.
I could sell the boat, since I have another. I have a 33-foot Hans Christian on which I will be living aboard and cruising the Atlantic circuit starting next summer. (Hopefully.) I haven't been able to sell the smaller one yet because, well, I just love her. She was my first keel boat. So many good memories. (Maybe I will someday post the story about Joel and I venturing up the Otter Creek in Vermont, as if we were Lewis and Clark on some as-yet uncharted river in Northwest.) And I have this fantasy, in which I am sailing with the larger boat, Dolphins, along the coast of Maine, and my daughter (now 12, but soon old enough) leap-frogging the various ports with me in the smaller boat, Sunset.
This led Joel and me into a good discussion about sacrifice. Would buying the Sentinel mean as much to me if I didn't have to sacrifice something in return? If the Sentinel represents all art and all creativity to me, then isn't it also true that I believe that we must make sacrifices to choose art and choose creativity. We cannot keep our nice day jobs and be the productive, dedicated and committed artists. This is the very theme of the letters by Rilke that were collected and published under the title of "Letters to a Young Poet."
(Ok, let's forget the fact that Wallace Stevens -- my favorite poet perhaps -- was an insurance man while writing the world's most insightful poetry. Please, don't confuse me with facts.)
Sacrifice.
Sentinel.
Sailboat.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Does appreciation demand sacrifice?
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2 comments:
sometimes it takes a while for a feeling i get when i read something makes its way up to the consiousness, so that i can phrase it. so here it is:
"If the Sentinel represents all art and all creativity to me, then isn't it also true that I believe that we must make sacrifices to choose art and choose creativity."
what makes you creative? does buying the sentinel make you more creative than now? if you made the sacrifice and bought it, ok, let's say you get more creative. and i'm sure you will. it's like a new relationship. it inspires you no end. everything seems like it was touched by magic. then after a while, things start losing that magic. it wears off and your every day life starts to show through that coating of magic. you are back where you started. with yourself. creativity comes from within. so what if you bought it and the magic lasts for a long time. then your house burns down and the sentinal is lost. now you've taken your creative motor and built it into your sentinal and its gone. is your creativity gone too? are you now a lesser artist?
all our lives we look for the magic outside instead of inside. or to ask very provocativly: isn't it like hoping to be a better writer by drinking lots of whiskey? after all hemmingway wrote some of his best stuff full of it.
yes, we are inspired by the outside world. but if we try to hold on to it, it loses its magic touch. a sunset is so powerfully strong, because we can't hold on to it. we can't preserve it. and when we do try to take a picture of it, it's pure kitsch.
good you compared it with a car. how many people believe that if they only had that new car they were dreaming of, they'd be happy. paying a price that hurts, gives it so much weight, that you have to give it the same amount of meaning, like the silver bullet. otherwise why would you have spent sooo much money on it. only if you were hoping it would do something to your creativity.
you quote the gallery owner in another blog: “Well, you probably can, but what you are really saying is that you don’t want to afford it. We all make choices in life, and if this is what you really wanted, you would rearrange your financial priorities to be able to afford it. And because you would be rearranging your priorities, you would be rearranging your values. And it would begin to affect every choice in your life. In other words, it would change your life.”
well put. so think about where you want to place your values. inside yourself or outside.
here's something i read in a book:
"only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."
now this is a value that's for free, but is harder to earn than every cent of those 26,000 dollars
You are absolutely right on this sacrifice thing. If I am depending on the sentinel to inspire me, then I am waiting for inspiration to come from outside; not within.
I like your question: if the house burns down, the sentinel lost, is my creativity gone, reducing me to a lessor artist?
So, yes, creativity needs to come from within.
But let's take this discussion one step further:
Even Zen monks feel they can pursue their devotion to their meditation by changing their environment. By living in a monestary, for example. Isn't that similar to surrounding oneself with art that inspires?
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