Photo: Nile Scott Studios
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modem life–its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness–conjoin to dull our sensory faculties…What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more…
In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”
Susan Sontag
Against Interpretation, 1964
This essential tension, laid out so articulately over 60 years ago, is still a lively and roiling one. It was a startling statement at that time to be made by one of our most brilliant public intellectuals: sidestep the institutional decoding in favor of feeling, sensuality, pleasure. And now we face even more of a cultural dulling from living in an infosphere that is assaultive, fractured and desensitizing. Susan Sontag’s injunction to “see more, hear more, feel more” isn’t going to happen online. This is a call to go with what the body knows and feels.
This is a dichotomy that artists know and talk about frequently. The center of gravity in a studio can fluctuate from the head to the body. Being tuned in to where I am centered isn’t easy for me. Sometimes the only thing that works is to purposively instruct that analyzing, parsing monkey mind to take a break. Here, have a bowl of soup so other voices can be heard.
This summer I made a concerted effort in the studio and in my life to pay attention to what made me feel a sense of pleasure, with no intellectual defense needed. Some new paintings began appearing that were counter to my usual way of working, but they were touching me in a deep and inarticulated way. Even so, I had to talk myself into allowing them take up residence for no other reason than that they made me feel really good.
I had other unexpected encounters with inarticulated joy in my non-studio life as well. Like the Tartan Army.
Boston hosted the Scottish men’s national team, their first world cup appearance in 28 years. The city was not prepared for what arrived—kilted men playing bagpipes were suddenly everywhere. They sang, bagpiped, went en masse to a Red Sox game, traffic coned the heads of statues, drank the Sam Adams brewery dry and were astoundingly friendly to everyone. Their chant, “No Scotland, No Party,” made it clear that some professional communal celebrants had arrived in town.
By the time they went home they had made donations to local hospitals and homeless centers. Mayor Wu signed a friendship pact with Glasgow, and the Globe ran a full page thank you. And even though Scotland’s team never had a shot, the celebrations were unstoppably unchecked, loud, communal, unembarrassed and generous. This unbridled exuberance seemed to carry over later in the summer, to sold out performances at Fenway Park by Noah Kahan and Phish. On those concert nights the streets of Kenmore Square were filled the people of every age, just having fun.
Some of the summer’s films invited deep philosophical speculation–The Odyssey and Blue Heron are two that come to mind—but there were also some “just enjoy this” offerings. I thought Project Hail Mary would be a solemn extinction dystopic narrative (the sun is dying, a lone scientist must save the species) but it was primarily a story of cross species friendship: two lone intergalactic survivors do it together. Simple and sweet.
Celebrating its 30th year of free Shakespeare on the Common, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company is performing Midsummer Night’s Dream this summer. Directed by CSC founder and Boston legend Steven Maler, it is a night of just plain raucous and outrageous fun.
The set is an enormous, over the top pink heart ringed in scaffolding that also features a pratfall ball pit. Taking a style tip from Burning Man (yes, it definitely has one) this magical fantasy held everyone engaged, with enough verve to reach those seated at the very back of the large crowd on the lawn. MND is a comedy about desire and misrecognition, about the arbitrariness of who we love. This production makes the disorder, confusion and madcap misunderstandings airborne and endearing.
It isn’t an easy thing for me to forego the head space hermeneutics. I am also aware of how I clearly feel obligated to make a cogent argument for why pleasure matters. But the fact is that Sontag’s erotics don’t need any hermeneutics bolted on to be legitimate. The Tartan Army didn’t need to justify its shenanigans with a theory of civic joy, and the heart-shaped stage doesn’t need a critical unpacking.
This all has something to do with permission: permission to enjoy a thing without immediately converting it into meaning. This is also true for a studio practice like mine, where working alone can lead to over scrutiny and reducing a work of art to content, context and meaning. That is what, according to Sontag, can drain the life out of a work of art. So “see more, hear more, feel more” is a useful mantra for many parts of a life.