So yes, one of my close friends, a great creative collaborator, a contemporary, an amazing spirit and soul passed away two days ago. So devastating. Word fails. Emotion wells up and is overwhelming. Feelings of bottomless pain and loss. And helplessness.
I will miss him. It feels like a part of myself has died too. And it's true. And final. How to carry on? Nothing seems the same. Everything has changed.
We went to see the Magritte show at the Art Institute. My friend loved art, was in artist in all ways, so it seemed like the right thing to do.
I always kind of thought Magritte was sort of a "lightweight." I was wrong. His work does have a lightness of touch; it's whimsical, and mysterious, and odd, and beautifully, exquisitely, rendered. But there is depth, and the attention to surface is multi-layered.
And that lightness is profound too. There is a grace to Magritte. Something magical comes across, even as he focuses on the mundane or everyday. Sometimes a train is a train, or a pipe is a pipe, and sometimes it seems so much more.
Can a painting on a wall still speak to us? Can a perfectly realized image of a pipe capture you? Of course. It can knock you out, and enchant, and confound, and make you laugh, and scratch your head. And you will marvel at how the oil paint still looks moist and alive.
We had to wait in a line, in the rain, out on the street in front of the Art Institute to see the show. Waiting in a line is one of my most hated things in the world to do. But we waited. And really, surprisingly, the show was worth the wait.
If I have a "religion," I guess mine would be "art." It's not always reassuring, or good, and doesn't promise anything when we die, but it can enchant and challenge us now, and we can use it to help us try to fill that emptiness that is always fighting to consume us.
When my great friend and I were working together on a creative project, he would always tell me it was the "good work." This was then, and still is now, my mantra...