Guest Blog: What I see with my ears I hear with my eyes.

Long time friend and partner in crime, Aurora*, has provided me with an opinion piece regarding an art gallery we went to this past Friday.

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We spent the evening at Towson University's senior student art exhibition at the Load of Fun gallery in downtown Baltimore.  Like most contemporary art exhibits, the gallery is a playground of speculative reality.  Unlike those Rorschach images where you interpret what you see, these images are what their creator tells you they are, often defying all laws of congruency. Tonight's were definitely exercises in the extemporaneous: welded metal bracelets linked to replicate handcuffs welded to an eyeglass case filled with origami birds made out of pages pulled from a porno mag is wittily dubbed "Sexual Frustration". Photographs of plant life bursting through plots of urban decay is "Wasted Space" - funny, my daughter is curating a gallery showing of similar works in a couple months which go by the theme of "The Third Conflict". Like I said, we must believe the artist's perspective, no matter how quantum the leap from their vision to ours.

Art is language, language similar to the speaking in tongues heard in old revival tents (or some Pentecostal churches). Not unlike Pentecost, each man hears it in his own language, regardless of what is being said. I must say some of what I looked at tonight was babble - things more geared toward the intellect than the heart.

I can't help but compare this language with the older mumblings of Mr. Van Gough or Gogh as you will or if you follow BBC's Dr. Who, Van Goth...(and a postmortem identity crisis ensues),  Like Mozart's four to eight measure classical constructions geared to the primate mind, Van Gough's language is simple and direct.  His vowels are color, his consonants clean dark lines, his elisions clouded skies and starry nights.  He will get in your face and speak of hope past despair with impeccable  diction. No need fear anything being lost in translation. He speaks to the heart, and his words leave you breathless.

I have a hard time reconciling the honesty of image found in photos by Pollock, or paintings by any great master from time immemorial with a gallery of works by students who have been taught to be fundamentally dishonest in the name of creating a commercial product, created without the discipline whose transcendence is the language of true art.

Or maybe this is the frustration of an old lady whose first love was the crayon box.  I did ok, the problem was the music was always voted more impressive than the drawings, which may have led down the inevitable path towards engineering, as it did for so many others on one side of my family.  I remember a high school guidance counselor looking over the results of one of the many tests we were subjected to and muttering something along the lines of "it seems you have an aptitude for engineering.  Too bad you're a girl. Have you considered a vocation with the Dominicans?" and so I turned to a life of crime instead.

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*I have poked and prodded Aurora to start a blog of her own, but she prefers to remain the silent but deadly member of my crime syndicate. Show her some love so that she'll blog for me again. 

College Events: The Harrowing

This morning, I took Aurora Delacroix to In the Heights at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. My school was offering steeply discounted tickets for students to the show. As you know, I happen to be a student and Aurora happened to really want to see this show.

Problem 1: Events involved with CCBC invariably skirt disaster and catastrophe. If they say a bus to an event will leave at 8, it will really leave at 9 (as was the case for the leadership retreat I went to in January and which I said I'd blog about but didn't oh well, kthxbai.). Knowing this, Aurora and I said no when Lisa at the Office of Student Life asked if we'd be taking the bus.

Lisa handed us our tickets and we turned to go - until she said: "These are just 'reservation tickets.' The teacher will have the real tickets and you'll get them from her at the theater."

O-kay. THIS would end well.

I wake up this morning at six, after a harrowing night of Stolen Cat trying to burrow a hole in my chest - so that she can be closer to my warm, loving, tasty heart, you see - and nightmares of not getting into the show because I didn't fill out the schools health form (oh, but when I dream about necromancy and cannibalism, I sleep deep and easy. My head is a fucked up place to be sometimes. And I DID print out and fill out the health forms...which they never bothered to collect. Right. Whatever.).

Aurora and I get to the Hippodrome around 9. We are entirely too excited since neither of us have ever been to the Hippodrome before (though supposedly my Pop-pop danced there in the vaudeville shows a million years ago) and we were there to see a Broadway show about Latinos. Who doesn't like to see their ethnicity win Tony Awards?

But when we get there, we're met by another CCBC student who chose to drive themselves and arrived early. She's in an argument with some of the Hippodrome staff. She's trying to get in with the reservation ticket, and they don't know anything about the college coming in a group, and they're beginning to think CCBC is selling scalp tickets to students or something.

Let me just say that I love CCBC. It has some great teachers and upper admin really cares about the students. But the line of communication is of such a great degree of fail that offices, departments, and students alike pretty regularly take advantage of the school and everyone involved. In short, I could totally believe that Student Life would sell forged tickets to students and pocket the proceeds. Harsh, but true.

I manage to diffuse the situation with Aurora's help. These are reservation tickets, the teacher will exchange them for real tickets whenever he/she gets here, didn't take bus, no clue when they're getting here, look I don't make the rules, that's just what they told me, is that a Starbucks over there, okay we'll just wait. The nice staff at the theater then validated my own thoughts that this was a really stupid and needlessly complicated plan. Why couldn't someone from the school just call and tell them to expect the reservation tickets and set aside real ones at Will Call for when people showed up? That way, no one has to sit outside in the seat-free box office and wait for the teacher and the bus. I don't know. I just go to school there.

Aurora and I plopped at the Starbucks on the corner for more coffee and second breakfast (1st cherry danish, 2nd cheese and fruit) and I watched for the appearance of a CCBC bus. No such bus appeared, but we eventually gave up and walked back across the street to see if SOMETHING could be arranged so I hadn't wasted $75.

Amid a throng of private high school students in plaid short skirts and knee socks, we forced our way to a door and asked if any CCBC students were there. The staff was great and understanding and worked very hard to make some sense of the mess. At that moment, however, I finally saw one of the teachers from the leadership retreat in January. SHE HAD TICKETS. Doors opened, choirs of angels sang, the head seraph played a bitchin' guitar solo.

Not really. But I DID get orchestra seats to my new favorite musical. More on that later...maybe...if I feel like it.

Maria from the Barrio