I spent several hours over the course of Friday and Saturday at the Polk museum of art. I was quite easily enamored with the artwork and ultimately the atmosphere of the place. Precise footsteps on the marble floor and the air always present with a thin layer of concentration. The experience was an intellectual high that took a spiritual turn truly transforming my mind. After some time I found myself on the second floor, spotted a chair and decided to take a rest and that’s when I say the photograph I wrote my ekphrastic on.
At first I acquainted myself with the more obvious approach, which was trying to decipher this person’s personality by the pile of their possessions lumped together in the bottom portion of the photo. Shortly I realized that no deep resolutions could be formed by such average items. He was a musician and he wore a hat but that’s what he did not who he is. That’s when the portions of this picture struck me as odd. The possessions only took up a fragment of the total area the rest being filled with a blank, black space. My interpretation being the outward appearance does not directly relate to the actual personality of a particular person. For this person, I find the photo to be an expression of identity crisis. Yes, there are these things, but there is also this emptiness, an uncertainty of his actual being. Furthermore, the photo prepossess he uses the medium of music to express his inner self and this leads him to find a purpose.
As I gaze upon my melody in the air
My eyes are drawn to what’s not there
The tangible was always fiction
Filled to the brim with nothing,
There is space, and I tell myself to leave it
It’s good, or, if only to blanken the mind it shall stay,
Familiar uncertainty, as my sight gravitates south
Oh, I’ve been here before
This is where sweet lamentations wisp away from my thoughts,
Flower then disappear
Only touching ears of those that know the sound
As a musician that performs night to an audience of day
I ask my melody, my melancholy,
What of me?
If it hadn’t responded
I still wouldn’t know the answer
Zach, I truly enjoy reading your blogs, for I get something out of them every time. Your word choices are so precise that it really helps me see the meaning that you want to get across! Well done and an excellent poem might I add.
ReplyDeleteWow, that was really insightful to a form of meaning with that photo. I also enjoyed the "on" and "off" picture in that same area.
ReplyDeleteIt is Good to really remove yourself from Your thoughts and to only observe Your surroundings. You seem very concentrated on the museum as though You just float through, like Your not even there and You are simply revealing everything that is flustering Your senses. It is truly a practice I should emphasize more in my life. Thank You.
ReplyDeleteawesome post
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this field trip and feel that I received a lot from it. I think reading poems in a environment that complements the poem, allows for the reader to pull more from the work. This happens to me every field trip we have gone on. I enjoy these field trips and wish we did this with the earlier texts too. I believe that I would understand and have enjoyed them more if we did. This is something I feel that Corrigan should do with future classes. He should defiantly have a field trip for every text read in class.
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