On Being, Mindful

Posted on May 24, 2014 Updated on June 4, 2014

This yearlong exploration of light has continued to surprise, delight and occasionally also startle:

“Thinking of your light exhibition. Did you know that one of the earliest forms of light for indoors was to stuff a wick-like material down the throat of an oily Icelandic sea bird and let it burn as it sat on the dinner table?”

Ick.

This was shared by collaborator Jeffrey Brice Ornstein who always has the best stories…. Oddly and coincidentally one of my 25 projects will feature the recent documentation of ‘an animal product as edible table lighting’… a life-altering experience for me, but more on that later.

Collaborator Amy Cranch recently forwarded a poem by Mary Oliver which celebrates – amongst other things – light. The poem reveres ordinary life, attention, and a recognition of the sublime within the mundane.

She tells me that this, along with innumerable other sources of inspiration, is fueling her ideas for our collaboration which she is in the process of creating with her husband, Marc L’Italien, and their talented support crew of dancers + videographer.

Mindful

Every day I see or hear something that more or less

kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle

in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for – to look, to listen,

to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over

in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant – but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help

but grow wise with such teachings as these – the untrimmable light

of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

~ Mary Oliver, poet