Sketchbook: New Orleans
Word from: Shlomo
How deep does sorrow take root? how high can prayers fly?
I did this sketch after reading Dena's Poem (thanks to Mordy, who linked to it from the forum). I liked Dena's approach, but was feeling pretty much the opposite at the time, so I guess this image can serve as a counterpoint: We can feel the shock and awe of a heavenly assault, but we can also imagine a heaven in shared mourning, managing its parallel crisis.
3 Comments:
At 1:24 PM, Jake said…
I LOVE the idea of cross-medium interaction so much. You should totally dig deeper with it. Maybe we can think up an installation that combines poetry, visual art and music. I think it would be hot!
At 4:57 PM, dena said…
shlomo,
what i think is textually interesting about your piece is that in the creation story there's all this talk of upper and lower waters, which in the account of the biblical flood gets taken up. God opens the windows of the heavens and the springs of the deep, and your pictorial representation has hope also kind of springing from both directions. The midrash talks about how the rakia holds back the upper water from flooding the earth and the sand the lower water. It's just interesting to me how in a world based on mercy and not hostility, the waters, as it were, are not held by anything. You know? They aren't restrained at all, they're participating.
My poem came from this place of discomfort with praising God for being "al mayim rabim" (on great waters) as if no water-disaster had just occurred. But a more Hassidic reading of that psalm, which would be in line with the spirit of your piece, would be to say that God is al mayim rabim, on multiple waters. On both the vengeful and merciful waters, on the waters of destruction and of hope. Although let's face it, that would be a much sappier poem....
At 7:50 PM, Shlomo said…
I agree Jake, I agree. I once did a whole drawing that sucked in a poem by Dena, "shechita/submission" and then spit it out again.
Dena, thanks for sharing the midrash! I think that it kinda segues with my depiction of multiple windows and multiple waves/tears. My intention was to allude to a divine beauracracy and multiplicty, where there are multiple ways of empathasizing with pain and a variety of paths, both direct and indirect, to reach reconciliation. And just to reiterate, I really did like your poem, and not just becasue it wasnt sappy. The discomfort you felt came through vividly, even while you seemed to be turning to the text first as a means for understanding.
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