Ramble on.
The Rothko Chapel, Houston 2007 - Thomas Struth
This afternoon, a post by a friend of a friend referencing Thomas Struth took me on an epic online ramble so personally resonant that I wanted to set it down here in narrative form. First I stopped at several NYT articles that have been illustrated by Struth’s photographs, including this fascinating piece from a few years ago on political theology and this feature on houses of worship that also function as art installations. One of the spaces featured in that second article is the Live Oak Friends Meeting House, a Quaker Meeting House designed by James Turrell that I’ve heard rapturously described by one of my closest friends, who lives in Houston and has, I think, a particular interest in sacred architecture (hi, Evan!). Turrell connects the function of the Meeting House to a piece of his at PS.1, Meeting, a piece that I first saw on a trip to that museum with Evan and his boyfriend Ryan (hi, Ryan!). We were there on a clear, colorless winter day at the end of December and opening the door into the room (what Turrell calls a “skyspace”) was a literal shock to the senses. PS.1 has a kind of mad-abandoned-hospital feel to it at all times—it inspires a delicious, excitable wandering—and opening onto the frigid outdoor evening air and the crowd of museum-goers, many of them lying on their backs on the floor, was a near perfect experience of surprise gratification. It was just as lovely and sudden a moment to come upon today, in the midst of a very different kind of wandering.
Considering what was already an overwhelming wealth of circuitous association, it was almost overkill to find Struth’s photo of the Rothko Chapel, another sacred/artistic Houston landmark that always makes me think of Evan. On a visit to him shortly after relocating to Brooklyn, my girlfriend and I loitered outside the chapel in the dusk, talking about the huge mistake we thought we’d made in moving an extra thousand miles away from such good friends and loved ones. Later I walked back in the deeper darkness to retrieve a scarf that I’d left behind, forgotten in haste or, more probably, in emotion.
I generally believe in a universe without consciousness or intentionality. I know I’ve now written two posts that smack of God or religion in a look-how-it’s-all-connected kind of way. (Also, admittedly, in a literal content kind of way.) Undoubtedly, undeniably I am tracing such lines because I’ve been spending time with others who are interested in doing the same—not just David Dark but Rebecca Solnit and Annie Dillard and Krista Tippett. I’m kind of embarrassed, not to be keeping such company, but to be nursing thoughts that would sound ridiculous to that sad girl carrying her recovered scarf and wondering, really, where she was going. The difference between her and me, there and here, is that I’m finding so much more pleasure in wondering lately, and in wandering. I’m having more moments of opening onto skyspace, of unanticipated pleasure in connection. It’s maybe even enough to make embarrassment feel irrelevant.
