Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

When I lived in Philadelphia, one of my favorite events was the annual Dada Festival. In the black box theater where I worked, we’d invite community artists to contribute short performances. Born during the last days of World War I, Dada artists aimed to replace accepted modes of art making with the absurd, repugnant, and nonsensical. The festival acts were generally not rehearsed, but the tech check allowed a glimpse into what to expect. I tried not to get too curious. I preferred the surprise.

One act featured a group of exquisitely dressed women in 1960s mod fashion (polka dots, white gloves, handbags, and big shades) who, pretending to stand in a life-sized kennel, simultaneously barked like canines; followed by the couple who recreated Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich where Dada was founded. To simulate time-travel, they stretched sheets of plastic cling wrap across the stage, and backlit in low light, sang slowed down versions of old-school hip-hop at a piano with a large candelabra.

Then, here was my favorite: an art student made a grainy black and white film of herself kissing a man to the live accompaniment of an accordion. The film was shown on a reel-to-reel projector. About three minutes into making out, a guy came down from the audience risers, picked up the projector, smashed it on the stage, then ran out of the theater. The audience erupted into cheers and clapped loudly. The best part of the act was not planned. We learned it was her very jealous boyfriend, dramatically fleeing.

Dada art isn’t for everyone. Frequently viewers whisper: “I don’t get it.” Many won't abide by works of art that feign complexity but can seem merely pretentious. I love, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to witness people's first encounter with Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain," that iconic 1917 piece in modern art. It can be dumbfounding, angering even, to engage the conceptual nature of a urinal turned upside down and signed a fake name, “R. Mutt.” It’s tempting to believe that art should be about something, not a representation of the void, the mystery.

And yet, the value of such work is the unexpected drift of thought the work takes us, even if we do not fully understand. I like to think of poems as a means to experience sound and language which deepens my appreciation of human expression even if on the surface its meaning is elusive. Contemporary art and poetry encourage uncertainty and a spirit of inquiry. If we are willing to let go of our frustration, abandoning the quest for meaning can be its own spiritual reward.

Today’s extraordinary poem constructs a fascinating and dreamy space where images sharpen into an immense and profound notion of the land and human interdependence.

The Half-Finished Heaven
by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robert Bly

Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.

The eager lights runs into the open,
Even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.

Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.

Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless field under us.

Water glitters between the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

“The Half-Finished Heaven” from THE HALF-FINISHED HEAVEN © 2017 Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robert Bly. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press.