When we listen (click on the player above) to Edward R Murrow's November 1939 broadcast, we find ourselves in London's underground Central Control Station of its Air Raid Precaution System. Americans of his day hung on Murrow’s disembodied words. In well conjured worlds, our minds decouple from literal time and space.
In 1941, poet Archibald MacLeish praised Edward R. Murrow for his overseas radio reporting during World War II. He said Murrow had destroyed a superstition:
'...the most obstinate of all superstitions - the superstition against which poetry and all the arts have fought for centuries, the superstition of time and distance.'
David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
This morning, mired in the laws of physics, I drove 39 minutes and 26.33 miles to Strongsville to ply children with songs and stories. Once we got going, we abandoned the here and now. No one stopped me from shepherding forty campers to a river in West Africa where Turtle was teaching Anansi to fish.
We are children of story. Are we born en route to untethered regions; do we learn the language of fact only when asked?
In Coming Close, another Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Philip Levine, drenches us in the experience of a woman’s factory work. Why are his word pictures more compelling than the turkey sandwich in our grasp? To put it simply, why do we crave art even as it whisks us away to strange lands? Would we be better off to embrace the present, no matter how tense (or dull)?
And what would be the fun in that exactly? A contemporary filmmaker echos MacLeish’s ruminations.
Filmmaking is like choreography except better. With filmmaking you get to choreograph time and space.
Spencer Kohan
There will ever be call for precise instruments to measure and facilitate modern existence. Happily, art provides its own vaccination against leaving it at that.
Public domain photo, London Air Raid Shelter Sign
- Susan Weber's blog
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bug eyes
Sorry, Suz, that's not a very nice "subject" to have displayed in your "comments" pane, but your article made me imagine looking out at the world through a bug's many-lensed eye. Or through a stained-glass window where each pane is a different color and a different lens.
To get the whole picture of our world we need to see it through all the various lenses. Wide views and close ups. Some lenses are history books or newspapers, some are friends, some are radio broadcasts, some are art, some are music, some are jokes or physics courses or novels or stories or genealogy searches or facebook.
Not all of our views are through our eyes or ears: Dance a dance. Ride a motorcycle. Pet a kitten. Bathe a baby.
We look through one lens and marvel at how each person in this vast world is so unique. A second later we look through a different lens and see that we have all the basics in common with a mother half way around it. Orly and I were watching Michael Jackson tributes on YouTube last night. The music and slideshows breaking your heart - helping you feel the essence of Michael.
We need to keep all of our lenses clean and well-used to get the the whole picture. Each person has lenses that are easier for him to see through and others that are more opaque - take more work.
Thank you for the lens of your article this morning, Suz!
clear lenses
Thanks, shlomit. Your post is a good example of what I might call an elegant lens - and you might call a clean one. Elegance in any field packs a whole lot of value into a small package. Usually, either the creator of this elegance has a well organized mind and polished skill set (ie. writing, painting, dancing, coding) or she puts a lot of time and effort into editing the piece she’s presenting. Either way, the recipient who looks through the proffered lens has been given a gift of clear vision and the consequent gifts of time and effort.
On the other hand, when I’m presented with information that’s difficult to assimilate because it’s too wordy, defies logic, lacks clarifying examples or, in my particular case, dwells in an abstract sphere devoid of emotion (imagery is a nice antidote to this), the lens is clouded.
A song with 8 verses might have some great parts to it. Edit it down artfully and your listener (besides staying to listen!) will thank you.
The continuous flow of ideas on the internet is another good example. It’s easy to be needlessly expansive, a challenge to be succinct. So I guess I’ll end this now!