— At West End Gallery
For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
I think we’re always listening for echoes.
Echoes of sound, of sight, of every sense. Echoes of history.
Echoes help us determine how we should react in a given situation.
With music, we listen for echoes of the music we know, to see if it rhymes with that music, if it pleases us in the same manner.
We do the same with words and images. When we look at a piece of art, we search for the echoes of past works of art in it. We try to find congruence with works we know that already echo some sort of emotion within us.
I think it’s a matter of comfort, this looking for the familiar, that thing to which we already know our reaction.
That’s probably why the new so disturbs us. It has few, if any, echoes from the past and the echoes that it does carry have been reshaped beyond our senses to the point they are barely discernible.
We can’t rely on echoes in gauging our reactions to the new. The new– the new sound, thought, or artform– has no echo and may not be comfortable, perhaps even shocking us.
We might, at first, dismiss it for that reason alone. But if it has merit, if it speaks to some part of us that has not yet echoed, we come to accept it.
And it creates echoes of its own.
Okay, let’s leave it there for the morning. I will have to read this again later to see if it makes any sense. Sometimes these early morning riffs seem better at first glimpse than they are in reality.
Some echo and some don’t.
I guess we should strive to create echoes. Words to live by.
After three or so years after posting this, I did read this again and it does seem to have an echo. That’s always good to discover in these things you put out there. They are often too much of their own time and there is little of substance to echo forward– or backward. But sometimes they hold something that makes me nod my head in agreement.
It made me think of those times when my work ventures outside what might be considered its normal place, its normal look. This new work, though it might excite me and feel to me as though it is a natural echo of my prior work, sometimes doesn’t immediately capture an audience. Because it is such a departure from the earlier work, it doesn’t carry as loud an echo with it that people can relate to in their mind.
The work has to create its own echo going forward. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. It is a bit disappointing when it fails to create an echo outside of myself. However, this underappreciated work often continues to speak loudly in my mind, allowing me to hold on to the hope that it still can echo at some time in the future for others.
Nick Drake seems to have created echoes with his music in this manner. He recorded three albums from 1969 to 1972 that never really found an audience at the time. He tragically died from an overdose of antidepressants in 1974 at the age of 26. In the years since, his work has gained that audience that eluded him during his short lifetime and has a cult following. His songs have a unique quality that draws me in but is hard to pin down. I’ve shared a couple of his songs before, and this one spoke to me this morning. It works for this post and painting. This is Time Has Told Me.
Redtree Times 