Dance Me to the End of Love— Now at West End Gallery
And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles (1841)
In thinking about what to write this morning about the upcoming end to my current show– which takes place this Thursday– at the West End Gallery, I thought of this painting, Dance Me to the End of Love, that is included in the show. I have always seen a sense of finality in it, a coming to endness, if that’s a word.
It’s not sad or gloomy. Instead, it is simply a natural end to all paths, one that all things in this world must reach.
But more than that, it only represents the end of the path, not total finality.
There is no total finality.
With this in mind, I came across the passage above from Emerson’s 1841 essay, Circles. He basically writes that all we feel is finality continues onward, that there is constant flow of all things. In that essay, he also writes:
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.
The circle never ends.
Bear with me here as this is the quick, two-cent version of a thought. Emerson’s words and my own interpretation made me think about how as we go through life our paths often seem to narrow as Time seems to be coming to a point of finality. And that is what I saw in this painting– our perception of our path coming to an end.
But to bring in Emerson’s thought, I also see it not as a finality. I see the path narrowing to a finite point where it then expands to the infinite, represented here by the expanding sky. As a result, it is a painting that has an air of joy in that perception of finality.
Like I said, this is the two-cent version. Hell, it might not even be that. Just riffing a bit this morning as my show winds down at the West End Gallery on Thursday. It’s been a good show in many ways, one of which I am somewhat proud. As proud as someone filled with great uncertainty can be.
And that’s good enough for me this morning.
Here’s a blast of 90’s rock/pop that deals with endings and new beginnings, as seen in its parting line: Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning’s end.
This is Closing Time from Semisonic.
It’s closing time here, as well, so you best git...
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