Tuning In
“Wasn’t it immoral to do work you didn’t enjoy?”
I don't know what it is about the word "cathedral" that seems to make me cry in public. Maybe a year ago, I heard my friend Sarah's production of a podcast where the daughter of Clyfford Still—the famous, if not totally narcissistic, abstract impressionist—describes what it was like walking into his studio. Brilliantly timed, I'd been slowly padding around the Still museum, soft daylight bouying his massive pieces around the room, when Sandra Still Campbell whispered to me through the museum headphones: "Over the years, the sheets of plywood that dad put up to give him a flat surface of some kind to work with warmed to a honey gold. It was like walking into a cathedral." As she said it, the ceilings seemed taller, the air thinner. The museum transformed into a place of worship. I began to cry.
Earlier this month, I listened to Kerenza Peacock, the English violinist at the helm of Adele's concert orchestra, wax poetic about Bach. Yes, that Bach. "There is something so magical about [Bach's] music that I feel when I'm playing the notes. It's almost like he's weaving an invisible cathedral." Again I stopped mid-stride, this time feeling the emotion hum from my chest.
Kerenza said a lot of other poetic things in the interview, too. Including that her job is to "make trees sing" (come on!) and reminding us that what we listen to is actually a form of nourishment. But, in perhaps my favorite moment of the podcast, she spoke of our bodies as tuning forks—that everything is vibration and that we must use our bodies to attune to what resonates, what strikes a chord, what operates at the same frequencies we do. Or, I thought, at least to find what might be quietly buzzing in harmony with us.
I love that.
