I have just returned from the Gardner Museum where, from 1 to 3pm, I was the host of the Living Room – a project based on Lee Mingwei’s original artist-in-residence project from 1999.
It is a remarkably informal project. You show up with a few objects, put them on a table and then talk to people about the objects. But that’s the hard part, talking. Without a formal context, how does one strike up conversation in a serene space where people go to rest and get away? It’s easy on a crowded train or a doctor’s office where there’s a common injustice or suffering. Our only hardship is Whistler the singing canary whose energetic song at times gets a bit loud. There is no sign that reads, “Warning: a stranger may attempt to be intimate with you.”
I try multiple approaches.
Read MoreI’m please to be part of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s new “Sanctuary Series” with a workshop of meditation and art making that provides a unique experience within the museum’s collection and provides tools for synthesizing the barrage of mass media imagery that fills our daily lives.
“Inner Chamber”, part of the Gardner’s Sanctuary Series
Sunday, March 6, 2:30-4pm
Register in advance.
As a young child I was “diagnosed” as having an over active imagination. This was my parents way of soothing me back to sleep after a particularly realistic nightmare in which the Pink Panther stalked me while his theme song played. This “superpower” as I now like to see it, the ability to imagine what isn’t there, is closely correlated with imagining what could happen or what is to come in the future. It is the power of imagination. And when not harnessed properly it can lead to useless worry.
It is also the power of empathy.
After learning to recognize the difference between dreams and reality I next had to content with the nagging worry about what could happen in real life – especially when it came to human suffering.
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