Here is Every

I spent a late February morning exploring contemporary art at MOMA, including works by Annette Messager and Alice Aycock.

I also experienced an installation of the work of Tehching Hsieh, "Cage Piece."

You can read the review about his work in today's New York Times (Sunday, March 1). Captivating.

Described by curator Klaus Biesenbach as "an ode to freedom," we must consider at once displacement and meditation. Much of Hsieh's work has to do with time itself: "wasting time is my concept of life."

Disturbing yet tranquil. Perhaps in this time of economic uncertainty, art will allow us to explore the inner life more fully and creatively.

Here's my photo from inside the MOMA, looking out into the world, my inner and external state transformed by the art.

"Words are all we have."

So said Samuel Beckett. But he also stated in another place and play, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."

The gentleman whose bust is above adorns the space in the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin, where the Book of Kells resides. His nameplate reads, "Magee."

My brief visit to London and Dublin, in large part to celebrate the publication of "The Letters of Samuel Beckett," was full of the mists and the myths of place, language, and time--and a bit of tea and insomnia.

I am in the midst of preparing for a "Creativity Conversation" with Edward Albee, who derives much of his inspiration from Beckett.