SmArts

February 8-14, 2016

Against having to know

By Molly Rector

Last week, I had the chance to talk to my students about a favorite book of mine, Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” which is an imitation of Marco Polo’s accounts to Kublai Khan. We looked at a passage in which Polo and the Khan are playing chess, when suddenly Polo begins going on and on about the things that can be read from a single square of wood on the chess board. He invents the age of the tree, times of drought and of flood, the city surrounding the tree, the reason it had to be cut down.

I’m thinking about this because sometimes it’s hard thinking of something to write about in this column each week. Of course, there’s a lot going on. All the time, there’s a play coming out, a new movement in poetry, a revival of variety and burlesque. All of this is happening right now, right where each of us lives, but it can feel somehow secret and hidden. And even so, it can be overwhelming, when one begins to look, how much there is to see, to keep up with, to be aware of.

For me, some weeks, I look at what’s passed between writing one column and writing the next and I end up telling myself that I didn’t do enough. I’m prone to guilt, and so I recognize that it’s entirely possible not everyone feels this way, but I do think this sense that there’s too much to catch up on, too much to keep up with, is a reason that a lot of people feel alienated by art. Somehow we get the impression that it isn’t enough to react to a piece, that we instead have to know about it (about the artist, the materials, the context, the political landscape at the time), so that we can have the proper reaction.

And, honestly, I think that’s a very destructive notion: that we have to have a particular reaction, or a particular understanding, or a particular level of engagement, in order to be included. So, as I’m looking back at how few of the fantastic arts events in my community I attended this week (and imagine how many went on without my even knowing about them), I’ll work on giving myself permission to be where I am (to know what I know, and not to know what I don’t), and on feeling nonetheless invited in.

Molly Rector is a staff writer for the Daily Record. Contact her at molly@dailydata.com.