And the rest of the week…

Teaching art history in the last 10 years has provided me with such wonderful moments to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of life…from births and marriages, to graduations and triumphs, to death. Art history has just provided me over and over with mini-moments a la the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town.

I remember on September 12, 2001 how comforting it was to have something to teach and not just look dazed and stricken with students. What I had scheduled to teach the previous day were these votive figures from ancient Sumer. I recalled driving to school on that gorgeous late summer morning and wondering how these figures would go over in class. They are these bug-eyed sculptures in perpetual prayer and seemed so out-of-reach for my hip 21st century students in our hip 21st century world. Of course, after the developments that morning a few miles south of us at Hackley, our hip 21st century world changed and I never got to teach on that day.

However, on September 12th, while some other teachers did not plan anything to do that day but just rehash the news, I leapt at the chance to teach those figures. The previous day, for hours on end, we sat glued to the television and computer screens straining our eyes, minds, and imaginations to comprehend the events of that day, and I noticed that all around me, people stared bug-eyed at those screens, hands clasped in hands, and I realized we looked just like those worried votive figures. Votive figures are figures designed to keep the donor in perpetual prayer, beseeching answers and guidance and comfort from the gods. Wow—just what we all did in those hours (and days and weeks and…) after what came to be known as 9/11. In class on September 12th we studied these figures from almost five thousand years ago—and we had a connection. They lived in times that were often incomprehensible to them. They sought solace. They hoped the world would be a better place. How long would it all feel so unfair? All of us in the class that day had an instant understanding of what prompted craftsmen to make those figures and place them in temples. We sought similar answers. I have never forgotten how easily we understood those figures after we had our own crises with which to grapple.

After Ahmad’s death early this week we did not have classes on Tuesday but gathered for public grieving and mourning, both on campus, and with his family in Karak. On Wednesday we transitioned back, a little, to regular school life, with a day of half the classes meeting. The women went to Karak that day to mourn with the family. I picked up the syllabus from where we would have been the previous day had we not been stunned by the unexpected death.

Wouldn’t you know it—without changing anything in the syllabus—in those two days of classes this week, the glory of art and history provided some edifying moments and helpful ways for us to heal and reflect on life.

The topic for Tuesday was Impressionism. Oh, you may think you know it because of the ubiquity of Monet and Renoir on bags and umbrellas and pillow cases and posters and—what else? But over the years, as my study has deepened, I have loved how rich the context of this art is, certainly in terms of what these maverick artists rejected and what they embraced. But—and we all thrill to this—certainly, Impressionist art is ravishing. The luncheon parties and the sun-dappled trees, and the sturdy haystacks, and the laughing and the dancing…it is art about the transient moments of life, with mauve and blue colors streaking the shadows of our days. It is art about the celebration of the quotidian (cue the reference to Our Town) and how we must sigh at every fleeting second.

But you know, as I prepared for class on Wednesday, and worried that the art was too lighthearted for our nudge back to normalcy, I looked at the six artists whose lives and careers I hoped to discuss in class (Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pisarro, Cassatt, and Morisot) I realized something so interesting about their art and the 1870s when they exhibited independently of the all-powerful French salon. In that handful of years when they painted the now-iconic works, those six artists suffered and endured many tragedies. Two of them lost spouses, one lost a mistress, and three of them lost children. They painted during a time of suffering in Paris, the Paris Commune, and the occupation of the Germans, when occasionally, hundreds and even thousands of average Parisians were massacred in a day.

Yet there is no sign of any of this in the art. Maybe their joie de vivre was their shield, their bulwark, against ineffable sorrow. Maybe they simply insisted on hope.

But what wonderful art to study on Wednesday as we struggled to keep Ahmad and his family in our mind, and return to our studies as well.

On Thursday we studied Rodin and the monumental Burghers of Calais, the sculptural program that shocked the city of Calais when it was unveiled in 1889. The city fathers expected to see a heroic rendering of a 14th century scene depicting the Calais city councilmen at their most noble moment in the harrowing days of the Hundred Years’ War. Instead, Rodin gave them a group of unfinished-looking statues wandering around in a daze. Worse still—Rodin planted the sculpture on the ground—not even on a pedestal at least! Over time, those indignant French came to love this statue and admire the promise that ordinary people among us could make heroic decisions and act in a selfless manner. After 48 hours of testimonials to Ahmad, everyone in class knew that he or she had known someone who had acted in a similar manner. Art history as catharsis, maybe even therapy.

I ended the week attending a concert. That alone is cause to celebrate! While I might have my selection of 50 concerts a weekend in New York, here, the pickings are a bit more sparse. Shireen, a colleague at KA, conducts a choral group in Amman, and she is brilliant. Her group offered a concert with a Baroque emphasis in the first half, and in the second half, Gabriel Faure’s Requiem. I have sung the Faure three times before, the first being at Denison as a college freshman a million years ago. Most recently I sang the Faure just months after 9/11 in New York in a church on Fifth Avenue called the Church of Heavenly Rest.

Faure once remarked that his Requiem is dominated by “a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.” Could there have been a more perfect way to end this week?? Shireen is not only a thoughtful and sensitive conductor (and teacher of music) but she provides the audience with helpful program notes, and she even creates an exciting ambience for the concert. Last Easter her concert was in a church that I had trouble telling what was happening to it—it looked in part exactly like the ruins of churches from the 4th-5th century, or it was a brand-new church not yet finished that had its roots in the design of the early Christian basilicas. But her concert of eclectic Christian music was performed in a church building where some of the walls did not exist, and she had diaphanous fabric hung in the openings. The music echoed out of the building out in the world creating a stirring effect.

For this concert Shireen performed in a museum “almost-finished.” Again, the motif of “under construction” adds an intriguing element to the concert program. The museum will be The Jordan Museum, dedicated to the story of Jordan, its arts, its politics. This concert of western music performed in a stunning new Middle Eastern building highlights how the interchanges of West and East happen with such ease and excitement in Jordan.

Anyway, I am sitting in the audience, enjoying the lush richness of Faure’s music. It begins with a rather turgid, Teutonic section about death, but it is as if we then cast off “the mortal coil” and are transported to paradise. The music reflects this transformation and this hope of peace in Paradise. Shireen conducts in a purely non-showy manner, highlighting her orchestra and her choir, and allowing her baritone and angelic soprano to captivate.

Shireen provided in the program notes a comment from Faure about his Requiem: “It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience….” As I sat there, basking in the beauties of Pie Jesu and In Paradisum it helped put a punctuation mark on the week.

Thursday one of our librarians asked me how I coped—she said, “How can I go on and not forget him?” Of course, that is the challenge with every death of a loved one. How do we move forward, pick up the structures and activities of life, and cherish the memory of someone? As Shakespeare observed, “Ay, that is the rub.”

So yesterday was I guess a day in celebration of the quotidian—a day of grading, of planning, of resuming play practice, and ruminating on the power of music and art as catharsis, maybe even therapy.

I postponed our production to this upcoming week, this Tuesday and Thursday. I will soon tell you how they are doing with the butter and diamonds.

I spoke with Hamzeh by phone several times this week as he recuperates at home in Karak. He may be back at the end of this school week. What a joyous reunion that will be.

We'll catch up soon...