Foster Harmony v. Enable Beauty

They are the first, and therefore dominant, tenets of Distilled Harmony - my template for living life. They seem so mutually supportive it is hard to imagine them coming into conflict. However, I now realize such a conflict is possible, and like everything these days, the insight emerges from packing crates. But let me begin at the beginning.

We have - to use the most generic, but perhaps the least descriptive, definition - somewhere between 150 and 250 pieces of “hanging wall art.” To clarify, by “hanging wall art,” I mean a work composed with artistic intent that is intended to be displayed by hanging it on a wall. Our various pieces run the gamut from large - 5 x 6 ft - frameless digital pieces, through 4 x 5 ft ornately framed oil paintings of sea battles and reclining nudes, all the way down to precious little postcard-sized street scenes dwarfed by their gilded frames. And no, I really had no idea we had so many, and such different kinds of  “hanging wall art,” until we were faced with the task of unpacking them. We are currently trying to move pictures of the pictures around in a weird tetras way - I'll stick an image in here if my tech cooperates. However, understanding how all this stuff can place Enable Beauty and Foster Harmony at odds requires a couple of divergences.

OK, some context. First, I turned 75 today on the 15th of November. Christine is a few years younger. This often puts us in social situations where the discussion of the longevity of marital bliss often comes up:

Maude:  “Oh, yes. Harold and I been together for 48 years.”

I respond: “Christine and I have been married for more than 50 years! (Pause, pause,) Just not to each other!”

It usually gets a good laugh - but more importantly it explains how all those bits of “hanging wall art” came to reside in the same house. Having spent more of our adult years apart than together, our individual efforts to Enable Beauty resulted in a blended grouping - collected and created in different times and places - that strikes sometimes very different chords.

Second, to illustrate how different those chords can sometimes be, I will share, again I realize, the tale of taking Dad to the art gallery in Long Grove. Dad, to set the chronology of events, lived to 100. This trip probably took place when he was in his late 80s or early 90s. At that time Long Grove, IL was a neat collection of galleries, restaurants, and little specialty shops; apples, candy, etc., sort of like little beach towns along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, but without the tourists, surf shops, or the ocean.

Anyhow, we took Dad into one of the nicer galleries. A variety of works, paintings, sculpture, weaving. It was one of those places where one spoke in quiet, modulated tones. And where, somehow it seemed, children under ten had been checked into an invisible quiet room somewhere.  But then, into the midst of all this calm and quiet gentility, Dad’s voice rang from across the room: “Why, I wouldn’t hang that in my toilet!”

We all managed a well-modulated retreat, embarrassment eventually replaced by laughter. But the point for this post is to illustrate that one person’s beauty is another’s banality.  Which is why buying art for someone is like buying them a puppy. In doing so you intrude on what is an intensely personal process.

So we currently find ourselves in the midst of a plethora of art, all of which was acquired to Enable Beauty - but beauty in the eyes of two different beholders. And therein lies the potential friction in the dominant tenets of Distilled Harmony: That which was acquired to Enable Beauty does not always, in the present moment, Enable Harmony.

I have chosen - at this particular moment - to apply different criteria - differentiating between Pleasurable and Interesting. Those images that I prefer, that for me Enable Beauty, I define as "Pleasurable." Those which Christine choses that make me want to holler "I wouldn't hang that in my toilet" - of which, truthfully there is only one - I will deem as "Interesting." And in a delightful demonstration of Enabling Harmony, she, without my overt input, has chosen to hang that specific image in her toilet!

So we continue to sort through this stuff and will reach, if not total agreement, at least acceptable compromise. Which unfortunately bring us to out next problem: where to hang it all. You see even those sorted images will far outpace the available wall space. Again creativity will have to guide us. I'm thinking of the garage as containing "hidden wall space" that in one way becomes a potential "pride of place" consideration, since it will be regularly viewed - well, once all the boxes have been unpacked and trashed.

I'll let you know how that works out. Until then find something to be thankful for and celebrate the day!