Page 72 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 2 #2

65 THE BEAUTY OF SADNESS

the creation of art requiring vulner-
ability, openness and honesty. This is
the only way to reveal the extraordi-
nary in the ordinary. It is the only way
to create art.
But this is a two-edged sword for it re-
quires both the artist and the viewer
to engage in that moment of open and
honest vulnerability. When the viewer
refuses to engage in that dialogue, the
work of art becomes provocative, dis-
turbing, discomforting……….

Only two works of art of ever disturbed
me. The one, Guernica. The other, The
Scream. I was perhaps six or seven
when I first viewed Guernica. It was so
disturbing I had to turn my face away
from the horror I felt. The sense of des-
peration in The Scream, which I also
viewed for the first time when I was
seven or eight perhaps, so profoundly
disturbed me, its sense of mad desper-
ation so profoundly horrified me, that teen years I did not write another poem. The
I could not view it again for close to a decade. only way I could resist the pain was to mur-
The idea that my work could be placed in the der my emotions. And so for each day of those
same genre as these two, well, I cannot find thirteen years, I felt nothing. Surely, my work
the words. does not evoke such pain in those who see
it….. Pain so severe, pain so eviscerating, pain
I have always found beauty in sadness.
so profoundly debilitating that he or she must
I have always found sadness in beauty. look away, look away as I did when I looked
This I have always known to be true. I am upon Guernica or The Scream.
acutely aware of the passage of time. I have When I look at the beauty of a rose, I can feel
always been. Long ago, just after my son was it dying before my eyes – so profound is my
born, I came home one nyght rather late. I awareness of time. When I look at isis or In-
was working three jobs while a student at nana, women I have worked with often, I can
Yale. I remember walking into the bedroom sense their “aging”. I can feel them succumb-
and seeing in JD’s mother’s hair, a single ing to time. Each mark of time upon their fac-
strand of gray hair that belied her youth. In es moves me, haunts me, calls to me to be pre-
less than the time it took me to force myself sent in the moment with them, to hold what
to take another breath, I saw her grow old and cannot be held, to deny time its vengeance
die. So painful was this moment that for thir- upon them. It is here that I find sadness. It is

nyghtvision magazine Return to Contents volume 2, number 2, summer 2012