Friday Night Frolic — What's Happening?

Snails Space with Vari-Lites, by David Hockney

OR: What Happens When the Suburban Soliloquist Searches for a Moment of Peace and Quiet.

Every December when asked what he wanted for Christmas, her father would, without fail, respond: Peace and quiet! He'd say it so fast and severely that she thought it was one word. Peacenquiet. In the colonial house in which they lived, on a street perpendicular to the fire station, within two blocks from the elementary school, in a city of fifty thousand, quiet was found only in the thick, Black Japan lacquer of night when the next day's clothing folded gracefully over wood chest at bed's foot, school books heaped in their rubber straps, the French horn and piano intermissionized, batted and clawed Teen Beat magazines softened, Hummel-murdering footballs idled in the toy box, and six children, boys in one room, girls in the other, slept soundly while parents exhaled conciliatory snores.

Peacenquiet is the night's oasis. 

On a mid-April morning, half-way through an active week-long vacation, in a cold, wet Washington, D.C., the Suburban Soliloquist, roaming the halls of an enormous Greek Revival building set back from the rumpus of stretched streets, and stocked with American art, thirsted for peace and quiet (why she expected it there still baffles her). Hours earlier she had enthusiastically entered the Museum, children in tow, and set forth purposefully through its wide halls, vaulted galleries and curved stairways. Her rambunctious young teens, not to be slowed by portraits or sculptures or old mousetraps or mothers, quickly set out on their own path. But in the chamber that housed the Annie Leibovitz exhibition, and at de Kooning's frenzied pastel sketch of JFK, and by John Quidor's Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, and near Albert Bierstadt's fantastical paintings of the nation's frontiers, the children conspired to descend upon their mother, robbing her of peace and quiet.

Go see The Art of Video Games! she finally suggested (or demanded?). Third floor. Text me when you're done. And they were off without a question, the hall and stairwell echoing the notes of their laughter and heavy feet. She was certain to not be disturbed for a long while.

Later, she made her way back to the third floor, where she stumbled upon the black box of David Hockney's Snails Space. Inside: a long leather bench on which to sit, silence and aloneness, not one other museum goer in the box. She sat. She stared at, and listened to, the illuminated, multicolored canvases of a world within a world—a moving, breathing model of streams and mountains, valleys and woodland which changed as the light by which it was illuminated altered; a shy bleating of activity emitting from the landscape. It made her think of a pop-out book. For several moments she sat alone. Five minutes? Ten minutes? Alone. Could it be? It was beautiful. An oasis. Peaceful. Quiet. Snails. Space. The world within the world. Just as Hockney had intended.*

And what happens when the Suburban Soliloquist finds a moment of peace and quiet? 

Two young teens tend to find her. (Often, when she is trying to digitally capture worlds within worlds.) And decide to sit and stay. Look and listen. They speak in whispers. (And ratcheted-up whispers.)

Max: What's happening?

Lulu: Are the snails moving?

SS: Living.

Max (surprised): Wh-what?

(Pause. Room darkens and lightens.)

Lulu: The snails are moving!

Max: Where are the snails?

(Pause)

Max: Really, where are the snails?

(Pause. Bleating heard.)

Max: Where's the sound coming from?

(Pause. Room darkens.)

Lu: What happened?

SS (into Lu's ear): Hold on, it's not done yet.

Max: I seriously don't get it.

(Pause.)

Lu (annoyed): Mom, what's going on?

(Inaudible whispers.)

(Kids, mildly agitated, exit. Camera out. Suburban Soliloquist: stands and exits.)

She made her way out of the black box, following the children toward the neon lights of Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway, wishing she could have lingered longer in the blackness of the box. But she would not leave Hockney and the snails entirely behind. She was to carry the bleat and tinct of them with her throughout their Capitol excursion, and far beyond.

The space of a snail is the day's oasis.

Peacenquiet.

* “The installation unfolds as a kind of silent performance that evokes Hockney's experience of designing sets and costumes for operas even as he lost his hearing. In the absence of sound, pure visual experience compensates and suggests a different narrative to every viewer. The title offers a pun and a suggestion from the artist. To sit in this installation through the entire cycle of light shifts is to take time for what Hockney called "the pleasure of looking" that leads us to understand "how beautiful the world is.” - From Snails Space with Vari-Lites, "Painting as Performance" at the American Art Museum.

*  *  *

NOW, for more sensory experiences, and the pleasure of looking and listening:

From the website of Providence's Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, where Bobby McFerrin will be performing on May 10, 2012:

With a four-octave range and vast array of vocal techniques, McFerrin is not a mere singer; he is music’s last true Renaissance man, a vocal explorer who combines jazz, folk and a multitude of world music influences. As one of the foremost guardians of music’s rich heritage, he remains at the vanguard with his natural, beautiful and timeless music that transcends all borders and embraces all cultures.

McFerrin takes his audience through demonstrations that continually illustrate how music interacts with brain and emotion, such as the video above from the World Science Fesitival, 2009 (more on the topic of sound perception can be found at PBS's The Music Instinct—Science and Song). He charms, delights, unites—with a common chorus—and even transforms his admirers by creating his own oasis, engaging others in his improvisational forays. 

From his website:

Listening to Bobby McFerrin sing may be hazardous to your preconceptions. Side effects may include unparalleled joy, a new perspective on creativity, rejection of the predictable, and a sudden, irreversible urge to lead a more spontaneous existence.  

Here, the emotional spectrum of crying until you laugh and laughing until you cry:

This is what's happening: the pleasure and wonder of looking and listening, new perspectives, spontaneity, a common chorus. How beautiful the world is.