Community - The Last Refuge For The Faint Of Heart

The hostess at the vernissage - a gathering to celebrate the works of a local artist - talked about community.  As she looked around the room and wondered at the marvel of such a diverse assembly all having come together to celebrate the life of an ordinary woman who turned childhood reflections into art, she smiled.  Comfort for the aged, she intimated, but defiantly added, 'But we are not done!' 

Her appeal was lost on the group all of whom wished they were somewhere else rather than in an airless suburban basement listening to the artist's interpretations of the childhood memories she put on canvas; but such is the nature of the beast.  Getting old is not for the faint of heart. Any port in a storm, although this one, rotten timbers, emptied bilge, and oily, scummy residue, was perhaps not the one these friends had expected. 

Community is lifeblood, said the hostess who was full of the moment, warmed by the association of so many friends and former colleagues who had come together to celebrate the artistry of an ordinary person who had given heart and soul 'to the world'.  

'If you knew that the rule that you followed led you to this, of what use was the rule?, asks the Anton Shugur character in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men; and that surely was the thought running through many of the heads of the assembly when they heard that the artist, now in her eighties had spent five hours a day, every day, at the easel. 

 

But most of the group were old academics who had taught at a minor university, an institution that had just been bumped up by the state from community college to something more respectable, but still was the go-to place for students with little promise but hopes of something bigger than the third-rate suburban life in which they had been brought up. 

Art at Milford College - MK as it was cattily called because of the low literacy rate of its students - was an add-on to the core technical curriculum offered there; so for the group there was no disconnect between the simple swatches of color and exaggerated effects of the artist's works and great art.  All one and the same, so everyone was happy.  They all had soldiered along huffing and puffing to make intellectual ends meet, so her effort was applauded not for excellence but with empathy. 

'Community', the hostess went on.  'Community, that all-important glue that holds us together, especially in these troubled times'. 

 

It was only a matter of time before the miseries inflicted by Donald Trump were brought up, and there was a knowing nodding when the reference was finally made.  

A murmur went through the gathering and a black woman stood up and said, 'Amen'.  There was a gleeful happiness in everyone in the room reading from the same prayerbook, feeling the same desperation, the same empathetic sympathy for each other, the same gloriously righteous feeling of belonging to a community of the like-minded. 

Resisting the urge to go on about what was happening outside the room, the hostess returned to the business at hand, and went on with her eulogy of the artist 'whose insights, sensitivity, and sublime perceptions have enriched our world'. 

One by one the artist displayed her canvasses, each more incredibly ordinary than the next, but felt it necessary and in keeping with the spirit of the group, to explain how and why she came to paint the scene before them. 

'Where does your inspiration come from?', she was asked. 

The artist looked confused, for of course the question had never come up for her as she painted whatever image came into her head that day.  She stumbled to find an appropriate answer to an essential question getting at the nature of artistic enterprise; but since there had been no depth of feeling, insight, or existential questioning of this pots and pans weekend dabbler, she could not reply. 

'Let me rephrase the question', the man in the back went on, and more kindly and gently, he moved the question away from serious matters to the fanciful colors and jagged black marks on the two paintings before the group. 

'Oh, yes', the artist said. 'Now I understand', went babbling on for ten minutes about nothing of any importance or relevance whatsoever. 

The show went on and on until the back row had fallen sound asleep, and the front row was nodding off. The artist, for the first time publicly celebrated, was in her element and simply could not shut up. She rambled on about her beloved father who was losing his sight and his vitality until she read him one of her poems; her long-deceased brother 'who picked acorns in the Fall'; her friends who braided each other's hair until she realized that no one was paying the least attention. 

The hostess was right in a way.  The group that had gathered around something other than potted plants and verbena had indeed left the assembly happy and satisfied. There was, as the hostess had remarked, more to life than they expected; and if it took some bad, horribly pedestrian art to wake up this somnolent dying-in-place crowd, so much the better. 

The idea that their deeply-felt progressivism had been conjoined with a new appreciation for beauty and artistic inspiration made them feel especially good. 

This affair was not exclusive to Bethesda, Maryland but to living rooms and improved basements everywhere - Bible discussion groups, men's sensitivity sessions, book club gatherings, victim's commiseration meetings were de rigeur, par for the course, part of the inevitable rush to closure.  'Our kind of people' in small groups, a subset of social class, was what helped make some sense out of a very imposing, competitive, individualistic world. 

So, who are we to take exception to the insufferably bad paintings displayed that May Sunday in a suburban basement? Or the treacly poems or the off-the-shelf women's romances chatted about in ladies' book clubs?

Yet there is always something depressing about all of them - time-fillers, cute bibelots on the mantelpiece, distractions, communal empathy - but reminders only of our eager futility. 

She meant well - the bad art, the dutiful questions, the soggy empanadas, the 'breathless love for each other' - and all ended well, back to the Barcalounger and cold cuts, but no one expects Picasso in a suburban Maryland neighborhood, so be happy with what you've got even though you might be fumbling around for answers in all the wrong places. 

The Art Celebration was a waste of time and effort, but part of the end of life scramble; and who is to criticize that?  Well, maybe there are lesser and greater wastes of time and this one was near the bottom, but everyone tried, and we have to give them credit for that.