i said i would write about spending the day in d.c. i got sidetracked.
my primary purpose for venturing into the city was to share in my father's daily commute. his attitude towards both minor inconveniences, like a difficult commute, and major hardships, like muscular dystrophy, has always challenged me to be a better human being.
daddy told me over thanksgiving break that there is no profit in complaining. he was correct, of course, and i spent a great deal of time afterwards thinking about how much i complain, how ungrateful i am for the life god has blessed me with, how unhappy i am with the dark folds of my brain or the green and white pills i forget to take.
my mother sometimes tells a story of my oldest sister, katie, responding to the typical parent-to-child statement that life is not fair. "i know that life is not fair," katie repeats with each retelling, "but can't it be unfair in my favor?" she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some twenty years after making this statement.
after passing an hour in my father's office editing student essays, i headed out into the d.c. air with my broken ipod and my bulky laptop bag. the corcoran gallery, my mother had told me, was showing an exhibit of annie leibovitz photography. i walked three of four blocks east to the gallery and passed my credit card to the cashier. i flashed my expired student i.d. for a $4 discount.
annie leibovitz has been hugely successful as a portrait artist. she took the last photograph of john lennon before he was shot, the picture of him lying on his side, naked like a fetus beside a drowsy yoko ono. she took the picture of a naked and pregnant demi moore, which appeared on the cover of vanity fair in 1991. she recently photographed the cast of sophia coppola's film marie antoinette for a vogue spread.
the corcoran exhibit, however, was not limited to her portraits of iconic celebrities. in fact, though i enjoyed the pictures of chris rock in whiteface, or of brad pitt sprawled on a las vegas hotel bed, or of ellen degeneres holding her own breasts with a cigarette hanging between her sneering lips, those were not at all what moved me.
leibovitz's partner, susan sontag, died of cancer on december 28, 2004. along with the chris rocks and brad pitts, the gallery walls also held intimate photographic documentation of her treatments, her slow decline toward a grave in paris. she looked weary and wildly beautiful with her hair cut short and her body confined to a hospital bed. i walked from picture to picture, from the 5-by-7 framed photos of sontag's ailing body in a porcelain bathtub to the poster-sized photos of her guileless face, and cried.
art galleries nearly always make me cry. i react with violent emotion to the very idea that another human being has experienced and created something, and that those somethings are put on display for other human beings to bear witness. i truly believe that the greatest good we can achieve is the genuine communication of our life experience, our human situation.
an artist, if she is honest, does this. annie leibovitz does this.
lovers have always lost lovers, parents have lost children, men have lost their mothers, but only one annie leibovitz lost a susan sontag. only one bob kiser commutes to the bureau of medicine, and each train ride is its own ride, each ticket its own ticket. only one geraldine kiser witnessed her young daughter rage against the silly injustices of childhood in that one moment, and each retelling is its own new moment. only one kathryn kiser injects herself with disease-modifying drugs to treat her multiple sclerosis, and each injection is its very own injection. the best we can do is live these moments and try to share what we have lived. only one karyn kiser cries at the corcoran, each of her steps through the gallery its own unique step.
does this make sense? am i communicating?
will i be an artist? can i sell my writing? can i live this way?
leibovitz's father passed just weeks after sontag. i could barely look at the pictures of him as an old man months from death, the life shrinking from his wrinkled face.
i am giving myself until christmas to put together a chapbook. i will send them out at the start of the year.
thrown together by karyn |
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my primary purpose for venturing into the city was to share in my father's daily commute. his attitude towards both minor inconveniences, like a difficult commute, and major hardships, like muscular dystrophy, has always challenged me to be a better human being.
daddy told me over thanksgiving break that there is no profit in complaining. he was correct, of course, and i spent a great deal of time afterwards thinking about how much i complain, how ungrateful i am for the life god has blessed me with, how unhappy i am with the dark folds of my brain or the green and white pills i forget to take.
my mother sometimes tells a story of my oldest sister, katie, responding to the typical parent-to-child statement that life is not fair. "i know that life is not fair," katie repeats with each retelling, "but can't it be unfair in my favor?" she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some twenty years after making this statement.
after passing an hour in my father's office editing student essays, i headed out into the d.c. air with my broken ipod and my bulky laptop bag. the corcoran gallery, my mother had told me, was showing an exhibit of annie leibovitz photography. i walked three of four blocks east to the gallery and passed my credit card to the cashier. i flashed my expired student i.d. for a $4 discount.
annie leibovitz has been hugely successful as a portrait artist. she took the last photograph of john lennon before he was shot, the picture of him lying on his side, naked like a fetus beside a drowsy yoko ono. she took the picture of a naked and pregnant demi moore, which appeared on the cover of vanity fair in 1991. she recently photographed the cast of sophia coppola's film marie antoinette for a vogue spread.
the corcoran exhibit, however, was not limited to her portraits of iconic celebrities. in fact, though i enjoyed the pictures of chris rock in whiteface, or of brad pitt sprawled on a las vegas hotel bed, or of ellen degeneres holding her own breasts with a cigarette hanging between her sneering lips, those were not at all what moved me.
leibovitz's partner, susan sontag, died of cancer on december 28, 2004. along with the chris rocks and brad pitts, the gallery walls also held intimate photographic documentation of her treatments, her slow decline toward a grave in paris. she looked weary and wildly beautiful with her hair cut short and her body confined to a hospital bed. i walked from picture to picture, from the 5-by-7 framed photos of sontag's ailing body in a porcelain bathtub to the poster-sized photos of her guileless face, and cried.
art galleries nearly always make me cry. i react with violent emotion to the very idea that another human being has experienced and created something, and that those somethings are put on display for other human beings to bear witness. i truly believe that the greatest good we can achieve is the genuine communication of our life experience, our human situation.
an artist, if she is honest, does this. annie leibovitz does this.
lovers have always lost lovers, parents have lost children, men have lost their mothers, but only one annie leibovitz lost a susan sontag. only one bob kiser commutes to the bureau of medicine, and each train ride is its own ride, each ticket its own ticket. only one geraldine kiser witnessed her young daughter rage against the silly injustices of childhood in that one moment, and each retelling is its own new moment. only one kathryn kiser injects herself with disease-modifying drugs to treat her multiple sclerosis, and each injection is its very own injection. the best we can do is live these moments and try to share what we have lived. only one karyn kiser cries at the corcoran, each of her steps through the gallery its own unique step.
does this make sense? am i communicating?
will i be an artist? can i sell my writing? can i live this way?
leibovitz's father passed just weeks after sontag. i could barely look at the pictures of him as an old man months from death, the life shrinking from his wrinkled face.
i am giving myself until christmas to put together a chapbook. i will send them out at the start of the year.
