Cultivating Creative Community
All by Russ Ramsey
She straightened herself up, turned to face me, and put her right hand over her left — a portrait of dignity and poise. And then, with just the two of us in the room, she began to sing over me.
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Mr. Ramsey. Happy birthday to you.”
Then she smiled, turned, and left the room.
And I wept.
For me, the empty pages tell the story of my life becoming occupied with things I never suspected would lead me from the corner booth at the coffee shop into the consuming risk and mess and joy and inertia of marrying a woman who beckons me out of isolation, of raising four beautiful and uniquely complex children, of moving from one city to another, of living in a community, and of following a vocation which, ironically, involves more writing than ever.
Silence a man’s inner dialogue and take away the filter through which he runs what he chooses to say and what he keeps inside, and what comes out of him will likely fall closer to the truth than to fiction. If this is true, then it is in me to belittle kindness and glare at beauty. It is in me to tell the ones who love me most to go away. It is in me to reject the advances of grace. And it is true. I know it is.
I slipped into the venue and climbed up to the balcony where I planned to observe the show from a distance. But so help me, by the middle of the second song I found myself headed for the stairs to stand among the crowd right in front of the stage. Why? Because my favorite band from high school was putting on an amazing live show. They were great! They moved me from being a distant observer to being a part of the experience.
But what if things were just that simple? What if we insist on complicating things that really aren’t that complicated? What if this life was something where having a good horse, being able to tell right from wrong, and knowing where a man could find fresh water and how to handle yourself in a fight were among the most important things you could know, and you took everything else as it came? Is there such a story to tell anymore?
If, however, you are a person who needs to gear up to visit an art museum, if you feel anxious about the way these hallowed halls of priceless history and beauty leave you feeling — how should I say it? — a little dumb, read on. I’m going to tell you how to walk into an art museum like you own the place. I’m going to liberate your conscience, affirm your intelligence, give you focus, and teach you how to develop a lifelong love of not only art but of the museums that house it.
Being booed is a recognition of ability and value. To whom much is given, much will be required.
And what is required? In baseball, only four things — hitting, throwing, running, and catching. That’s it. Pretty simple. But it is in the combinations of these four things and in the accuracy with which you do them where the problems are born. You must catch what someone else hits or throws. You must run faster than the opposition’s combination of a catch, a throw, and another catch. You must hit what is thrown, and most of the time it’s coming at you fast — sometimes at your head. Simple? Yes. Nerve-wracking? You bet.
Rembrandt was no dummy. He knew he was a great artist, no question. But he also knew he wasn’t limitless. And one of his apparent limits was his inability to satisfy what people sometimes wanted him to be. This must have been very frustrating at times. Surely there must have been days when he would’ve loved more than anything else in the world to be for another person exactly who they wanted him to be.