Visit
I visited my artist-friends in Charlottesville on Saturday for lunch. Rain came and went outside, while we ate fresh bread and soup, and stories went round the table. They told me about a friend they knew in New York in the 70s, a composer named David, who had a very hard life. He was nearly blind because of abuse suffered in childhood, and he had no money. But at some point in his life, he had listened to Beethoven and found what he needed. When they knew him he was studying and writing music. Steve said, "I did a portrait of him once," and left the table to dig around in the basement. He brought back a head sculpted in wax and mounted on a wooden base with dirt all over the bottom. I could have cried at how beautiful it was, this dark head with blind eyes and a sweet half-smile like a bodhisattva. Sensitivity showing through the lines of the face crumpled in places by abuse revealed the sensitivity of the sculptor's hands and his admiration of the musician's character.
They had lost touch with David after coming to Virginia, and aren't sure if he is even alive. He seemed fragile, they said, someone who could easily be crushed by the weight of the world. But the story, the sculpture, between them contained the history of art--born out of love and skill and suffering, sitting in a sculptor's basement for 30 years, then breathing compassion and stillness over four people at lunch time.