I had powerful motivation to recover at least most of my strength by Friday, Oct 16. Katharina, a young classicist from Columbia University, and I were scheduled to go on an excursion to see several castles and palaces with amazing gardens in the hill towns Northwest of Rome. I am very thankful to say that when Friday morning came, I did not feel feverish, my cough was manageable, and I bundled up for the trip in crisp fall weather.

Castello Ruspoli

Katharina and I took a train from Termini Stazione to Orte, where professional garden tour guide Lisa Finerty met us at the train station, accompanied by another American expat, Julie. A few words about Lisa: She is a former Merrill Lynch executive, a master gardener and a garden activist. She’s done some fantastic work with schools and marginalized communities in Chicago. She has that combination of acute observation and quiet confidence that comes from working close to the earth. What a day we were in for!

The winding roads, truth be told, made me a tad car-sick. Our first destination was the Castello Ruspoli in Vignanello, a medieval fortress that became an elegant home in the 16th c. Two princesses from the family still live in the castle and have been activists on behalf of historic preservation. I won’t even attempt to go into the complex genealogy and political history related to the family. Well-connected, rich and powerful is the simple description. Handel was a guest in this house, where he composed and performed.

Castello Ruspoli

The site offers both a remarkable garden designed to impress, and a “secret” garden for more private use. The main garden is a green garden – no flowers and a clean bare-earth floor. Sculpted green labyrinths form significant patterns of initials and family crests. These are meticulously restored with authentic Buxus Semprevivans (box evergreen or boxwood) and, in some places, Myrhh. The secret garden, drawing on imported Persian traditions, was a more intimate place for meditation and inspiration. When a glimpse of it was revealed to us, I gasped. The view from above was like a Persian miniature painting, exquisite and tranquil. A faithful dog guarded the pathways and we did not walk down into it. Better, perhaps, that it remain an unattainable vision.

Secret Garden at Ruspoli Castle

Another happy outing to Vignanello with garden guide Lisa Finerty (left to right): Lisa Finerty, Juditha from Art Monastery, Jan Miller from the American School of Rome, me, and Suzanne Datin, also affiliated with the ASOR

There is a church across the Piazza from the Castle. We went there to see the crypts and chapel underneath, but also got treated to an archeology lesson. A group of volunteer excavators have been clearing some Etruscan tunnels further below the crypt. They were part of an amazing and ancient engineering system that carried water over very long distances. The tunnels, carved from the volcanic rock, remained in use through Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance periods. We had to don hardhats with LD lights to descend the rough stone stairway into pitch darkness. We saw one place where a stair led down to an even deeper level. I felt a bit claustrophobic; it was really a relief to get back up into the crypt!

From Vignanello we followed beautiful rural lanes to Bomarzo, alternately referred to as a “sacred wood” and a Monsters’ Park. Created in 1552 by an eccentric Epicure (more about this soon) named Vicino Orsini on his remote estate, these sculpture gardens were neglected and forgotten until visited by Salvadore Dali in the 20th century and consequently restored and opened to the public. The paths allow one to wander through woods and valleys and to come upon fantastic sculptural groupings – giants in combat, a huge tortoise with a lovely nymph on its back, a leaning house that disorients, an assortment of creatures of mixed ancestry – aquatic, celestial, and earthly all together.

We had a lengthy discussion of Epicurean philosophy, thanks to Lisa’s and Katharina’s knowledge of the subject.Epicures of the Hellenistic period, such as the poet Lucretius, wrote about the importance of being fully “present” to savor the here and now, the atomistic and changeable nature of all forms, and the idea that happiness is a good thing if it harms no one. Epicures were atheists and did not believe in an afterlife. Needless to say, these ideas were not admired by the Christian church. In some cases (Galileo’s for example) it could be very dangerous to be associated with Epicurean poetry and thought.  So Orsini was definitely not main-stream. His grief over the death of his beautiful and beloved wife, Julia Farnese – their story is indeed a painful one – apparently led him to ride his horse for hours through his gloomy garden alone. It’s no wonder that, after his death, it became abandoned, the stuff of legend and rumor.

After Bomarzo we drove on more winding, scenic roads to the medieval hill town of Bagnaia. After parking, we climbed up winding stairways to move between street levels and arrived at a charming restaurant, where we drank simple (and wonderful) vino bianco and ate a hearty lunch. From the restaurant it was a short walk to another amazing palatial garden complex: Villa Lante.

Villa Lante

At this site the twin buildings, each topped with a lantern – a square viewing pavilion – serve almost as foils for the main act: the garden itself. This is a garden with hydrodynamics! The ingenuity of how the water flowed and spewed and ambushed and trickled down through each level from the high entrance to the bottom! Plants play a support role in this garden. The sculptures and pseudo-grottoes are the prominent features, the staging for the precious and spritely water itself.

Villa Lante

When we entered the first of the palace buildings we encountered a minor road block. A film crew was in the midst of filming a period piece and actors stood around in 16th c garb, waiting for their cues. We were able to enjoy the frescoes on the walls and ceilings of the entry logia, but could not enter to see other rooms.

A small church in the piazza of Bagnaia is dedicated to Ss. Antonio e Rocco. Its sober architecture bears not a trace of the Baroque. We chatted with an elderly lady who keeps a museum for the Confraternity there. She told us that on Jan. 16, the eve I believe of  St. Anthony Abbot’s day, a huge pile of wood, taller than the church, is ignited in the Piazza. The fire is thought to dispel the “Fog of St. Anthony” that makes many people ill that time of year. The next morning at 10:30, a special ceremony for blessing animals is held – all kinds of animals. At noon, cars, tractors and other vehicles are blessed. This lovely lady also showed us the figures and lanterns that members of the Confraternity carry through the streets on feast days, as well as their gold-trimmed red and white robes.

On to the next site.

Over more breathtakingly beautiful mountain roads – and past Lago di Vico, a legendary volcanic lake among the Crimini Hills supposedly created by Hercules – we arrived at  Caprarola, certainly the most magnificent (by a long shot) of the palaces we visited. Here the Palazzo Farnese looms above the twisting streets of the old town.

Farnese

The scale and the quality of the fresco paintings here are mind-boggling. Every surface of wall and ceiling is painted – with ancient Roman-style grotesques, with historic scenes, and with trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye” or illusionistic) paintings that seem to go up into the heavens. I was fascinated by panels that appeared to be inlaid colored marble, veined and evocative, and then by other panels that made me do a double-take: veined marble or mythic scene? Both were fresco painted, but I was struck by the pleasure the artists seemed to take in creating an uncertainty as to which were “natural” and which man-made. We walked up a grand circular stairway designed so that the pope could ride up it on his horse, all the way to his bedroom.

Lisa Finerty (left) and Juditha from Art Monastery (right)

Here another branch of the same film crew was at work. Cardinals, dukes and ladies in period dress smoked cigarettes, checked cell phones and drank coffee between scenes. For us, their presence, even if ironic, was evocative in these rooms. For them, our presence was pretty surely an inconvenience. After a last look from the windows, out over the vast, once Farnese-owned lands, we left the palace and headed back toward the train station at Orte in the gathering darkness.

What a perspective on the histories of Rome and the papacy from these remote power-broker retreats and hideaways! The train ride back to Termini was, for me, a sort of lucid dream of another time in this place.

For me, life at the Academy settled into a rhythm that included some or all of these each day:
A morning jog in the amazing park of Villa Doria Pamphili;
Catching up on IMA-related business via email;
Audio-recording interviews for my project and conscientiously downloading these to more than one storage device;
Writing a crude attempt to outline ideas about thinking, language and sensory experience triggered by the interviews; and
Visits to the AAR library on deliberate quests, sometimes spiced up by fortuitous discoveries of books related to the ideas mentioned in the previous item.

The daily rhythm is regularly punctuated by the Academy mealtimes – gatherings of people who are deeply engaged in their own individual quests. These include not only the scholarly and artistic endeavors of the Fellows, Visiting Scholars and Visiting Artists, but also the quests of “Fellow Travellers,” the Academy’s term for companions of Fellows and Visitors who are sometimes partners caring for young children. The adventures and discoveries of these residents, very often artists and scholars themselves, are often ingeniously integrated with the rhythm of naps and school hours.  So when all gather in the dining room, there seems to me to be a sense of adventure.  The meals function not simply as social times, but also as super-colliders where ideas get knocked against one another, tested and potentially changed. I continue to be impressed by the way the quality and artistry, really, of the kitchen staff contributes to these gatherings. Each meal is obviously prepared with care and served with considerable generosity on the parts of both cooks and dining room staff. I sense that we residents all leave the dining room loved and fortified to return to our work and our various solitary explorations. This may sound over-blown, but the meals feel like good-natured and very informal blessings.

AAR dinner

On weekends or when interviews are unlikely and meals are not served, long exploratory walks to historic sights are the things. Walking the streets of Rome on a Sunday is a delight, as my IMA colleague, Daniel Incandela, recently commented. Families, couples young and old, groups of friends: it’s good to just be outdoors, strolling or perhaps stopping for a gelato or an espresso.

a street café outside the Pantheon

This week my Academy routine was interrupted by a nasty cold or flu of some sort. I felt ill for several days, finally surrendering to complete bed rest for two full days. The prospect of walking down several flights of stairs (and back up) and of meeting people was too much in my weakened condition. I had to forego a scheduled Academy walk through some nearby ruins. The Italian language felt overwhelming. I was sick.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that sometimes illness is an opportunity, except in the sense that all experiences are opportunities. But perhaps it’s worth saying that there are moments when the opportunities of experience coincide with an openness or a readiness to take advantage of particular features of experience. What I’m trying to say is that I got sick and, yes, there was some discomfort involved (the fear that can flare up when it’s the middle of the night and you’re having trouble breathing and you’re alone, for example), but that it was not an entirely bad experience. As far as my intention to think about thinking, knowing, language, aesthetic experience, and the realm of the visual while at the Academy, the interlude of being sick, especially during that post-acute-misery time of weakness and recovery, provided some valuable time for reading, writing and sorting through perspectives.

This is the project description that I sent to members of the Academy community, attached to an email inviting them to schedule an interview time with me:

3 October, 2009
Member of the Academy Community:

My name is Linda Duke and I am an Affiliate Fellow in residence at the Academy for four weeks, Sept. 28-Oct. 26, 2009. Back home, I serve as Director of Education at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. While in residence in Rome, I hope to collect from members of the Academy community descriptions of and reflections on their recent aesthetic experiences – with works of art, architecture and other design arts, gardens and thoughtfully-prepared food.

View from AAR balcony

Volunteers will be invited to speak or write about whichever experiences they choose and may participate as many times as they wish. There are precedents for using language as a window into the types of thinking that are engaged (see below). In this project, it will be important to capture participants’ actual words, via audio recording or in written form. My interest is in examining what commonalities of critical and aesthetic thought might be found across the domains of art, design and culinary art.

If such commonalities can be documented, the implications for educators in any of the three areas would be significant. They would indicate that experiences with the tastes, textures, aromas and appearances of food – experiences that are commonly enjoyed – could be used as an entry point for expanding young people’s capacities for noticing, describing and other activities and mental habits that are fundamental to appreciating art and design. Noticing, wondering, savoring – these mental activities slow us down and put our full attention in the present moment, connect our senses and emotions, and often prompt us to make links to related knowledge from past experiences. Engagement with the arts both fosters and requires these activities. So does the enjoyment of real food, the kind of food that nourishes body and spirit with its sensual beauty. Rich or poor, urban or rural, people, including school children, enjoy food. I hope the data I collect might provide an argument for educators to more often exploit the use of language – in discussion and writing  – related to direct, personal experiences with art, design and food to enhance aesthetic development and awareness. I anticipate writing one or more articles describing what I learn in this project.

AAR Pranza

A well-known model for using discussion and writing to support aesthetic growth and development related to viewing works of art is Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, a discussion-based approach to teaching in museum galleries, a professional development program for classroom teachers, and an image curriculum based on the research of psychologist Abigail Housen. VTS is the basis of the IMA’s highly regarded Viewfinders program in several Central Indiana school districts. In her basic research, Housen has demonstrated that language can be used as a kind of window into thinking and, therefore, into the changes in thinking that occur with aesthetic growth. Housen and others have shown that VTS supports aesthetic development in controlled studies. She has also demonstrated that aesthetic thought can be shown to overlap with what is more generally called critical and creative thought. This makes the implications of a program such as VTS, as well as the promotion of aesthetic development itself, important for educators very broadly, beyond the disciplines of art or art history. If aesthetic development is very similar – if not identical – to the development of critical and agile thinking in any field or arena, then the term “aesthetic” is due for a make-over. Instead of referring to something effete and impractical, it may be understood to be an essential aspect of human consciousness and creativity.

For my Academy project, I imagine applying some of the same techniques for gathering language that Housen has developed, expanding them to elicit language describing experiences in the three arenas. With nearly 20 years of professional experience in facilitating discussions about art, I look forward to exploring the potential for fostering discussions of the three arenas (art, design, food) with the Academy residents. I hope that the raw data I collect – the recorded interviews and discussions – might be of interest to others who have the scientific training to analyze them through the lenses of linguistic anthropology and developmental psychology. I am currently seeking collaborators who might play this role. Developmental psychologist Karin DeSantis has agreed to review the material. I hope to engage the assistance of a linguistic anthropologist as well. I imagine these specialists might look at language from several points of view. When and why do people pull terms from other domains? For example, when is it helpful or even necessary to describe a painting’s colors as luscious, a building’s roofline as inspiring, or a pastry crust as heartbreakingly flaky? Do these kinds of appropriations occur more often when people have more or different kinds of experience with art, design or food?

Chefs in AAR

A few words about the usefulness of initiating this project at the American Academy are in order. A quick scan of the impressive list of scholars and artists who are in residence shows that this is a gathering of gifted and uniquely experienced people. So this project is not about collecting samples that would be considered “average” in any way. However, it is an opportunity to learn how much variation there might be between the kind of noticing, reflecting, and wondering an individual directs to an experience with a painting and a building, or a garden, or a seasonal dish. The Academy may afford the opportunity to gather data from individuals who have highly developed critical thinking skills in at least one arena, and to examine whether and how those show up in a non-specialty arena.

The fact that internationally renowned chef and food educator Alice Waters has recently helped the Academy overhaul its dining program is a plus (In Rome, the Academy Learns to Cook, by Elisabeth Rosenthal, NY Times, 3/15/09). That fact ensures that some of the residents will have noticed the quality of the produce and other foodstuffs brought in for meals, as well as the nuances of preparation and flavor juxtapositions. Back at the IMA, educators have been considering opportunities to partner with that organization’s new food provider, Nourish Café.  They’d like to experiment with educational programs that might link thoughtful sensory experiences with food to thoughtful experiences with works of visual art. For me, the opportunity to learn first hand about how a fellow arts organization, the American Academy in Rome, is pursuing this idea will be very useful and timely.

Thank you for your consideration.

Linda Duke
Director of Education, Indianapolis Museum of Art

A few days after sending this, I decided that some interviewees would feel more comfortable if I asked them to choose a picture to discuss. I paid a visit to the wonderful photo archive and was able to get digital images of Academy gardens, the historic Villa, works of art made by artist Fellows, and the nearby Tempietto of Bramante.

Bass and Kitchen Gardens at the Academy

I grateful to say that I have been able to record some wonderfully thoughtful interviews. One of the first was with Alexandra Vinciguerra, the master gardener who has restored all of the Academy’s gardens – the Bass Garden and kitchen gardens at the main building as well as the historic gardens of the Villa Aurelia just down the street. I’ve interviewed the master chefs and interns in the kitchen as they chopped and stirred. I’ve captured the thoughts of scholars about their work here. They talk about the buildings, paintings, music and ruins that have captivated them and sometimes drawn them into relationships lasting decades. The artists and musicians have also given me some astonishing and thought-provoking interviews – fueling my growing sense that our culture needs to better understand that range of aesthetic thinking and the role of the senses in understanding our world and lives. I started with a simple idea: collect samples of language people use to describe aesthetic experiences and see what similarities are found across domains of experience from the arts to design to food. I now feel I have material that begs to be looked from other angles as well.

September 30, 2009

This morning I went on an orientation tour of the library at the American Academy in Rome. It is a beautiful library, both conceptually and physically. Imagine sitting in small reading rooms next to wide open windows (no screens) that open onto idyllic Italian gardens. Imagine several floors of stacks that go down into a kind of crypt, and also those small, ladder-like circular stairways that lead to upper-level shelving. Imagine an aesthetic of contemporary simplicity and book preservation science in harmony with warm, traditional wooden desks and chairs. The cataloguing system is unique to the Academy, neither Dewey nor Library of Congress. The fellows and residents here have wonderfully generous access after they’ve taken the orientation tour.

Over lunch I listened in as experts in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance studies earnestly debated the reasonableness of the term Dark Ages. Is it useful to say that ancient Classical knowledge – about architecture, for example – was forgotten and then revived in the Renaissance? Later, after I had made as much progress as possible on my project, I set out on a long hike from the Academy’s perch on the Gianicolo hill – with a stop at Bramante’s Tempieto – down the stone steps and across the River Tiber to the Pantheon. If you never took a survey of art history course, you might not know that the Tempieto is a miniature Renaissance “classical” style building of elegant proportions designed by the architect Donato Bramante in 1499. The Pantheon, by contrast, is a large Roman temple originally built in 27 BC, then rebuilt around 120 AD. After the lunchtime conversation, it seemed fitting to visit one of the most famous examples of Renaissance architecture and the nearly 1,900-year-old domed structure that inspired its maker.

This evening (Wednesday) most of the Academy community attended a lecture by the organization’s President and CEO, Adele Chatfield-Taylor. It presented the “story” of the American Academy since its founding in 1894, through wars and many other challenges. Several parts of this story were especially affecting: the commitment to cross-disciplinary conversation, the struggles to quell objections from scholars to the inclusion of artists, and the decision to develop the Rome Sustainable Food Program. The last mentioned is a commitment to local, organic and seasonal food inspired by chef and food educator Alice Waters. In so many ways it is helping the Academy achieve it mission to enable creative communication and collaboration. Meals are now a complete delight! That means people want to “eat in” and to linger in long, enjoyable conversations. I’m tempted to start including detailed descriptions of meals in my blog posts! Let me cite the post-lecture dinner as an example. It began with a delicious and aromatic pasta dish with porcini mushrooms. A couple of us had special servings, made with rice-pasta – the kitchen happily accommodates all special diet needs! The pasta was followed by a delicious radicchio salad, then a course of fantastic broiled cheese. The dessert looked delicious, but I had to let it go. Tonight I’ll try to snap some photos!

October 1, 2009

Today offered an immersion in classical studies. After working with Marty on next steps for my project in the morning, I enjoyed an amazing slow-food lunch of tomato risotto and assorted vegetables before hurrying to a walking tour of Roman imperial sites led by antiquities scholar Corey Brennan. We jumped onto crowded city buses and rode down to the Palazzo Venezia. From there we walked to the Column of Marcus Aurelius. Corey had arranged permission for us to climb to the top (194 steps on a circular staircase just wide enough for human shoulders, only 5 people at a time). For anyone bothered by heights, the view from the top was overwhelming. From there we visited various ruins that articulated the Colosseum of Domitian, including the Piazza Navona, which retains the form of the giant track used for athletic events. Then on to the Pantheon, which I had visited the day before. In the crowd our group became separated. I eventually located 2 fellow tour members and we made our way back up to the Academy as night fell.

I had just enough time to clean up and join the Academy group in hosting a number of fellows from Harvard’s Villa I Tatti outside of Firenze (Florence) for dinner. The I Tatti folks deliberately spread out among the tables so that many of us could meet and talk. The dinner conversation was, as is usual here, fantastically enjoyable: A Hungarian scholar of NeoPlatonism, the director of the American School in Athens (not part of the I Tatti visit), and a filmmaker from the US were my conversation partners. At the end, to my surprise, I met a colleague from a museum at which I used to work. He and three others from I Tatti lingered to talk after the dinner. We enjoyed stories of the great art historian, Bernard Berenson, who gifted Villa I Tatti and his wonderful collections to Harvard. They urged me to visit the Villa during my stay – a train ride of less than three hours from Roma. What a day! I am ready for bed. PS this is a photo of the group converging in the dining room for lunch.

Sept. 26, 2009
Tomorrow I fly to Philadelphia; later that evening, I leave Philadelphia for Rome, Italy. The plan is for me to work on an interview project (more about that later) at the American Academy. This incredible opportunity is possible because the IMA is an institutional member of the Academy. That means the IMA is entitled to send a staff member for an Affiliate Residency of four weeks each year.

Tonight, after some fairly frantic days of preparation and with one whole suitcase full of voice recorders, cameras and various recharging and power adapting devices, the whole plan feels pretty fantastic and abstract. Someone just asked me where I’ll be at this time tomorrow night. I guess the answer is, “somewhere over the Atlantic.” Yikes! I’ll write again when I get to Rome.

from flickr user hum2000_8a

First week in Roma!
I am fascinated to observe the effects that linger here at the Academy from Alice Waters’ project. They call it the Rome Sustainable Food Project and it’s local, organic and seasonal. The dishes are simple and healthy – not rich. People who came to the Academy earlier in September describe an amazing phase of creations made from peppers and tomatoes as local gardens peaked. We seem to be in a radicchio and fennel stage now. Besides these I’ve already seen dishes with beets, onions, all sorts of peppers and tomatoes, those flat Italian green beans, carrots, potatoes, squashes of various types, and romaine. There’s always very good bread. Polenta, deliciously prepared, is a frequent vegetarian alternative when chicken or pork is served. Organic yogurt and honey with fruit is consistent for dessert at lunch, whereas dinner often concludes with an amazing baked confection or granite with cream.  One of Alice’s own from Chez Panisse, Mona Talbott, is the executive chef here and the creative force behind all of this, assisted by a talented staff and interns from several prestigious culinary schools. Mona seems to thoroughly enjoy the work. She stands nearby or sits with various diners to get their reactions during meals.

The communal lunches and dinners are amazing for conversation as well as for the food. It’s an unusual and talented group! I really find the people part very exciting. The subjects of mealtime conversations range wildly, from Eero Sarinen (including the IMA’s Miller House!) and modernist architecture, to water issues in a city that still runs its fountains from ancient aqueducts, to a provocative poem by Lucretius on the nature of reality.

My project is starting slowly. I’m revising some of the materials and waiting for approval from the staff here. I’ve been advised to hold off on starting until I get a sense for the unique culture and rhythms of the Academy. That makes sense to me. The Fellows and other artists and scholars here are rightly protective of their time. I hope to conduct interviews with members of the community on their experiences with art, design (architecture, gardens, etc.) and meals. I’d like these to be enjoyable.

Sept. 30, 2009
This morning I went on an orientation tour of the library at the American Academy in Rome. It is a beautiful library, both conceptually and physically. Imagine sitting in small reading rooms next to wide open windows (no screens) that open onto idyllic Italian gardens. Imagine several floors of stacks that go down into a kind of crypt, and also those small, ladder-like circular stairways that lead to upper-level shelving. Imagine an aesthetic of contemporary simplicity and book preservation science in harmony with warm, traditional wooden desks and chairs. The cataloging system is unique to the Academy, neither Dewey nor Library of Congress. The fellows and residents here have wonderfully generous access after they’ve taken the orientation tour.

Over lunch I listened in as experts in Classical, Medieval and Renaissance studies earnestly debated the reasonableness of the term Dark Ages. Is it useful to say that ancient Classical knowledge – about architecture, for example – was forgotten and then revived in the Renaissance? Later, after I had made as much progress as possible on my project, I set out on a long hike from the Academy’s perch on the Gianicolo hill – with a stop at Bramante’s Tempieto – down the stone steps and across the River Tiber to the Pantheon. If you never took a survey of art history course, you might not know that the Tempieto is a miniature Renaissance “classical” style building of elegant proportions designed by the architect Donato Bramante in 1499. The Pantheon, by contrast, is a large Roman temple originally built in 27 BC, then rebuilt around 120 AD. After the lunchtime conversation, it seemed fitting to visit one of the most famous examples of Renaissance architecture and the nearly 1,900-year-old domed structure that inspired its maker.

This evening (Wednesday) most of the Academy community attended a lecture by the organization’s President and CEO, Adele Chatfield-Taylor. It presented the “story” of the American Academy since its founding in 1894, through wars and many other challenges. Several parts of this story were especially affecting: the commitment to cross-disciplinary conversation, the struggles to quell objections from scholars to the inclusion of artists, and the decision to develop the Rome Sustainable Food Project. The last mentioned is a commitment to local, organic and seasonal food inspired by chef and food educator Alice Waters. In so many ways it is helping the Academy achieve it mission to enable creative communication and collaboration. Meals are now a complete delight! That means people want to “eat in” and to linger in long, enjoyable conversations. I’m tempted to start including detailed descriptions of meals in my blog posts! Let me cite the post-lecture dinner as an example. It began with a delicious and aromatic pasta dish with Porcini mushrooms. A couple of us had special servings, made with rice-pasta – the kitchen happily accommodates all special diet needs! The pasta was followed by a delicious radicchio salad, then a course of fantastic broiled cheese. The dessert looked delicious, but I had to let it go.

Alice with students at Cold Spring School

What does it mean to say, “I live in Indiana”?  What is distinctive about that, as opposed to saying, “I live in Colorado,” or, “I live in Florida”?  These questions came to my mind as I listened to chef, author and food revolutionary Alice Waters speak at The Toby on December 2 as part of the IMA’s Planet Indy series. Alice was describing the simple delights of eating local, seasonal food, as well as the simple genius of rebuilding local economies around sustainable practices. In Alice’s economy, producers of organic vegetables, fruits, dairy items and meats know that their products will supply local markets and restaurants instead of being shipped across the country. Organic producers make a decent living; their neighbors enjoy fresh, high quality food and improved health.

Alice’s revolution is aesthetic as well as economic. She advocates beautiful experiences with the food we enjoy. She believes that children deserve to learn how to notice tastes and scents, and to develop the language skills to describe these and their thoughts about such sensations. During Alice’s visit we discussed the Human Capabilities initiative of philosopher Martha Nussbaum and Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen. They argue that a humane society has a responsibility to give its citizens the opportunity to develop such capabilities as understanding how to care for their bodies, how to give and receive love, and how to communicate effectively. I have sense that Alice, Martha and Amartya are on the same wavelength.

Hmmm…. I started to feel that my own residence in Indiana is a bit superficial, and not all that aesthetically appealing, either. I have an address in Indianapolis, but an inventory of my refrigerator and cupboards wouldn’t necessarily confirm that statement. Veggies from California, bottled water from New York.  If I had amnesia and went to my kitchen in search of clues about my own life, there would be little evidence to help me deduce my location. And if you asked me to name a good, local, organic poultry producer, I’d be stumped. I spend most of my days in Indiana, but I have no meaningful relationship with the farmers or cheese makers in my area who are working to produce quality food.

Nearly a year ago as the IMA staff began planning for Alice’s visit, we initiated a series of meetings with organic producers, chefs and culinary arts instructors, school lunch decision-makers, and environmental educators. It was amazing to see the groundswell of enthusiasm and the number of committed people who wanted to help bring Alice’s message to a wider public. IMA educators initiated a partnership with Cold Spring School, IPS’s environmental magnet and a neighbor to the Museum, to introduce some of the ideas in Alice’s Edible Schoolyard initiative. At Cold Spring I saw children learn where tomatoes come from and how different a local, vine ripened tomato tastes from a cellophane-wrapped import purchased at the grocery store.

In 1971, American meditation teacher Ram Dass wrote a book called Remember, Be Here Now. I’ve always loved that line: Be Here Now. I know that my distracted attention wanders all over the place and is often anywhere but here in this moment. I think that if you added up all the moments in my life when I have really been consciously present – in my body, in the instant – the sum total of those moments of fully-lived experience would be pretty small.

Alice isn’t teaching meditation, but she is advocating that life be lived more fully and with greater consciousness. She is urging us to help our children discover that a fuller life is their birthright. Live here now.

In introducing the evening’s program, Mr. Lin noted Tan Dun’s frequent mention of shamanism when discussing his work. Theater historian David Goodman has written about the ancient roots of theater art in ritual performances at shrines. During such sacred performances, the audience witnessed a transformation of one or more of the characters on stage. Goodman argues that this element – the witnessing of a transformation – remains at the core of many theater traditions. When the audience watches as the performer changes, the people experience a kind of sacred catharsis. An audience member cannot transform into a ghostly spirit, or become the essence of unbridled rage or grotesque regret – but the actor can. In this sense the shaman and the actor are one in the same. Both have the ability to journey to painful and dangerous spiritual places, and to return to the ordinary human world we recognize as “reality.” Though Goodman writes specifically about Japanese theater, last night’s performance with Chinese cultural references brought his ideas to mind. Ghost Opera is a daring expression of the composer’s understanding of the shamanistic function of the performing art.

And then there was the sound! An exquisitely sad violin solo interrupted by a rude, unexpected squeak. Hisses, whispers, the clack of stones, a shifty sound of paper rubbed or crumpled. As the Ghost Opera unfolded, I began to think that I – and perhaps all humans – continually listen for the sound that signals a crack in the veneer of ordinary reality. On some deep level, perhaps our ear is always cocked for it, vigilant even though not consciously aware of the anticipation. Has a small sound, significant only because it does not make sense, ever caused you to startle? To snap to conscious presence in the instant? Are such sensations harbingers of mental illness? Or are they a neurological symptom? I guess either of these is possible; but last night such eerie sounds came from musicians who transformed, before our very eyes, into shamans who could speak to the spirit world.

One more feature of the evening was notable for me. As I sat in the balcony savoring the visual beauty of the stage design and Tan Dun’s astonishingly post-cultural soundscape, I sensed a strange collapsing of history and time. “Neo-cultural” isn’t a term I’ve heard, but I’ll improvise here and try using it to describe a sense of something human in a primal, ancient sense, but at the same time, something of a future that is just beginning to enter our consciousness. On the one hand “Neo” evokes the term Neolithic, the period when humans moved from hunting/gathering into the life of village farmers. Not that humans didn’t have culture as they wandered for Paleolithic millennia. However, that way of living lightly on the earth has been almost completely erased from the memory of modern humans. We are today the cultural descendants of our Neolithic ancestors. On the other hand, “Neo,” as I’m using it, also represents the sense of glimpsing something new, beyond the multi-cultural phase of human societies today. Tan Dun’s work somehow manages to touch something very ancient in the audience, while at the same time opening a new possibility for being connected with fire, water, stones, and air – with the earth itself.

I am grateful to Glen Kwok, executive director of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, for helping the IMA bring such an extraordinary performance – an performers – to the new theater! May this be the first of many provocative and beautiful artistic events in The Toby!

Talking with Boureima during his short stay, I became conscious of the inherent contradictions that African museums represent. Contemporary African museums inherited their collections from the European colonial governments that established them. Colonial museums in Africa were originally created for the enjoyment of white visitors; black Africans were not admitted.

Their collections consisted primarily of traditional objects – masks, sculptures, and other artifacts – that were often displayed to demonstrate the inferiority of the African cultures represented. In many cases objects were acquired by reprehensible means – deceit, theft and violence. So now we come to the place where the contradiction gets really complicated: The collecting practices were shameful, but some of those objects represent traditions that have almost disappeared. If they had not been “collected” they might have disappeared, along with memories of the understandings they represent. Another complication: according to Boureima, few ordinary Africans today are interested in visiting a museum to view such objects. Whether because they feel disgust at the colonial repression such collections represent, or because they would rather experience traditional material culture within the context of events and practices that have survived in the villages, many Africans consider the museums in their countries to be irrelevant to the lives they live today.

What a conundrum! Collections that represent traditional knowledge and worldviews in danger of being lost, held by museums that have bad karma, are under-funded and run by staffs with little opportunity to develop their professional skills, and are unsupported by the public. Why should Africans or Americans care about the potential loss of these objects and traditions as African museums crumble or are destroyed in the violence of civil war? Aren’t phones and the Internet, banks and commercial development, and, most of all, effective education and health care the most urgent concerns for all of us? Of course all of these are vitally important.

Here’s where I started to think about an analogy that might be found in environmental studies: biodiversity. We know that when species are lost, the healthy diversity of the gene pool and of life forms in the ecosystem is weakened. More homogeneity equals heightened vulnerability to disease, climate change and other threats Diversity is nature’s insurance policy. It allows life forms to adapt and respond to challenges. The earth is itself a complex, healthy system when diversity is maintained. Is it reasonable to think in a similar way about culture? As we lose languages and ways of understanding the world, is human potential somehow diminished? As mass communication and a global economy prevail, is it possible we lose ways of thinking, distinguishing and valuing that could make human life more creative, compassionate and resilient?

I don’t know the answers, but I’m asking – thanks in great part to two days spent with Boureima Diamitani – a man who has dedicated his life to these questions. I hope this is the start of an on-going conversation between the IMA and WAMP.

When I was very young, I had a special sense about written numbers. It’s hard for me to access that now, through all the years of education devoted to making sure I understood numbers in a standard way. But I still have a feeling about that early relationship, and sometimes I wonder how it might have developed if I hadn’t learned to be ashamed of it and to ignore it.

Here’s what I can recall: I knew the shapes of the numerals as indicators of the distinct characters of each. Though my sense for some of them has slipped out of reach, in the way dreams do, I can still feel the stronger personalities. The numeral five was intimidating in appearance, but in actuality quite sweet. Seven was both stern and judgmental. Eight had complexity and depth – and eight led to a painful collision with my first grade teacher, Miss Logan. She taught us to write eight with one continuous figure-eight line. Soon after, she exhorted us never to write it as one circle on top of the other – an idea that had, frankly, not occurred to me.

Once I heard about this forbidden way of making the image, I badly wanted to try it, to find out why it was seductive and wrong.  I hunched over my practice sheet to try what sounded to me like an ingenious alternative. The hurtful rap of a ruler on the back of my head shocked and scared me. I could hardly believe she caught me in the act so quickly and easily. Miss Logan’s efficient suppression of dissent gave me, early-on, the impression that privacy and experimentation had no place in the classroom.

Back to the personalities of numbers: you might think it’s just as well that this idiosyncratic notion of numerals having distinct natures signified by their visual forms was scared out of me. Even in first grade it was beginning to raise some dauntingly complex dimensions of arithmetic. What kind of psychodrama might be the sum of 8+7? If 5 were subtracted from 9, what interpersonal consequences would that equal? Left unmolested, I wonder if I might have been able to craft an alternative way of working with numbers that allowed me to derive answers that approximated my classmates’. I’ll never know. As it is, I developed a serious case of math phobia and went on to do poorly in math classes throughout my schooling – with only the slight exception of geometry, to which I was timidly attracted. It is only in middle age that I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am actually fascinated by mathematics as logic, and by the more philosophical implications of mathematics, rather than the computing tasks. I’ve also noticed that the concept of numbers having “natures’ isn’t entirely far-fetched when one considers mathematics as a system for describing relationships and processes.

My early sense about numbers may be one indication of something it’s taken me years to notice about myself: I believe I am a primarily a non-verbal thinker. Until I reached this hypothesis, I thought everyone thought approximately the same way.

Several years ago, I began asking my colleagues in the art museum education department how they thought – not what they thought, but how. Were they conscious of thinking in words, for example? I started this line of questioning because I realized that I was completely unable to describe or explain my experience of thinking. Of course I could mentally use words. If I needed to craft a statement of some kind and make decisions about the most effective wording, I could certainly rehearse the possibilities in my mind and make a choice. However, that would be a particular situation, very different from my ordinary, day-to-day thought/language processes. Truth be told, I had to admit that in my on-going mental life, words don’t play a part. In ordinary conversation, I do not plan or even know what words will come out of my mouth. I would even go so far as to say that the times I have jotted notes for a talk or to teach a class have led to my most lack-luster presentations. The notes always flummox me.  It’s taken me a while to trust myself, but I now feel that I am better off speaking “spontaneously.”

But back to the question about thinking that I posed to my co-workers: Most people seemed taken aback by the question and several mentioned that they had never considered how they thought. Upon reflection, quite a few said that they were conscious of words and sentences going through their minds. Several said they “heard” their thoughts as an on-going voice inside their heads. One person described being vaguely aware of punctuation in his thoughts! Another described dreams in which she read the narrative and conversations in a way that reminded her of the bubbles over the heads of comic book characters.

It was difficult to cover my own surprise at these revelations. Even now, as I type this anecdote into my laptop, I wish I could form the ideas on this screen with my hands. I wish that you could take them in with a probing – or a playful – gaze, rather than following various linear sentences to various open or dead ends. I don’t think with words.

How do you think? Can you describe your experience of thinking? Please let me know. I think others will be interested as well.