Tuesday Muse: Taking a Different Approach to the Ordinary

I think I noticed the sculptures in mid-May. It was oppressively, bone-draggingly hot out, and my coworker and I were walking (which we already regretted) to a food truck several blocks from our office. We cut across Madison Square Park and I pointed out the gravel walkway that seemed to have been created recently. It was dotted with benches and picnic tables, and bordered with brightly colored fences and, well, these slug-like, amorphous blobs of colored metal.

"I'll never get this side of modern art," I said to Laura, and then we kept walking.

Because honestly, it was hot.

It was only last week that Laura and I finally walked up that new gravel walkway and sat down on the benches encircled by the installation. I rested my hand on one of the sculptures and, to my surprise, it sang. Not the echoing tone of metal struck just the right way, but loud, discordant, electric music.

And then suddenly both Laura and I were on our feet, flitting from sculpture to sculpture and calling back and forth to each other about what we heard. There was a purple sculpture full of sound so faint we had to kneel on the ground, press our chests to it, and parse the vibrations for sound. The yellow sculpture we could barely keep from singing; the slightest breath seemed to set it off. The gray sculpture, its toppling heap of a shape already suggesting over-abundance, was alive with sound that swelled and rose the longer your hand rested on it.

And suddenly I'd found whimsy in that which I had nearly overlooked, reminding myself once again that sometimes when you think you need a new concept, all you need is a new approach. And, perhaps even more so, that discovering something magical where you expected only the mundane can be more delightful than magic itself.

Charles Long's Pet Sounds will remain on view in Manhattan's Madison Square Park until September 9, 2012.

Tuesday Muse: Real Life Fantasy Worlds in the American West

This week's Tuesday Muse (and the reason I was M.I.A. last week) is Zion National Park in Utah.

I've spent much of my life possessed, like many habitual readers, by a soul-deep desire to find something more in this world. It's not just the hope that one day the back of the wardrobe will reveal a forest or that a letter from Hogwarts will come in the post, but rather a cognitive dissonance that arises between your perception of the world, largely gleaned through books, and the image that the world presents. It's a sense that there must be another world that's richer, somehow, than our own. A sense that we're owed an adventure or two there.

But, visiting Zion National Park last week, I realized I might never have needed to feel that way if I'd known exactly what the park held. It's a fantasy world all in its own right. So here's to discovering uninhabited places and unconquered wildernesses. They've reminded me of the magic of this life: not the same as the magic of fantasy worlds, but entirely comparable in its own way.

Tuesday Muse: Mary Oliver

Tuesday Muse: Book Spine Poetry

Today's Tuesday Muse was going to be "meeting your childhood heroes" (see Exhibit A below), but because the last two Tuesday Muses I've made specifically referencing people have directly followed their passing away, I decided not to curse Bruce Coville. May he live long and prosper and write many more books about unicorns and dragons.



So, instead, today's Tuesday Muse is this brilliant little bit of book spine poetry from Maria Popova:



Next time you find yourself stuck, go to your bookshelf. Grab a few books with titles that interest you and rearrange them until you have a poem or an insightful phrase.

And share your poem here, because I want to read it!

And if that fails, try a limerick. Because really, everyone likes limericks, and if they don't you shouldn't trust them.

Tuesday Muse: An Invocation for Beginnings

Today's Tuesday Muse is Ze Frank's "An Invocation for Beginnings." We all know the struggle of staring down a blank page. This is your inspiration as well as your invitation to begin.

"There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore. My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark."