This weekend it was 55(!) degrees in Providence.  M and I gave the Oscars a nonchalant cool kid chin tip by seeing The Big Short at The Avon Saturday night and The (far more enjoyable) Theory of Everything on Sunday.  Between showings there were warm beverages and downcity walks and cracks for letting in light.  We admired murals and I thought about art in its many mediums, and I wondered about appreciation and its affect on a piece of work.  I considered the old “if a tree falls in the woods” theory, and wondered if it applies to the creation of art.  If an artist works alone, in the dark, producing a masterpiece, does it still result in significance?  Left wholly unshared, does art still hold weight?

I also thought about the Leonard Cohen lyrics and the cracks in everything that let light in.  As I looked up and studied the negative space between buildings in the Financial District, I realized that it is this space that allows the buildings to shine.  It is the space between two structures through which the light beams.  In this presumed emptiness, all purpose is found, and without it, functionality would cease.  So this space, these cracks, the unpunctuated time that exists in all of us, are a crucial part of the creation process.  They give us room to enter and exit, to see ourselves through windows, from the inside and out, and to exist in those alleys and streets between.  These spaces are where we able to step back, to share, to admire, and to grow.

With these spaces, we build up.

photo of me by Michael Collins.