Back in May of 2018, I first used this wonderful Latin phrase, and in a slightly different context, but it seems to become more and more relevant with every passing day. It's just that different things are "speaking for themselves". Enough is being said in so many other places, that I guess I will continue to tell odds and ends of my own story, in the theory that my story is all I have to offer the world at this pivotal moment.
In the 1980's when I was living in Manhattan and working at Time Magazine, I studied at Parsons School of Design at night. I had hoped to work toward a degree in graphic design, so that there would be some practical application to my (post-English church music) art career, but it just wasn't in me to deal with advertising and other commercial functions. In the end, I majored in Illustration, and over the years I tried on and off to make at least a little bit of money from a variety of art and art teaching endeavors, but my heart wasn't in it. Life lesson: it usually doesn't work to replace your primary life passion with another less passionate endeavor, and do it wholeheartedly.
In a portraiture class, the teacher had noticed that I was trying too hard to draw my classmate's face in minute detail, and she asked me to take off my glasses. I am so completely nearsighted, I balked at doing this, but she insisted. Of course, even being only about four or five feet away, I could now barely see the other woman's face, just the basic shapes and major areas of darkness and light. Yet this was literally almost a new way of seeing, and helped my sketch look three-dimensional in a way it hadn't been. For the rest of the class, I used my glasses only part of the time, and the resulting drawing was more balanced and satisfying than it would have been otherwise. So I think there is another life lesson in this!
One evening after this, I decided to walk all the way from midtown down to the Village without my glasses on, to see if I could do it, and to see how it changed my experience of being in the city. It was extremely hard. I mean, I was young and not really in danger of tripping, falling on a curb, or walking into people. That part of the journey was navigable. But what was unnerving was the inability to see people's faces clearly, or their body language at a distance. I guess I had become very dependent on scanning the sidewalks to see if I was in any danger...and with that form of radar taken away from me, I was, to say the least, somewhat nervous. I couldn't tell if people looked friendly or not. Once I got to the school, I was relieved to put my glasses back on and go to class -- perhaps never considering (as I have just now as I am reliving the experience) what the day-to-day life of a completely sightless person must be. Once again, my gratitude to my eyes knows no bounds.
This is a time when we will need to rely on, and trust, all our senses. Things may be "speaking" to us in different ways, and we need to "listen".
