Breath

On a long weekend this past fall, we took advantage of some of the bah-squillion cultural activities NYC has to offer. That Sunday we went out to JFK airport as this program, Open House New York, had opened the Saarinen TWA terminal for visitors.

Investors will make the current terminal into the central lobby of a hotel, including a small museum and have a couple outer buildings for the actual accommodations. The site is protected by the National Register of Historic Places so developers can restore and preserve, but not demolish. Thank God... I had seen pictures of how beautiful the modernistic design of the terminal was, but didn’t expect the experience of exploring the space to be so moving. There were supporting statements from the architect, Eero Saarinen and others involved in building and protecting the terminal on some displays throughout the space.

“We wanted passengers passing through the building to experience a fully-designed environment in which each part arises from another and everything belongs to the same formal world.”-Saarinen

These statements affirmed the experience of seeing a creation that was so seamlessly integrated, each element fluidly connected from one to the other.

Each design element would easily (and at the same time, unexpectedly) give birth to the next so that the elements all together felt like one, almost like an organism, a living thing with the ability to breathe. You could feel the history, the echo of the sublime style of the early 60s. There was a hushed, almost holy quality in the way people slowly moved around the space, taking it all in. It was a very special privilege.

On that Monday we went to the Cloisters, which hosted a special art installation by Janet Cardiff. I had seen "The Forty Part Motet" at P.S.1 in Queens: forty speakers with each speaker on its own channel clearly projecting one voice in the forty part choir (Salisbury Cathedral choir and others) for an eleven minute piece written by Tallis. The piece, "Spem in Alium" is stunning in and of itself but to hear how the sound is so specifically recorded and…alive, moving through the space, with single voices, parts in unison or the entire forty part choir is breathtaking. This was an art experience similar to the TWA terminal in that the artist takes the scientific, the seemingly concrete and quantifiable and turns it into a living, breathing thing. Even more moving is that this process of creation is meant to be shared together. Its existence depends on our own interaction with it as visitors are encouraged to move around the space, stand in different parts of the chapel or listen closely to individual speakers, like standing next to a different singer at various points in the piece. Some people smile or close their eyes or even cry as they experience the miracle of animating the inanimate and bringing something to life.

 

NYTimes 2013

The breath is evident. The breath is the power. This has been a recurring theme of inspiration to me. It reminds me of how moved I was by the palpable breath of the puppets in "War Horse" on Broadway. (The production is touring now but even if you can’t make it, at least watch some YouTube videos on those damn puppets. You’ll be amazed!) Why are so many theatrical traditions (ancient traditions!) linked to puppetry? I had a big discussion about that with a filmmaker I worked with last year and he felt we have a human need to engage in the act of making something come alive and experiencing that communally. It also explains the appeal of resurrection and why that story has had such power for so long to so many. The promise that with faith, we can bring back the dead to the world of the living is an exhilarating prospect.
Later that week, we attended a concert of Lar Lubovitch’s dance company at the Joyce. It was a great, diverse program. The pieces that appealed to me most were the ones most connected to the breath, connecting that body of dancers to the life of the music. Each dancer’s body contributed to the creation of a whole new being, creating a whole new organism from these many parts. That’s the key to creating art: creating breath.