where art lives

today I was sitting under the few full-grown trees on the downtown pedestrian mall while Annie worked from her laptop. The book I had brought to read was less enticing than the dense, summer activity around me.
so I sat and watched
and I began to notice
the art in everything

An old man set himself on the ground against a building, leaving his guitar case open at his feet. He strummed his guitar gently...almost inaudibly, then began to sing with a voice that started as a yell and sweltered into the soulful ring of pure southern gospel.
art

Then, a moment after his rich song had begun, a young man with a traveler's backpack weighing slightly down on his youthful stride and a camera hanging around his neck, knelt down at the old man's side and began to take pictures. He squinted through his lens as the old man sang on. I could only imagine what he saw.
It was the art of observation.

At some point, a white-haired tourist with high socks and white shoes summoned the young man to his feet and I watched as she talked with him. From my little observation dock a few feet away I tried to read their gestures. The young man explained his pack and his camera, and, I imagined to myself, the the jar of peanut -butter in the side pocket of his pack as well. The woman listened eagerly, her curiosity indulged.
It was the art of inquisition: of curiosity and conversation.

I watched for awhile longer: the tourist, the photographer, the singer. I had to smile when the old man sang "Lord, I can sing and I can sing on my own. When I sing, I can sing alone," and in a moment of subtle irony a man watching on the side-lines noticed an empty chair and brought it over to the old man for him to sit in. The man who sings alone accepted the chair graciously and I wondered how many others noticed what a team of contributors had made themselves a part of the moment: the song: whether from one side of it or the other.

perhaps no one really sings alone.

And this was my reflection
my art