An Errand of the Soul - Inspired by the Degenerate Art in Nashville

As soon as I walked into the building, I felt it.  I didn't even know I was missing it.  What I did know is that despite errands to be run, loads of laundry to be washed and calls to be made, I stopped.

I turned my car toward downtown Nashville Friday to run an errand of the soul.

I had known for three months that I needed to make this trip. Thursday evening solidified this knowing.  As I read the program for "Harmonic Convergence" this weekend's symphony, I saw the word -degenerate.

Degenerate was used in a program reference to the German composer Arnold Schoenberg whose "Survivor from Warsaw" was performed with George Takei as the narrator.

Last October I first saw degenerate, a term I don't think I had ever considered, in the opening for the German Expressionism exhibit at the Frist Museum.  

Kirchner's "Winter Landscape in Moonlight" one of the 'degenerate' works on the Frist cover. Exhibit ends 2/10/13.

That evening I knew why Hitler declared thousands of works degenerate.  In his effort to eliminate art that didn't promote "healthy Arian values" more than 1,000 expressionist paintings and 4,000 drawings, prints and watercolors were burned in 1939. In addition, 700 paintings were shown in the  Degenerate Art Exhibit  viewed by 2 million people in Munich and another million as it was taken about the country. Artists who taught lost their jobs and galleries were forced to surrender their work.

That first evening and again this past week I experienced the real reason I believe Hitler wanted to destroy these works.  These works hold profound light and beauty.  Animals to many of the German expressionists were idealized as spiritual creatures.

I spent the afternoon walking among these works, experiencing them.  The artists whose works are in this exhibit were the 'degenerates.'  Yet I walked and considered how generate is the root of this word.  How did a word related to growth get corrupted in this way?  And what are we to generate and grow from Hitlers abominable actions?  

Of what was Hitler so threatened, really?  Likewise what are so many corporations, lobbyists and politicians threatened by in relation to the masses today?  

When I walked into the Frist yesterday I felt the same inner 'ah' that I felt the night prior when I sat down to listen to music.  What if this is the greatest threat, the threat of our being fully present in our bodies, not worn out and exhausted, not sucked dry like zombies by tv and the computer, not slowly poisoned by fast food but to feel Life and Light stirring within?

I have been longing to go the ocean to sit in the sun for several weeks now.  Yet it occurred to me as I walked into the Frist that maybe just maybe this art would activate the Sun within, warm my bones, my heart, my soul and that's just what it did. 

We are here in this time of Harmonic Convergence on an errand of the Soul, to feel our bodies inner 'ah,' to see and sense our Light.  Music, art, nature, animals, our bodies - these are the avenues through which Heart and Soul arrive.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 9 February 2013

dawn@imaginetheshift.com