January 9 Post: The mystery of art

I live in mountains, specifically those of Northwestern Georgia. We have our own kind of light, of sunlight, at different times of the day. The sun rises over the Blue Ridge mountains to the East, mountains that sometimes are gloriously snowcapped, a hope for this week. To the west is a range where Lookout Mountain TN and GA stands at the north end of our vision.

This morning dark clouds hovered over the entire sky except at the Eastern horizon. A ball of fire perched on the eastern peaks, and the color was a new one for me—orange, amber, coral in combination and diffusion. The light tinted the barren trees and hills I drove on my way to work before 8:00 a.m.

I caught a glimpse. I had to get to the office.

But I also had to write this down and the next day, driving the exact same route, I looked for the exact same sunrise and it wasn’t there.

And it struck me that art is trying to make the ineffable permanent, the glimpse a gaze for others to enjoy, the abstract concrete, the short feeling something that lasts, the momentary image a surviving story, the two-second experience years old.

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