“And, But and Or,
They’ll get you pretty far.”
I began thinking about AND while visiting an exhibit of an artist who embodies AND. Eleanor Antin is an artist who can draw and write and perform and direct. She creates work that is conceptual and sensuous. She performs as a ballerina and a king and a nurse. She just kept saying AND. Her work kept showing me AND. Her work started me echoing AND.
AND is the persistence of freedom, of resisting confinement by label or convention, of singing even when silenced, even if only in the privacy of the cave. AND is the redeemer of But.
Late-born and woman-souled I dare not hope,
The freshness of the elder lays, the might
Of manly, modern passion shall alight
Upon my Muse’s lips, nor may I cope
(Who veiled and screened by womanhood must grope)
With the world’s strong-armed warriors and recite
The dangers, wounds, and triumphs of the fight;
Twanging the full-stringed lyre through all its scope.
But if thou ever in some lake-floored cave
O’erbrowed by rocks, a wild voice wooed and heard,
Answering at once from heaven and earth and wave,
Lending elf-music to thy harshest word,
Misprize thou not these echoes that belong
To one in love with solitude and song.
Echoes
by Emma Lazarus, written in 1880
Doesn’t the word ‘Twanging’ just make you laugh!
Sing more songs of AND for Echo…