In the last few months we’ve hit 115 degree weather, started half a dozen programs, canceled half of those due to illness, visited students and families, made new friends, lost some loved ones, and it is about TIME to breathe, rest, and mediate on what is most important.

Awareness of space increases our awareness of stillness in both mind and body. A gesture of movement can be just as powerful as a gesture of silence. The sound of silence, becoming more poignant to the point of our creativity. To capture a momentary frame of any thought, feeling or word is to ask the artist to appreciate it for themselves. And then their appreciation of that space becomes translated to the senses of the audience through mediums of movement, stillness, sound, light and shadow. Are they preserved in paint? Or articulated through a camera? Or are they only preserved in the body of the performer and the soul of the one who saw it? At this point, it doesn’t matter. The artist spoke, and you heard.

While I was on campus for research, I walked by a lovely room that was completely unoccupied. It looks out over one of the many courtyards, and the light was such that I thought I could attempt to capture the moment without my own clothing, colors, and other items causing a distraction. More simply, it eliminated variables of the environment so that one could just see movement. Sometimes in darkness the artist is most free. This is a prayer. I suffered a hip injury the week before, and tore a tendon in my foot. But you can’t see the tape, and my instability became a part of the improvisation. Without a doubt, this piece was meant to speak as intelligibly in my soul as words are to you now. I could not tell you exactly what I was saying, because the language is not the same, but I truly felt joy in this frame. Joy, appreciation, love, gratitude, and a question almost obscured by the rest, just as my face is obscured by shadow. But there.

Enjoy.