New York Photography Blog - Volume I

(Piano Mosaic, Times Square)

It’s true, that we think of the muses as “she,” going back to their ancient origins, but let’s be p.c. and make them half guys and half gals and picture them circling, fighting and squabling as we wander along a city street looking for something to capture. Yes, we are hunter, and capture is the right word. We don’t want to kill it; we just want to capture it and bring it back to civilization.

The storm of muses follow no known order; they are, after all, muses - they may spend their time in celestial coffee shops musing, or being amused. Maybe they spend half time making music that only a few humans can hear.

But the thing about them, compared to say the business idols, is that once they touch you, they will never leave you completely alone. You may feel alone. You may lose your best friend. Your dog may turn on you (things are really going badly when your dog turns on you) but the muses, once having selected you, cannot go very far.

They put a lot of work into you already, and although you may feel that they’ve disappeared, it just isn’t so. They always arrive, breathless sometimes, but with big grins about what they’ve found in their own wanderings. You haven’t gone anywhere - they’ve done the traveling for you - and now they return to tell you in some invisible inaudible language what they’ve found. Trinkets mostly. Things that you have stepped over many times. But they’ve polished them up a bit - and they’ve sometimes gone so far as building nice neon signs to point the way.

Of course, you are so imperfect (as I say, you’re own dog dislikes you) that you don’t always recognize their gifts - but when the time is right - when the moon is in the house of Taurus the bull - when the Wizard of Oz beckons - even though he is a phony - don’t discard the touch of art that enters your world; embrace it like an old friend.

As I say - if meant to be - it will return again. And pat the dog on the head and remember that although he can’t see them, good chance is that he can, and he too will return to your good graces.

Oh, just a long-winded way of saying that if your hand has been stamped by the faeries in the pre-human art club era, then no matter what befalls you - your feeling for art will return. That may not be much of a comfort to you now - when you’re trying to figure out how in the world to pay the rent - but someday, it will be a comfort.

[Ed. I suppose this is some sort of rhapsody on the idea of living in the world of art, but I’m not sure and neither is Mr. Beckerman. He claims to have heard this speech in a dream. I doubt it, but who am I to say, I’m just the editor alter ego that he feels the need to trot around now and then.]