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He had told me one time about his travels in some sort of ephemeral place that seemed to shift in form and magnitude each time he spilled forth his stories.

Paddling along a river that was so highly elevated that you could see the peaks of mountains and the goats that sprang from rock to rock along the side of its facade; the very clouds danced around the summit as sharks do around a shipwreck at the bottom of a shallow sea. But no, actually, it was more like he could see the outreaching hand of man streaking across the sky in the hopes of reaching the edge of heaven, a blasphemous form and idea. Or rather…perhaps, no, it couldn’t be; am I that close to heaven? It certainly felt that way. A fleeting moment that leaves a white gash streaking across your very psyche; or perhaps something far more divine than such a human attempt at understanding; the attempt at defining the ephemeral existence of non-existence. How I long to make what I see, what I see. This moment of serene resignation. This particular moment, he was I; for since, then I have changed. Yet I was you, but can I really say that? Can my own experiences be shared with you? I seemed to be able to share it with myself quite comfortably. Yet to say that I shared the incident and its relative insights with myself would be quite a leap for I do not believe that the person who experienced that event was the same person who existed one second before the occurrence nor do I believe that he is the same person that is writing this story right now. Truth be told, he existed only for a brief moment, the creature was as cursory as the moment.

Yet, that doesn’t make my hindsight any less credible. Sure, had I written about it at that exact moment maybe I could have gotten down my thoughts far more lucidly. But then I would have never felt it as I had felt it. I would not now have the same memory of the feeling; since, the very enigmatic impression would have been altered by my foolish decision to scribble away at something that could have been absorbed naturally. To call me selfish would be fair, I am selfish. But let it be known that I am attempting to share it with you. Just as my self that existed then shared it with the self that exists now, I will now share it with you. Or rather, I have already shared it with you haven’t I? Scratch that, no I haven’t.

The calm water caressed my paddle as it dipped into the motherly liquid once again, only to emerge. Pushed out by its own mother in a solemn manner; over and over again. Beneath the serene surface were hundreds of jellyfish, lingering and soothing their bodies within the warm embrace of their homes. The breeze gently swayed the branches of the trees back and forth, making them wave at me and my company. As we paddled forward, the clouds seemed to move aside as a ray of light came reaching down to touch the water to turn it into ichor. The gleaming golden hue blinded me and forced my eyes upwards. There I saw the double gates of color that led me further into a domain where I had not been before. Arching fixtures of light that brought my mind to elementary levels while at the same time, befuddling me with inexplicable awe. I never knew such formations could exist. Yet there they were before my eyes, two rainbows, designed with such care, control, and calculation; the hand of a great artist had painted the sky for me that day. As we passed under the portal, I could no longer see it as I looked up at it from beneath, just as quickly as it had appeared, it had disappeared. Yet, as I looked back after gliding under its belly, I saw that it had once again materialized. It still looked the same; a facade on both sides. Oh! Had I entered or left? Not long did I dwindle upon this query when the chill of my inaptitude knocked invasively upon my physical experience. I quickly asked my companions as to why it had gotten so cold. We had been underneath the thirsty golden tongue not so long ago yet, we were now struck by a bitter and sudden cold. Then a shadow slowly began to creep towards me along the surface of the once golden gore. A point slashed the pleasant cerulean sky, making the azure bleed white globules that formed into beings that drifted off to form new families and communities. I had stopped paddling. How had we gotten so close to the peak of this giant? To have been going on a flat surface this entire time, to meet this epitome of height and grandeur. Truly the world is not flat, nor is it round; it twists, turns, zigs and zags. Without any real communication between any of us, we had all stopped paddling and floated in our plastic containers. Some took pictures, I did not. How can the limited capture the infinite? I simply sat there in my confined plastic mould, my plastic tomb, that was where my old mind died and a new one was born. For, my reluctance to take a picture of the scene was not because I believed my mind to be capable of taking a snapshot. Rather, I trusted that my mind would remember the feeling, the painful peace. Just as we finish documenting one thing, the horizon expands again.

Such a sad thing, you are still not there. Well, neither am I. Perhaps, if we go to the islands off the coast of British Columbia one day, we can experience the ephemeral.

In October 2006, David Phillips, a nationally recognized sculptor, brought suit against Pembroke Real Estate, Inc. in federal district court of Massachusetts, asserting that Pembroke would violate his rights under VARA (Visual Artists Rights Acts, 1990), and MAPA (Massachusetts Art Preservation Act, 1984) by removing multiple pieces of his sculpture and stonework from the Eastport Park near Boston Harbor. Pembroke owned the land where the park is and hired the artist in 1999 to create 27 sculptures for placement in the park. Soon after the park was completed in 2001, Pembroke decided to redesign the park and remove and relocate the works by Phillips due to conceptual change of the new design of the park. As a result, the artist objected to the revised plan and filed suit seeking for injunctive relief. This case raised an important question about the protection of VARA on site-specific art.

Site-specific art is a subset of integrated art. A work of integrated art is comprised of two or more physical objects that must be presented together as the artist intends for the work to retain its meaning and integrity. In terms of site-specific art, the location of the work is a constituent element of the work. In this case, the artist argued that these sculptures were made specifically for the park and had a marine theme that corresponded to the harborside location of the park. In other words, the marine environment of the park itself could be interpreted as one medium of the artworks. Therefore, removing the sculptures from its original site would lead to an intentional conceptual destruction on the artworks. Pembroke, on the other hand, contends that public presentation exclusion permits it to relocate Plaintiff’s artworks. So what is public presentation exception? This statute was adopted after the case of the artist Richard Serra and his site-specific piece, “Tilted Arc,” in which the court rejected the artist’s argument that the relocation of his site-specific art from the federal plaza violated his rights under federal copyright and trademark law. Public presentation exception permits certain inevitable modifications of artworks if they were moved because the point of VARA is to preserve a work of visual art as it is rather than preserve it where it is.

Convinced that the works were site-specific and moving any or all of these integrated work would cause a physical alteration of the work, the district court first issued a temporary restraining order preventing Pembroke from altering the park. The injunction was later (2004) vacated because the district court held that although VARA applies to site-specific art, the public presentation exception allows Pembroke to relocate these sculptures. In 2006, the artist challenged the district court’s reasoning about public presentation exception and the case entered the first circuit. The result was that the first circuit not only affirmed the district court’s permission for Pembroke to remove Phillips’ artworks, but also held that VARA does not apply to site-specific art at all since VARA says nothing that suggests special protection for site-specific art.

Trial courts have adopted the same reasoning about the exclusion of site-specific art in similar cases following the final decision of Phillips v. Pembroke case. However, the decision was questioned in 2009 in a case between the wildflower artist Chapman Kelley and Chicago Park District. The artist designed Wildflower Works, which was considered as a site-specific painting/sculpture, in Chicago’s Grand Park and the park officials altered it without the permission of the artist. In this case, the court raised the question about whether the Phillips v Pembroke rule would allow any distortion of a site-specific work. The plaintiff argued that site-specific art is not necessarily destroyed if moved; modified, probably, but not utterly destroyed. And the public presentation exception does not eliminate every type of protection VARA grants to artists of site-specific art. For instance, it does nothing to limit the artist’s right of attribution, which prevents the artist’s name from being misappropriated. Also, site-specific art could be defaced or damaged in ways that do not relate to its public display.  In short, the court held that the exception only covers a particular kind of site-specific art and site-specific art should not be categorically excluded from VARA.

I wouldn’t consider myself a proponent of the electronic music scene. It takes a specific time, place, and mood to get me into most of the dubstep and livetronica that’s being tossed across airwaves at bars and parties and, most recently, television commercials. But these platforms take the electronic genre out of its true context in the live show, which is something I’ve been very strongly reminded of in the past couple weeks, having seen Lotus and Big Gigantic play this February. I consider both of these events as life-altering experiences in the way they’ve shaped my relationships with those present as well as my perception of light, sound, and self.

I know it sounds like a stretch, especially for those who’ve never attended one of these shows with all their strobing lights and pulsing baselines. Overwhelming noise and visuals in combination with lurching sweaty crowded bodies is simply not everyone’s cup of tea. But I would argue that it’s nearly pointless to attempt making a real connection with the music, the kind of connection that yanks and strums the heartstrings, ignites flash bulb memories in the mind’s eye, and gives the body no choice but to swerve to the beats and synthy melodies, without having experienced it in proximity with the lights, the performance, and the camaraderie of the crowd. It’s like eating French fries without Sri-Racha (or ketchup), like watching a youtube video of someone sky diving: still pretty good alone, but nothing like the combination of elements that work together to produce a whole that’s impossible on its own.

Enter a shadowy concert hall with vaulted ceilings. The air is dense with smoke, body odor, and anticipation. There is a pulse in the room, some bodies following its lead more closely than others, but all movement altered by the sound. Even the bartenders shuffle and duck in time. The openers fade into pits at either end of the stage, and the room goes quiet. An eruption of primal cheers signals the headliner’s arrival, preempting the exploding lights, lasers, projections, beats and screes and womp-womps. The baseline becomes the heartbeat of the crowd, everyone sways and dips, arms up, fingers outstretched, bobbing and crashing like an ocean of individual ripples, each swelling with its own kind of life. Everything is a shadow but for the sunbursts that illuminate it all like lightning, and you catch the ecstatic expressions on your neighbors’ faces for seconds at a time. Everyone is touching everyone. Skin on skin, you share the air with every mouth, and it tastes like smoke and sweat but also energy, and everything is shared. There is no self. Communication happens in the eyes and smiles because nothing else is heard but the jams. Hours later, the music stops, the lights flick out. How long has it been? There is a ringing in the ears. Your shirt is soaked. You feel new. You will never hear the same and you don’t want to. The flashing colors and pixels will appear when you close your eyes for days after. You’ve shared yourself with everyone present, and they with you, and everyone is carrying pieces of everyone else out the door.

A day, a week, a month later, one of the songs I heard that night comes up on shuffle. Instantly I’m thrown back into the moment, I feel an intense longing for the flashing faces all open and euphoric, I have visions of pixelated landscapes juxtaposed against cats, I begin to tremble. It isn’t the music itself that makes me feel this way, and although I’m enjoying the sounds, it’s what they trigger that gets me smiling and moving uncontrollably like a shot of adrenaline and serotonin to the heart. And I don’t remember my friend getting sick in the parking lot, or taking an elbow to the cheek, or almost getting lost, and I’m glad I went.

So since my article from last week, I’ve recently joined up to be in the cast of a play called The Great God Pan. For the past week, I’ve been going to script readings and thoroughly examined the characters and plot with an awesome group of people. While these meetings have been wonderfully fun, it was astounding to find that we could examine this 70-some page play for three hours four days out of this past week (only skipping Friday for St. Valentine’s Day). I’m sure that we found some things that didn’t really exist (and weren’t intended by the author–but authorial intent and its insignificance are topics for an article for another day), but we managed to stumble upon some amazing bits of characters in the recesses of the text and our own minds that really made the whole thing come alive.

Our director has a habit of hammering in the idea that we need to form connection, connecting with our characters and the other characters, surely, but also allowing the characters to connect with us! We contribute just as much to our characters as they have to offer on the page, and I think that it’s important to analyze how the characters you create are you unique to your creation of them. No one else could have written Harry Potter the way J.K. Rowling did, or Gandalf the way that Tolkien managed. These characters, as do all characters, have a unique and intimate relationship with the people who write them–even when that person is George R. R. Martin and he’s murdering everyone that you’ve ever loved in a novel.

Why a character does what they do and how they do it is important, but why they’re doing what they’re doing how they’re doing it for you (their writer, player, or actor) is equally significant. Authorial intent might not matter, but it probably does to the author! And for that reason, I think it should matter to you. There’s a lot of debate about whether characters continue on after you finish that last sentence of your short story, defeat the final boss of the campaign, or the red curtain closes–but if they do, if they really experience everything that they’re put through in the writing, wouldn’t you want them to experience a fullness of being? I mean, sure, some characters aren’t going to go out happily or be good people, but as fully-written characters, maybe they can reach that kind of fulfillment that everyone’s always seeming to be searching for, which isn’t to say that it should be handed on a silver platter, but certainly attainable.