lots of red

I have opinions and sometimes I tell people, but a lot of times I don't talk to people. I have ideas about how to introduce art into the seminary environment - not at all they way they're doing it at Columbia. I say what I think they should be doing, but it doesn't resonate. I know that I don't bring it up correctly, even that my solution may not be the thing they want. Still, I just want to say here, the room is too pretty, too organized: Prayer/potter's wheel and creative area/display and dance mirror. I say rip all that stuff out - display work somewhere else; remove the prayer kitsch - creating itself is prayer. Everything in that room right now distracts from the act of creating; it's pretty and it's set up to fail.

Speaking of prayer kitsch - there are other spaces set up like this all around campus: comfy chairs, incense, "prayerful atmosphere", "prayerful books". Perfectly Victorian. I want to bring a cow patty in from the field and place it on the table; throw the furniture out on the curb; cover the coffee table with 100 demitassen of espresso (partially consumed). When I say prayer kitsch I think my reader must have some idea of what I'm saying. I'm referring in part to the whole industry in Christian publishing that offers up easily digested devotional compendiums that proffer pleasant thoughts for the junior league; there's a breakfast tray or coffee cup on the cover. There's incense and smells (someone somewhere read about how our cognitive faculties are spurred on by smell, so we've got smells in abundance - pretty smells). I think it'd be more authentic and prayerful for people to write their own devotional while they're sitting there; bring in a wheel barrow of red clay and mulch and wildflowers - cart it in yourself. Prayer kitsch is all pre-packaged, pre-thought out, pre-theologized mass produced, hands off, mind off paraphernalia and it all functions to clog up the pipes while giving the aura of having prayed. 

A room like this should be Merzbau.