When the arts foundation I’m associated with decided to start running its retreats, the board sat down and broke “art” down much the way whoever started our American brand of public schooling has broken the world and its evolution into “subjects.” Where any of these actually start or end or turn colors into another category, I cannot tell you. Can you have history without religion or science? Can you have Social studies without psychology or art? Evidently.
Anyway, they came up with five disciplines: music, visual arts, theater, film, literature.
Do not ask me why the stage got double billing and sculpture, painting, dance, glass fusing, carving, weaving and the rest of the visuals all got lumped into one. In fact, dance, which is not represented formally at all, still is represented by a couple of pirates who show up through the back door and refuse to leave – abetted by the heads of all the discipline groups, who are all willing to claim them.
So, okay. So this leaves me with a problem: where does the operation of large machinery fit into all this? Certainly, it’s as orphaned – or as rich in impact and discipline as dance is. But now I’m thinking – maybe the operation of a backhoe actually IS dance?
I remember when we had first built this house and we were doing something in the front “yard” (read: weed infested, strewn with bits of cement and tar paper and studded with errant nails) with a backhoe. Couldn’t have been digging the gas line, because the windows were already in and carpet down, and besides we pretty much forgot to put the gas line in. No, it was in. We just forgot to run it into the kitchen, which is why we are an all electric home. Which has nothing to do with art.
This backhoe was working really, really close to the house, and I knelt on the couch watching as it worked inches from my face on the other side of the window. The man operating the thing, I don’t even remember what he looked like. What I remember is the delicate movement of the bucket as it transcribed its smooth curved path, the elegant, almost sentient reach of its teeth for the ground. It came within an egg’s breadth of the window, but never touched the house.
My friend Dal, who owns a raggedy, earnest little bobcat, is of that ilk. He steps inside that tiny cab and the machine comes to life around him. It pirouettes on its fat tires, dips and lifts and whirls. It can trim an inch off the surface of the ground, place the dirt in its bucket egg-zactly on the target, and then gently pull the tiny pile back into a smooth plane. So many times I’ve watched him execute these tiny, intricate routines and never even dent my barn.
Dal instructing M. There is not a picture of me driving because I cannot drive and take pictures of myself at the same time. And nobody else is as fascinated by me driving this thing as I am.
That machine, I have to tell you, had multiple personalities. When I was the brain, the thing lurched around, crunched the corner of the barn, burped and bounced and moved more like a wrecking ball than a feather. I could get the job done, but it was more like mud wrestling than ballet.
M, moving up to driving this. On his birthday, 2007. He was pretty good at it.
Except for the matter of the water main – (is that how you spell water main?)
I’m thinking about all this because two days ago, worried that the horses might drown in their stalls one of these fine winter days, I called a friend who owns a big orange Kabota tractor with a front loader. I had a fifteen minute job – trim the top off this little mound and drop the stuff into the stalls, thereby raising them so that the horses will be high and dry (and much closer to braining themselves on the barn eves).
This is a professional shot of the Kubota. Some Kubota, not my friend’s. I am hoping the copyright holder doesn’t mind it being here. I have not charged any of you admission, so??
I’d never seen a tractor do anything but pull harrows or diskers or mowers, so it was with wonder and delight that I watched my friend do the same lovely, lilting hydraulic dance – scooping up an inch here, two inches there – shaping and molding my arena material so lightly, so tenderly. Three hours later, my arena was a painting, a sweep of sloping sculpture.
Of course, I didn’t have my camera. Anyway, if I’d had it, the sleet would have done it in. For t those three hours, my tractor artist worked in the freezing rain; I don’t think he felt a thing, he was so absorbed in the act of defying entropy. And I have no record of it. Which is a shame, because the horses had it pretty much chopped it up again within a couple of hours.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you ever get the chance to watch a machine dance, sit yourself down and take the time. SO worth the price of admission.
An interesting side note. G sent me this link to a blog that mentions him SEVERAL times – so scroll down a bit if you’re interested in how his clients feel about him. I chortled.
A sample:
“Plus Guy recommended it, and when someone who has been in the music business for 30+ years recommends something we have been listening… so far anyway. If he tells me to get tripped out on some drugs for inspiration on a song I would rethink that one, but I highly doubt advice of such a nature. He is like Yoda, Mr Miagi, and Jerry Garcia wrapped up in one dude with a studio.”
Hotcha.
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