377 days, Blog #114, thoughts on preservation, perfection, and a bread crumb grinder

I think one of my favorite parts of working in a museum is being able to go behind the scenes.  Granted, most of my behind the scenes is behind a computer, in front of Power Point.  But occasionally I do get the opportunity to peer into secret corners of the four buildings pieced together over a century and a half – which has a similar thrill to the secret corners of all the rooms in the Eastern Point cottage pieced together over three decades.  These corners are almost literally hidden treasures, with objects kept out of light, out of temperature extremes, away from touch… and the most of humanity’s eyes.

The secret is fun because it is mine even though in reality I could never possess such fine objects.  The secret is depressing… because the life of those objects is stunted.

I have lamented many times (in this blog as well) how the act of preserving an object sometimes takes the life… or the thing that made it special… the soul out of an object.  Yes, it is an object.  So, no, technically, it doesn’t have a soul.  But there is something very sad about a dish that is kept in a cupboard never to serve a meal or clink alongside laughter ever again.  Or a piece of furniture upon which no one will ever sit.

I do understand that there is an art to preservation.  No, actually, it is a very skilled science.  And one I appreciate.  My hands are bolted to my sides in the presence of a suit of armor because I know of rusty fingerprints.  And yet… a suit of armor… made to fit a body that would sweat and bleed and probably do a number of other bodily functions that might not be appropriate to discuss at this point in time.  But it contained organic matter.  The organic matter with oil and oxygen and all those other deadly microbes that will undo the life of an object and prove that the object is much like its creator… imperfect and mortal.

I was thinking about this and somehow connecting it to writing.  I think the nature of Nanowrimo is a forgiveness of one’s need for perfection.  I have struggled with liberating my first draft writer this month.  I can’t deny that.  Even as I take on a new story and new characters, there is a need to say things exactly right.  Which isn’t right.  It’s a lot like that preservation thing.  Making a piece of art, no matter if it is supposed to represent the ordinary or the supreme, into an impossible, unlikely – unlikable thing of perfection.

It’s kind of like Frankenstein.

No, not in the reviving the dead way.  The hubris of godly perfection way.  Which is really what the whole story of Frankenstein is about.  A cautionary tale of trying to thwart our human imperfection.  Our very human imperfection.  And that includes our mortality.

Of course, it is a great hope of an artist – written or otherwise – that our work will transcend death and live well beyond our years.  Maybe it is a testament of flattery to Paul Revere that his silver sits in a cabinet hidden away from natural light or a thirsty pair of lips taking a drink of ale.  I often wonder… and just as often don’t care… what Shakespeare or whomever would think of all the interpretations and stretchings and mutations of his words in the name of perpetuity.

And love.

So maybe this is ultimately a contemplation of who owns art?  Who owns the determination of right or wrong if the creator is but dust and worm food?  Is it the observer who laughs or cries or feels a piercing into her soul?  Is it the caretaker who hides away a canvas in the dark and laments that it can’t be shown until the flecks of paint are hidden from plain view?  Or is the beauty in between all that?  The nature of the deterioration… or the translation from the creator to the life to the destruction?  

And if I as a creator don’t even own what I write or paint or photograph… is there any validity to my concept of perfection?  Isn’t the oxygen just waiting from the get go to work its magic and manipulation?

It is easy to put things on a pedestal or in a frozen snapshot of time when they were last used.  But I think I am more a user of things than admirer.  Or maybe my admiration comes through the practicality of doing things, as opposed to extoling the virtues of a thing’s possibilities.

In the kitchen at Beauport we had a great many objects on display to convey the reality of a kitchen from the early 1930’s.  One of those objects was a meat (fruit/bread) grinder.  It sat on a table with a number of dishes and some artificially created Styrofoam food to suggest the preparation of a meal (that I actually found rather weird, but cool if I were going to do a play, I guess).  I have one of those grinders.  I am going to use it next week to make bread crumbs and contaminate it with not only my naked touch, but food and the wear of use.  I keep it in a drawer, in the same bread bag that my grandmother put it in some years ago.  It still works quite well.  I can still make out the engravings on the pieces to differentiate the bread vs. the meat.  And it makes a wonderful dish.  That we all enjoy.

I don’t think it would serve the world any better if it was sitting in the midst of a pretend meal in a museum or locked away in a climate controlled area.

It works.  And that is an art.