Call me silly and romantic (and I can assure you that I’m both) but I have always adored the song from A Chorus Line titled What I Did For Love. I am moved by it, I believe, because it epitomizes what I think we all inherently understand: that we human beings are best when we are acting on behalf of what is in us to do. Some call it what we “ache for.” Joseph Campbell famously put it as “… following our bliss.” It’s true that many of us don’t know what that is, but that’s a topic for another post, a good one I think…
Anyway, I thought of the song because I was sitting down to write about a visit I had with Guy Cross, the editor and publisher of THE Magazine in Santa Fe. He kindly took the time to come up to Truchas to see my show at Hand Artes Gallery and to share a meal with Kim and me.
Guy started THE Magazine twenty-three years ago, I think he said it was, because he had a mother who took him around to all the galleries and museums in New York City when he was growing up and he came to appreciate art and artists.
He wanted to create a place where they would be intelligently and objectively reviewed, where the reader would be exposed to and engaged by a spirit of adventure and new ideas; to be a “visible and viable presence in the local, regional, national, and international art communities.”
No small feat. But he’s done that.
And he took the time to come to Truchas because twenty-three years later he still has a lust for finding what’s new and who may be doing it.
Having spent part of an afternoon with Guy, another of my favorites springs to mind. It’s a quote by Henry David Thoreau:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”
To the very small degree I know Guy Cross, that is him, spot on.
Love to you all,
Jeane
