Urban Light

 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Title: Urban Light
Artist: Chris Burden (1946 - 2015)
Type: Assemblage
Year: 2008
Dimensions: (320.5in X 686.5in X 704.5in)
Location: Los Angeles County Museum of Art

photo credit: Experiencing Los Angeles Blog

God, I think, is a son of a bitch. You can call me a heretic, but you can't say I'm not a believer. Two Born Agains ensured the vital roots of my belief with tactics that would probably violate the Geneva Convention. After my father died and my mother grew terminally ill, a question arose that has challenged my faith since college: If God exists, how could God allow so much atrocity to occur in this world? While there are and have been beautiful things in my life, there are and have been deeply tragic and evil things in my life too. Something doesn't add up. I have fallen into a religious bergschrund, somewhere between the church and atheism and I can't seem to find the surface. Id est, if God and I had a Facebook relationship status, it would be: It's Complicated.

The tragedy of the believer, it is deeper than the tragedy of the non-believer.  - Elie Wiesel

God and I may be on the outs, but it doesn't mean you and God can't have a lovely relationship. I think we all know how some relationships are easy and some, well, they repeatedly test every ounce of our sanity, so we ignore their calls and dodge behind objects to avoid them. Art, on the other hand, is easy for me. I regard art with a reverence significant enough to be near spiritual. If you watch me walk into a gallery or museum, my hands automatically clasp behind me. Positively supplicant. So when I found myself at Chris Burden's Urban Light installation on Wilshire Blvd, the fact that 202 historic streetlamps (originally lighting the Southern California streets in the 1920's and 1930's) were arranged in the form of a classical Greek temple was not lost on me. 

And what is a temple? The dictionary calls it a building devoted to the worship of, or regarded as the dwelling place of a god or gods, or other objects of religious reverence. In this temple of salvaged streetlamps, I felt the same awe, safety, and peace a Jewish person might feel when they go to temple. 

October 27, 2018. Eleven temple goers - people seeking community, perhaps some praise songs, and perhaps also an uplifting message from their Rabbi- were gunned down and violently murdered by a hate-filled lunatic in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. It was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on US soil, ever. The pain of the friends and families of the victims is excruciating. The Jewish community was rocked to its core. Pittsburgh was too. Ditto the world. Suddenly temples no longer feel safe.

When innocent blood has been shed, something doesn't add up. It never does. It is not surprising that I find myself drawn, but uncomforted by the words of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel.

"Some people who read my first book, Night, they were convinced that I broke with the faith and broke with God. Not at all. I never divorced God. It is because I believed in God that I was angry at God, and still am. But my faith is tested, wounded, but it's here. So whatever I say, it's always from inside faith, even when I speak the way occasionally I do about the problems I had, questions I had. Within my traditions, you know, it is permitted to question God, even to take Him to task."

I did not pray to God this week. I had nothing nice to say to him. Instead, when I needed peace, I revisited Urban Light temple in my mind, and when I looked up the artist's statement for the Urban Light installation,"it is a statement about what constitutes a sophisticated society - safe after dark and beautiful to behold." Wait. Did God just slide into my DM's?

Squirrel Hill and Pittsburgh have some work ahead. As a people, we cannot be complacent or fall into despair. We need to leave our respective silos and strive for inclusion...nay, we must *active fucking verb* INCLUDE! INCLUDE! INCLUDE! because it is the bedrock of a sophisticated and progressive society and because of it, we will be something beautiful to behold.

May our faith in what our temples stand for, wherever we find them, continue to inspire us to fill the dark corners of this world with goodness and light. And for goodness sake, VOTE.

VOTE ON TUESDAY!!!!

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

In an effort to find my new normal, I'm getting back to some of the things that regularly happen or give me joy, even if it feels a little weird to talk about fashion when there are greater problems looming in the world. Last week my workplace was in pure triage mode, working very hard on the logistics of last week's funerals and shivas for the victims, coordinating with media etc, but we are also working very hard on the security and resiliency needs of the Jewish community into the future. It feels good to be doing boots on the ground work in the wake of this tragedy. If you are able to donate to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh's Victims of Terror fund, that link is here. If you just came here for the pictures and the fashion (outfit details are below) but some how got roped into reading my words, thank you. Thank you for reading my blog this week.

What I Wore: 

Sunnies: Ray-Ban aviators, here!

Faux suede motorcycle jacket: past season Bar III

Stooges t-shirt: here!

Pleated skirt: Mango, here!

Purse: vintage Carlos Falchi

Sneakers: Nike Lunarlon/ Converse Chuck Taylor collaboration, similar here!

Your bosom friend from Pittsburgh, 

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