Jennifer Garvey Berger

Spoken in English. Their words, as they said them.

If If we were to take that fundamentally kind of artistic approach of discomfort is a feeling and a feeling is the quest of the artist, right, to generate a feeling. My son is, getting his master's degree in philosophy and he thinks a lot about art. His first degree is in art, curation. And he's constantly telling me I'm wrong about art. You know, just and that I'm drawn to the beautiful, which he thinks is completely immaterial.

His definition of art is a thing that moves us in some way, a thing that makes us feel. It's been really interesting to take that definition with me into museums, the street, everywhere. And think about that definition, something that makes me feel something, as art.

And we were My daughter and I were at a museum in New York. There was a, a modern art exhibition and there was, a kind of installation in front of me that was quite beautiful. And there was an installation behind me that was cacophonous. It was, several different radio stations static from different countries layered over each other. And, and some kind of strobe like thing that was happening. And I had no interest in going into the room in which that installation was. But it came to me because it was sound and it was light. And as I stood kind of looking at this very beautiful thing in front of me, I became more and more disturbed by the sounds and the flashing lights were kind of off to the side. And when we left, I thought, Oh, that that was art. That that thing that actually made me experience sensations in my body as my body resisted the sound of the static, that's art.

And recently here in this community, we've had a a decision to make that we struggled with. I don't even think anybody understands why we struggled with it. The decision is actually very straightforward. But anyway, we tumbled over ourselves. And, and we had many meetings and we sent emails and people got very stirred up. Everybody stirred up about something else. Right? Everybody sort of picked something from the stew pot, that resonated with their own identity in some way and was stirred up by it. And there was a you know, and I got stirred up too. I wrote long emails.

And there was a piece of me that thought, oh, this is art. This this engagement we're having with one another, this is beautiful. It's not pleasant, but it's so alive and it's so exposing of what matters. And you know, this perfectionist client was very frustrating.

And it really exposed what mattered to the design team. Ultimately, to her, she she became a friend.

And I understood where she was coming from, what her quest was about.

I think this is If we could think of that as art, we might have less suffering along with the along with the anguish of difficulty.

I really think humanity has what it takes to make it through these, you know, very threatening times that we live in.

But not if we drive huge cars with one person and not if we spend our life's work in polishing our egos or our bank accounts. These these no longer they no longer seem like moral endeavors at a time when we are so collectively threatened.

And yet we often can't help ourselves. So I've been paying a lot of attention to how do we help ourselves.

Which of course brings us back to love, brings us back to this thing that the thing we crave is relationships, belonging, being seen. And so If we could access that more easily, I'd be able to buy smaller cars. I'd be able to spend our time solving problems, collaborating together, experimenting.

That would be great.