I guess we’re never more than a few feet from an advertisement these days, and the NYC subway system is no different. The stations, platforms, and train cars are full of ads. The good news (for advertisers, at least) is that, when we’re sitting on a subway car for twenty minutes with nothing else to do, we do tend to actually look at and think about the ads. And the good news for the viewer is that advertisers sometimes then give us ads that actually require some thought.
One great case in point is the current ad campaign of Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM): “And then it hits you.” You can view the ads and read more about the campaign here. But the gist of it is a series of images of “audience members” who are stopped in their tracks (in the middle of 7th Avenue, on the subway, in the library), days later, as they’re “hit” by the experience they had at a BAM music, dance, theatre, or film event. “We’ve all had a BAM or other cultural moment come home to roost in the unlikeliest of places.”
Isn’t this what we all want, as artists and arts leaders? To give this experience –which we’ve all had ourselves – to others?
Sometimes I leave an amazing arts experience, stunned into speechlessness, and get to enjoy its “aroma” for hours, weeks, or years afterward. Other times I’ve found arts experiences, like in the BAM ads, sneaking up on me later.
Often a single moment or image or idea revisits me from an experience that otherwise didn’t move me much at the time. These experiences cause me to doubt whether “quality” or “enjoyment” are important criteria for us to use in evaluating art, or in deciding what to experience or create. If a single moment can have that impact, isn’t it worthwhile? How many moments like that do we get in life? And how will we have them if we don’t put ourselves in their way? How will we give those moments to others if we don’t take risks as artists and create something?
As Christians working in the arts, the next question about that moment might be “So what?” Being stopped in your tracks in the middle of 7th Avenue might just get you hit by a cab and nothing else. What’s the ultimate purpose of that “ah” or “aha”?
Wonder. Profound humility. Worship, if you know to call it that. The opening up of a space, a “God-shaped vacuum” that only He can fill.
I remember that empty space opening up and the awe that accompanied it, long before I knew God, at the moment I turned the last page of Pride and Prejudice, the moment I was drawn into the lives onstage at my first Shakespeare play, and the moment I opened a book of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. More recently, I turned the last page of Emma (still nuts for Austen), experienced War Horse (the play), and stood before an original O’Keeffe, and said “thank you, Lord.”
What’s your “moment”? Share them in our Advocacy section!
Part 2: Once we open that void, what’s our obligation to point to the person who can fill it?
