Sunday Serendipity and a Sunday Poem

I recently stumbled on an epigram, a quote, an artist's statement, a passage that stopped me in my tracks.  It was among some papers I was in the process of recycling, and was by an unknown (to me) author.  What astonished me was the brevity and clarity with which it captured the "what" of what happens when you actively and willingly engage with a work of art -- the unexplainable and instant living communication that flashes between painting and viewer, poem and reader, music and listener. It's an electrifying process, a dialogue, really. In the vernacular, you "get it."  But the experiential process of "getting it" cannot be 'splained.  Indeed, the more you try to 'splain the "it" or the "what," or the "how," the quicker it disappears. The process is magical.  And magic, as everyone knows, needs a spirit of quiet, open waiting in order to work.

Here's the lovely quote, which, in its own way, is also a wonderful poem for your Sunday.

Art's capacity to elude cognizance is electrifying.  To require interpretation is to neutralize its charge; to be receptive is to experience its livewire. 
                                                                      Helianthe W. Stevig