Aga Khan- The Middle East
I
like to read my horoscope every Thursday and decide whether or not I like it
for that week. This week he completely nailed me. The following just ain’t gonna
happen.
There
is a 97 percent chance that you will NOT engage in the following activities
within the next 30 days: naked skydiving, tight-rope walking between two
skyscrapers, getting drunk on a mountaintop, taking ayahuasca with Peruvian
shamans in a remote rural hut, or dancing ecstatically in a muddy pit full of
snakes.
What
I have found in this life is that it is just as important to know what you ain’t
gonna do as it is to know what you are going to do.
This
week I visited the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto which is a showcase of some
wonderful Middle Eastern art objects- glass, ceramics, textiles, inlaid wood.
It is a wonderful museum. So many look to the Far East for inspiration which completely overlooks the wonderful craft objects of the Middle East- Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia, Irag which was the hub of trade between China and Europe. There are objects in the Aga Khan made in the 3rd century that will blow your minds and wonder if we have really progressed.
I changed my phones and lost all my pictures.
There
were art objects in the museum that without a word of a lie would take years to
complete. The artistry and fine detail are out of this world. These
craftspeople didn’t have to make a living. They had a sultan, king, emperor
that was keeping them alive while they undoubtedly slaved over the details of
these objects of beauty.
The
system of patronage is mostly gone and it leaves us to make what we can to stay
alive and still try to create beauty.
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