Lughnasa Waxing Harvest Moon
Sin and Salvation has ended for me. It will leave without another tour on my part, though I may go check it out once more on my own. One of the most pleasurable tour experiences I’ve had in what is now 8 + years of volunteering at the MIA, this show brought together a number of interests of mine, including the PRB.
With most things I do I hold myself to a very high level of expectation, a curse left over from days as a good student. Maybe I should say, as they do often in the Hebrew Scriptures, a curse and blessing. The blessing usually comes in the preparation which always gets my full attention. I love research. The curse begins to strike soon after, that is, when any work has to go beyond my study and into the world.
First, there is the anxiety. Have I prepared well? Have I prepared enough? Have I focused on the right material? If these questions sound familiar from finals week, you know what I’m talkin’ about. Then, there is the time just before and sometimes in the very beginning of a presentation or tour when the same questions come flooding back, always in a place where there is no more hope of doing more.
At some point, usually after an introductory moment, the anxiety subsides and the presentation takes over on its own. Sometimes, a critical look or remark can throw me even then. That’s the worst, to be thrown off after having found my stride.
Sometimes then, at the very end, when the preparation and the presentation is over, if people make a substantive show of appreciation, the blessing returns. At this time it is a great boost, a confirmation of what I always wish for, the coming together of content and audience for an aha moment, or a huh! I hadn’t thought of that.
Today, on this last tour of the Sin and Salvation show, I experienced a double blessing: a show of support with good questions, interaction, clapping, people shaking my hand, others staying behind to discuss their insights, even a woman who went on the very same tour a week ago and returned with a friend to do it all over again. This was a double blessing because as a special exhibition I had given my tour over and over. Most of the time it was well received, but this affirmation at the end gave all the research and other tours a positive glow.
Sin and Salvation can have that effect, I guess.
