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Message |
| Posted By: |
Uncle Tantra |
| Date: |
5-May-2003-01:18:47 |
| Subject: |
Taliesin's Apprentices |
Yesterday I took a short Road Trip. Technically, it's a Road Trip within a Road Trip because I'm currently away from home on a consulting assignment, my last before moving to France. And it was a fine Spring day so I thought I'd take advantage of the weather and take a drive. I really wasn't driving to anywhere, I was just driving, cruising through the Wisconsin countryside in a little red sports car, digging it, feeling the wind in my hair and no particular need for a destination.
And then I saw a road sign that told me a town called Spring Green was only 35 miles away, to the right. And I remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright's original home and studio, Taliesin, was near Spring Green. "Way cool," thought I. I turned right.
After all, a visit a few years to his other home and studio, Taliesin West, had inspired me to write a fun story, with a cool narrator, and I wound up liking it (and him) so much I put it at the end of Road Trip Mind, and allowed the narrator to have the last word. And a fine last word it was, too. :-) Anyway, a short time later I arrived at Taliesin. I cannot tell you how short a period of time, because to do so would suggest that I violated a number of Wisconsin traffic laws, but I will say that society should neither underestimate the inspiring effect of a red sports car and a fine Spring day on the driving habits of an old fart nor judge him too harshly for succumbing to such inspiration. :-)
There is only one word for Taliesin. Stunning. Beautiful. Amazing. Jaw-dropping. Ok, ok that's more than one word, but you get the picture. To be honest, if I was forced to limit myself to single words, and pick the one I felt most represented the wonder that is Taliesin, I would still need two of them.
Mr. Wright's grandparents emigrated to America from Wales and, according to most historians, he chose the name because his design is wrapped around and into the brow of the hill, literally bestowing it with a crescent crown. In Welsh the word Taliesin means "shining brow." There is a better story about where the name came from, but I will save it for later because because well, because it's *better*, and I'm telling this story, so you'll just have to wait. That's just how us storytellers do things. :-)
Anyway, The first one-word description would be *Taoist*, because I don't think I have ever been in a place that as strikingly reveals the simple truth of Lao-tzu's verses about the flow of nature and how, if we atune ourselves with that flow, our lives can flow, too.
The second word would be *inspiring*. Mr. Wright, his life, and his work inspire the hell outa me, and I thought I'd take a few moments to share some of that inspiration with you.
I'm not the only one who finds him inspiring, by the way. A noted art historian whose name I have forgotten once wrote an essay for which he was scorned by his fellow countrymen because in it he stated his opinion that Europe had produced many great masters -- Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Vermeer, etc. -- but that America has produced only one -- Frank Lloyd Wright.
And they can find no record that he ever graduated from high school. He just showed up one day at the University of Wisconsin wearing a wide-brimmed "The Shadow Knows"-style hat, a white scarf wrapped around his neck, and a long, flowing cape. (He wore variations on this same theme for the rest of his life.) Anyway, he somehow talked them into admitting him, and because UW didn't offer a program in architecture, he studied engineering. Yup. Frank Lloyd Wright never formally studied architecture. Go figure.
He graduated, and began designing homes for paying clients, interspersing them with designs for the Hillside School that his aunts ran on the Spring Green property (literally the first coeducational boarding school in Wisconsin) and a couple of houses on the same property for his sisters. Finally, because he had achieved somewhat of a name for himself as an innovative architect but had attracted few paying clients, he decided to move back to Spring Green and take on apprentices, to start a school to help pay the bills. He didn't call them students because they were apprentices, in every sense of the word. Wright's philosophy was "Learn By Doing," and they *did* a lot. They drafted, they studied architecture, but they also were required to cook, to clean and maintain the grounds, and to build a house for Wright himself -- Taliesin.
You can see as you wander through the house that many of these talented architectural students were not equally talented craftsmen. Given Wright's philosophy of "organic architecture," most of the materials came from the area -- oak sawn from trees on the property, limestone quarried two miles away -- and many of the timbers still show the saw marks and mistakes made by his apprentices. These materials were not chosen only because of philosophy. They were cheap. Wright was not a rich man. He drew his designs and his apprentices attempted to create them, using whatever materials they could lay their hands on. And it worked. You walk into a room and the first thing you notice is a remarkable hanging lamp, for which there is no other word but Art. Then you walk closer and realize it was built using 30 cents worth of scrap plywood. Learning by doing, on a budget.
Just to give you an example of how thoroughly these apprentices "learned by doing," at one point in his career Mr. Wright heard through the grapevine that Alexander Guggenheim was interested in meeting him to talk about the new museum he wanted to build to house his art collection. Wright *wanted* that commission, so he invited Guggenheim to visit him at Taliesin, and then, to impress him, had his students add an entire new wing to the house. In two weeks. They worked night and day. Wright got the contract. They learned by doing, all right, and by watching how a master does things. Sound familiar? :-)
But it wasn't all work. Every apprentice had to own a tuxedo or an evening gown, because at night they dressed up and had formal dinners, followed by a live musical concert or a dance recital or a movie, all held there on the property. Wright was aware that the apprentices had to learn architecture, but he was also aware that as architects they would have to wine and dine rich clients and be comfortable in that environment. Sound familiar again? :-)
Mr. Wright loved art. Not just creating it in the form of his buildings and his books and his other designs, but appreciating it, living with it, having art all around him. But he was far from a wealthy man, and was constantly in debt. In fact, when he died his family found that he had not paid property taxes on the estate for over 30 years. So when he landed the commission for the museum, this was quite a windfall for him. Guggenheim flew to Japan, where Wright was living at the time, and handed him $500,000 in cash (many millions in today's dollars). Rather than paying his bills, Wright spent the entire amount on Asian art, which he brought home and put in his house.
Many of these pieces, the ones that were not later sold off to pay debts, are still there, and one of the jewels among them is a Chinese carpet that he bought at an auction of items that had belonged to China's royal family. The carpet is huge -- it took 50 people over 30 years to create, is today considered the largest carpet of its kind still existing in the world, and was recently appraised at being worth $2.3 million. But it didn't quite fit into the sitting room area Wright intended it for, so he took a pair of scissors to it and cut it to fit, rather than move two columns. The columns were his, part of the overall design of his house, and the carpet was just a carpet. Humility was never Mr. Wright's strong suit.
But perseverance was. Taliesin has been built three times.
One night while Mr. Wright was away speaking in Chicago, an employee who had been told that he was going to be laid off had a somewhat psychotic episode. He piled brush around the base of the house, poured gasoline on it, and set Taliesin on fire. Then he waited outside and, as Wright's wife and children and several others came running out, killed them all with an axe. Wright had his apprentices rebuild the house, but at some point the house was struck by lightning and burned down again. He rebuilt Taliesin a third time, but began spending his winters in Arizona, where he discovered the property on which Taliesin West stands.
He and his apprentices built the second house themselves. It, too is *Taoist*, but for me its main value is as *inspiration*. I'm starting to get up there in terms of age. Wright discovered the site at age 70, while camping. And over HALF of his entire output as an architect and an artist took place between the period when he built Taliesin West and his death at age 91. I've never found anything *more* inspiring to a late bloomer such as myself.
But my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright story is of the day he first discovered the Tao Te Ching. According to his family, he sat there, reading Lao-tzu's words about the Tao and the flow of nature and the need to be in tune with that flow, words written thousands of years ago, and his first reaction was exasperation and petulant anger. Why? Because he was disappointed and disturbed to find out that somebody else had figured this stuff out before he did.
I can identify. Ego is a bitch. :-)
But, at the same time, ego may be as essential to the architectural genius as it is, in a strange way, for the spiritual seeker. For an artist to be able to create, he really has to believe in himself, believe in the purity of his dreams, believe that it is worth the effort required to manifest them as works of art. Ego. For the seeker of enlightenment, you have to have enough strength to believe in *your* experiences, *your* dreams, and have the courage to believe in them even though others do not, even though others tell you that you are crazy. Ego. But in both cases it leads somewhere.
Frank Lloyd Wright's ego led him many places, where he left behind a taliesin -- a shining brow -- on the crest of many hills. And because of that ego, or perhaps in spite of it, many of those buildings are still around to inspire us today.
Inspiration is a good thing. And say what you will about Wright's ego, he felt a need to share his inspiration with others. His apprentices *paid* to work themselves to the bone building his houses and other projects. But they felt it was worth it because they got to be in the aura of an inspiring master, and have some of that inspiration rub off on them. I never studied with Mr. Wright, but I know the experience from my own life. And it was worth every penny, every stone lifted and set into place, every all-nighter. Learn by doing.
But I'm done *doing* this story, so that's about it, all I have to say about Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin.
What? What's that you say? I still owe you a story, the "better" one I alluded to earlier for where the name Taliesin came from? Oh, all right if you insist. :-)
Taliesin does mean "shining brow" in Welsh. But it also happens to be the name of the most famous bard in Celtic history, a near-mythical figure who traveled from town to town, wearing a long cape and carrying his harp, which he used to accompany his tales of Gwidion and Arthur and their mystical adventures. A bard tells his tales not for himself, but to inspire and uplift the people he meets. Mr. Wright reputedly felt a kinship with Taliesin. And he may have been onto more than he suspected. In one of his verses, the original Taliesin wrote:
Three primary essentials of genius:
An eye that can see nature.
A heart that can feel nature.
And a boldness that dares follow it.
For all we know, Frank Lloyd Wright may have read these words, found yet another seer who had experienced the same visions he had, and grown exasperated that he wasn't the first to have such realizations. But for all we know, given reincarnation, he may have *written* the original verse himself, and had no need to get exasperated. :-) What we do know is that in a very real sense he became Taliesin's apprentice. He allowed Taliesin's simple philosophy to become his life, and allowed that life -- despite his ego, despite tragedies that would have felled a lesser man, despite age -- to inspire millions of people. He realized his dreams, and in so doing inspired others to realize theirs. We should all be so fortunate as to have such an ego.
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