Linn Meyers, “Our View from Here” (detail) (2016) drawing, (all photos of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, by Cathy Carver)
About a Line
There is something about a line that is eternal,
not
because we wish it so, but rather because
in separating the light from the dark, we make
a passage through
all the sundry reasons to lie still and
accept what you have been given.
(isn’t legacy disappointing?)
Something about a line that is progressive, denoting
the difference between here and
there, and marking that difference in length, in the breath
held between instances of flight,
Linn Meyers “Our View from Here” (detail) (2016)
Walking these museum halls that curve in on themselves
and are now
marked with plummeting and escalating chronicles
of what the line has survived
to tell.
Is it the undulant grain of its massed form that makes
It so
confidently optimistic:
the knowing it will rise again;
or is it the togetherness?
One line joins hands with another and soon there is a
fire along the horizon,
a swooping and soaring conflagration
that is a stay against darkness.
Linn Meyers “Our View from Here” (detail) (2016)
Why did we leave the caves?
To make edges, perimeters, and further out,
frontiers?
To make ourselves
test the more profound
question of our continuation
through the formalized sorties against space —
cold,
unbroken, unwelcoming space.
We started making lines and broke that raw space, giving ourselves an out.
Follow it even in its relentless hopefulness.
Where are you going, you ask.
No. Be quiet.
Hold the line.
Linn Meyers Our View From Here will be on display at the Hirshhorn Museum (700 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC) through May 14, 2017
