Praise Song for the Day: In Praise of Elizabeth Alexander
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Today begins a new weekday feature on Medium, which elevates the things in our lives that are praiseworthy. Like a daily gratitude practice, Praise Song for the Day will be a way of appreciating what we know we know in a different and perhaps even profoundly deeper way. This column takes its name and hopeful spirit from a poem of the same title by Elizabeth Alexander called “Praise Song for the Day” delivered twelve years ago at the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. In no way is the poem political. Neither will this column be, which can be shared, appreciated, and treated as a way to be grateful every day of your own life. Alexander’s poem and life inspire a kind of gratitude in me that will launch other thoughts and resonance of gratitude. Whether they are people, place, names, ideas, songs, actors, kindnesses, etc., Praise Song for the Day (the column) selects one “thing” to lift up and examine closely.
It’s been reported, that Henry David Thoreau, perhaps the subject of a future Praise Song of the Day piece, would walk around his beloved Concord, Massachusetts town during his lifetime between 1817–1862, examining every nook, leaf, and corner of where he lived. In fact, Thoreau took up residence at the nearby pond for two years, two months, and two days to see if he could live his life “deliberately” and simply, perhaps seeing what others missed in their daily comings and goings. After all, Thoreau was a surveyor in his work life, which must have given him a keen insight into his own beloved community.
I see Elizabeth Alexander in the same way as Thoreau. More than anything she is a surveyor. She drinks in the world and the light with her keen eyes, noting the boundaries and other data to the precise contours of their existence, refracting them through her lens. In her most current job as surveyor-of sorts and as the president of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Alexander supports artists and arts organizations, scanning their greatest needs while offering insight and support for their continued relevance. The Mellon Foundation has stepped up and leaned in heroically these last ten months announcing financial safety-nets for the arts. As many organizations have gone dark since the start of the pandemic in March of 2020, the Mellon Foundation announced in August of 2020 that it would support 1,500 artists and arts organizations. It truly has been a frightening time for the survival of creatives. Many of whom had to think about how they would keep the lights on or make ends meet.
As an artist herself, Elizabeth Alexander’s generosity of spirit comes from being a person who deeply considers others, embracing those on the margins into her world of care and precision. She sees the world plainly and with hope. Even in her own grief, which certainly informs her work at the Mellon Foundation, Alexander wrote a most astounding memoir called Light of the World about her life with the artist Ficre Ghebreyesus who died way too young, leaving Alexander with his exquisite works of art, two sons, and a trove of remembrances. In discussing what art and the artists capture, Alexander writes:
“Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave.” ~ Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World
Elizabeth Alexander’s surveyor’s eye and artistic generosity make for a perfect launch to the column that bears and honors the name of her poem. This homage to her work and craft should be read and read and read. [Praise Song of the Day] [Light of the World]
