In my wanderings during my last trip to Dublin, Ireland, right before my screening at The Pearse Centre, I discovered The Douglas Hyde Gallery, housed in Trinity College’s Arts Building. It’s small but extremely thoughtful. I was particularly taken by its collection of books, many of them written by John Hutchinson, the gallery’s director. I bought some of the most beautiful ones, little gems that combine his thoughts on art, beauty and the ways in which he sees the world, with works of art. The first of these books, The Bridge, is filled with most of the ideals and principles he still embraces. In his own words, it’s “a set of notes, perceptions, and speculations… Threads appear and disappear; there are echoes and gaps; metaphors are mixed.”
Here is something I love from the book:
Gabriel Josipovici has written about how we might learn to feel at home in a world that is largely indifferent to our personal needs and wishes. He suggests that contentment and happiness may only be possible if we value *touch* over sight. Although sight seems to give us a sense of the wholeness of what we behold, it is only when we try to overcome distance and to *touch* the world that we become whole. If we depend on sight, which seems to offer us frictionless control of what we perceive, we may avoid some of the pains and uncertainties of living, but we will also lose our full involvement with life.
