Yo-Yo Ma: Citizen Artist & Host on Encapsulating Awe

 ​Beauty is that in the presence of which we feel more alive. John O'Donohue
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While listening to Krista Tippett’s interview of Yo-Yo Ma, two ideas stood out amidst a discussion of beauty: that of being a “Citizen Artist” and of being a welcoming host to your audience.
 
Now I am certainly not a world-class virtuoso like Yo-Yo Ma. And music is very different than painting in a many ways. Kandinsky considered music the highest form of art because, having no physical form, it is maximally abstract. Music is often created with, and performed for, others. I paint in solitude. Their commonalities are beauty, inspiration, and improvisation, and if created from a deep place, an interior exploration of the Big Questions one is holding. The work is an offering.

Yo-Yo Ma shared some thoughts about beauty: that it is transcendent, a moment when “a transfer of life” takes place, the encapsulation of an momentary experience of the awe of something larger than one’s self, of “the vastness of what humans have been trying to express for millennia,” an attempt to code the human cognition of wonder. I know that during the best times of creating work, in a flow state, I feel I am in the center of that awe.

Certainly being a Citizen Artist is a core aspect of my work and identity. I don’t know if my activism and my experiences of awe are encapsulated in my work in a way others can perceive, but that is certainly an intention and a hope of mine.
 
Yo-Yo Ma said that when he's giving a performance you are his guests. Being your host as a performer before a live audience is quite different than "hosting" you from the solitude of my studio. I rarely see you, and never while I’m “playing.” But I welcome you to listen deeply to my paintings and enter into your own awareness of wonder through them. I hope they open you to something you might otherwise not have experienced.

You can listen to the interview at https://onbeing.org/programs/yo-yo-ma-music-happens-between-the-notes-jul2018