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There is a river called the Big Horn in Montana where my brother and I like to go fly-fishing. There are few memories from these trips etched more lucidly in my mind than simply wading thigh-deep in the swift clear water - feeling the constant pull of the current. There are the grassy banks of the river swaying with buzzing late afternoon heat, the tinker bell arabesques of insect life, and the snow-frosted peaks far in the distance dwarfed by the circling sky. I can see my brother casting upriver, almost out of sight, a slow-moving figure with a glowing filament looping over the water with a rhythm that surely must have a give-and-take relationship with time.
What I do know to be true about this place is that each time I return the waters carry a deeper meaning for me. It's as if the river has threaded a course right through my heart, mind and spirit. With each visit the river has followed me back until it's become a waypoint in my life - suffused with a certain gravity that I find increasingly irresistible and reassuring.
I'm sure that works of art have this same power
to touch us, change us, and become fixed markers in our personal narratives.
Whether the work is a poem, a symphony, a relationship or a painting I believe
that this transformative power is equally present. Exposure to the arts causes
an alchemic change within us.
I wish you many such touchstones in your life - grounding, liberating, reverberating. I hope you encounter one in these pages - but wherever you find them, may they show you the way to yourself.
Matt Barry