Lonnie Holley

There are poets like the great Mary Oliver, who might suggest that one’s primary function when moving through the world, for as long as they have life and the ability to move through the world, is to play close attention to that which others may foolishly call small, or quotidian. The brain and heart are both containers, with as much space as you wish for them to have, and to live is to create collections of found affections. Sounds from your beloved and familiar blocks, movements of the trees and the people beneath them, the way someone you adore may hold you for a few lingering seconds before releasing from a hug and vanishing into a crowded crosswalk. To think of our living, our making, and our loving in this way means that, at least for some of us, we may be propelled forward by the prospect of what’s next. What moment we can hold and place in our overflowing pockets. The work of Lonnie Holley is, for me, a work of this kind of accumulation and close attention. The delight of finding a sound and pressing it up against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you.