Change is a Lute

After The Lute by Thomas Wilmer Dewing ([1851-1938], United States, 1904, oil on wood panel). Italicized lines quoted from Jerome M. Foster II’s label for the painting at the National Museum of Asian Art.

I instantly feel a sense of anxiety
rather than calm.

Are they in a field, a forest, or a fog?
These women sit in anticipation
for the lute player to perform in

an idealized relationship with nature̶
one of balance, respect, and coexistence.

The reality of our environmental impact,
however, is often dissonant and exploitative,

the lute player left to admire
her wooden instrument instead
of the obscured world around her.

Our world will eventually
blur and fade away
like it does in this scene, but

the note of hopefulness when I imagine
the gathered figures as leaders and changemakers

sounds like the first pluck
of a lute string.

Dewing, Thomas Wilmer. The Lute. 1904, oil on wood panel, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C..