Lotus and Lemons

It must be summer because the Anderson Gallery began their happy hour series tonight.

The kick-off was a reprise of one of my favorite events there, the WRIR scavenger hunt, where audio meets visual and guests like me get to figure out which matches are made in heaven.

Using the Anderson's two new excellent summer shows, "Sanford Biggers: Codex" and "Jacob Lawrence: The Harriet Tubman Series," DJ Michael Miracle had come up with songs to match fifteen of the artworks.

There were boomboxes in all the galleries as people took their list of songs and art and tried to match up which were inspired by what.

While Michael's show "Lotus Land" played on the boomboxes, we moved from gallery to gallery trying to see what he had seen in the art, all the while listening to his show.

The challenge was how thematically similar the works in each exhibit were, meaning certain songs could have gone with more than one piece of art.

But he's a clever one, that Michael Miracle, and as I chatted with others doing the hunt, I found that many of them were stymied in the same way I was.

And just like the first scavenger hunt two years ago, a big part of the pleasure of it was going back through the exhibits repeatedly, seeing new details each time.

While others finished up or gave up and went outside for the ice cream social part of the evening, I kept at it, sure I could figure this thing out.

When they announced the two-minute deadline, I turned my sheet in, still questioning two every similar song titles and not sure which painting went with which.

And, ta-da. It was a three-way tie and, no, I wasn't one of the three.

Sure enough, the two I'd gotten wrong were the two I'd repeatedly switched back and forth, not quite certain which was which.

So at least in my own head, I knew how close I'd been. In fact, if I'd turned in my sheet earlier before I started erasing, it might have been a four-way tie.

I consoled myself with romance.

The Westhampton was showing the Danish film "The Bald Hairdresser," which had been renamed for American sensibilities "Love is All You Need."

The perceived need to do that says so much about us as a people, doesn't it?

One of my favorite things about the film was how the characters moved seamlessly between Danish, English and Italian, with only occasional subtitles.

All the Danes had great big, beautiful blue eyes.

Another perk was that most of it was set in sunny and lemon-filled Sorrento, Italy, as gorgeous a place for romance as could be imagined.

That I was there just last Fall and remembered it well didn't hurt, either, especially given the magnificent cinematography.

Because the main characters are middle-aged, it wasn't a typical romantic comedy, instead showing two people who'd been around the block a few times and took a while to acknowledge the feelings developing between them instead of immediate sunshine and rainbows.

You know, like in middle-aged real life.

They even quoted Henry Miller.

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.

A truism, even at middle age.

Give me a Danish rom-com any time and hold the corny Americanized title.