How Lausanne
By Hantian Zhang
How, this summer, we arrive to spend a day in Lausanne. How we move like a breeze, up along the Escaliers du Marché and down past the Cathedral. How the dark red roofs shimmer downhill, framed by a sliver of Lake Geneva, a streak of the Alps, and the dome of sky vaulting high with the morning light.
How, then, our eyes adjust to the man-made darkness at the Collection de L’art Brut, our steps guided by the limelight. How a face writhes like in Munch’s The Scream. How a countenance emerges from ballpen-drawn lines and dots. How the arabesque twirls and crawls, covering one panel after another. How an army of woodcut figurines rests and recuperates on the display shelf, gilded but gnome-like.
How we bend closer for the artists’ biographies. How some were confined in prisons. How others revolved in and out of psychiatric wards. How still others made art in solitude, in basements and attics. How the concept of “Art brut” itself poses the question: would you buy this art at a street fair? How the discussion meanders to the curator’s uplifting role, the museum itself a frame that legitimatizes.
How, back under the sun, projects from my own childhood glisten in the nooks of memory: hand-drawn maps of imaginary kingdoms, a Jurassic Park kneaded out of play-doh, albums of stamps now collecting dust. How fulfilled the heart once was, by such nuggets of materiality and carefree dedication. How growing-up frames them all as unproductive. How their very existence falls through the cracks of adult chores.
How we find ourselves in the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery afterward. How the linden trees green the skin and the eyes. How the lawns relieve the soles and the mind. How I bow to Han Suyin’s headstone engraved by this line, “There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.” How quiet the power such words burnish in the writer. How a single sentence could frame a many-splendored life.
And how the trip turns out about framing. How Lausanne frames this day in memory.
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Author Bio: Hantian Zhang is a writer based in San Francisco. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Diagram, The Offing, Eclectica, Manifest-Station, Waxwing, and elsewhere. He is a data scientist by day.