Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin home

Sunday June 28, 2009

Taliesin. Frank Lloyd Wright's home is a thing of beauty. I'm not one to easily part with $110 but the tour of this home and grounds was extraordinary. The design, spacing and overall aesthetics made one feel contemplative whether one felt so inclined or not. It just had a magical and captivating feeling. Walking through the rooms and workspaces one gets the feeling that they created something very special in this environment.

A decade ago I was in the MOMA standing in front of a Picasso. I had this overwhelming sense of bearing witness to greatness, knowing that Picasso had at one time stood before his masterpiece. That was sort of what I felt going over and around Frank's place. He was a genius, no doubt about that. There's a certain refreshment one gets being in the vicinity of such people, people who are not bound by conventional thinking, morality or religion. I add religion because, on reflection, particularly after listening to Richard Dawkins' “The God Delusion”, I have to agree with many of his conclusions. Most of the great thinkers throughout history were either non-religious, agnostic or outright atheists. Religion, on the whole, has been an overall blight to humanity no matter how the apologists try to spin it. Genius, throughout the ages, has had to be circumspect in the best of times or covert in the darker eras in whatever they were working on, so as not to ignite the fire of religious backlash. I do hope the upcoming century sees science in the ascendancy and religion falling out of favor. Far too many people have been deceived, oppressed and killed in its name, whereas society can be quite moral and ethical without it. In this enlightened age, can we not dispense with the fear that is at the core of man-made, organized religion? To think that Darwin's “Origin of Species” was first published in 1859 and is still being condemned by evangelical sophists!

Oh, but I do go on. We spent a pleasant day here at Taliesin and will take the special feeling of this place home with us.