Cori Connors: 36. DANCING ON BLOSSOMS

Beth & Tess dancing on cherry blossoms.

Tonight we hopped in the car and headed to Salt Lake City on a whim. I'd read about an art installation at Memory Grove that is only here for a week. I looked intriguing. An Icelandic-Danish artist named Olafur Eliasson has created a visual and auditory experience that uses disappearing sounds from the Great Salt Lake. Our tired old salty lake is on hospice, caught in a drought for years. She is losing her lifeblood that flows from the mountains every spring. Our winter decided to head east this year and leave us here in the west high and dry. Literally.

Our daughter Annie and her two girls Beth and Tess joined us. We unfolded our camp chairs under a fully blossomed cherry tree; her fallen petals formed a white blanket under our feet. The snow-white branches above us sheltered us from most of the rain that fell.

The exhibit was a massive sphere in the middle of the park, surrounded by large speakers. We humans clustered ourselves around it. The artist had created a visual that projects inside the globe while a symphony of disappearing sounds from the Great Salt Lake pulsed through the speakers. The piece lasts a half hour. By 10 pm we were on our way home. The objective of the exhibit, sponsored by the Salt Lake Arts Council, is to give folks a visual and auditory experience to connect them to the vanishing lake to the west of us. Perhaps the symphony is a lament. I found it symbolic that waves were the vehicle for expression: Sound waves and light waves testifying for their sister water , whose waves are wilting.

My tiny phone camera couldn't capture the magic

Because it was a rainy night I anticipated a sparse gathering for this outdoor show. I was wrong. I love being wrong sometimes. A large crowd had gathered, sitting on blankets under umbrellas. It thrilled my frumpy spirit to see unknown neighbors in our community flocking to experience art.

I am reminded tonight of the power of artistic expression to feed my soul. I've been residing in my left brain, trying to figure out how to deal with the rapidly falling state of affairs in our country and in our world. It feels like we are spiraling fast. Art gently lifted me from my panic. It was refreshing and heart warming for me to join a crowd of people to engage in artistic expression, not as a political statement or intellectual exchange, but simply to inhale and exhale without having to justify ourselves... to be connected by our mere presence, regardless of race, color, religion or political alignment. Art, like nature, is the great unifier. Art about nature doubles that.

Stripping art from our culture is going to do us in! We must not let that happen. Partaking of art opens capillaries in our spirits, enriching our energies and nourishing our overtaxed souls. I realized tonight that I often don't realize how much I need to immerse myself in art until I experience it and feel new life flowing rapidly into me. I hadn't realized how thirsty I was.

So here's your reminder: Go swim in art for a good solid hour or so. It's good to create it, of course, but partaking without creating has its own merits. Then pause for a moment and see how you feel.