Paul Klee, upper right, continues to engage his fellows. Musician, painter, craftsman, architect, creator of worlds, he seeks those who feed, share, and actualize his vision.

Consider his Twittering Machine: mere mechanism moving fresh harmonies. The wire-bird quartet are each distinctive. A leading soprano darts forward, voicing new directions. The alto, shrinking from prominence, adds undercurrents. The tenor, an assumed favorite, keeps the quartet moving. Unconcerned with attention, hearing best the accompanying voices, the bass improvises uplifting support. Turn the crank, faster, slower, with variations in speed, adding voiceings, considering accompanying situations, voices and words, as a crankturner you metamorphosise from a mere technician to an actualizing composer: a fellow singer, both limited and actualized by physics.

Klee looks out, appreciative equally of the mechanics which enable his gestures and the spirit which engages experimentation and actualizes performance. How far and at what speed will the head incline or decline? What input will shape those eyelids to output one of innumerable inviting or retarding expressions?  And how does your face form now, how does your pulse change?

Klee’s viaduct’s revolt, breaking free from uniformity, from subordination to mere common function. His vision and art builds on varied influences working fresh in new circumstances, and he is himself one of the supports, a pipe piping new songs others may freshen. In 1937 Klee joined his fellows in a Nazi exhibition, a display of “decadent” art. Good German citizens, gathering for mutual satisfaction, would condemn weak individualities which might dilute German supremacy, or prudent citizens would learn to keep any such interests private. Germanic viaducts function by reducing every part to collective function, each part a replica of a functioning patriotic companion. Klee’s sense of harmony lies elsewhere, and survives in this, among other visions, carrying nourishment still, one among many tributaries of creative activity.

Observe your mail: envelopes take shape, each a potential face, each a voice capable of speech, attentive to input, of actualizing fresh directions. Each envelope exists as an unread cover, a child in need of attention. Each envelope exists as an invitation, a speaker ready to join in group activity. Klee’s Ghost Letter still seeks a voice. Perhaps the curlicue heart, in 1922, utters “nein”. No may be the prelude to fresh energies, not merely resistant to Nazi attitudes and actions, but free from them, looking forward. Nein, of course, may also be the extermination of such individuals, one at a time or in groups, by gas or by conditioned repression.

Klee, shortly before his death, offered up his Bell Angel,
a figure all but unnoticeable to those who seldom listen. This figure offers little to sight, preferring to inner voices. But the bell’s motions invite attention: what is she leaving, what will she approach? The face suggests determination, not fear or disgust, not pleasure or approval, but inviting determination. For those who listen, actualizing her appearance requires actualizing her circumstances, requires sharing her current environment. As she moves, she sings.  When we listen, we may respond. As we listen, so shall we sing. Thus begins fresh harmonies.

Klee’s Death and Fire shows one of the visions in 1937 his Bell Angel would see. “Tod” (death) appears in the landscape, the circle, and the face. “Tod” reappears in the mouth and eyes of our companion. But the expression shares with the bell-angel determination, inviting fellow observers, fellow actors, to action. Resisting fascism and censorship, of course, is a possibility. But moving on, seeking fresh creations, stoppable perhaps, but not reducible by suppressions to come.