Museum: MOMA

Today I visited my famous friends. We're on a first name basis now, so it was great running into Pablo, Sal, Rene, and Henri.

I find it quite thrilling to see a work of art that you've studied and discussed for so many years, live and in the flesh. I think it's titillating to see the brush strokes, the pencil lines, and the canvas staples. I like getting up real close and finding the mistakes. I like knowing that it's all real.

I like to wonder whether we make too big a deal out of things, like art, and how it comes to be that a painting is worth more than a life. I like discovering how some paintings are enormously huge, and others are surprising small.

I like seeing that one painting, you know the one, the one you always think about, the one you always speak about. I like that moment when you see it, under the lights, and the frame around it isn't gold, but quite an understated brushed metal. I like how it just sits there, quietly, smug, discreet. And crowds gather round it, pointing, staring at it solemnly.

I like wondering how art really changes the world. Does it? Is it really that significant, or do we just like the drama?

I like wondering whether the world today is in a place where it can handle newness anymore. Are people still making such bold statements? Are people still breaking ground? Or is the ground so shattered that our ears are numb to the sounds of the drills and we are jaded by the fractured cement around us. If you make something new now, it falls through the cracks, silently. But still we stand, agape, at the blue paintings that changed the world 100 years ago.

I went to the MOMA by myself, because I wanted to see what it would be like to take all this in without having to hear what anyone else thought, without having to pace myself, without having to be judged for how quickly I walk through the halls. I have ADD in museums. I am judgemental. I don't like to give anyone credit that they don't deserve. I walk briskly through 3 halls in a half hour. And then I see one painting that takes my breath away in a flash, and I will stand in front of it for 20 minutes. That's the feeling of beauty. That's what it means to dive in. I save all my energy for those moments. It's all instinct. It's thrilling. I, know what I like.

I don't know if you understand what I'm talking about. But that's OK. Here are the two new friends I brought home with me today for my own home. And no, I didn't steal them off the walls.