At The Art Museum

Deer Tick--"Art Isn't Real" (mp3)
Art Brut--"Modern Art" (mp3)

One of the ways that I'm still coming to terms with adulthood at age 52 is trying to figure out how to act at an art museum. Well, of course, I know how to behave, but I don't really know how to feel comfortable.

More than anything, I spend most of my time in an art museum doing what is some pre-conceived or developed-over-time notion of what I should be doing. I can't enjoy any moment in there because of the internal monologue going on.

It's like there is another voice inside my head that issues continual directions:

"Okay, step into the room, now carefully double-check to see which way the rest of the people are moving so you don't go against the flow. Wait....wait....don't rush up to the most famous picture. Keep cool. Okay, now. First painting. Stare at it and either tilt your head or nod. Approach it slowly and see what's its title is. Now do you understand the picture? If so, either nod again or mutter 'mmmmm.' Walk on to next picture and repeat. Every third room, find a bench to sit on so that you can stare at one wall and one or more picture on it for a long time."

It isn't that I don't enjoy art. I do. I even think I've seen enough of it and studied it probably not enough to have developed my own internal sense of what is good and bad. I enjoy seeing famous works, I enjoy rediscovering artists that I didn't think I knew but now recognize, I enjoy being able to see a painting from across a room and to think "that's got to be Mary Cassatt," I enjoy exploring (some of) the modern art and trying to find a way to make it work for me.

But because the viewing of art is so public, it seems to require a public response. And my quirk is, when I see a group of people behaving in similar ways publicly as they do in an art museum (not a football game), I immediately think that they are doing something affected and false. But I don't have enough confidence with art to behave the way I want to behave because I don't even know how I want to behave. So for me, it is all an act.

One thing I like to do in an art museum is to get up close to a painting and see how it was made, something no reproduction can ever hope to reveal.

Of course, my museum problem may well be personal. I don't know how to portray awe very well, and especially not in a public way. That same internal voice kicks in and says, "You need to act very overwhelmed. Say 'Wow' at least once. Best not to say anything more, because then everyone will think you are overwhelmed." I certainly feel awed all the time, but it's not a feeling that I am well able to put into either words or actions. It's more of that chill that I feel when I hear a stunning piece of music. I'm comfortable tearing up in the darkness of a movie theater or finishing a book that I don't want to get out of my head and just sitting there alone, mulling over all that it did to me to read it. I think I truly know I'm awed when I get a huge smile on my face as the only outlet for a myriad of positive emotions. But the art museum forces me--no, not really forces--my perceived expectations of an art museum have been socialized into me so that I may stand and stare at something for awhile even though it has not moved me at all.

Yesterday, we spent a couple of hours at the great Art Institute of Chicago, a beautiful museum with a new modern wing, acting that act. It was not an unenjoyable experience. The museum is friendly and open and not-overly monitored. Art museums have made me nervous, like libraries, because the first ones I went to offered some combination of "it's not okay to talk" and "it's not okay to ______," the latter enforced by swooping museum guards focused on preventing even the slightest breath ending up in the wrong place. We got a little of that yesterday, one of our group being cautioned to stay outside of a line, but we also had fun. And we saw a lot of top- notch paintings by artists I know reasonably well--Renoir, Manet, Monet, Henri, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Johns.

We also entered the crazy world of Cy Twombly, the feature of the new modern wing. Twombly has convinced me that physical mixing of painting colors and the selection of two or three of those "new" colors on a canvas really can mean something. That's a step for me.

Who knows? Maybe next time, I'll have that comfortable, confident command, that nodding appreciation, a true mirror to what I'm feeling inside.

Taking Umbrage Is Retarded

Get Over It - OK Go (mp3)
If You're Gonna Be Dumb, You Gotta Be Tough - Roger Alan Wade (mp3)

Two different people forwarded me this email last week:

You may or may not have heard about the movie coming out in theatres around the country on Wednesday that is being protested by a number of national disability groups.

Special Olympics has joined the group. The protest centers on the movies use of the word 'retard' and one of its characters. I'll not try and launch into an explanation which I'm sure will be inadequate. Honestly, I'm not up to date on this issue. Instead, I have copied the link to a news release that came out of Special Olympics in DC today, and was published in a number of national media...including Associated Press. This should fairly give you enough information ... and you can seek out additional information.

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN1029346220080811

USA Today has an even better version of the story.

So I just need to get this straight. Tropic Thunder, a film in which Robert Downey Jr. plays a white guy who surgically alters himself so he can portray a black guy, is being protested by the mentally handicapable...? We're to believe that repeated use of the word "retarded" is picket-worthy but blackface is OK in the right context?

Naw, screw the whole blackface part. That distracts from the stupidity of this particular protest. We're to believe that repeated use of the word "retarded" is picket-worthy on any film?? That's just... just... well... challenged.

Most hypersensitive, hyperdefensive people might dismiss my insensitivity to their plights as a sign I'm a good ol' Southern WASP who's rarely if ever been mocked for my identity or suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous humiliation for the amusement of the masses.

To dismiss me for this reason is both accurate and ridiculous. True because I am indeed a Southern WASP. Ridiculous because (a) I own a scooter and look awkward riding it; (b) I wore JAMS a lot. In 1992; (c) I collected comic books in high school; (d) I own 10 Rick Springfield and Hanson CDs; (e) Do I really really need to go on?

I get mocked. I got mocked a lot as a little kid. I got mocked plenty in high school. I passed out at a fraternity house in college and woke up with permanent marker on my nose, cheeks, ears, and both kneecaps, and I had "TOOL" written in beautiful capital letters on the back of my neck and on my stomach (with an arrow pointing up, not down).

I've always identified with Cinderella, as we were both raised in a house with wicked step-siblings who enjoyed verbally and physically terrorizing us. (Go ahead and insert your snickering gay commentary and get it outta your system.) While Cinderella fraternized with mice, my step-brothers preferred placing me in locked rooms with several possums. In real life, they don't talk, and they're not cute. Not when you're seven, anyway. This was one of any number of acts from my growin' up that formed my notion of what is offensive and what is worth just getting over.

However, it's different to be mocked as an individual as opposed to being mocked for your involuntary membership in a group. There's no Dorks United Movement or anything that stands up for my kind as a collective, so I can't claim to suffer the same level of indignities as women, homosexuals, minorities, the mentally challenged, the physically challenged, the overweight, the underweight, models, or cat lovers.

In college, I was the poorly-timed butt of several jokes. A friend infamously skilled at putting his foot in his mouth at the wrong times managed to tip past the scale of the culturally acceptable, and all I could do was shrug, acknowledging with him that he deserved his shame. And then laugh at him. Let's call him Julius.

The first time I was hobbling out of a building with my newly-broken ankle, incompetently using my crutches to navigate some stairs, when Julius shouted at me from across the quad. "Hey! Cripple! Gimp! Yeah you! You look pathetic!!" he shouted. He didn't notice that, about 3/4 of the way from him to me was a young lad in a wheelchair. Because, well, Julius wasn't talking to that cripple. Vitriolic arrows of hate were fired from many bystanders' eyes at my pal that day.

Another time, a large group of acquaintances -- most of us were still getting to know one another -- were headed to the dining hall when Julius punctuated a conversation with, "Yeah, Billy's a real bastard." And everyone kinda nodded, not knowing the depth of Julius' attempted humor. So he explained. "No, really. Billy's, like, 24 hours away from being a bastard. Like, in real life!" He was trying to explain the joke, you see. So he kept explaining.

My biological father was killed in a car wreck the day after I was born. Ha!

To me, his joke wasn't remotely offensive. I'd known Julius for years and was used to his wit, which often had the acidity of high molarity hydrochloric acid. But I knew him, and I knew his intent, and he knew I had relatively thick skin in these matters. Nothing to take offense at, honestly. But I also knew he'd overstepped his bounds with everyone else in our company. The conversation died like Thelma and Louise driving over the cliff. Three different girls in the group pulled me aside at one point or another to make sure I was OK. The guys just kept saying things like, "That's cold, dude."

But "retarded"? Are they really trying to make that the next N-word? Do we really need another N-word? Isn't one word that is known merely by its first letter enough? As Dumbledore so astutely observes in the very first Harry Potter, "Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself," so how many Voldemorts do we want in our lexicon?

Is "retard" really worth that fight? Is Tropic Thunder the right place to dig in the heels and fire away?

My smell test in matters of offensiveness is admittedly egocentric: If I don't see the big deal, then our culture ain't ready to think it's a big deal. And if our culture ain't ready, then taking the wrong tack to bring it to our attention only annoys and alienates, distancing the very people needed to change the culture.

So to those of you hypersensitive to the plight of folks rarely referred directly as retarded? You'll need to come back in a decade or two. For now your complaints are only annoying and reek of seeking attention for a problem that's not nearly as dire as others in our midst. (If you want proof, check and see how many times people refer to Obama as "retarded" to scare your votes away and compare them "black" and "Muslim.")

"Get Over It," admittedly closer to an bona fide "hit" than we're generally aiming for on this blog, is from OK Go's debut eponymous album. "If You're Gonna Be Dumb..." is from Roger Alan Wade's first album -- yes, he now has two -- All Likkered Up. I'm actually pretty sure both are available on iTunes and Amazon.com's mp3 site but was to ashamed to look the latter up.

The Other Side of the Manifesto

Mad Mission - Patty Griffin (mp3)

One of my oldest friends in the world gets married today. He's 39 and getting married for the first time to a truly fascinating, and significantly younger, woman. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just sayin'.

Anyway, his betrothed and I were talking about her time in Atlanta, where she worked for a couple of years, and she was bad-mouthing the single scene there. "Atlanta is so serious about being single," she said. "A coworker actually criticized me because she saw me walk into the grocery store on a Saturday morning wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. She said I would never find someone if I didn't take the time to show pride in my appearance, even for something as banal as the grocery store." It was this encounter that symbolized why she will be moving to be with her new husband in the quaint small town of Rome rather than insisting he come to her.

Sometimes you find yourself
flying low at night

For most sane people, to work so hard to create a false persona, merely to appeal to someone else who is working hard to create a false persona so that your two false personas can hopefully go on a few dates before the illusion cracks and he discovers your secret stash of sweatpants and sees you without your makeup... well, it shouldn't be all that appealing to reasonable minds.

For those of us in that category, what's not to love about New Orleans' French Quarter?

The French Quarter is a laid-back, somewhat malodorous, splotchy and potentially sleazy affair. It's that sorority of girls you had a blast hanging out with because they cussed like sailors, drank like the Irish and could beat you in Beer Pong. Yet, because they weren't the supermodel richies of Tri-Delt, you were kinda ashamed of how much you liked them.

Flying blind and looking for
Any sign of light

For the tourists who venture regularly, the Quarter is sweatpants and no makeup. It's baseball caps and highballs with well liquor. It's Miller High Life in the middle of the day. It's more AC/DC and less Arcade Fire. It's about relaxing and enjoying life with only a fraction of the bullshit artifice that clogs up our pores in the real world.

You're cold and scared, and all alone
You'd do anything just to make it home

A little bullshit artifice in our daily lives isn't really a bad thing. In proper doses, it can be a societal superego, keeping a leash on our ids, but this blog isn't the place for it. My aim is to be the Garfunkel to Bob's Simon, the Amy Ray to his Emily Saliers, the Jethro to his Tull.

I'll hopefully make some observations into the human condition without having to worry about hurt feelings or keeping up a shoddy facade. And I'll write about music I like, even if it's the sonic equivalent of sweatpants and no makeup.

It's a mad mission
But I got the ambition
It's a mad, mad mission
Sign me up

"Mad Mission" is by Patty Griffin, off the album "Living With Ghosts"