June 24 | The Feeling is the Point

Museums are a con.

They fill banners and trifolds with pictures of pictures, claiming they’ve got historic paintings and important documents, and then when you get there, you realize the most interesting thing in the museum, despite all the curation, is the people. 

It creates a special kind of shame. Being surrounded by artwork that took tens of thousands of hours of people far more talented and intelligent than you, and yet all you can really do is find yourself eavesdropping on someone complaining about work. 

Even alone, you find yourself distracted by your own thoughts, the troubles of the day, desires for the future, reliving your own greatest moments, each thought trying to lure you away from the present like a will-o-whisp guiding a traveler off of the path. 

Maybe the great works of art serve not just as statements in their own right about the world—but as proof, from humans more alike to us than different, that all the chaos can be overcome, or at least channeled—into the thing in front of you, the poem, the painting, the sculpture, the thing that is still just beyond your apprehension? 

Reminders of what could be, an invitation to feel it all and try again?… Read the rest