bend your knees, that's what they're for
Sunday, February 14, 2010 at 01:14AM I knelt down and put my elbows on the floor to take this picture today at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
An older man was standing next to me when I got back up, and he asked if it looked cooler from down there. Something about bowling balls. "Want to get down there yourself? I'll help you up," I offered. He smiled, and said I understood just the problem. He still didn't lie down on the floor.
As I walked off to the next room, I glanced back and saw him bend at the waist to see what those refracting glass balls looked like from down low. It just about made my day.
This kind old gentleman continued to make my day, when he came up to Jeff and Fanny and I in a later gallery, entering us into a conversation about the very nature of art and what should belong in a museum. (His wife was not interested.) I dreaded these conversations oh so much at Kenyon, but it was nice to glide around the conversation with someone who came from a completely unknown, and likely different, background, not having read the same essays and sat in the same classes for the past couple of years listening to the same professors and the same lectures. I tried to convince him that the point really was just what we'd done in the gallery with the "bowling balls" - look at things from a different perspective, ask ourselves different questions, perhaps even those questions about what belongs between these huge white walls and in our collective values.
He just kept on making my day.
And, to make it even better, we then walked into a big room with about 8 screens showing William Kentridge films. Could it be any better?
Yes. Because our new friend walked in there, too, and he loved William Kentridge as well.
Reader Comments (2)
such a sweet story.
I just LOVE Kentridge and will be attending "The Nose" in less than one month and it will "make our day."