(non-space)

FAKE, BORING, POINTLESS, AND OBSCENE: Notes from a Weird Day, part two.

People came today because the museum admission is free. They are neither more interested nor more insightful than tomorrow or last week.
They gave us an ad campaign to attract us, and we came to show our appreciation of art, especially when it is free.

They mill confusedly around--I've already had one physical confrontation with an oblivious or otherwise profoundly distracted young boy--trying to see everything. Some are taking photos. I'm already sorry I came here, as I am nothing like these people. Art, when institutionalized, becomes worthless. Once canonized, any subjective object will begin to depreciate in value. It becomes fodder for untrained eyes; hapless, lazy minds; the patrons' collective acuity is trained to perceive advertising and intellectual dogma rather than analytical thought.
They too might assume this vantage point, the gallery's balcony, and relish a temporarily exalted perspective--try to count the heads which float below--yet they'll forget to count themselves among the crowd. And that is the problem: with this scene; with everything.

All of this...it is not even ugly--simply void. The momentary camera flashes, the uninvested sidelong stares past a sculpture, whose creation might've taken years--all this amounts to a a nullifying wave of ennui, which seems to crest repeatedly, everywhere I move my eyes.

NOTES ON A MUSEUM IN A CITY OF ARTISTS:

In the center of the exhibition was a large stack: hundreds of identical prints piled neatly. They depicted, in grayscale, a slate sky with agitated cirrus clouds obstructing what might've been the sun or a lens flare. Several people crowded around (we are always impatient for free souvenirs) while one girl, crouched by the stack, hurriedly rolled them and passed them on...psychic parascopes revealing an apartment's imminent interior.
One girl clasped her paper excitedly (IT WAS FREE ART) and said to her companion, presumably her room-mate: "I can have this framed! We can put it in the apartment! We were looking for something to put in, you know, that space in the hall!"
Only then did I notice a dark blotch on the photograph--the silhouette of a small bird, veering desperately towards the margin, trying to escape, reluctant to accept its fate: as an artistic footnote; anonymous decoration.