Less is More....

Let me start out by saying - I LOVE holidays.....and the great thing about being on a holiday that hasn't turned out the way you planned it, is that you have NO PLANS! It's been a wonderful reminder/ lesson for someone like me who often likes to be in control and know what's going on....In fact, I'm finding that the older I get - the less I care about making lots of plans - maybe it's the improv training....There may come a day when I can look Keith Johnstone into his non-wandering eye and say, "Keith - I am truly living in the moment." I would say that the last few weeks have brought me very close to just that!

Since being back from Scotland I have gotten into a groove of getting up, leaving the flat and wandering where my impulses take me. It's a lovely thing to leave with no destination in mind.

I spent an entire day strolling through the Victoria and Albert Museum AND the Museum of Natural History....Conveniently located across the street from each other and FREE of charge. How civilized!

So - here's the thing with me and museums - I feel almost embarrassed to admit - I don't think I really like them. I've tried, I really have. I've given it the  ol' college try.....I have close friends who RAVE about museums and the art they contain, friends who could spend a week in ONE museum and still not have soaked in enough.....And I also know that I should feel....something...at having the chance to stand in the same room as a lot of these paintings, or sculptures.....but mostly, I end up feeling really, really TIRED. Maybe it's the concrete floors, the general silence - or ( and this is what I suspect most strongly) maybe it's the collected energy that these buildings and pieces of art have absorbed over the years that seems to overwhelm me.

Don't get me wrong - there are many paintings that I have seen in the last week that have done what I think art should do - and that is, they've taken me outside of myself, and even brought tears to my eyes. I have looked at a painting and been dumbfounded as to HOW, with a brush and paint, a person can paint something that looks SO life-like that the painting seems to BREATHE! THAT is real - freaky-time - magic to me.....The same thing with sculptures looking like they might just take a step towards you - WOW!

.....but, a word to museums of the world: LESS IS MORE PEOPLE!!! Less is more!

After a while it gets to feel a bit like going for dinner at a Foody - Yummy. ( for those who have never heard of such a HORRID restaurant....it's a horrendous, Chinese buffet with more choices than you've ever seen in your life - though in my museum analogy, we'd be talking gourmet foods from around the globe instead of bad Chinese/ western cuisine slowly drying under heat lamps). Either way - you gorge yourself on a little bit of everything and come away feeling TIRED, full to bursting, not having really taken in and appreciated a single offering on its own. If your museum only showed say, 100 paintings at a time ( and that's pushing it)....I'd be there! Imagine....a different 100 paintings every two weeks.....and then everything rotates. You'd end up with regular repeat customers!

( I'm exaggerating a little bit....there were a few paintings I spent some quality time with...but you get my point)

Another thing? I think I'd like museums a lot more if I could touch stuff. I want to pick things up and turn them over. I want to smell them and see what the frame is like in the back. I think it also might be cool if there were price tags on all the things in museums. No? Anyone with me here? When there's a price tag attached to something....then you have a quick and easy way of relating the item to your own life. You can stand back and look at VanGough's Sunflowers and think, " It would take me 163 years to earn enough money to buy that,".....then the art starts to become a little more tangible? It would also be really entertaining to listen to that one guy who you know would be saying, " That's crap. There's NO WAY that is worth that much money!"

I think this is why I can spend HOURS browsing through an antiques market. I'm allowed to touch. I can see the price tag....I also get a bit of history on the piece, what year, where it came from...sometimes even who owned it - like an interactive museum. How cool is that? And I don't get shit for taking a coffee with me. ;-)

Anyhow....

I've also spent an afternoon at the Tower of London. Very cool....The crown jewels are something else! There is a room in one of the towers where the more politically sensitive prisoners were kept. Many of them were kept long enough that they had the time to carve their names and family crests into the STONE walls. Very sad.

Walked around SoHo. Interesting. The streets are lined with sex clubs offering peep shows all hours of the day - geared at STRAIGHT men....However, the street traffic is mostly GAY men. I'm not sure which is a cover for which.....

Anyhow....my eyes are FRIED from this computer screen. We are off to Avignon on Sunday....