Walls of Art

I took the train to Times Square to get half price tickets to a musical - booth was closed for 3 more hours. So I gave up writing music today and took a train to the Guggenheim. It was closed. So I walked to the Whitney Museum - it was open!

I stood in little mirrored structures and watched boxy televisions. There was a glass display of vacuum cleaners. The "music room" was a gallery with giant bright canvas musical instruments drooping off the walls from hooks. Later I leaned on a wall while taking in some blotchy paintings and a security guard didn't like me doing that. Perhaps the wall was art. I exited past a Jackson Pollock and found a Phillip Glass score to read. We saw him play solo piano a few years ago and he stopped part way through a piece and said something like, "Oh sorry I am playing the wrong piece now, it is easy to mix up because my pieces are often so similar."

Then I went in a room to see six films all playing on the walls at once by Caes Oldenburg. Fine-dressed people walking slo-mo through a river, acting like chickens while a woman is pulled by on a plastic sheet, a topless woman in fisherman's pants sticks a hose down and fills 'em up. It was beyond absurd and though filmed in the 60's still felt new and fresh. Suddenly life on planet earth was beginning to make sense and my brain was on fire with new connections and I started to laugh out loud in glee. The security guard didn't like that either.

I left, walked past happy kids at the zoo in the park, cavernous stores full of stuff and people, famous buildings, and back to the ticket booth in Times Square, where the pulse from the epicenter of the commercial world vibrates all around you. The wait was going to be at least two hours. So I decided to go to a jazz club instead, featuring the music of Sting played by his former band mates, along with the guitar player from Wicked and the trumpet giant Lou Soloff. This was amazing. Really amazing. Under rehearsed, so a bit of a jam. I heard solos from these guys that each made my trip across the continent worth it. Again, I was laughing in glee, and in a club apparently you can do that sort of thing and no one notices. The sound man was either deaf or dead, but despite sound glitches so terrible the audience will have nightmares for years (and I quote the club's brochure: "State-of-the-art Meyer Sound System") the evening was a huge treat. The event was in part to raise money for rain forest preservation (5% of proceeds!!!) and to prove this my waiter gave me an ugly green plastic thingy to wear upon my wrist. There was also a bass for silent auction, signed by Sting himself. His signature was more like groovy modern doodle art, so I leaned back against the club wall and studied it for as long as I wanted.