This is my New Yorker friend Joshua who went with me to The MET and took pictures with me and watched me be extra as ever with little judgement. Check out his photography page
HERE
Visiting The Met has always been one of those things on my bucket list i had written in invisible ink. I kind of put it on there and forgot about it, contenting myself with dreams because sometimes it feels easier that way...sometimes.
Somehow though...I have been able to walk across a bridge that connects dreams and reality like that tale of the lovers that unite once a year; the cowhearder and the weaver girl, Zhinu and Niulang.
I have taken to telling my local friends when I'm off on an adventure. Friends local to the area I am visiting at the time, I mean. My mind has a way of convincing me that I am about to die at every given second. So, to off set that thought I let those wonderful people know that I'm about to do something that I think is crazy.
This time however, I just so happened that I had a friend in the area I was trying to get to so it became a safer, meet me at via this train mission.
It was scary but not very and I learned something again that day. The one train that I hated most, I am slowly coming to love. As I sat in it, alone, watching very few people with me even though it was rush hour I mused over how we can delay a beautiful thing.
I had forgotten the view I got from that train. Above the city instead of beneath it. Closer to the sky...the sun, the clouds. Over seer in the silence. It is some how quieter...even though it is more dangerous. Maybe that's why they do it, the thrill seekers. Maybe there is a scares peace in a moment charged with a pending end.
Walking the Eastside of New York was an experience in itself, strolling down streets prominently mentioned in movies. I understood why they were mentioned in the movies and I must admit it wasn't the happiest realisation. Still, it was an interesting feeling taking each step down those streets.
Then there we were The Metropolitan Museum of Art where tucked away were shards of my heart I had not become intimately acquainted with yet. Some shards created by hands of a generation long long gone. Hands that never mine but knew me...but created parts of myself anyway.
I am absolutely infatuated with all of Vincent Van Goth's work. I remember the very moment I fell down the rabbit hole completely in love with it too. I was in art class, our teacher handed me this book of his sketches. So very man sketches....He is so well known for his paintings and tortured life.
As quite an artist who favours the sketch myself i poured over that book. I always felt so inferior in my fine arts class. Why was I there? Everyone in my class was way better than I at the fine art portion of things. I'm a writer at heart and I much preferred illustration. Fine art always made me feel acquainted and like a fraud.
I didn't understand so much about myself then, I had no formal training and didn't even understand the many many many layers of art. Fine art might not have been the best place to start really...but I don't regret the training. It was exploration and I had the honour of being taught by extremely talented professors.
So seeing Van Goth's progression and his unique view on the world from black and white the vibrant colour changed my life and touched my heart. Well, that was the beginning of my love affair with everything Van Goth, I only fell deeper when I learned about the painter himself, his career, what set him so far apart from his pairs in his time. The dark, winding mind field he ran down that his painting allowed him to come up for air in.
Did you know there is a matching portrait to this ever famous portrait? It is dark, shadow filled, broody and haunting. It lacks lighter tones so much that it barely shows up in a picture. Oh, Vincent Van Goth, every my favourite of the late greats, your mind a maze you sought and found colour in the midst of the darkness and when you could not find it you created it. New star paths and new colours build in the remembrance, deconstruction and construction of joy.
I'm not even being extra when I tell you I connect with his work on a spiritual level. I remember when Doctor Who did an episode when they visited it and so many facets of my own life came together in that episode. I honestly cried like baby and that story, fictional as it is remains my favourite to this day. I could have cried standing in front of his portraits that day at the MET too....but art is supposed to move you so, I have no shame.
I also say Monet's and so many more artists at the MET i promise! I myself have always felt like the Van Goth painting amongst Monets on the art wall of my friends...His work is not my cup of tea but I deeply respect his gentle and loving brush strokes and he dissolves into a siren love of the pastoral.
My brief few hours at The MET was more fantastic than I could put to words. The staff there were so helpful and quite funny in that classic New York way I love I suppose. One of the workers mentioned that she only met two people with pink hair and that I was gorgeous and wore it well. I was tickled.
I hear the Museum of Modern Art is dope, I think I'll be heading there too next.
Peace. Love. Dream Bigger.
