I went to the MoMA

and it was okay. Actually the first hour and a half I had an okay time. I took notes, searched for my favorite painting (not on display) and picked a painting to write about. As I walked and walked, I felt like the MoMA is the worst museum- so tired. After a while nearly everything I saw made me go, "that's not art." because it was just so dead. Good art should be flown around the country for fanatics to cuddle with it and tell it their dreams. We should burn it to keep warm, choking on the oil fumes, fighting for the ones with toxic vermilion. If it must be imprisoned, can't it feel the warmth of the sun? At the very least we should be able to take notes about it in pen. (they didn't confiscate my pen, but they had me put it away and gave me a golf pencil. I was happy to see it fall out of my bag and roll away on the BART ride home)

I eavesdropped on a middle school tour that progressed through the exhibits exactly as fast as I did, and it was inane. I started to feel very bummed that I have to take a painting class when it's not my medium at all. A museum is a library where you can't touch a single book. There actually was a great installation called the shadow$hop where you could touch everything and buy it, but it was closed all morning so I didn't go in. Why didn't I go in? Am I that cowed?

When my class met up and we discussed how we liked everything, I perked up. It was interesting to engage with the art that way. The monitors interrupted us several times actually with instructions, but I didn't hear the specifics. That museum is so aggressively regulated. At one point I strongly wanted to make a flash mob and take off our pants, because it would hurt David Park's Bathers not at all, and yet it is forbidden. I was too timid to propose it. I got my pants part way off (I had a skirt over them, but if everyone wanted to do my idea I would have taken that off as well) but I put them right back.