(no subject)
Moments of Intimacy, Love, and Kindness
Went to this exhibition with my mother in what must have been about 2002, and spent a while trying to get far enough away from her that I could have emotions about pictures in peace (emotional expression of any kind in the presence of my mother makes me intensely uncomfortable). At the other end of the spectrum, the “Shaped By War” retrospective of Don McCullin’s work at the Imperial War Museum drew together human experience as expressed through moments of intense suffering, anger, and fear. Both exhibitions did more to give me a sense of global humanity and empathy than any number of well-meaning essays have, and about a decade of newspapers. I guess for the same reason I enjoy seeing people in public being happy to see each other, or comforting each other without self-consciousness: there are moments when you get to see how small and human and unique everyone is, and how similar they all are, and it makes the presence of all these vile bodies a little more bearable to know that they’re capable of doing things which aren’t posturing or posing or hectoring.
People who are wrapped up in the moment they’re in, or the person they’re with, are not trying to present themselves as anything other than what they are. They’re naked and perfectly imperfect, with their heads flung back in laughter or their faces distorted with sobbing, or their nose wrinkled up with a smile that creases their eyes and spills joy all over everyone, not just the person it’s aimed at.
This morning on a crowded train I watched a man maybe a couple of years older than me dressed in a work suit bend down to comfort the small child of indeterminate gender he was travelling with. The small child held onto the man’s pale blue tie. The conversation lasted some time. Everyone around them was beginning to smile at the scene, smile into the scene, a kind of outward expression of goodwill. There was no one to see it but each other, but they weren’t smiling for each other, they were smiling for the small child and the small child’s patient travelling companion and the tie in the child’s hand and the fact that we were all pressed up against the walls and bent around poles and it was early in the morning, and no one was angry because someone was being kind.
Went to this exhibition with my mother in what must have been about 2002, and spent a while trying to get far enough away from her that I could have emotions about pictures in peace (emotional expression of any kind in the presence of my mother makes me intensely uncomfortable). At the other end of the spectrum, the “Shaped By War” retrospective of Don McCullin’s work at the Imperial War Museum drew together human experience as expressed through moments of intense suffering, anger, and fear. Both exhibitions did more to give me a sense of global humanity and empathy than any number of well-meaning essays have, and about a decade of newspapers. I guess for the same reason I enjoy seeing people in public being happy to see each other, or comforting each other without self-consciousness: there are moments when you get to see how small and human and unique everyone is, and how similar they all are, and it makes the presence of all these vile bodies a little more bearable to know that they’re capable of doing things which aren’t posturing or posing or hectoring.
People who are wrapped up in the moment they’re in, or the person they’re with, are not trying to present themselves as anything other than what they are. They’re naked and perfectly imperfect, with their heads flung back in laughter or their faces distorted with sobbing, or their nose wrinkled up with a smile that creases their eyes and spills joy all over everyone, not just the person it’s aimed at.
This morning on a crowded train I watched a man maybe a couple of years older than me dressed in a work suit bend down to comfort the small child of indeterminate gender he was travelling with. The small child held onto the man’s pale blue tie. The conversation lasted some time. Everyone around them was beginning to smile at the scene, smile into the scene, a kind of outward expression of goodwill. There was no one to see it but each other, but they weren’t smiling for each other, they were smiling for the small child and the small child’s patient travelling companion and the tie in the child’s hand and the fact that we were all pressed up against the walls and bent around poles and it was early in the morning, and no one was angry because someone was being kind.