15 minutes of fame: plathsrevenge

plathsrevenge

15 minutes of fame

Nov 12, 2005 19:06

{i have a new layout, featuring a lovelylovely picture that jenny painted for me last december, depicting our downtown ice skating adventures. i tried other things, but my idea of winter tends to always come back to that picture.} today, after a meager three hours of sleep, i joined mollie on an adventure to the warhol museum. on the way, we stopped at a gas station, where i watched a young mother tucking her two children carefully into carseats and wondered about her life. while we sped down the parkway, we inadvertently remained in close proximity to a boy on a motorbike whom we did not part ways with until we took the stanwix street exit, and he continued cruising down the road. i wonder where he was going?

as the last time i was at the warhol was last november with jenny, everything seemed to be glowing with quiet undertones of her. like her silent ghost was traipsing around with me, her translucency reminding me that she remains on the other side of the ocean, and i remain here. nevertheless, the warhol never ceases to cheer me up significantly with its strange modern art and intricate bits of warhol's life. we began by traipsing through the seventh floor, which housed a special exhibition by a group of artists called general idea. political statements on aids, photos of naked men, sex toys, and poetry on conceptual designs. i was mostly unimpressed, except for a beautiful black and white photography collection of various nude bodies bound with thin twine, greatly distorting their shapes. as we continued downstairs, we glimpsed giant screenprinted faces, old film equipment, magazine covers, polaroids of andy in drag, mammoth prints of glittering shoes, and even a bit of modern art created by the oxidation of paint when exposed to urine. my favourite aspect of the museum has always been the silver clouds installation. in the sixties, andy created an exhibition based on interaction, which defied conventional gallery practice for its time. the installation consists of extravagantly-sized silver pillows full of helium floating enchantingly around a white room. from my experiences, i've noticed that when people find themselves among this supernal creation, myself included, they feel compelled to twirl dizzily around the room, and lie on the floor, looking like children watching clouds on a summer day. another interesting exhibition was an entire room full of stark white and blue pills, all arranged symmetrically on the walls, while several giant pills sat strikingly in the middle of the floor. looking back, i don't believe i was allowed to take photographs in there, as it was part of the general idea exhibit. shhhh.

yesterday evening consisted of a long, passionate conversation with adam over tea and coffee. at seven-thirty, i was surrounded by wrinkled, white-haired people smoking cigarettes and eating mashed potatoes in the dim yellow light who had, sadly, filtered out by the time adam arrived. there's something endearing about obnoxiously american things, which is why i love king's so dearly. we enthusiastically discussed waking life & before sunrise, meditated on some existentialism, lamented over the precarious state of society and our inherent alienation from it, and griped intensely about our experiences with the education system. i recognised a definite warmth that comes from finding a similar mind.