Musings from Banana105 degress + humidity. Welcome to DC summertime. Tonight we did the classic sweaty body part things. There were the obvious ones: swack= sweaty back, swees= sweaty knees, swass= sweaty you-know-what. But then we got pretty creative…. swostrel= sweaty nostrel, swiver= sweaty liver, swavicle= sweaty clavicle, and sweenis= (not what you think…) sweaty weenis (small bit of skin on your elbow). I honestly don’t think I have ever felt this hot. We are roasting.
This past weekend I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. It was amazing. So much better than I remembered… except for one thing. One of the huge contributing factors I went was to see “Madame X” by John Singer Sargent. This painting is such a big deal. It is of the most prolific paintings made by Sargent because it after it was painted, it caused quite the scandal! It is a painting of a well-known Parisian socialite. Sargent painted her very sensuously, looking to her left, only showing her distinct profile. He also painted one of her straps falling off her shoulder, (later changing it) causing outrage to all those that viewed it at the grand salon in 1884. She was a married woman after all! It was a humiliation to her, and amounted to a failure as a portrait painter in France for Sargent. He ended up moving to London permanently. He said of the painting: “I suppose it is the best thing I have ever done.” If you were the curator of the Met, would you hang “Madame X” in the “visible storage” area of your museum? Where the only way to see it would be very close, behind a glaring piece of glass, and hanging with no frame? Yeah, neither would I.
This summer I am interning in D.C. I get to work next door, and inside, this incredible building. I went to bed last night thinking about how much I am going to miss spending time in the Capitol everyday. It is not only a building though… it is a symbol of America. It is a monument of our freedom. I know, sounds cheesy… but you would be this way too after giving visitors tours of it everyday! It never fails to astound me how gorgeous it is inside, how it rivals even the most incredible buildings in Europe. I am proud to be American.
So, I have always thought that blogging is a strange and confusing world, of which I am not a part of (by choice)… but lately, I have been inspired by some pretty awesome bloggers… like John Mayer, and some rad friends of mine. I have realized that blogging is more than just selecting cutesy scrapbook-like backgrounds. It is, in all actuallity, sending thoughts and ideas about life into that “cosmic void” (words of Meg Ryan on “You’ve Got Mail”), and whether they are digested by readers or not, they become something concrete, which is a whole lot better than simply floating away in my head…
