"Someone out to tell them [Americans] how to behave in a museum. They talk as if they were at home..."
Charles Dantzig quoted in "Objectif Lune," in Harper's magazine, May 2009.
from Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien.
* * * * *
I am almost always disarmed by the near whisper--or so it appears to American ears--and discretion of the French when they visit a museum in our country, as much as I am by the "openness" and lack of artifice of so many Americans wherever they be.
* * * * *
Sometimes either (1) when one stops yammering to one's fellow museum-goer about what one bought at Macy's the other day, or (2) stops for a few moments clicking on one's cell-phone, one might actually see something (as in "looking without seeing").
There's always, too, a time and place to rock to the beat of Lady Gaga or Prince.
Sometimes a little intellectual effort--and tuning down the noise inside (and outside) our minds--yields surprising results. Which might be a tall order for most Americans (and increasingly so for Europeans).
Charles Dantzig quoted in "Objectif Lune," in Harper's magazine, May 2009.
from Encyclopédie capricieuse du tout et du rien.
* * * * *
I am almost always disarmed by the near whisper--or so it appears to American ears--and discretion of the French when they visit a museum in our country, as much as I am by the "openness" and lack of artifice of so many Americans wherever they be.
* * * * *
Sometimes either (1) when one stops yammering to one's fellow museum-goer about what one bought at Macy's the other day, or (2) stops for a few moments clicking on one's cell-phone, one might actually see something (as in "looking without seeing").
There's always, too, a time and place to rock to the beat of Lady Gaga or Prince.
Sometimes a little intellectual effort--and tuning down the noise inside (and outside) our minds--yields surprising results. Which might be a tall order for most Americans (and increasingly so for Europeans).
Michaelangelo Merisi in a Vermeer-esque mood.
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