Speaking from the art

Hi everyone, and good morning on another beautiful Tuesday. I know what you're thinking, and yes, today is my five-twelfths birthday. I appreciate the warm wishes. So let's dive right back into the thick of things, eh? Yesterday, I wrote about a blunder that my lovely wife and I made while traveling. Today's story has to do with our travels as well, and while there are some slightly similar aspects, I think you'll agree at the end that it was a pretty unique experience.

The summer after college graduation, we took a trip to France and Spain together. It was wonderful, and though I'd been to both places before, it was as a high schooler who cared more about the dead mouse we saw than the history and architecture of the places.

That actually reminds me of a little side-story, if I may be so bold. One of my most vivid memories of my trip to Spain was meeting Spain Cat. Our class was waiting outside somewhere (again, I didn't sweat the details), and a skinny and sickly-looking cat slowly made its way toward us. Someone bent down and put the remaining bite of a ham sandwich on the ground for the cat, since he looked in need of it (I'm saying "he" instead of "it" from now on even though I didn't inspect him for genitalia). As if being replayed in super slow motion, the cat pawed at the sandwich and finally took a bite. We couldn't believe how slowly he was moving, and we stood there mesmerized as he took probably three bites in five minutes. My friend Jon said, "Watch this," and he walked up to the cat and snapped loudly right near his face. The cat stayed looking right at him completely frozen until three whole seconds later, when he finally blinked at the snap. We couldn't believe that his reflexes were so slow (especially with "cat-like reflexes" being in our vocabularies), and it was really a highlight of the trip. What can I say, we were highly-cultured individuals.

Back to Peter the College Grad. So my lovely now-wife and I had gone through our "Let's Go" book in great detail and had a nice selection of things we wanted to see in each city. When we arrived in Barcelona, we put down our big backpacks and started planning out our next couple of days. "This could be interesting," one of us said in reference to the Museum of Contemporary Art. It wasn't necessarily our thing, but something specific in the description caught our attention and we thought it could be really cool. More on that later.

We arrived, and it was even contemporarier than I imagined. Yeah, I said "contemporarier." I'm cool like that. Here's an example of what I mean: One room had a gigantic thumbtack in it. By gigantic, I mean the size of our kitchen table. Then, around that room were pictures of that thumbtack in various locations. The adjoining room had a gigantic frame in it (maybe 20ft by 20ft) and pictures of that frame around the room. We saw the frame on the ocean, on sand, etc. Contemporary? Yeah, a bit.

We got to the really out there stuff a little later. After hearing some electronic house music, we followed our ears over to a darkened room. We went in, and there were cool lights flashing and a huge screen on one wall. On that screen, it was a scene of a person dancing in a disco. She looked a little bored and just moved back and forth to the music. That, my friends, is art.

But I've saved the best exhibit for last. We walked past a pretty large room and stopped in our tracks. On the far wall was another large screen. Rather than a dancing bored European, this just had a black-and-white close-up of a man's mouth. It looked like he was saying something over and over again, but we couldn't hear anything. Then we noticed on the side wall that there were about a dozen pairs of headphones. Cautiously, I walked up to the wall and put a set on. I must have had a very confused look on my face, because Amber asked what I was listening to with an equally confused one. I couldn't explain but rather motioned for her to try on a pair of her own to experience this exhibit. She did, and we both stood there for a couple of minutes shaking our heads as we watched and listened. The man said what sounded like, "Boosh, tee...Boosh, tee...Boosh, tee." That's it. We kept waiting for it to change in one way or another, but that's all he kept saying over and over again. Our response after taking our headphones off was probably what 90% of you would say in the same situation: "Okaaaaay."

We realized that we'd seen then entire museum and were about to head out. Then we remembered the thing that caught our eye in the description of the museum that made us want to go there in the first place. "Where are the rotating exhibits?" I asked. "Yeah, I was looking forward to those," my lovely now-wife said. We lamented the fact that they must not be there then for a second before the realization hit us both at the same exact time. "Unless they just mean...ya know, that the exhibits change instead of ones that spin around." "Uh, let's not tell anyone about this."

So here I am telling you all about it. I feel like eight years is enough time that it's ok to share now. It's funny (to me at least), because we never would've gone there without misinterpreting that blurb. But then I wouldn't be able to look at my wife every so often and say, "Boosh, tee...Boosh, tee," now would I? It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Have a great Tuesday, my friends. Got any modern art stories? Send 'em to ptklein@gmail.com and you just might get featured in this week's Follow Up Friday. Take care, and I'll see you back here tomorrow.