Museum of Modern Art

The previous week had me splattered like an urban Pollock painting across these streets….spilling all my inspiration in the down pavement drainage ditch.  Sitting there on the corner of Bowery and God-knows-where, my knees are clacking up against parked car’s bumpers and I’m sifting on the ground for my spilled credit cards and ATM receipts.  Thumbing through the plastic mess, I grab a card that had moved to the back leather slot along with those photos we rarely look at and Selective Service passes with the ink worn off.  A woman in distress and cast in bronze looks back at me and I realize I’m holding my Moma membership pass.

So then it was five days later that I was speedwalking down 6th, a scarf around my face and breathing in Nuts 4 Nuts cashew fumes and gazing up at the up above water towers…….me saying “pardon me” to the passing gusts of chill wind shooting uptown into the Park to play a lil’ two-hand touch.

There is nothing so glorious as the moment you realize you’re in MoMA…..staring past the ticket takers at the sculpture garden and walking up the stairs towards the contemporary art section with wide eyed amazement.  And it’s Rothko! And it’s Beuys!…….my feet sticking to the floor as if Matthew Barney had set them there with petroleum.  I’m trudging on slowly and clacking my work shoes on linoleum towards suspended helicopters and Euro women in fox fur with headphones on listening intently to John Baldessari rantings.  I’m grasping on to escalators and thumbing through MoMA printed site maps…I have to see this! And this! And that!……leaning in on placards if maybe a little too closely only to see if I can catch a whiff of the canvas DeKooning put brush to.  I’m on such a high and straining my eyes to catch each fold and peak of the impasto style strokes of the neo-Impressionists or standing back respectfully for the pale and fragile palate of Egon Schiele or Otto Dix.  I gingerly run my fingers along the white walls through each room to Ed Ruscha prints and Larry Clark photo ops and I’m kicking about dust balls created only by the thousand eager art seekers milling about all day long…..taking a brief rest to stare out the multi paned window frames opening up to a still active city below with a cobalt lit sky above them which announces a day’s end and the museum’s closing.  15 minutes to go……and I take the stairs down……to prolong the minutes more until my exit out of this huge cultural space…….grabbing a book or two from the museum shop to get my inspiration back which managed in this time to grab itself out of the gutter and make its way to my studio where it would wait until I returned. And returned. And returned. And returned.

(1/28/2010)