A night at the museum

I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art this evening hoping to be inspired and driven to write a lot this evening. Per usual I was unexpectedly surprised by how my expectations were soo wrong. Note to self, when inspired before going to an art museum, just go home and write, don't go to the museum.

It was not that there was really nothing cool to look at...although I was disappointed by how uninterested I was in 1960s and 70s Italian art. I feel rather bad about the Italian artists these days, they have such high standards to live up to with Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci. No wonder they went to extreme lengths to try and regain something creatively inspiring.

I was most taken aback by the sculptures. I never imagined myself as a sculpture lover until I saw the "real" David and started crying by how extraordinarily beautiful he was. He is the perfect man. And then tonight, it was the dead corpses covered with blankets that I couldn't get out of my head. I was taken aback as I walked down the hallway to find these 9 covered bodies--all of them contorted in different ways.

What struck me was the mystery of the story below the blankets. How did they die? Who were they? Did they suffer? What was their last thought? Questions rang through my head like the ambulance sirens that were supposed to come pick them up and take these sculpted dead bodies to the morgue.

And on my walk home, I laughed at the fact that death is beautiful. And with that thought I was transported back into the scene in American Beauty when the boy is showing the film to the girl with the dead bird in it.  Death is beautiful. There is a peace that takes over no matter what pain the person was in. Morbid, maybe. But it triggered an avalanche of thoughts and questions.

There is fear about death everywhere, yet we depict it artistically all the time--movies, music, visual art, and even in the food we eat. We in many ways feed off of death. That may sound like a strong statement, but when was the last time you ate something that didn't result in the death of something living? Even if you are a vegetarian there is still death involved for that plant.

Death deserves some respect and less exaggeration. We are all terminally ill and we are all dying. Which raises the question of dependence. Life depends on death, yet as humans we feel so much sorrow and grief when death occurs--we don't want it to. However, if it did not occur life may perhaps cease to exist. You cannot talk about death without encompassing all living things. Death won't stop just for humans, that would break the balance of everything. The earth needs us to die just as much as it needs trees to die.

It is the lessons of suffering that we don't want. I agree suffering is difficult, but it exists to teach and to make us aware. Death teaches us. Those 9 artistically molded bodies taught me something. Death is merely an artistic end to a story. We never know when ours may come.