For a kid who loved arts and stories, I was never a fan of museums. They were too neatly arranged, either too crowded or too empty, and I could usually hear the squeak of my soles on the clean floor too much. It didn’t help that I always felt like I was supposed to read and register the entirety of the captions underneath each painting, sculpture, or artefact. It didn’t help that I usually failed to do so, got both restless and bored, and then frustrated. Who, then, likes to learn?
My sister and I asked my parents to exit the Rijksmuseum probably as soon as we entered it – paintings weren’t our cup of tea. A few years later, believe it or not, I ended up on camera to present the perks of another museum to my fellow preteens. Mic in hand, script in the other. Couldn’t remember for the life of me how I did it, just that my hair must have looked terrible.
I probably visited a dozen more museums since then. Le Louvre, the British Museum, the MET. I started to like them slightly better even if I still felt like I shouldn’t miss on any caption lest someone reprimands me – and although I found more things not to be a fan of. I had started reading about them around that time too. The stories behind the acquiring of each painting, sculpture, or artefact. The stories who contradicted the ones I had just read about. Later on, the stories of how jewels get stolen even in places supposedly unbreakable.
Sometimes, though, you meet people who are interested in museums slightly more than you are – unphased by the relative silence of people who don’t talk but whose shoes still squeak, less distracted by the bustling but quiet energy around them, and perhaps simply less restless than you would typically be. And, somehow, they make museums a little easier for you too. Ground you with a hand, a stare, or just by standing next to you in front of a window, reading a caption you stopped bothering to comprehend. And you start to enjoy it through their minds and eyes – the experience, the scenery, the stories you always felt excluded from. Get a glimpse of what makes this whole place fascinating to some when others would rather think of when lunch starts.
I went to unconventional museums, some of them on topics I fundamentally did not care about, because it made someone happy. I walked through the exhibitions, through the art galleries, through the strange venues. I read all of the texts underneath or besides the pictures and can recall none of the things that were written there. What I remember is that she takes way more time than I do at each panel because she sits with the information given to her and digests it – learns, truly, in a way I’ve always felt unable to because of this restlessness I’ve written about. Maybe she simply just walks slower too. I remember her being quiet against the permanent bouncing of my heels on the floor and my incessant chatter. I remember the knowing glimpse in her eyes when she figured out I was more excited by the gift shop than the exhibition – but that I was happy to be there, always. I think of the story I tell myself about this afternoon, and I can picture the place it holds in the corridors of my mind.
People. They’re like museums too. Heads filled with dusty rooms of childhood memories, sounds and smells that bring tears to one’s eyes, and collections of pictures whose colours will eventually fade. They might bother with putting captions and voiceovers over some of them, and, for once, I won’t get restless or bored. I’ll read, and listen, or both, and remember all (or most) of it just like I recall the pace of her walking and the atypical but welcome stillness of her body when all of me constantly feels on edge. People are unconventional museums for a young woman who loves arts and stories and hates the squeak of her soles on clean floors. Mazes and unending galleries of opinions, and interests, and incoherences. Exciting parades of likes and dislikes. An ever-changing exhibition, yet always, somehow, the same.
In hindsight, I probably entered more museums than I can remember, some of which I still get to visit whenever I pick up the phone or grab a cup of tea – led around a room or two, more if I am lucky. I’m in a lot of these rooms twice, then, both on a painting and standing in front of it. Reliving a moment through someone else’s eyes, knowing I’ve been there. Knowing I’ll still be in this room even when the colours fade – because it happened, and it was real.
There’s a specific museum, though, whose corridors I have walked through relentlessly, and got lost in more times than I can count. I am in none of these paintings, but all of them will die with me. I explore it at night when everyone’s asleep and there are no visitors, tidy up some rooms and close some doors that occasionally still burst open when I expect it the least – flooding the whole place and spoiling the wooden railing of my stairs. It isn’t well-lit, and some of it fell apart already, but I try my best.
I try to take care of this museum.
It holds everything and everyone I have ever loved.
andstillwedream 