Sometimes in order to appreciate something, you need to know it, understand its reason, purpose or methods.
Sometimes there is some historical context that adds relevance or importance.
Sometimes the skill to produce a thing is obvious, it appears difficult, requires technique, skill, patience.
Sometimes it’s just nice to look at – it’s pretty, and it makes you feel good.
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Self Portrait, Vincent Van Gogh, Museé d'Orsay, Paris, France
I was reminded of this last summer when my wife and I went to Paris and we brought along with us our then 5 year old daughter. Since she is an only child, she is used to getting a lot of attention from her parents so there are times when we ask her to go along with something that Mom and Dad want to do even though we know she will be bored after 30 minutes. Such was the case when we went through the Museé d’Orsay, probably the 3rd of 4th museum in Paris we made her go through.
Vincent van Gogh is one of my favorite painters and the Museé d’Orsay has one of the very best collections of his work so this little field trip was going to happen. As expected, after about 30 minutes my daughter said she was bored and I wasn’t ready to leave. In an effort to extend our stay, I picked her up and started carrying her around with me as we looked at the paintings. Distraction tactics commenced – I started asking her questions about the paintings I was looking at:
How many ears can you see?
Where is the blackest black?
Where was the artist trying to get you to look?
What do you think those yellow bursts look like?
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Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Museé d'Orsay, Paris, France
Asking these questions might have initially started out as a way to distract her so we could stop and stand in front of a particular painting for awhile but it turned into us looking at the painting differently. Sometimes we had to move closer, sometimes we had to move further away. She started to qualify what she was looking at -
“I like this one better than that one”, or
“this pale blue in the middle is nice”, or
“that woman looks sad, she must be very lonely”
She started to see the paintings as a story rather than an image and I started to do the same thing. We started making up our own stories of what was happening in the paintings we saw. It was by far the best experience I’ve ever had in a museum.
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Au Café dit L'Absinthe by Degas, Museé d'Orsay, Paris, France
Kids are funny that way, their impatience or intolerance with a thing typically comes from not understanding it or from being disinterested in the current activity. The slightest of changes will impact the way they see something, and as a result, their behavior will change your behavior. There is no question this activity with my daughter made my trip to the Museé d’Orsay significantly more enjoyable – our 30 minute excursion lasted close to 3 hours.
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Irises in Monet's Garden by Claude Monet, Museé d'Orsay, Paris, France
Take some time to slow down and look at what you are looking at. It can be a bunch of paint brush strokes you’re looking at or people standing in line to get their coffee. Looking at the things around the thing you are looking at can add to the experience in ways you won’t know until you try. Sometimes all it takes is a 5 year kid to point that out to you.
Has anyone else ever had this experience or one like it?
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The Louvre Entry by I.M. Pei at late afternoon
Everyone needs to leave their bubble every now and again – go one town over or fly across the world to famous cities full of cigarette smokers super models and un-affordable fantastic architecture. I recently did the latter (*air punch*) and if you haven’t read the last few posts you’re lucky missing out on the type of garbage insight that only I can bring. I thought it might be interesting to lay out some of the observations I found while traveling; some are awesome, and some are terrible even more awesome. Okay, I promise I’m going to stop with the strike-through no I’m not.
Orange on orange with African tote purse and leather sandals = French Hippie!!
- Little French girls all wear dresses and their mothers do not.
red on red with ciggie, bath shoes, and cellphone
- Capri pants are very popular with the man in Paris
- Young French people all sound polite and adorable, even if they are cussing you out and insulting your choice of shoe wear.
- French people are not rude, at least not to me. I had a great experience with every French person I spoke with. Seriously, if you are from the Southwest (and I am going to call Texas the southwest) people are crazy, ridiculously friendly. Everybody here says ‘Yes Sir’ and ‘Yes Ma’am’, so by comparison, everybody else tends to appear rude. Everyone I spoke with might not have gone out of their way to be friendly like us Texans, but nobody was rude.
- French women don’t really wear bra’s – at least not the ones that should.
- Turned up collars apparently are coming back in style. I know you’re thinking ‘when did they ever go out of style?’. I know, that’s what I thought!
- Almost all French people are thin. Everyone is thin in Paris, despite eating carbohydrates like we breathe air, because everyone smokes like a chimney. Seriously thought I was going to see little kids smoking by the time I left - I spent a lot of time explaining smoking to my daughter:
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No funny story, just a good life lesson; but I will say this – if you ever meet me and I see you litter, I’m going to punch you right in the face. I just don’t understand littering. In the gutter beside every curb in France is 50 billion cigarette butts and it makes my blood boil to see someone just pitch that butt into the street when they are done. That same person probably wouldn’t throw a drink cup into the street but for some reason, smokers think cigarette butts don’t count as trash and throwing it into the street somehow isn’t littering. You have been warned…(do you think used cigarette butts could be fashioned together to provide relief housing? Just a thought).
Finally, I wanted to include a picture of the ‘Fire Evacuation Map’ that was in my hotel. I thought it was awesome – enough to take a picture so I have included it here for your amusement. Take a good look at the people indicated in the diagram. There’s women in stilettos and wide brimmed hats, barrel chested (and one would assume good looking) men, – is that guy in green military and is he escorting people? Awesome. The guy on the middle right looks like he is practicing his karate on stairs – Wax on! But the absolute best is the last picture on the bottom right – you got the fashionista, barrel chested guy, and I’m going to say the next one is a middle aged lady and probably a cougar.
Greatest evacuation map ever.
