ice lolly

Last night I went to an opening at the National Gallery.

Pop Life was a pretty banal exhibit and it turns out it was borrowed from the Tate so I guess I'm not surprised. It was probably very resonant to the British public for whom it was originally curated but its snap and smack falls flat in this context.

We all know how Andy Warhol informed north american culture, we live within it. And truth be told, most of the art was pretty boring and not terribly well executed by anyone's standards. People who objected to it were right, it's not good art. What it did at the time was bring art back into line with the personal and the political which I still feel was important. I just don't think its importance rests with preserving or displaying the individual works themselves.

Likewise, I ran into an old friend there. It was kind of him to say hello, he was in a suit, I was in a tee-shirt and jeans, trying hard to be invisible. I am savoring the position of the observer now and do not really want it to be interrupted.

We were at university together and at school he was brilliant, mobile, facing the idea of life, he was an open book and he could have done great things. Now he is flat to me, I was pleased to see he is physically well but knew before I turned to acknowledge him that we would add nothing to each other's experience of the evening. He has settled into a predictable existence and although he feigns a friendly face when he sees me, really? He's not in there.

For a change, I was able to remember myself and not engage with this on any level. I did not wonder why he follows me on Twitter and ignores me on Facebook. I did not wonder about the general lack of insight, the predictable turns of logic and idiom in the few conversations we have had since university, I didn't say what I was doing or worry about fishing out a bit of his old-school soul to show to and reassure myself that there was hope for us all. For a change I wasn't that arrogant.

There doesn't have to be hope for us all with us all. You decide what kind of hope is right for you, you decide who matters in your life. It's ok to let go.

I took out my earbud, smiled and said hello. I said I was fine and asked how he was. He said he was fine, I said "nice to see you," put my earbud back in and carried on. I was surprised and pleased not to have felt the urge to "catch up."

I like to think we are all connected and that everyone and everything matters and I think they probably do but you know, sometimes, the individual expressions aren't part of our own personal universes and that's perfectly ok too.

I open my eyes and the world is created. I close my eyes and the world dissolves. You open your eyes and a world is created, you close your eyes and that world dissolves and when we open our eyes, once again, a new world is born. That's the dance. It's always ok. It does not require our approval.

We only matter when we matter. We exist as the center of the universe for ourselves every day but we only exist for each other in those moments of contact. I guess I am at the point where I can allow some people to exist solely in the abstract. It does not mean I value their place in my past less, it means I understand the flow of time over this plane of existence enough to embrace their passage.

I am also at the point where I am consciously moving to the American stylebooks in terms of my writing and I do wish the computer, the software, the blogs, all of that, would stop trying so damned hard to prevent me from doing it.