and actually... at the National Gallery of Art in Washington...

The meeting was over a bit sooner than expected. We could have run for the early afternoon shuttle. I could not resist but stay. After walking through the sculpture garden of the National Gallery, I walked in through the west entrance and was very easily pulled into several hours of a speechless visit. It was not the first time that I walked through here, but it was for the first time that the crowds were bearable, for the first time there was a relatively quiet feeling about the place. For some reason it was not long until I was pulled into that different kind of Museum visit: It was not really me visiting the art, it was me showing the art to the camera. It was the illusion of looking at something, while actually looking at the miniature version of it on the tiny screen in the back of a small black picture taking machine. It was good that I had not forgotten the bear. I was able to come back to certain pieces and was able to look at them from at least a bit of a different perspective. Once the batteries ran out, my time ran out, I had to leave the city to catch the next packed plane. Why did I need the camera at all? Why was I not able to just keep the images to myself, to be just there in this particular moment in space and time? Why did I not quite manage to pull myself back enough to be by myself completely alone, turned into an observing little dot?... Maybe it is too much to ask in the midst of a giant art collection? I don't know. I think I might want to take some time off... maybe it would be good to just sleep. Maybe it was okay. Maybe there were peaceful moments somewhere between the hundreds of deliberate clicks. Now that I think about it... there were. Very many. But maybe because they were so quiet, they are really nothing to write home about. The moment we try to describe something, or record something, we create a completely new thing that then can again be described and recorded... All echoes of some original idea, perhaps... infused with distracting frequencies of the present, the past... and the confusion... clearly not clear enough to think this one through right now...