my weekend

so i haven't posted in a while because i have been in new york thursday-now. thursday i decided to take a late bus into the city from amherst. got in at 1am.

friday i slept in (which i normally don't do) and while my friend was at work i walked from his apartment in midtown down to soho to run some errands i've been meaning to do every time i come to new york, and shop a bit.

i went out to dinner in alphabet city and then went out. my friend pete was volunteering in the bronx and play squash with intercity children early the next morning. when he was ready to go back to his apartment i met up with some friends from home and went to this party with a bunch of tisch kids who had well calculated facades and came back around 430am with two girls who needed beds in tow. i felt really bad bringing them back to pete's but i couldn't have slept soundly knowing they were, like, 40 blocks away sleeping on the floor of three male nyu students apartment.

we walked in and tried to be quiet but were a bit giggly. pete woke up and i told him what was going on; "pete i'm really sorry there are two girls with me we're going right to sleep and will be quiet they had nowhere to go but they're good friends yada-yada-yada...so is it okay if these two girls crash on your couch?" to which he responded teasingly "yes two girls can sleep here" and then under his breathe "awesome"in the morning i woke up around the same time that pete woke up (7:50ish) running on full but running on approximately three hours of sleep. it was sunny out and not too cold so i decided to check out the GRAY exhibition at the MET (see old blog entry). i walked there alone from 51st street and got there right when they opened at 9:30am. at 55th street i got slightly tired and realized how ambitious it was of me to just wake up, but i trucked through with the help of a grande coffee. it turned out to be a really great move on my part getting there so early because it wasn't crowded at all. infact, it was relatively empty. walking through i kind of felt like i was in "the mixed up files of mrs. basil e. frankweiler." i got the audio guide. i knew jasper johns (meaning i can recognize his stuff and know some basic background info) but this exhibition brought his work to a whole new level. unless you're peter schjeldahl listening to the audiobook at any exhibition is pretty clutch...you always "think you know but you have no idea." the only thing i don't like about them is the headphones kind of isolate you from a "true" interaction with the artwork and the museum. you miss out on the background noise around you (what the people around you say when they walk up, opportunity to stand behind someone getting a guided tour and eavesdrop for a few, anything else that may be going on) ideally i think when you're looking at art you'd want to be able to walk through once listening to the audio/have someone present the facts to you. then you'd want to walk through again at a later point after having sat on it all and let the work re-pluck your thoughts a little bit and sink in. ok anyway

GRAY was great. afterward i checked out the new Gustav Courbet exhibition. didn't know
anything about it but decided i may as well check it out because i wasn't really doing anything. was pretty cool; used the audio tour for that, too. he was a rebellious dude, too. a "fuck you france but i'm a sick artist so you have to respect me" type of guy in 19th century france. this is a self portrait he did before he got into art schools and was feeling kind of directionless and unconfident. the piece happens to be the face of the exhibition. he had some beautiful portraits of women. a bit erotic, but beautiful.

i started using the notebook feature in my blackberry and so i wrote down things in the MET that i had never seen before and loved, or had seen before on a computer and after having seen in person i really liked, random things to remember, etc. for anyone that is interested, the cryptic list reads "0 thru 9, the trellis or woman with flowers, jo the beautiful irishwoman, the wave, wisteria dining room, madonna dali, piero fornasetti: architectura writing desk, charles ray tree guy, sharon lockhart."

i also saw this these beautiful panchos decorated with dyed feathers from south america... wearing them you must have felt like a worm inside a butterfly with beautiful wings. the panchos were thick; i bet touching them was like touching the breast of a bird, or touching a stuffed bird. they had been preserved in the ground for a looooong time and i guess were recently discovered. i left around 12:45 and wandered around central park for an hour or so, called my grandparents which was good because i've been meaning to call them, sat down for a little. met up with lindsay in the village later and then went shopping and bought a dress & a cool necklace from a guy on the street.

i couldn't get a hold of pete and knew he was probably napping after volunteering all morning and getting no sleep. so i went back to his apartment and woke him up around 6:30pm...got ready and left. pete and i were trying to go to the DFA records thing at the MoMA so we got there around 830pm two beers deep and waited 20 minutes for it to open to see if there was anyway we could try to finagle our way in. apparently its been sold out for sixth months. one usher told us he couldn't even get his best friend in. twas a bummer. but we brushed it off and met up with my friends mike, kristen, and dickie for dinner. not really sure how but things worked themselves out and we wound up with bottle service at marquee all night. i woke up confused at my friends kristen and mike's house in new jersey(?) but it was a good night all together.

when i got back from NJ this morning pete had gone out and bought pretty bright pink and purple and chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles from this bakery down the street and a sandwich for me. i decided that i wanted to enjoy my sunday so i stayed in ny and i'm heading back to school tomorrow (monday) at 6am in order to make my microbiology class.

Posted by Madame Lamb on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 8:42 PM