The Rest Is Silence

U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been silent for nearly five years straight during oral arguments-- and a lot of people are talking about that.

(You like that?)

Whatever you may think about Clarence Thomas as an adjudicator supreme with pickles, special sauce, and a sesame seed bun-- whatever you may think about his alleged propensity for doing socially unacceptable things to other peoples' Coke cans, you've got to admire somebody who has the balls to be quiet for that long.

Well, at least... I admire him. For that.

Call me young, dumb, and full of pubes, but I like to think that, when people are quiet or, dare I say, silent: they're listening. Sure, sometimes people are daydreaming about boobies or their cats or their feet or scallops and scampi at Red Lobster-- I can appreciate that, but I would hope that a Supreme Court justice who has been quiet for that long is taking it all in, in an introspective way, surveying the scene, ticking away the points of attorneys and fellow justices in his head... taking it all in, the way one might at a museum.

Do you know what I think about people who talk too much at museums? I think they should be arrested on the spot and forced to wash dishes in the kitchen adjacent to the overpriced cafe that peddles cafe au lait and panini. And those charged with supervising their involunatry detention and servitude should say to them, "You want to run your mouth inside a museum? This is the place to do it. And I hope you know Spanish, because Paco over there's got a great story to tell you about his older sister, a pair of nylons, a roll of duct tape, a chinchilla, and a microwave."

You might be surprised that someone who blogs so, um, incessantly(?) is a proponent of silence in certain situations, but I definitely am. Oftentimes, it is most called-for. Believe it or not, but I am frequently silent. Either that, or I say far, far too much. There is no in-between with me. I'd say "I'm working on it," but I'm not.

I've been going to a series of trainings at work and, while others at the intimidating-looking ovoid table in the intimidatingly-named board room participate energetically, I am more often than not silent. Even though I started in early September, I still can't help sometimes feeling like the new guy. And what new guy wants to open up his trap and be judged? And who wants to hear the new guy make an ass out of himself?

I know, that's all coming from within. I get it. I do. Still, sometimes it's just so hard to speak. I'd rather listen, and judge everybody else.

After all: that's what I'm really good at-- isn't it?

As far as Clarence Thomas goes, I don't know especially what he's good at. Never met the guy, you know? I don't know. All I do know is he's not being paid that exorbitant sum of money and wasn't granted that forever-if-you-please title for talking. We're not paying him to talk. We paying him, really, to think. To pontificate. To evaluate. To adjudicate. To deliberate. To interpret. Yeah-- to think. And, the last time I checked, it's hard to do that while running your mouth like you've got something to prove to someone, or to yourself.

Maybe I just like the strong, silent type.

Shhhh....

Salinger at the Museum

I'm not ashamed to admit that, when I'm in a museum, I feel like a dickhead.

If I were a character in a J.D. Salinger novel, I would have written,

"I'm not ashamed to admit that, when I'm in a museum, I feel like a lousy goddamn phony." Fortunately, I'm not a character in a J.D. Salinger novel. If I was, I wouldn't be Jewish, I’d alienate everyone I ever cared about, and I'd probably have had gonorrhea and cirrhosis of the liver by age 15. If I ever write a post about how I wish I was a character in a J.D. Salinger novel, please remind me of all that, will you?

Thanks.

So, anyway, taking me to a museum is a pretty easy way to get me to feel like a dickhead. I’m in Rhode Island visiting with my in-laws, and a friend of theirs took my wife, my sister-in-law and I to the RISD museum, which opened its doors to the public for free, as their Christmas gift to Providence.

I’m a reasonably well-educated, liberal-arts kinda guy. I was, in fact, the only individual in the museum wearing a tie who wasn’t a security guard. And yet, though I’m sure I look the part, I find myself struggling in the museum environment, like a blind hamster who has just been thrown into a toilet. What do I do with my hands, I find myself wondering. How close to the painting am I supposed to stand? Am I supposed to talk to my companions about what I’m seeing? Does “that cloud looks like the Elephant Man‘s torso” count as a viable artistic observation?

I was looking at a table with was constructed over 7000 man hours and contained 750 pounds of ivory, sterling silver and mother-of-pearl inlay.

“That’s a nice table,” some driveling moron said. I looked up and realized he had said it to me. I laughed.

“It is,” I replied sputteringly. “It’s a nice table!”

Wow. Commentary that could easily have come from a flat-faced, slack-jawed man-child wearing headgear and a bike helmet.

My parents did not take me to museums when I was younger. We really weren’t the museum type, although I don’t really know what that means. I don’t think they found staring at paintings to be a worthwhile expenditure of time and money. My father, being Israeli, doesn’t do well in quiet, taciturn environments that encourage measured introspection and low-to-mid range decibel utterances. He’s more fun at, say, a Super Bowl party or a shooting range. My mother says she likes going to the art museum, “just not with you,” she said once. She likes to go with Paula, a friend of hers who loves museums and is a round and jolly person.

“Did Paula eat any of the paintings?” I asked at age ten when my mother returned home from one of her museum outings. It was probably the jealousy talking.

I realize that it’s very male of me to say this, but I get instantly bored the moment I set foot into a museum. I can write for days straight without so much as two hours sleep-- I can read entire books in one motionless sitting, I can listen to music twenty-four hours a day, but I can’t look at a painting for longer than seven seconds before I start to think about sex, a scene from a Three Stooges short, or my next meal. And I can’t help but look at the other people in the museum and think about what they look like while they’re having sex with each other, what they’d look like in a Three Stooges short, and I am absolutely convinced that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing there either.

There was one woman today at RISD with terrible bleached blonde hair who looked like she was dressed up as some 1980s version of Pocahontas.

She looked like a dickhead, but no more of a dickhead than I, I’m sure. I certainly felt like less of a dickhead today, though, because I got to feel bored, uncomfortable, ill-mannered, ignorant and out-of-place for free rather than for a fee of $38.00. Of course, I ended up buying two beautiful felted pins for my wife and sister-in-law at the museum’s gift-shop, which cost more than what the entrance fee would have. But it’s amazing how good it feels to do something nice for people you love.

It even helps you feel like less of a goddamn phony bastard.