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.

You See Yourself

I made the mistake a little while back of doing a favor for my boss.

You, I'm sure, would never commit such an occupational solecism.

My employer informed me that her friend, a published playwright, had written a play and her publishing company asked her to make multiple revisions on it before it could be published. My boss asked me to review this script and make suggestions, revisions, comments, criticisms, & c "as soon as possible."

Actually, before she asked me to do this, she volunteered my services to the playwright.

"Please don't do that again," I said to my boss when I was informed that my services had been volunteered without my knowledge or acquiescence.

"Do what?" she asked innocently, quite possibly resisting the urge to bat her eyelashes.

"You know what," I said flatly. I've known my boss since I was eleven, so I can talk to her this way, rather like the way we churlish boys abuse our mothers.

"I thought you'd love the opportunity to be more creative!" replied my boss, feigning hurt.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see slaving over someone else's bullshit children's musical and working diligently to further her career as an opportunity to be "more creative" nor do I see it as something I, or anybody else, would "love" to do.

But that's beside the point. I did it, partly because I was already commited to do it, and partly as a favor to my boss.

The musical, by the way, sucks donkeynips. It has all the hallmarks of a musical about high schoolers written by a fifty year-old woman, because that is precisely what it is. There are the stereotypical characters, even referred to in the character list as "The Jock," "The Nerd," "The Cheerleader," and "The Artsy Girl."

I mean, seriously? Shoot me in the teeth.

But I took several hours, on a Saturday, mind you, to review this woman's daft little musical, because her publisher was breathing down her neck to receive the final revisions by Monday. I reviewed and edited the work, even adding monologues and dialogue of my own, and emailed her four pages of notes. Then, I washed my hands of it.

Until she emailed me back not 25 minutes later with 10 more questions about the play, and other character ideas to consider and get feedback on. Now, I should have said, "Sorry, you got your feedback already. If you want more jumpy mattress, you'll have to put another quarter in" but, of course, I didn't. Because I am a slave, a doormat, an assfuck, a limpwimp. More of my weekend got pissed away making changes and suggestions and additions and deletions to this manuscript that I don't give a hoot in Christ's left nip about. I sent her another email, indicating in a very polite way that this was the end of my critique session. She emailed back and was appropriately grateful.

I didn't hear from the playwright until yesterday, when she called up my office.

"Oh, I'm actually glad you picked up the phone," she remarked. Gee, thanks.

She went on to say how helpful the revisions were and how they made the play much stronger, which was nice to hear. She also mentioned that the publishing company was pleased, which was also nice to hear, since nothing I've written has pleased a publishing company since 2001. She then mentioned that she gave me "credit" in the script for my aid, and I won't lie and say that didn't please me either, because it did, though a fee of $1,000 would have pleased me a good deal more. Unfortunately, she did not stop there.

"And I wanted to let you know that I'll be contacting you again in the future to consult on some of my other musicals that I have coming down the pike that need a fresh voice, because I really see you as a dramaturg. Isn't that how you see yourself?"

This is where I ceased being pleased.

From the ever-trusty Wikipedia, for those of you not familiar with the term: "the dramaturg will often conduct research into the historical and social conditions, specific locations, time periods, and/or theatrical styles of plays chosen by the company, to assist the playwright, director and/or design team in their production."

In short order, The Playwright's Bitch.

I think this is what one might call a "back-handed compliment." I have definitely been on the receiving end of such compliments before, and I know distinctly what they feel like when delivered. Now, this playwright may very well think that it's a high honor to be called upon to flush out and finesse her simple and fatuous theatre pieces, but I do not share that opinion.

Proud? Sure I am.

Snob? Probably.

I think, though, I was less offended by her suggestion that I be her own private, in-pocket, free-of-charge dramaturg than I was by her incredibly and outlandishly presumptuous question, "Isn't that how you see yourself?"

Isn't that how I see myself? As what? As chained to your hip, spending my free time reviewing outdated and ridiculous feel-good musicals about pimples and algebra?

No. Most definitely not.

"I see myself as a writer," I said to my boss this morning, recounting the conversation to her in a voice close to breaking, "but I suppose nobody else does," I said as I turned on my heels and walked out the door. On my way to go to Staples. To stand there for half an hour making photocopies. Of one of this woman's stupid plays.

And so maybe I'm just not.

Of course, I'm a blogger-- you know that. But, is that the same thing as being a writer? I vacillate on that point. I perform in amateur G&S operettas-- does that make me an actor? Maybe. Does it make me a singer? No, I'm no singer. Does affiliation with the arts always have to be dependent on whether or not you get paid? I don't necessarily think so, but that is how culture defines you. The insipid, scripted question you hear the most when meeting some painful new schmuck at a party, "So, whaddyoo do?" refers, of course, to what you doo, for money.

I don't know what titles or jobs or hobbies or anything really means anymore. One thing I do know quite clearly is that, at no point in my life will I answer the question, "So, whaddyoo do?" by saying,

"I'm a dramaturg. Nice to meet you."

Because neither of those statements will probably be true, especially if you write children's musicals.