To see and hear

Last night I went to the Thursday Night Live at the Dallas Museum of Art (or as I like to refer to it – the Dallas Museum o’ Fart. Who doesn’t like a good fart joke?). It’s free admission to the regular collection, and a jazz cabaret in the café space. Sweet. Two things I noticed:

1. The Olafur Eliasson exhibit is two words: awe and some. There are a few photographs and some more-or-less traditional art pieces, but the coolest pieces are the installations. By the time we got to the end of the exhibit, my whole brain was overloaded from looking at things in weird ways. For instance, there was this (and I know this sounds silly) black fan, like the kind that you’d have as an oscillating fan in your house, that was suspended from a cathedral ceiling by a long cord. The way the fan blew, it would swing around in these random arcs. Part of the fun was just watching the way it would twist and spin as it flew over head. But there was also the way you’d catch a puff of breeze on your face when it would turn just right, and the strange hum and whir that filled the whole gallery from the motor. A lot of the installations took some time just standing there to figure out what they were doing. It was almost too much to see all the exhibits. I was almost in mental shut down by the time we were done. But if this one comes to your town, it’s definitely worth going to see, brain fry and all. (http://www.dallasmuseumofart.org/Dallas_Museum_of_Art/View/Eliasson/index.htm)
2. I really hate jazz. I mean in an almost-to-the-point-of-violence hate. When we finished with the Eliasson exhibit, we wandered down to where the jazz combo was playing. I’m assuming this was good jazz. There were a lot of long hair types sitting around, rocking out to the funky tones. But what do I know about jazz? For me it was like getting hit over and over again with a dead catfish. Aaaaghh. Aaaaagh. Why do you keep hitting me? I realize this is a deficiency in me. Millions of Miles Davis fans can’t be wrong. And I understand the French love the jazz. But me? I’d rather listen to a quintet made up of a jackhammer, a cat in heat, a ’78 Ford Pinto engine, a string of bottle rockets and Weird Al Yankovic on accordion playing Stairway to Heaven. Backwards.