I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tonight, for the first time ever. I’ve been to The Frick Museum several times and I love the collection there, but I’d never been to the mother of all museums before. And I’ve lived in New York for 4 years. The thing is, now I wish I’d never gone. The museum is so enormous and amazing and now that I know that (I mean I always ‘knew’ that but now I’ve actually seen how expansive it is)I can’t stop myself from dying to go back. I have to see all of it. Awful.

I went to the museum with my class and we looked at several pieces. We surrounded a painting and played a game called the Delayed Judgement Activity. In this activity, you reserve all of your judgement and make objective statements about the piece. For example, “This woman looks happy” is subjective while “This painting has four women and a man” is objective. So we went around three times and tried making our statements as objective as possible. The neat thing about the activity is that it’s a group-activity. One person makes a statement and we all ponder whether that’s really objective or not. This process causes each observer to notice things that she or he hadn’t paid attention to before the exercise. The painting, therefore, completely transforms right before your eyes. It’s really magical.

By the way, the practice of separating objective from subjective is really difficult and requires a personal effort, especially when talking about an artistic object.

Before?

Today’s thoughts are revolving around two words. Both of which contain the word ‘self’.

First, self-consciousness. There is a lady in my art class who doesn’t seem to have any of it. She speaks her mind loudly and most opinionatedly all the time. When a slide is shown, she’ll say ‘it sucks’ even if the work is displayed in one of the local museums. It’s not that she’s standing up for herself, she’s actually being obnoxious and calling other people’s opinions wrong, etc. But the interesting thing is that the entire class is aware of this. We all look at each other each time she speaks in such a manner. It’s so obvious to everyone that she’s being rude that I always wonder why it isn’t to her. Can she really not tell? Is it that she doesn’t care? Or that she’s totally unaware? As I live my life on this side of dangerously aware, I often find myself wondering about people who have overcome the trap of self-consciousness.

Now onto the second word. Self-confidence. As someone who seems to have a collection of achievements and a total lack of self-confidence, I am interested in what makes people so self-secure. I certainly didn’t lack any love, on the contrary, my family made me feel appreciated and loved at all times. They’ve told me repeatedly how proud of me they feel. Same for friends. I have a loving boyfriend with whom I’ve spent the last six years of my life and real dependable friends. What is the answer? What is it that I seem to be missing? The one thing that will make everything click and have me feel better about myself. How do some people turn out confident while others, like me, worry about every little thing? Is everyone secretly self-conscious?

Sorry about all this self-pity. I guess thinking about my novel makes me ponder a lot about humankind and what makes it tick.

Before?

I’ve been thinking more about Istanbul and the changes it underwent. When I was little, we had one TV channel and one radio channel. Both of which were government regulated. I remember the time the second channel started, it was a huge deal. Now we have over a hundred channels and many European ones. We even have cable TV now. Same on the radio, hundreds of choices. I also remember when the first McDonalds opened here. Everyone was so excited. We all queued to get some. We used to have to call an operator to make international calls. We’d give them the number and they’d call us back when the connection was made. As of a few months ago, we even have a subway.

The fast is over. Another year has passed.

My mom and I watched a wonderful movie today called Hasards ou coïncidences by the famous Claude Lelouch. I had seen Les Uns et Les Autres by him many years ago and loved it. That movie is responsible for making me a huge fan of Ravel’s Bolero. It’s been a really long time since I watched an entire movie in French with no subtitles. I must say I suffered quite a bit but I did understand enough to make it all the way to the end. Gotta brush up on my French more. That’s another advantage to being home. I get to hear tons of it.

If you do speak or understand French, I highly recommend the above two movies. Or many others by the same director.

Before?

Lots of thoughts today. I had a long day, starting with a 10am Art History class, moving on to a Japanese class, a chat with a Columbia Deaf Education professor, and ending with a Novel Writing class.

In the morning class, two interesting things came up. One was the use of the word “primitive.” Whatever the initial intentions, the word has evolved to have pejorative meanings. And, in this side of the world, is often used in conjunction with African Art and the likes of such. We were discussing how that’s really a matter of judging and bias and prejudice and a student mentioned that it could also just be a means to categorize and asked what a more appropriate word would be. The teacher suggested primary as an alternative. It’s interesting, to me, how we can easily refer to other culture’s traditions, artwork, products as primitive without noticing that we’re judging them with our word choices.

The other topic of discussion that I noted to mention was about walking through a museum. A student asked the teacher if he knew any tricks about how to view an exhibition. The teacher said that in the cases of a special exhibition (which draws a larger crowd since those are only around for a limited time) it’s a good idea to start from the end. This way you get to avoid the crowds and to look at things in a different perspective. He also advised looking at pieces which weren’t surrounded by crowds. Paying attention to what others avoided. We also talked about whether people like or dislike listening to the audio information (which is available at some museums and it gives you detailed information about the piece, mentioning it’s period and other historical facts). How do you like to visit a museum? Do you like people to tell you what the pieces mean or do you like to not know anything and just feel them?

During my novel writing class, an interesting discussion surrounded the topic of dislikable characters. Would you read a book that had a protagonist you really hated? One that was truly evil? One that was immature? Why? What makes you come back and look for more? Are you only interested in characters you can relate to? All interesting questions for an author.

I also noticed how I think about my novel all the time, unconsciously. As I was explaining my plotline and setting to another student in the class, I noticed that I was saying things that were new to me. It was as if I had figured out the purpose and the tone of the novel without realizing it. It seems I think about it even when I don’t realize it. Why else would all these ideas roll of my tongue on the spur of the moment?

Before?

If you’ve ever watched Dharma and Greg you might have noticed the vanity card that flashes on the screen for a split second at the end of each show. The only way to read these cards is to tape the episode and freeze frame at the exact point. Or you can go here and read them all.

I just love the Simpsons.

Until this year, I used to watch at least 2 hours of TV every night. I can’t seem to work without the TV on. I need the noise. I’ve been this way since I was a little kid. During college, people would come in and out of my room at all hours and point at the TV, which was located behind me, and ask why I watched an infomercial about a cooking instrument. I had no idea what actually played on TV at any moment, I just enjoyed the noise.

Last December, I went to Japan for a six-month business trip. Going six months with no TV was a dreadful thought. Luckily, I have a portable DVD player and friends with tons of DVDs. I took over 60 movies with me. With the help of the movies and MBTV, I survived. Now that I’m back here and the new season’s about to start, I’m wondering whether it’s a good idea to return to watching all that TV. To be fully honest, the MBTV recaps are a lot more fun.