struth_tempo and duration, linda bamder

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Tempo and DurationAuthor(s): Linda BamberSource: Ploughshares, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter, 2009/2010), pp. 23-25Published by: PloughsharesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40354552Accessed: 16-03-2016 15:31 UTC

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LINDA BAMBER

Tempo and Duration

When I was young I used to go to museums with my father in the city

where he worked. At the time I didn't know how to look at art for my-

self, so often instead of looking at the paintings I just looked at him. I

had no idea how art developed and concluded in his mind, but I knew

when it had because then he would step back. He would take off his

glasses, and that would be that. It was satisfying, like the final gesture

in a piece of music that might be all you remember and even all you

really heard.

Recently I attended a musical performance of which I heard al-

most nothing, which happens to me sometimes. The rest of the audi-

ence applauded wildly, so I guess it was really good. Across the curved,

elliptical balcony railing I could see a man my father's age who had

heard every note. I saw him gather the music up inside himself; then

he shivered and gave it all up. What is 'my father's age'? The age he

would be now, or his age when he gave it all up? I'm almost my fa-

ther's age by now; but he died quite young, so I think I'll outlive him

by years. In another sense, of course, I will never catch up, since he

was twenty-nine when I was born. He is here as I sit on the floor

of a room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art writing this; here in

my handwriting, for one thing, which is identical to his when certain

moods of his and mine concur, or when I want it to and make it do,

as I do now.

The cafe in the sculpture garden has windows five stories high. The

coffee there is overpriced, but for $3.97 you can sit in the dead of winter

and watch the clouds go by. You can watch your grieving, loving heart

dissolve again and again over past and recent losses: there it is again, a

beautiful cloud of love and grief.

Thomas Struth makes huge format photos of people in museums

all over the world, art-lovers and tourists in front of famous paintings,

looking. The tourists wear shorts and backpacks, while the people in

the paintings are clothed in flowing garments, orange and ultrama-

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rine. My backpack is on the floor beside me, and I feel uneasy when

the guards go by. Will they make me pick it up and go? One of them

says not to lean against the wall, but doesn't ask me to leave. I need to

be in this gallery because it contains a photo of an older fellow, hands

behind his back, looking at two portraits on the wall, my father. From

their frames a black-clad, white-ruffed man and an identically dressed

woman return his gaze; so there they are, three well-dressed bourgeois

art lovers, two of whom have had their portraits painted. Is my father-

object older or younger than the painted couple? Older by a good ten

years, and at the same time younger by centuries. Like a long, unem-

phatic phrase in music, his attention takes its time, his body slightly

bent and hands behind his back.

Last night I went to a party for lovers of art. There was lots of space

and taste and money, and you were supposed to know when to stop

talking to someone and go talk to someone else. I did not. How glad

I am to be in a situation I know how to handle, duration-wise: here

things go on until they stop; like grief, like clouds, if you just give them

time. Oh, but they don't Here's a guard to throw me out We're closing

now, he says, so I get up to go.

Near the exit is more Thomas Struth: a face, this time, projected on

the wall. Struth got people to look at his video camera for a full hour;

not smiling or frowning, just looking. Sometimes they blink; some-

times they cough. It's all you need, it's gripping, it's a drama. Now it's

really closing time. Two hundred guards are massed, or more, gently

surging near the edges of the hall. They are pent behind a line but over-

flowing here and there, their ethnic and physical diversity cloaked in

uniforms of navy blue. They are not only from all over the world but

from all over the museum: the American Wing, the Classical Galler-

ies, the Tiepolo room where people ride triumphant chariots into the

fabulous clouds. The guards are moving, talking shapes; they want us

to go, they want to go home. One of them makes a shooing gesture, not

necessarily friendly, to hurry me along. I'm almost the last one out; I

don't know when to stop, I guess.

Or even just slow down Outside a woman shakes her head because

I've bumped against her running for a bus. Her face close up is full of

disapproval; seconds later seen from the bus, it's inexpressive but alive.

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It looks like something Thomas Struth might film. What was I thinking

of, running so hard? There's always more art, more grief, more clouds.

There's always another bus.

Linda Bamber 25


struth_tempo and duration, linda bamder

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