Take that, Newton.

You

All alone

Are you waiting for someone to make you whole?

Can't you see?

Aren't you tired of this dysfunctional routine?

--Staind, “Falling”

There is no way for me to hear those lyrics and not feel convicted. I’d been dreading this weekend for the last two weeks, ever since I heard Margaret and Alison were going to a conference. I never realize how dependent I am on my friends until they leave for a few days.

So Thursday rolled around and I realized my other friends were going to be unavailable this weekend too. It seemed I was headed for a solid three days of loneliness in EH 019. Yeah, I was pretty tired of that dysfunctional routine.

Instead of lying around the apartment, I escaped to the anonymity of the city like I used to when I was living in Washington, D.C. Indy isn’t quite Washington, but it’ll do in a pinch. I went to the art museum. I’d never been there and was actually quite impressed that such a place exists in Indiana.

Art museums are the modern-day cathedral. They have this surreal reverence to them to which even the most uncritical patron (me) must conform. Everyone wears their best clothes to the art museum, even the little boys with collared shirts barely tucked into their itty, bitty Dockers. The artwork itself preaches sermons and/or leads worship by example.

My favorite piece was called “Round Trip (A Space to Fall Back On)” by Vito Acconci. It took up an entire corner with stools and boxes placed “randomly” around the floor, wall and ceiling. A podium equipped with speakers played a loop of commands, ruminations and odd noises recorded by Acconci. Whenever he wasn’t speaking, there was this almost eerie knocking sound. It gave me a sense of unpredictability coupled with discomfort. I believe the point of the work was to move the viewer beyond his/her self-imposed physical/psychological constraints. If wooden stools can break the laws of physics, why can’t I?