i stalk strangers

Today I decided to head to the Prado, a diesel art museum here in Spain’s lovely capital… think of it as the Louvre of Spain. Anywho, I’m taking an art history class on Goya, Velazquez, and Picasso, a class in which I am one of a staggering two people. TWO. So basically if I don’t have my shit together it’s a little more obvious than if I were in a class of 20 where I could hide in the back row as I prefer to do. Therefore I pretended to be ambitious and I went to see everything we’ve been studying. I have to say that now that I know more from the past two semesters of art history classes, it’s more interesting to go to the Prado than it was two years ago. All I remember from when I went is that I wanted to ask the guards “Let’s see… I’m looking for a painting of… JESUS. Is there anything along those lines here?” Because I swear, I felt like it was like a Jesus convention. Like, the pamphlet should say 'Hello and welcome to the Prado... we will now burn the image of Christ into your brains forever.'

Anyway today I saw what I wanted to see and I have to say that I enjoyed my two hours there despite my complaining about going beforehand. The reason for going today versus another day is that Sundays is free entry to the museum. Oddly enough this is also now the reason why I will never EVER return there on a Sunday. At one point I was so surrounded by people that I literally could not move… needless to say I got really frustrated and claustrophobic annnnnnd I may or may not have shoved a 12 year old out of the way. Or maybe it was an old lady. Whatever it was, it was small and was easily moved from my path. Think along the lines of Frank in Old School when he gets shot by the tranquilizar dart and is stumbling through the birthday party and you see him shove a kid out of the way by his head. I'm a horrible, horrible person.

Moving along, I think people-watching in art museums is absolutely hysterical. There’s just a plethora of people ASKING to be stared at. There are a few basic ‘categories’ into which most museum-goers fit, which I will now indicate:

1.Germans- I can’t really criticize Germans because well, it’s who they are and technically I have kin there. And it's the language I most want to learn. And they make great beer! However, I feel like whenever I’m in a museum there are an abnormal amount of Germans. Like there you are, standing quietly and looking at a painting by Goya and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by approximately a thousand angry-sounding blondes. Der shnee ist weis!!! Heineken!!!

2.The artsy types. The 'see' art. They 'know' art. They 'feel' art. Life is art. They are art. Art is life. Lots of men with artsy long hair, artsy gotees, artsy little hats, and artsy scarves that serve no warming purpose. They are dressed in black from head to toe. The female counterpart has those “I want to look intelligent” style glasses with some crazy frame color, patchwork coats, and giant voluminous scarves. They also normally appear to be anorexic and gaunt to look more like the tortured artistic souls that they are. If they have come to the museum with friends, they find the need to overanalyze every aspect of every painting to the chagrin of said friends who don’t seem to have any interest in knowing why such and such painter decided to paint the scene from such and such angle or the cultural significance of the position of the subject’s right hand. But it’s fun to watch them explain how they interpret it all because they use lots of over-exaggerated hand gestures and pensively pucker their lips a lot.

3.College-aged travelers. They look weary and ragged and are usually dragged from museum to museum by one over-zealous member of their traveling pack in an attempt to see all there is to see of a city in a 48 hour period. In my case two years ago, it was Joanne with her highlighted travel books and itineraries, and we loved her all the more for it because frankly if she hadn’t been along for all of our little trips we probably wouldn’t’ have seen half the things we saw. Except for the long weekend we spent in Madrid being tourists and she had us up at 8:30am to go see 18 different fountains. It ended up being Joanne plowing ahead with a map, her three whining friends trudging a good 20 yards behind...

4.Retired folks trying to become cultured in their old age. They always pay that extra bit to have the audio guides, which they hold on to like they’re divulging the meaning of life. You hear tidbits of their conversations and you can’t help but find humor in it. “Well my my my Earl, would you look at this pretty painting. The audio guide says that… Earl? Earl? Earl!! Oh Earl, get off the bench and look at the pretty painting!” Poor disgruntled Earl heaves a sigh and staggers over to his beloved wife of 50 years and stares blankly at the painting. He mutters something, and the two proceed to squabble like old couples married for multiple decades tend to do. And the Betsey laughs.

The only thing that can improve an art museum people-watching experience is heading afterwards to the Starbucks across the street (I was freezing my metaphorical balls off and needed heat... and water to balance out the drinking of the previous evening) to enjoy a tea and a chocolate chip muffin. The artsy variety of the museum goers come to the Starbucks after they get their fill of their Spanish masterpieces in the Prado, because artsy types thrive in Starbucks and coffee shops with hippy-ish music where they can convene to talk about things like art and deep things and social movements they're plotting. There are always plenty of people-watching subjects. For example, in one of my favorite coffee shops back in Worcester where Miss Allison Niedermeier used to work, there was once a group of girls who comprised the lesbian power allegiance or something... and their activity that day was designing/puff-painting lesbian pride underwear. I think my favorite, or at least the one that most sticks out in my memory, was the thong which read 'Angry c***' in bright pink.

And that's all I got for now...