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October 12, 2005
TT: Entries from an unkept diary
- Collecting art changes your relationship to art objects in all sorts of ways, some of them surprising. In my own case, it's had an unforeseen effect on my fantasy life. Before I started buying art, I dreamed of owning such pricey objects as, say, a Degas pastel or a Matisse cutout, none of which I could hope to acquire without first taking up a new line of work (bank robbery, say). Now my wildest dreams have become considerably more practical: I'll never be able to afford a Cézanne watercolor, for example, but it's within the realm of remote possibility that I might someday be able to scrape together enough cash to bid on one of his color lithographs.The simplest way to sum up this shift in perception is to define it as the difference between five- and six-figure fantasies. Not that I can easily imagine myself shelling out a five-figure sum for a painting or print--I've never spent anything remotely close to that on a piece of art--but it's not wholly inconceivable, a fact that lends a touch of savor to my newly "realistic" dreams of future acquisitions. Will I ever add a Cornell box or Morandi etching to the Teachout Museum? Probably not, but I might, just as I might run off one day with the most beautiful woman I know. (Wipe that smirk off your face, love.) No, it's not likely, but it's a hell of a lot more imaginable than my running off with Kristin Chenoweth, right?
- When did No problem! replace You're welcome, sir in the vocabulary of Americans under the age of forty? Though I can see how it must have happened--it's clearly a vulgarization of De nada--the implications of the two expressions are subtly but significantly different. To gracefully turn away thanks by saying "It was nothing" is...well, graceful. To bray "No problem!" is to invite the listener to infer that you haven't been put out in the slightest by his request for help, and wouldn't care to be. I guess that's democracy in action, right?
Speaking of exasperation-provoking clichés, I'd like a word with the originator of the piece of folk wisdom so commonly dished up to singletons no longer actively seeking a companion: Ah, but that's the best way to find one. Could this, too, be a vulgarization of a foreign idea--a watered-down Zen koan, perhaps? Or might it have insinuated its way into the common stock of received wisdom by way of some banal twelve-step slogan as yet unknown to me? Whatever the source, it's the second most irritating piece of well-intended reassurance I know.
The first? That's easy: It's safer than driving! If you like your front teeth, better keep that one to yourself.
Posted October 12, 2005 12:04 PM
