Touch and feel
December 19th
About twenty-five years ago, I committed a crime. Or misdemeanor — I am not sure of the legality of what I did. I mean I did commit SEVERAL crimes and misdemeanors in my life, once I even had to go to the court to plead guilty to trespassing. Well, it was more of a matter of getting lost than willful trespassing, but I knew better than to try to argue in front of a judge in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. But I digress — I remember this one quite clearly:
The mid-1990s, New York City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Egyptian Gallery, mid-morning on a weekday. That’s where and when it happened. For some reason, the gallery and the museum were almost empty on that day. I saw the sculpture from the photo above, right in the middle of one of the rooms there. I saw a museum custodian assigned to that gallery walking away to another room. I saw that there were no other people anywhere in sight. So, on the spur of the moment, I decided to do it:
I reached over the rope in front of that sculpture. I purposely ignored the posted “PLEASE, DON’T TOUCH” signs there and extended my arm. And I touched that sculpture, first with my fingers, then with the whole palm of my hand. I moved my hand from the arm of Haremhab the Scribe to the shoulder and to the head and finally over the face. Then I touch the hieroglyphs on the pedestal, tracing them with my finger. All that happened in no more than 5 seconds. I remember nervously looking over my shoulder if anybody saw me. I remember looking up at the security cameras to see if they track me already. I remember leaving the museum quickly, expecting to be grabbed by the security at any moment. I remember judiciously avoiding the Egyptian gallery during my next few visits to the MET.
Of course, nothing happened. Nothing from the legal or security standpoint.
But something did happen there at that moment when I touched the sculpture from more than 3300 years ago. It was the feeling of connection to something from the improbable deep past. Some kind of connection to a person from that era who took the raw basalt block and made it into a brilliant likeness of a person from the Pharaoh court. Some kind of connection to a creative spark that is burning in us humans since the first non-utilitarian work of art was created.
I feel that spark in me still. It has been smoldering and is burning now and looking for a creative outlet for some time. Writing helps, but I feel the need for more. Photography helps, but is still not quite the right fulfillment for me. I was very good at drawing and painting with watercolors, but I stopped that in my early twenties. Do I dare to go back to it? Do I even have any spare time to practice drawing and painting again? So many questions, but the need to create is strong and only getting stronger in me.
