Day 10

K left the apartment early to spend the day working with Martha on last year's taxes. I took the umteenth load of dry cleaning to the cleaners down the street and then vacated the apartment so the cleaning lady could have it. I walked hard for an hour and a half - I'm almost getting easy with long fast walks again - and ended up at the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art. As many times as I've been here I don't get tired of it, but now almost half of the main galleries are closed, so a great deal of what I am used to seeing is not currently available. So, I crossed under 2nd St by way of the tunnel between the two museums to the East Wing of the National Gallery. The East Wing specializes in 'modern' art - as opposed to the more traditional art on display in the original West Wing. Some of this stuff I love but a lot of it is just nonsense. OK, I am in many ways a Philistine. Just because some critic says that something is significant doesn't mean I have to agree. I am absolutely convinced that most of what is on display in the East Wing today will not be there in 20 years.

All one has to do to verify this prediction is to look at Art periodicals throughout the 20th Century. Most of the artists featured and praised are currently unknown. The same is true of poetry, theater, and music. What forces combine to save some artists and consign most others to oblivion are really not well understood. Nor is it in any way certain that the artists added to the cannon are really superior to those who fell by the wayside. But the reality is that they are the ones who will be known. Historians and others, when they survey the past, focus on those figures whose names and stories have survived. Doctoral dissertations can be written about the odd, obscure figure, but only the famous are real to the multitudes. Furthermore, a few seminal names come to be proxies for whole classes of persons. The most uneducated person knows the names Einstein, Beethoven, Shakespeare, and Picasso - even though they (and for that matter most 'educated' persons) have little if any familiarity with their actual work. They have become cultural icons and proven their value by being commercially viable. Their names and images can sell product and they can serve as a convenient shorthand reference for excellence in their respective fields. But how did they, rather than Fermi, Vivaldi, Webster and Braque, become the poster children for their fields?

OK, so I worry about odd stuff. But the question of who gets to decide what is important and what is not (in art and in every other field) is the basic political question. It goes to the heart of what all governance is about - the distribution of rewards (and punishments) and the allocation of responsibilities and perks. Living here in the land of Pork and Baloney I tend to get cynical about most political issues. For good reason. But they are not that different from the more high brow questions of assessing excellence in the arts and preserving someone's works accordingly. Most politicians are forgotten - even if their works were exemplary. The same is true of most artists, poets, playwrights, and composers. Success in one's own brief span of years does not guarantee even a faint memory in times to come.

And speaking of fleeting fame and odd standards of taste, as K and I were about to return to the apartment from an emergency run to FedEx (mailing in the payoff check for the Jaguar) we watched a bizarre happening play out in the area in front of the Eastern Market Metro - Snoop Dogg, sans posse and seemingly just wandering, was setting off waves of celebrity meltdown among the unsuspecting commuters exiting the Metro station, dispensing handshakes, hugs, and autographs. What he was doing wandering around the southeast section of Pennsylvania Avenue I have no idea. He has no performance currently in DC that I could find. The scene reminded me of the movie "Soap Dish" where Sally Fields, playing an aging soap opera star, goes to shopping malls in order to be recognized and fawned over. Seemed rather strange.