PMA

I met Jeremiah Miller today, author of “The Celestial Symphony” and museum caretaker at the Philedelphia Mueseum of Art, PMA (or positive mental attitude, as I told him). I had been walking around the museum for the better part of 3 hours, floor to floor, room to room, it seemed endless the amount of things you could stumble into from all corners of the globe, from all eras. Paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, weaponry, whole rooms, even whole buildings such as a Japanese Tea Garden brought in piece by piece and reconstructed. I’ve mixed feelings about certain things being taken from their place of origin and put on display, but at the same time I don’t know the back story of most of those things, or the reasons to how or why they ended up in that museum. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the experience of virtually time traveling the whole world in different points of history by simply passing through a building at your leisure.

One area struck me was two very large paintings of early doctors performing surgeries on patients, perhaps human cadavers, with crowds of other doctors looking on. It in part chronicles the early history of surgical procedure and how modern procedures have come to be. Not only was this particularly striking, there was a woman going around with a young child, maybe 4 or 5 years whom she was explaining the art exhibits to. Normally art spaces such as these ought to be walked through in silence but I didn’t particularly mind, though she was somewhat loud. Trying to explain things simply to a child is an art, not all parents can get it right. It’s a balance of trying to explain something difficult so that they might understand, but sometimes in trying to safeguard their sensibilities and protecting them from vulgar realities, you end up cutting corners off the edges of the truth, softening them.

The young boy was actually asking some legitimate questions, he asked her “did they kill those people with weapons?” The mother said something “no, they didn't kill anyone, these people donated their bodies to science so that other doctors can learn about diseases. It’s like people with covid today donate their bodies to science so that we can better learn about it.” “oohhh” he said. While that explanation was somewhat true, the real history of the medical field was brutal and grim. Quite often their test subjects were mental patients, vagabonds, prostitutes, societal outcasts. I worked at CSU Channel Islands earlier this year, a former Mental Institution turn university. There a doctor had performed thousands of lobotomies, a practice that was once heralded as a miracle of modern surgery, turning schizophrenics and manic depressives into vegetables. The practice ended in the United States sometime in the 1970’s, not that long ago. Children always look to their parents for answers, and for a long while hang on their every word put under the notion that they seem to know everything. How very long does one go before they realize their parents are just as muddled and confused as their children, some it seems their whole lives never really knowing answers beyond what they’re told.

I can go on about the museum itself, there’s so much to take in, a single visit doesn’t do it justice. But I found myself on the second floor to find some works of Pablo Picasso (where I also found a Dali) when suddenly I had to sit and rest. I’d walked into a room to see an incredible piece of glass art that was somewhat shattered and a bench in front of it, so I sat. The piece was called “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even: by Marcel Duchamp (worked on 1915-1923). Jeremiah had already said hello to me as I’d walked into the exhibit very cordially, which I always appreciate but approached me this time to ask me what I thought of the piece. I told him I thought it was amazing. He asked me if I knew the significance of it it or what it meant. I looked around the room and saw the artist’s other pieces and noticed that a lot of his previous works were included in this one. He began to give me a terrific explanation of the multilayered/multifaceted symbolism inside this piece, it was a culmination of this mans life’s work. Now if I’m honest, the skeptical part of me felt like art is so subjective, so how could this man know specifically what it meant, but as he went on about the nine stages of life, the seven filters, the three unseen forces of nature, the barriers holding us back from our true natures, I began to believe and kept an open mind to his thought and wisdom. The man is even attempting to write a book about the piece he’s calling “through the looking glass.” Already he has a published book that I’m looking forward to getting. I’d go on about this but quite honestly I’m still digesting it, it was quite moving, and relatable. As he spoke, I was almost moved to tears (yes I am the sensitive sort) but I had to tell him about my friend that just passed away, who was also an fellow artist and craftsmen, how he had been on my mind all day throughout and that in some manor or form, pieces of art reminded me of him, or rather, pieces of art reminded me of myself, who I may be in the context of history, how all of us at some point can be portaitized as one character or another. All together they bring about the entire human experience, life on this planet.

I’ll have to get back to this and give it a more profound thought but all in all that was my experience there, we exchanged information, emails and phone numbers and I let him now that it was an honor to meet a friend upon my journey and that that conversation had been a highlight of my trip. He told me that sometimes in life you get lost and need to meet someone to tell you that you’re headed in the right direction, and for me he was that person. You have to take in and accept the signs of life, those are the signs of self. I thanked him for his time and wisdom and told him I’d be in contact, and I mean to.

I’ve already received the following message from him:

“My dear friend... Blessing be to you.

Our lives are come together... To help bring more understanding of our purpose... Thank you for being. Bless your water and your ways”

On my way out I came across Picasso’s “The Three Musicians” and I thought of my friends.