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[Aug. 13th, 2008|08:37 pm] |
This is my speech to MoMA, for posterity and for myself. I may give this publicly, but probably not. But I write it here, because I've had this public journal for almost 10 years, and it is my record. For better or worse, with a 15 year old's hella cool journal nick (mydarkestangel was right around The Crow's heyday), I will write this speech for myself, for the end of MoMA and for the end of my early twenties.
I want you all to know that I'm leaving, for now, but I will still be in New York should you ever need me or require my attention to details I should have caught over these last two years. It has been difficult realizing that I have to end my tenure here, because if I was ready for it, I would try to stay here. But here has meant more to me in two years than here has ever meant anywhere else. Here, I learned about my honest naivete. In Essex, I knew a language that I used to skim over crowds and breeze into college. In Northampton, I turned into the wind and realized that if I wanted it, I could do what I love, that writing, teaching and learning was something I really could do, and I stopped being a lazy overachiever and strove for something more, but something I didn't have a name for yet. I still needed more practice, more time to find out what tools I needed. But at MoMA and in the Archives, I stubbornly admitted that my language was imperfect, imprecise and very assuming. It caused me trouble, sometimes, to hear myself speak in a tongue that sounded different out loud than it did to me, or anyone who knew me. My tongue had only practice with the same people for 18 years, then in college with the same people going through similar trials, but at MoMA...and in New York, I found people who made me want to be more than I was, more than I had ever needed to be before. Over the last two years I have worked on my ability to communicate ideas, expressions, demands, desires, inquiries not simply in my own way but in other people's ways. I can understand more about myself because I believe I understand more about people, art, food, living. I think this job, the people I met, the challenges that I was required to meet, has made me a more complex, compassionate person. I have had opportunities here that I could never have dreamed of, but most importantly, throughout these two years, I have desperately missed writing. I have missed making, molding, defining my thoughts on the page and because of these two years, I can step forward with a passion to be better, wiser and as brilliant as you all are. [private addendum] But I know this is not the place for me. It made me better, having known that, having that as my backbone. I've seen a lot of beauty in this place, but I've also seen a lot of red-a lot of Armani- a lot of Italian vacations and Friday afternoons off, going to the summer home, and I'm not going to begrudge you your luxuries, I just wanted more. I wanted to feel that we reflected the art on the walls, I wanted to not be self-conscious that I didn't look professional, I didn't want to work surrounded by suits when the man taking up an entire gallery across the sculpture garden was a raving lunatic alcoholic that killed himself while driving blizted out of his mind fifty years ago and you can stand across the room and see the universe in his paintings but nothing of him. It can be reproduced in hi-definition but you still don't want to really see him. The aesthetic and bravado of him is enough to keep the institution fat and shiny and your shoes, shiny, and your interns, woefully underpaid. So there it is. It is the best; new skills, brilliant people, funded trips to see art around the world, funded language classes, access to galleries, basically...a pretty easy job paired with business, economics, trustees, $20 admission fees, $20K yearly salary in New York City and a boss who is kinda a bitch.
There it is Molly- two years of your life, furiously, passionately, desperately, lovingly spent. |
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