Please Can You Stop the Noise I’m Trying to Get Some Rest

“You’ll find this first painting unpleasant,” the tour guide, who’d given his one-syllable name to the group of which all but two had promptly forgotten it, said, walking backward and stopping before a crushed velvet rope in faded white. And, as he was in the process of assigning feelings to people without much consideration for their personalities, many took it upon themselves to determine the pleasant or unpleasantness of the painting for themselves. Some turned up their noses. Others squinted with downturned mouths. Others shrugged and continued as if they hadn’t witnessed what art critics had deemed the museum’s “most horrid piece.”

The info card that sat firmly next to every other piece of art in the museum was conspicuously missing from the painting. The artwork arrived at the museum without a title, an artist, or a history. It sat in storage for years until a new curator chose it to appear in an exhibit titled Rogues Gallery, in which all the pieces were by unknown authorship. With its morbid depiction, this particular painting caused quite a stir that the curator, deciding to drum up some press, kept it hung after the exhibit was over.

As the group continued on under the disciplined lead of Tom, or Bob, or Pete, or Greg, one girl stood behind, unaware that the cluster of tourists had moved on. She smiled at the painting, and the painting smiled back.