You are always on my mind/beyond my comprehension.

Subject: stranger in the park, I liked his moustache, he was scared when I approached him. 

I woke up with Elvis'  “Always On My Mind”  on my mind. It was my earworm for the day, rotating in my mental jukebox with another song I’ve had in my brain head for over a year now and another really explicit one by Peaches that has been rearing it’s vulgar head at inappropriate times since 2006.
 
I took my cerebral playlist to the Kandinsky exhibition in the old Post Office building (now cultural outlet) in central Madrid. Kandinsky’s art is abstract, the kind that begs the question: where do you draw the line? He drew them all over the place and even coloured them in sometimes. If you have never seen Kandinsky’s work, imagine the sort of stuff that commonly elicits the following reactions: “pfft I could do that” or “looks like something my unborn child could do” or “I’m an unborn child and even I could do that”.
 
I am not in that camp. I like to think I understand the significance and meaning of the major modern art movements despite often not knowing the meaning of individual pieces of art— I did once stand back to admire a blank, white canvas before realizing it was rolled up at the top and was, in fact, a blind.
 
Then again, I have also seen a pair of headphones plugged into a pile of gravel at an exhibition of final year art student pieces in Glasgow, come on now, folks, how long do I have to look at that one before I can keep walking?
 
The conundrum in this case is as follows; just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s good and just because it’s beyond your comprehension doesn’t mean it’s drivel. Gravel, maybe, but not drivel.
 
I am happy for a piece of art to remain beyond my understanding, but at the same time I will never be servile to the superhuman quality it is so often given.
 
Everybody around me was, of course, taking it more seriously than I was (see: 7th Nov). I shifted my gaze towards my fellow anthropoids, all of whom had gathered to see the creations of another anthropoid. The majority had audio-guides and were ritualistically spending the necessary amount of time staring and nodding and pointing at each painting in order to appear cultured and intelligent to those around them.
 
I had opted out of the audio-guide because I feel the relationship between humans and art should be pure and unadulterated, actually it’s just because I didn’t feel like being part of the world’s blandest silent disco.
 
The collective drone of the audio subjected me to a thousand, distracting whispers. There was an outburst of “SHHH” when someone spoke loudly, forgetting they had headphones on, pretty rich coming from the rest of the zombies. Are the paintings trying to hear something? Why does it have to be silent? I couldn’t hear a bloody thing above the white-noise and had since returned to my mental jukebox to drown it out.
 
I drifted from painting to painting and, treading water in my lack of knowledge, tried to make out images in the mess, like you would with clouds. 

A fish, a rainbow, a penis, a house, a boat, a light-house, a vagina, a face, a dog, a nipple, a face, a line, a vagina again, two lovers, a fish again or is that a vagina? So many vaginas, or fish, I can’t tell.

I figure either Kandinsky has sex on his mind or I fancied fish for dinner.