A Blip

It took me four months to step inside the art gallery across the road from where I live. It’s a contemporary gallery with striking colours angled across its façade, a little blip of artistry hiding in plain sight.

I wander past it each day, shuffling under its reeves to escape the rain, but somehow I had always been too busy or distracted or tired or oblivious to actually go inside – until now. Yesterday evening at 6:34pm, after walking past, pausing, swivelling, and being suddenly struck by the fact that the semester was almost over and neither of us had set foot inside, my friend and I finally ventured in.

The tall glass doors swung easily on the hinges. Apart from our footsteps, it was silent – the lobby was almost completely empty, and though there was a muffled warmth, it felt incredibly lonely. The attendant beamed at us, handed us pins, and directed us towards the restless-looking security guard at the entrance of the exhibition.

I can’t think of any word to describe the exhibition other than bizarre. There were rooms with luminescent chalk accompanied by melancholy jazz, large white spaces with mechanised African rain sticks and walls plastered with hand-scribbled essays. Security guards sat dull-eyed on the side benches, barely acknowledging our presence, and the air felt thick with a sense of unease. We stepped through room after room, wandering along narrow white corridors in what seemed like circles.

At 6:50, we stepped out of the gallery, blinking.

It’s funny how banality and jarring creativity can live side by side. Here I was, living the same routine over and over for months, and 10 meters away was this world of expression that creeps under your skin and stirs up the settled dust in your mind. The juxtaposition simultaneously prompts an intense dissatisfaction with the complacency of routine, and a longing for the comfort it provides.

We laughed a little uneasily then hugged and went our separate ways back to our rooms.