Somehow, it's already my sixth year
working in the museum.
I'm thinking about that as I take my seat,
with the big wooden door at my back
and the little rope in front,
like a fence or gate.
Guarding has its tedium,
but it's not a bad job, not at all.
Before this, I taught woodworking in a vocational school
and listened to the saws buzz all day.
And before that, in my younger days,
I worked in the music business,
though it didn't seem so much
of a business to us at the time.
I managed small bands
and drove the van on many tours, both long and short,
and knew the inside of every smoke-filled
hole from Sheffield to Hamburg to my Vienna,
though there weren't quite as many
holes here as we would have liked.
So off we'd go in the van.
It was good.
Well, mostly it was good.
I like people, you see,
and to be of use...
But I had my share of loud.
So now, I have my share of quiet.
My favorite room is the Bruegel room.
It is, one can say without boasting,
the finest room of Bruegels in the world,
and perhaps the most popular room in the museum,
so there's always much watching out to do.
And when it's quiet
or one tires of looking only at visitors,
one can turn an eye to the paintings and
you will always see something new, I think.
You've heard that before, I'm sure, but it's quite true,
especially when it comes to Bruegel.
Now, some of my co-workers, I'll admit,
might not share my enthusiasm.
Some are students,
with their minds on the night's parties
or the day's exams.
And some, well some have worked here so long
it's hard to say just what they've done with their minds.
But that's their own business,
and we all seem to get along.
For me, the paintings are almost always worth a look
and the Bruegels are worth that and more.
Just the other day I noticed a frying pan
sticking up from a figure's hat
that I'd somehow missed before.
And that led me
to thinking about eggs, and to start a
search for them in different paintings.
And each time I counted one I would go
make my rounds and return to search again,
and before I knew it an hour and a
half had slipped pleasantly by.
Discarded playing cards,
a bone, a broken egg,
a cigarette butt,
a folded note,
a lost glove,
a beer can...
A woman came into the museum
and spent quite a bit of time,
first just sitting, and then looking in the galleries,
none of which is unusual in itself...
But what is it about some people that makes one curious,
while with others one would be just as
happy to never know a thing about them?
Three or four days later, she was back again,
struggling with a map
and looking more than a bit confused.
I did want to help her but I must admit,
I brought up the phone call in part because
it would allow me to confirm if her story was true.
It's sad, but one has to be careful these days.
But she did come back, and she did ask me to call.
And it was true.
She was stranded all right.
But not as stranded as her cousin, Janet,
in a coma of all things.
Anne knew nothing of the city
or how long she should or could stay,
or what to do with herself.
I guess she spent a lot of time wandering about,
but she didn't seem to have much money,
and of course, it was cold.
I got her a pass to the museum.
It was no big deal.
Nor was it any trouble to help out a bit myself.
If I were to wake up lost in Montreal,
where she came from,
it's what I'd hope someone would do for me.
It's the hands.
It's always the hands.
She asked if I'd go to the hospital with her.
"Why not?" I thought.
It felt good to see my city anew,
to go somewhere for no reason other
than to show it to someone else,
and then realize I hadn't been there in years
and actually liked these places.
They usually weren't places I'd show a regular tourist.
They had to be inexpensive, for one thing.
It made me realize how much time
I normally spent sitting at home,
and online, of course.
An art student worked here for a while.
I liked him, he was a punk kid, just as I'd been once.
He thought the museum was a bit ridiculous.
He said when he looked at the paintings,
he mostly just saw money,
or more accurately, things standing in for money.
I guess this was what he'd learned at university.
He said this was clearest in Dutch still lifes
which were essentially just piled-up
possessions of the newly rich of that time.
He said these were no different
than if someone today
were to paint a pile of Rolex watches,
champagne bottles, and flat-screen TVs,
that they were the rap-star
videos of their day.
And he said they were only less subtle versions
of all the other commodities the museum was hoarding,
and this was now just part of the way things
were disguised in the time of Late Capitalism.
He didn't hold it against the museum
personally, but he went on like that.
I asked why he always used the term "Late Capitalism,"
and how people knew it was so late,
and if it wasn't perhaps more troublesome
if what existed now was early.
He knew a lot more than me
but he didn't seem to have an answer for that.
He was also unhappy about the cost of museum admission.
I agreed it would be nicer if it was free,
but he was a big fan of the movies and
I had to remind him they cost as much
and he never complained about that.
"Yeah, you can't win," he said,
"but maybe someday everyone will lose less
"and museums and movies
could both be free."
We got to wondering how museums began.
He looked it up and was pleasantly surprised to report
that because of the French Revolution the Louvre opened
as what is considered to be the one of
the first truly public art museums
with the idea that art should be
accessible to the people,
not just tied up in the private rooms of the rich.
He was a good kid, and I'm sorry he moved on.
I watch the adolescents come through
with the big school groups.
They fool around, ignore their teachers,
send text messages.
Sometimes they compete to be the most bored
and to make fun of the art.
It gets a bit tedious but I know I'd have done the same.
Some of the paintings do get their attention,
Medusa's head of snakes works like a charm,
or rather like some horror film.
In fact we have a strong showing of severed heads here,
the Cranach Judith and Holofernes is especially graphic,
but there are at least five more.
And then of course, once they
actually start looking, there's sex
which is common in the museum, too.
It makes the kids laugh, nervously I guess.
And to be completely honest,
there are a few paintings
that look like cheap porn even to me,
soft-core of course,
but somehow just a bit sleazy.
There's one with a dog at the bottom of the picture
and even the dog looks a bit embarrassed.
But then there's the sculpture with a veiled body
that gets to almost everyone, young or old.
Or that magnificent body,
of a god I think, his penis is missing
as they often are,
but I think that just makes everyone
think about it and miss it.
It's quite a thing,
to be able to watch people's impressions.
And it's as if we, the guards, can be invisible.
I see the one kid on their own, maybe
holding back at the tail of the class.
Perhaps it's a girl, or a boy,
looking furtively at the discus-thrower,
whose ass so tenderly rests on a tree,
and the tree seeming very dead in comparison.
I've seen this happen again and again.
Where else can one look at such a thing,
and without shame,
because after all, one is in a very fine art museum?
Of course, these days they could just go online
and see all the Internet porn they want,
but it's different here, the way it feels for them.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I know it is.
And on Sundays, for example, there's an
immigrant's party here that we love...
It's a big spectacle to admire
on the huge church grounds.
This big gathering of black birds.
And I like to walk up to the church,
because the church is really unbelievable,
and you go to the back, and walk over the hill
to the Johann-Staud-Gasse,
and it's always a unique view.
The most-asked question is probably
of course, "Where is the bathroom?"
Naturally, we tire of it, though in the
case of the most obnoxious visitors
who ask in the rudest ways, there is the option
of sending them on what we guards call
"the scenic route."
But we all in life have to use the place,
so if they ask politely,
there's no point being bothered.
Price or value is a common question, too,
and not just amongst schoolchildren.
It makes me think about the English word "priceless,"
and wonder if a painting could actually be priceless
in the sense
that no price could be put on it.
And if so, and it was in a museum and not for sale,
if that could mean it was somehow set free
from all such accounting?
Many of the works considered greatest in the museums
were worth little or nothing in their day,
and many of the artists who made them died poor,
and yet they sit side by side with paintings
that were of great renown and sold for fortunes.
Side by side they hang,
and if you weren't told,
would you know which was which?
Johann the Elder.
Only 1.2 meters deep, it's not very deep.
Every day we have to pump out 60,000 liters
so that the lake stays like this,
otherwise the water will rise up to the white line
and then we can't drive the boats here any longer.
The water can go that high, but it is very clean water
and we always keep it at 1.2 meters deep.
And now we're driving 14 meters
underneath the little blue lake.
Hello, my name is Leitner.
I've a missed call from Dr. Winterstein.
Yes, thank you, I'll stay on the line.
Yes, Dr. Winterstein, this is Leitner.
You've called me?
Oh, yes.
Well, should we come?
Thank you. Yes. I'll tell her.