K009: Moby Dick, Art Museums, and the Norovirus
Dear Emily,
A much overdue response to your New Years’ greetings, but 2025 does seem to be chugging along. Already, we’re nearly 1/12th of the way through!
I had a half written newsletter to you, planned for about two weeks ago… before I got struck with norovirus and found myself wholly uninterested in staring at a screen for longer than two seconds to check the time after an extended nap. After reflection, I still think my thoughts are relevant, so I’m fusing them with some more recent reflections on art and public consumption.
At the beginning of the month, I was a stand-by reader in the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Moby Dick Marathon, a 25-hour reading of the Herman Melville classic. While it was wildly disorienting to forego sleep and read the book in one go (and for the first time), this was a successful venture. Dozens of people stayed the entire reading, but over 2,000 different visitors entered the museum during that time period. Hooray for museums!
My initial thoughts were of storytelling as a public event. Many of our ancient tales - the Iliad for example - were meant to be told over long periods of time, read out loud as entertainment. The 200+ different readers of Moby Dick sometimes did voices, sometimes changed languages, and sometimes stumbled over archaic technical language, but they were contributing to the meaning of the story. How do Queequeg’s motivations change if he has a Jamaican accent for a chapter, then that of a sleep-deprived teenager who lives half a mile down the road?
Less than 25 hours, public speeches and poetry readings used to be far more common events than they are now. Going beyond the written word, large gatherings for visual media (film or performing theaters) and music (concert halls) have also faded in favor of the individual consumption of art.
While I read Moby Dick amongst a crowd and cheered when the infamous white whale finally appeared, I have spent far more time this month watching television with headphones on, listening to music alone in my car, or reading silently.
In many ways, shared consumption of art has become a novelty. Would you agree with this statement?
Perhaps as a counterpoint, I can share a more recent experience. In Philadelphia, I attended a late Friday night performance at the Museum of Art. While I was there alone and didn’t talk to any other visitors, I enjoyed live musical performances in a crowded gallery as we all looked at the same paintings.
Is this more in the nature of the shared experience, or the individual?
What role does fandom play in this, when the enjoyment of a piece of art isn’t based in time or space, but to be engaged with long after you first come across the art? (See: my current obsession with Conclave (2024) memes, tributes to my favorite film of last year).
I know you’re traveling at the moment, so you may not reply, but I hope that you’re enjoying art whether it’s on your own or in a crowd.
Call me Kate,
Kate