Random Sobering Thoughts

I visited the South-American exhibition yesterday, and loved the works by the Columbian artists, Oscar Munoz and Juan Manuel Echavarria. Echavarria's video piece was very heartfelt, and I felt it made the point about art as an essential and natural outlet for people during hard times, and how art can be political without being preachy. I felt a little more informed, about people and about Columbia, after watching his video. Munoz's work was magical, it appeared to have been video-edited, only it hadn't.

The rest of the day was spent manoevering my way back to the apartment. Which brings me to my next point, that tourism makes people jaded. Not the tourists, because it's always an experience being in a different country and seeing something new. It's those serving the tourists.

Bored gondola rowers and stall-owners at San Marco. They all looked jaded, like they had seen and dealt with all kinds of people and their less desirable human qualities.

Tourism's a massive, complicated creature. It lets many people make a living, it lets visitors take away a piece of the place, it creates memories, but that's the thing with professions where you have to smile constantly and sell your wares -- professions where you depend a little too much on others. You get jaded by the superficial exchanges, and the sheer number of people you encounter every day.

But perhaps I'm just seeing one dimension of these people. Perhaps I don't see them with their friends and families, and I don't see them chilling out and being tourists themselves. Perhaps we all have to do some things we don't like, in order to earn the means to do things we like. Perhaps some things come in packages and not detachable parts.