Having no class on Wednesdays almost but not quite makes up for having class at noon every Saturday. While nothing can take the place of the freedom afforded by two days off in a row, Wednesday morning rolls around and every week I'm more relieved than I expected to be when I hear my hallmates scuttling off to class and I don't have to go with them.
Tuesday night I was prepared to make up for my relatively tame weekend (home by 1 AM every night). With David and Paul from U Chicago, Lila from Reed, and Rachel from Lawrence, I was lured to "MOD club", an apparently foreigner-friendly club with no cover charge on weeknights, by the promise of live "funk-brit-pop" and cheap drinks. And funk-brit-pop there was, more or less, made funnier by the fact that all the lyrics were in Russian and that we couldn't figure out what was British about it. All the same, live music is live music, and the rumbling bass is the same in every language. You don't have to translate the beat of a drum.
Wednesday I finally made it to the Hermitage! Even without any fine art, the Winter Palace is astounding. Many of the rooms are simply recreations or preservations of 19th century Russian royal style, with furniture, decoration, and brocade in place. One small ("small") hall was lit by three enormous crystal chandeliers, probably 10 feet in diameter at least, which reflected off the pale marble pillars and life-size solid gold sculpture of a peacock perched on a branch surrounded by smaller wilderness animals.
The museum was easy to get lost in, as it's somewhat haphazardly organized, and I wandered from room to room following the pull of certain colors or paintings that caught my eye. But I was tired, carrying in my limbs and clouded head the weight of another night out. It made itself known in the throbbing of my soles and shadows of fatigue on my face, drew my mind from the museum, my legs dragging like sandbags, my eyes drooping past Matisse. So I left the rest for another day (another several) and sat in the courtyard to absorb how good it felt to be surrounded with art. I get wrapped up in this gloomy idealist perfectionism--or perfectionist idealism?--and museums sometimes help to lift it. I love to watch an artist's work progress as they move away from what was accepted, standard, and into their own style, pursuing not perfection but their own voice, a mode of expression that translates their souls or spirits or intellect. It's refreshing, I come to adore the "flaws" in composition and representation, feeling the artist as a real person at the moment they pressed their brush to the canvas.
I just love art.
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