Part 2: Berlin and the Unbroken Framework

The View from the Bus

The long bus ride down to Berlin gave me too much time to think. As the German countryside blurred past the window, mile after mile of green and grey, my own thoughts came into focus. The framework I’d pieced together just before leaving—this idea of the analytical mind, my need for a generative process—felt less like a theory and more like a lens. I spent hours on that bus turning it over and over, wondering if Berlin would prove me wrong. I hoped it would.

The Framework Tested

We were in and out of museums and galleries from morning to evening; the days blurred together into one long cultural marathon. I walked through what felt like a hundred of them, and the disconnect I wrote about was my constant companion. I really did try to leave it at the door. I’d stand in front of a painting, sometimes for a long time, and wait for something to happen. But the silence from the canvas was always louder than any feeling it was supposed to give me. The static, silent world of painting on canvas left me cold.

Points of Connection

The only time a connection broke through the noise was when an artwork stopped feeling like a finished statement and started feeling like an active inquiry. This happened with art that looked forward, questioning our place in an almost digital world and speculating on what our future might hold. Or it happened with art that looked inward, speaking with a raw honesty about subjects like mental health. These were the very themes I wrestle with in my own practice. Encountering these pieces felt like a meeting at a crossroads—a moment of recognizing that another artist was navigating the same intersection of ideas. It wasn’t just an appreciation of their finished work; it was a validation of a shared process. It was an inquiry I could participate in, because it was about the same problems I’m trying to solve in my own work and in my own head.

The Static and the Dialogue

It wasn't until the ferry ride from Denmark, on our way home, that these thoughts found their context. With the quiet hum of the ship's engine below and the dark sea outside, the trip finally had a moment to breathe. The conversation with my classmates started slowly, but as we began to unpack the week, a shared theme emerged. The sense of being an outsider in a gallery, of performing interest while feeling nothing, wasn't just my experience—it was a quiet burden many of us had been carrying.

That conversation, hashing out the sensory overload and the relentless pace, was more generative than any art I had seen. It was in that shared dialogue that the real problem crystallized: it wasn't just the art, but the environment it's presented in. A museum or gallery is a difficult space for me. The sheer noise, the constant presence of other people, and the relentless pace of moving from one room to the next create a sensory static that makes any genuine connection impossible. My brain is too busy processing the data of the crowd and fighting off exhaustion to have room for anything else. I’m certain that if I could rescue a painting from that environment and hang it on my own wall, we could become friends. In the quiet of my own space, a real dialogue might finally begin.

Conclusion: A Framework Refined

I’ll be back in that barber’s chair in a month or so. He’ll probably ask, “So, how was Berlin? Did you hate all the art?” I’ll have to laugh. And I’ll have a much better answer for him. I’d tell him the trip taught me my problem isn't really with art; it’s with the room. It’s the overwhelming atmosphere, the exhaustion, the pressure of a hundred people all performing "interest." I’d tell him the best part of the whole trip was a conversation on a ferry in the middle of the night, and that, like him, I just find my connection in a different context. Not in the gallery, but in the quiet dialogue after. I think he’d get that.