All the beauty in the world....
It's not easy to come by but it's not too far away either
Today would have been my father’s 100th birthday but he didn’t make it past 70 and died in 1995. For most of history, his lifespan would have been considered a good run. And indeed, today I saw a play about a man whose brother died at the age of 26.
The play is titled “All the Beauty in the World” which greatly appeals to me because, as you may have read here before, my life’s goal is to surround myself with beauty while living in a city that crushes it at every turn. That would be New York.
This small play is a one-man show about a former guard who worked for ten years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Patrick Bringley is that one-time guard and his memoir about those years has become a world-wide hit.
I know what you’re thinking because I thought the same thing—how can a book about standing around among some priceless artworks be even the least bit interesting? On the other hand, I’ve always wondered about those guys. How do they manage to stand around all day, every day without losing their minds?
Well, Patrick Bringley is here to answer those questions and the play is quite poignant and, dare I say it, kind of deep. Wait until you hear him explain “The Harvesters” by Pieter Bruegel, a painting on wood commissioned in 1565.
From the moment Bringley opens his mouth, this off-Broadway play has the ring of truth. I don’t want to give too much away except to say that the emotional underpinning of the play is about the death of Bringley’s 26-year-old brother.
Along the way, you’ll learn a whole lot about those mysterious museum guards who move like cats and watch us and the great works with one eye on each. I very much recommend it. It’s in a small theater and you’ll be really close Bringley himself.
I couldn’t help but think of my father as I watched the play. My father was a freight elevator operator and, before today, I would have thought his day to day existence was not much more interesting than that of a museum guard. He was more or less trapped in a box going up and down all day long. But thanks to Mr. Bringley, I now understand that the interior life of the mind goes on no matter how tedious a job might appear from the outside. And it can lead to some surprising places.
There is no one-person show about my father’s life and there never will be, but there are still those familial scenes that flash through my mind at unexpected times…like today.