La Boheme Artistique

My new office is pretty scarce in the art and wall decor department.  Last fall I went from a cubicle to a relatively spacious office, from no walls at all to a wall of exposed brick and three quite large, quite blank, quite white ones.  I don't have any real burning desire to spend more money on artwork right now, particularly artwork I only see during working hours, but I also can't stand blank white walls.  They're far too institutional looking for my taste...and well, frankly, they're just boring.

The other night, I started digging through old posters that had long been rolled up and stuck together in the back of my bedroom closet.  Most of them would never do in an office, the majority of them had clearly been with me since college (James Dean, Van Gogh's Starry Night, the original Rent cast, respectively.)  Defeated, I was about to simply accept white walls for a bit longer, until I remembered another tube of posters, buried even deeper in the back of my closet.  I pulled the gray tube out, only vaguely recalling what might be inside.  And there, just as they were the day I last rolled them up, probably at least five apartments ago, were all of the posters - the ones I'd never had the money or the where-with-all to frame, that I'd purchased while backpacking through Europe, some ten+ years ago. 

I've found myself longing for those traveling days quite a bit lately; remembering them like it was yesterday - unable to comprehend that journey was actually more than a decade ago.  What a luxury those days were, to have nothing but time and empty days to wander around the streets of Amsterdam or Munich or Paris, all of it on my own accord, each and every memory - both those really wonderful, perfect ones as well as those upsetting and frustrating, all completely my own. 

The poster I hung in my office today probably won't seem like much to anyone else who comes in and sits down for a meeting; I doubt most people will even notice it's there.  Truthfully, I'm not quite sure I'd even buy the same thing were I to find myself roaming the seller's stalls atop Montmarte today.  But I did buy it, happily, proudly, when I was 22, on one of my last nights in Paris.  I can't even pretend that the poster was some sort of rare, unique find either.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the seller had a stack of them tucked away somewhere out of sight, ready to replace the sold item as soon as I'd handed over my Euros and walked away.  Still, I fell in love with my poster immediately that night, making my purchase without a seconds thought as to how I'd simultaneously continue to backpack and keep a poster from getting wet or wrinkled or damaged.  And yet, somehow, I did.  I have carried it with me through the rest of my travels, on the plane back to the States, and from apartment to apartment to apartment throughout my twenties and early thirties.  And now, an office.


I like looking at it, this antiqued ad for the original Moulin Rouge, now as I sit at my desk day in and day out, dealing with this crazy, always changing job, the one that comes with direct reports and too many emails coming in and so many people asking questions and needing immediate decisions, and fire after fire to put out.  I find there is something immensely comforting about looking up and thinking about where I was eleven years ago, who I thought I was then, and who I think I am now, and how really, I think my 22 year old self would have gotten along just fine with my 33 year old self.  Somehow, when I look at that old poster, I just know that we've managed - even with our ups and downs, mistakes, near misses, surprises, and wins - to make one another proud of each other.