& her thoughts
Your friends are staggered in the rooms before and after you, while you stay stagnant in an empty, light, mustard yellow room. Everyday you see thousands of people, everyday you stand still knowingly posing for the hundreds of photos, yet you can’t help but feel alone, isolated in the glass box that separates you from the rest of the world. A smile is what you’re known for, and yet you wonder why, “Why does my smile bring such a grand allure? Why?” You ask yourself how is it that people cannot see the hollowness in your eyes, for you wear it like a scarlet letter for the townspeople to see.
There is a melancholic nature to you Mona Lisa, your eyes are sad. You watch the various faces come in and out, and you stand still like you always do, wondering whether they’re truly appreciating you or basking in superiority for being able to visit you. The more you look the more you know, you know this is not how you want to be remembered, this is not how you want to live, because when the camera’s disappear and the people are gone, you’re left in a darkened room in the middle of the night, alone, no companion, no friends, when you’re finally free to breathe and break free from your almost smile, you are left with an everlasting loneliness. You can hear your friends next door talking amongst themselves, laughing at the tourist who had to be escorted out because he dared touch one of the paintings, the Roman Antiquities come to life and start walking around, they stretch their stiff legs and visit the Gudea to discuss the value of religion. Delacroix’s tiger’s come to life, roaming the halls of The Louvre hungry for their next prey. Your friends used to visit you but they saw the sadness in your eyes, don’t see the grandeur of your portrait, and have since been discouraged from coming again.
Oh Mona Lisa, you’ve forgotten to use your words, you haven’t spoken in forever and you’re longing to scream is on the tip of your tongue but you’ve forgotten to. You’re saddened to never see the halls of The Louvre, visit Liberty, leading the people, peak in to visit Bathsheba at Her Bath. You often wonder, what if you were La Belle Ferronnière and she was you. Oh it must be extraordinary to exceptionally ordinary, to walk freely and breathe fresh air, to go beyond the four walls that you’re enclosed in. You lock eyes with everyone that come to see you, you wonder what it would be like if you switched out of your dress and switched into pants, place your hair up in a bun and walk away, visit the Seine, walk by the water, go in and out of the gift shops, oh how wonderful it must be to have someone to buy souvenirs too.
But your reality is that you will forever be enclosed in a glass box, bound by four walls, in an empty room filled with thousands of people. You will forever be alone as the crowds grow bigger. Mona Lisa, you are the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most industrialized, and the most critical work of art in the world, and yet no one knows how misunderstood you are.
Mardin
19/03/2019
Consequential Strangers 