Amsterdam Eighteen: Mood Zones

I took it easy Wednesday. I worked on an index in the morning then went for a stroll. As I walked out the door, I remembered that I was in Amsterdam. It seemed that each time I left my apartment I was surprised to find myself in a foreign country. It was as if I woke each day in the United States and the front door was a portal to Europe. I always forgot it was a portal until I walked through it. This made for a very fun life each day: I woke up thinking nothing particularly special was happening then I would walk outside thinking I was going out for groceries. I would stop a foot or so outside and shake my head. “Who put that canal there? There aren’t any canals outside my house in Madison. What the hell was in that coffee I made this morning?”

Reality reasserted itself and said, “You are in Amsterdam, motherfucker! Drink up the canals, admire the mansions, explore the neighborhoods, and check out a museum for crissakes. Van Gogh ring a bell?” Van Gogh? Hmmm. Why not? No, wait, the Stedelijk. Fuck it. Just walk and see what happens. Soaking up the city is intoxicating.

The day was cloudy, but not terribly cold. I took an umbrella with me just in case, though. The apartment had a little rack near the door and there were three umbrellas in there, each a different color. I was feeling festive so I grabbed the brightly colored one with polka dots.

I walked southwest, cutting through the canal rings and past the Seven Bridges of Reguliersgracht, one of the most beautiful areas of Amsterdam. I stopped on a bridge and looked out over the water. After a time, I turned and faced the street, watching cyclists and pedestrians as well as the canal stretching out to the west. Everyone in the area had a different look and feel about them compared to other spots in the city. To an extent, that was because the locals of the area are different and so are the tourists and travelers exploring. I thought it was more than that, though. I noticed that I changed depending on the neighborhood setting around me. I became a buzz of energy around the Dam or Rembrandtplein whereas I was soft and contemplative when strolling through the quieter streets of the Oude Zijde. At the Seven Bridges, I felt … timeless. The setting erased the idea that there was another place that might be more gratifying. While in that setting, there is no possibility of believing a better place exists.

I walked away reluctantly and soon found myself on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat. I felt entirely different. “No, that was just a thought you had at that moment. You could have easily been in Vondel Park or the Jordaan and felt the same way if the conditions were right.” I doubted this, though. I looked in the windows of the antique shops and galleries, slowly strolling with my arms behind my back, casually twirling the umbrella, and I continued hazily thinking while simultaneously being intrigued by paintings and artifacts. I remembered feeling similarly at Seven Bridges in the past. I was always with S., though, so perhaps I thought it was her as much as the spot; but, no, it was the setting itself. Night or day, summer or winter, doesn’t matter. Romance emanated from the place. The romance was so subtle that I had thought it came from within me, but the truth was that I walked into a mood that never wavers. I knew it was true because the mood didn’t come with me when I left.

The discovery of a place I could visit to experience romance through no effort of my own was extraordinary. Amsterdam provided a huge array of moods, almost all of them on the plus side of the emotional spectrum. On guide maps, Amsterdam’s semi-circle urban layout was often categorized through color: The Nieuwe Zijde might be blue while the Oude Zijde could be red. My map, on the other hand, would highlight mood zones and I would make maps within each zone to show where specific emotions could be felt while occupying a specific position on a given street, bridge, or park.

I think these truths have been understood by photographers, painters, and filmmakers in a somewhat different way. Lighting and timing give a place a particular mood. The difference, though, is that the painters, videographers, and photographers are not in the space they are capturing; they are looking at the space from another place. In a sense, the photographers, filmmakers, and painters are celebrating the space from which they are painting or taking photographs. What you do not see as viewer is where you are while you are looking. The composers of the image, if they are adept at their craft, have likely searched for a special place from which to capture the scene with paint, film, digital photos, or video. Finding a place to capture is likely easier than finding the position from which to capture it.

The art of experience differs from other arts in this sense. In Amsterdam, I was the object of art to be captured. I merely needed to move myself from place to place to create different moods, sensations, and thoughts. I experienced a particular array of mood/sensation/thought in Eik en Linde that differed from the combination I experienced at Seven Bridges. As I connected more intimately with the city through spatial exploration I was able to mentally map the places that created distinctly unique experiences that couldn't be found at other locations. Romance can be experienced in Oosterpark, but the qualities of the romance would be different than the romance experienced at the Seven Bridges. My ability to notice the differences depended on the sensitivity of my awareness. Awareness of the quality of being in a particular place was the art.

I viewed paintings in the window of an attractive gallery. The interior was entirely white; the only colors came from the paintings, most of which were abstracts featuring one color. All of the paintings were bright and bold with clean lines. Many of the one-color paintings used different hues to create shape and form; three hues of orange made up one painting that was divided by both straight and curved lines. My eyes were pleased, particularly because the sharp white of the interior made the colors explode. The paintings didn’t look like they required tremendous skill, but the five figure prices suggested that the painters were masters. To each their own.

I thought more about myself as the object of the art of being and realized I was priceless in comparison. I looked up and down the street and saw other priceless objects of art standing, walking, and cycling. I wondered if they considered themselves more valuable than the paintings and antiques they viewed. Furthermore, I wondered if they viewed one another as the art they were. I wanted everyone on the street to gather around to view each other, to sniff and listen, to touch and lick, for each to marvel at the interplay of multisensory art objects. All the galleries and antique stores would likely shut down as their paintings and artifacts failed to compete with this newfound relational art between humans.

I walked across the Prinsengracht bridge and Nieuwe Spiegelstraat became Spiegelstraat. More shops and galleries. I’d had my fill so I continued walking. As much as I wanted each person to appreciate the art of every other person, I did enjoy stopping to look in the windows. I wouldn’t want the galleries to close; I simply would like a change in perspective when a human being looks at another. I was awed by the existence of other humans, by being in proximity, and by experiencing their presence through my senses. Granted, I preferred interactions with humans in specific places at specific times under certain conditions. The centerpieces, though, were the human beings.

The massive edifice of the Rijksmuseum appeared before me. I hadn’t visited since 2001. Seeing it again made me feel like a child. “Dad, dad, can we go? Please, please, please, dad, just this once and I won’t ask for anything else, okay?” My inner dad said yes so I went. My biological dad would have said yes, too, because that’s the type of guy he was. My brother and I once pleaded with him to drive fifty miles off an Interstate highway to see a ghost town we had found on a map. We were on vacation driving across the United States and my dad wanted to make time, but he was too much of an explorer to say no. Unfortunately, the ghost town was a major disappointment. The best part of the experience was the excitement on the drive to it. In a sense, that made the detour worthwhile and I could see in my dad’s face that he felt the same way. At the very least, we scratched the place off our list of things to experience in life knowing we never had to wonder what we missed.

I had extensively explored the Rijksmuseum on two occasions. The first time was in 1998 with S. and the second was in 2001 when I visited Amsterdam on my own. Rembrandt’s massive Night Watch is the focal point of the museum, but I was more fascinated by other parts of the museum. Still, Night Watch filled me with awe. The size blew me away, about 12’ x 14’. Combined with the detail? Insane! I couldn’t imagine how long it took to paint it. Museum guides proclaimed it was finished in 1642, but there was no information on when the painting was started. The main building of the museum was being renovated so the Night Watch was in what was called the “fragment building.”

Since the main building was being reconstructed, I enjoyed other areas. The furniture and interiors section was a highlight for me. There were three large and intricately decorated dollhouses that I loved. They provided a detailed view of how affluent houses were furnished in the seventeenth century. I spent at least an hour looking at them. I could imagine living in each one and it was easy for my mind’s eye to see the men, women, and children of past eras walking into and out of each room: A teenage girl combing her hair in front of a bedroom mirror, a stately gentleman drinking scotch in a wood-paneled den, and indentured servants slaving in a basement kitchen stocked with pots and pans as well as a wood-burning oven.

Interestingly, doll houses were not toys in the seventeenth century; they were serious hobbies of women. The most spectacular of the three dollhouses was collected by Petronella Oortman. The museum guide stated that all the pieces were made to scale in the same way and using the same materials as the furniture and other items in houses of the time. The miniature porcelain was delivered from China. Oortman commissioned cabinetmakers, glassblowers, silversmiths, basket-weavers, and artists to furnish the dollhouse. The cost of the dollhouse when created was equal to the price of a real seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam.

I loved looking at the antique furniture as well. The houses they had once called home formed in my mind and I thought of Herengracht, Prinsengracht, and Keisersgracht. I had not explored the major canals much compared to past trips. I decided I would at least cover some of the canal ring I had not yet seen as I walked toward the exit of the museum. However, the wind was howling and the gray day had turned dark. Fortunately, rain was not falling. My umbrella would likely have flown away just as spectacularly as the woman’s I viewed during the weekend I stayed at The Grand Hotel. I sighed as I thought about the hotel while walking back the way I had come. I veered slightly off the same path I had taken and saw the sign for Conscious Dreams again. I remembered that I still had the Ecuadorian shrooms in my refrigerator. I contemplated whether I would shroom in the evening as I shopped at Albert Heijn for groceries and a bottle of wine.

I returned to the apartment early evening. The wind had died down near the end of my walk, but a heavy rain poured. Even with the umbrella I was wet. I was wind-worn and tired. I changed clothes and made a ham and kaas broodje mit tomaten. I tried out my Dutch here and there. It was bad, almost always related to food, but I noticed when I shopped or spoke to others that the attempts were appreciated. The woman at Albert Heijn tried to help me with pronunciation and that made me feel welcome. I had a decent ear for the language and could pronounce Dutch words fairly well. I lacked the vocabulary, though. Most of the Dutch in Amsterdam spoke English so fluently that whenever they discovered I was American they would launch into my native tongue.

I opened the bottle of wine and loaded a bowl. I puffed a bit, listened to music, and lied on the couch to read. Shrooming seemed like a bad idea given my physical exhaustion. I had tickets to moe the next two nights and I thought it would be fun to shroom at the Melkweg. The day had been full, a nice mix of work and meandering play, so I relaxed the rest of the evening.