Partner and I went recently to the Rhode Island School of Design
Museum, to see a show about men’s clothing.
Shows likes this – fabric, clothing – usually bore the hell
out of me. But this one was amusing, and really memorable. They had one of Mark
Twain’s shirts. They had one of Andy Warhol’s terrible shaggy white wigs. They
had a dapper trim little tux that had belonged to Fred Astaire, and a very small dress suit belonging to
Truman Capote circa 1970. They had a Harris Tweed suit that might or might not
have belonged to one of the British royals in the early 20th
century.
I was amused and really gratified to see these things. These
were garments worn by famous people, and –
Well, and what? Why does that
make them special?
Not long ago, a scientist on television showed how people
impute mystical properties to things owned by famous people. He showed a group
of people a fountain pen that he said had belonged to Albert Einstein, and
asked if they wanted to see and hold it, and they all handled it reverently.
Then he showed them a sweatshirt and told them it had belonged to Jeffrey
Dahmer the serial killer, and asked them if they’d like to handle it or try it
on. No one wanted to touch it.
He lied in both cases. The pen didn’t belong to Einstein,
and the shirt didn’t belong to Dahmer.
But I understand implicitly what those people felt. We feel
instinctively that objects take on the properties and personalities of their
possessors. There are even psychics who claim that they have the skill of
psychometry: the ability to read the histories of objects and their owners.
I own a Jean Cocteau lithograph – a portrait of Erik Satie –
which was once owned by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. I like to
think that I can feel the personalities of all three when I look at it: Cocteau’s
imagination and drive, Satie’s whimsy and purity, Shostakovich’s dark humor and
power.
I probably can’t feel any such thing.
But I like to think
I can.
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