The Third Eye
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This is something I wrote for an English class. We had to go to the San Jose Museum of Modern Art and write a descriptive essay about something there. I wrote mine about a mixed-media piece called "The Third Eye," by Michael C. McMillen. Dan referenced it and I thought it was fair to post it here so you'd know what he's talking about. And, well, just because. I'm not sure how I feel about it, now that it's had time to cool. Here goes:
It�s the first thing I notice. Set in the middle of a blank white wall is a dark red door with dark brass hardware. The other exhibits in the room are video installations, all noise and nonstop television flicker. The door has mystery. A grimy sign hanging over it reads �The Third Eye� in spidery, heavily serifed lettering flanked by a yin-yang and an aum symbol. The sign almost fades into the softly lit off-white of the gallery wall, upstaged by the door�s deep, intense red.
It is narrow and old-fashioned, almost Victorian. The doorknob is mounted low and its finish has the warm glow of regular use. The door looks like something out of the engravings from Alice in Wonderland. It looks like it leads to Narnia. It looks like magic, like it knows I�m the only person in the room that can see it. It looks like it�s waiting.
The door is an invitation. Children too young to care about sophistication or metaphor run to it, immediately intrigued. �White Rabbit� drifts down from hidden speakers on the ceiling, almost lost in the low-level gallery noise, as I wait for the children to be shepherded away. I don�t want to share this one.
A brass plate is mounted at eye level with twelve round steel rivets. The dark patina of the antiqued brass brightens around the two round holes. The upper one is backed by thick glass: a peephole. I can see an odd, wavy pattern through it. The lower hole has a dull honeycomb grille with something that looks like cotton batting behind it.
I lean in to look through the peephole. The plate has a subtle, oily smell that is quickly overpowered by the scent of incense, not sharp enough to be the patchouli that the small plaque on the gallery wall mentions.
I look through the glass and suddenly I�m back in Amsterdam, trailing after my stoner sister as she hunts for weed. Behind the door is a head shop, much too large to fit in the gallery. I can see a register and a display case filled with glassware, rolling papers, and other paraphernalia. A trash can and broom lean against the right wall, and a couple boxes of neatly rolled posters are tucked into corners. At the end of the long room a staircase leads up to a small loft, open to the rest of the building, with columns and arches along the half-wall that runs along the room. A mirror ball glitters in the half-light near the ceiling. It reminds me of the tiny room at the back of the caf� where my sister happily smoked weak Amsterdam pot with two other Americans while I read and waited for her to finish.
I can almost see into another room on the left. There is a large Op Art poster against the back wall, a couch, a bookshelf, and the end of a table with what looks like a squat glass hookah or water pipe perched on it. A bluish strobe light further back in the room flickers rapidly on and off.
The plain white walls of the shop are papered with posters. I immediately recognize one of my boyfriend�s treasures -- a Doors poster from a gig at the Fillmore -- that we have hanging on our living room wall. I pick out the faces of Dylan, Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, a Dead poster, �War is not healthy for children and other living things� and several black-and-white Op Art designs.
In the back part of the room underneath the loft are some more shelves. A blue couch is tucked against the wall, under the stairs. Along the back wall is another couch or shelf, and balanced on it is a large, flat, white disc with dark shapes around its edges and a small hole at its center. I can�t shake the conviction that it looks like the ViewMaster reels I played with when I was small.
I keep staring, trying to see everything, almost dizzy with d�j� vu and the now-cloying incense smell. Jim Morrison�s voice snakes through the gallery as �Light My Fire� fades in overhead. All the San Francisco head shops and Amsterdam caf�s I have ever seen are in this room. There is a creepy unreality about the scene, not just from staring at it through a peephole. It�s too cunning, too clever to be real.
It inspires a sudden strong greed in me. I want it. I want to own it. I want to take it home and not have to share it with anyone. I want to be able to stare at it as long as I want and not have to let anyone else see it. I want to have this impossible, perfect little world all to myself.
It�s magic. I read the little gallery plaque, I know it�s a diorama, everything I know about miniatures and optical effects is screaming that it�s just a clever illusion, but something in me knows it�s real. The door, the sign, the incense, the shop -- everything has that quiet aura of magic, of an entire world just beyond reach.
Magic isn�t spells or cauldrons or bargains with demons or men with big beards waving sticks in the air while they chant, or any of the trash people seem to think it is. Magic is the secret things that happen when only you are paying attention, things that happen in the corner of your eye, things that speak to your soul. I want the door and I want the shop because it feels like its own little world. I want it because I love it, because I think I deserve it, because I want to believe that magic still exists and that I can still find it like when I was little and magic was waiting for me everywhere.
I look through the peephole and notice something that should�ve been obvious: off to the right, all the way at the back of the shop, half-hidden by the display case at the center of the room, is a red door. I step back and look at the door I am looking through, then lean forward to look through the peephole at the one at the back of the shop. The doors are identical. I know the rules. If this door in front of me is magic, then so is the one at the back of the shop. If I could just get through this one, I could walk through the shop to the door at the back and open it and step through. Who knows what would be waiting for me outside?