I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. down.

In the middle of the day, my friend Jeremy and I shared a joint,

in the middle of the day, my friend Jeremy and I shared a joint, then went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

We were young and seeking fun. Our friend Jennifer met us there.

We gave ourselves the assignment of guessing the names of visual art, only looking at the

wall signage after making our guess. We stood close, then moved back, then

inch closer again, studying every part of a canvas with great seriousness.

Then bursting out a title, like it was a great game

no one had ever thought of before.

In front of Sezan's The Large Bathers, Jeremy shouted,

The Nude Beach at Sundow.

By Picasso's The Three Musicians, I said,

The Clowns sits in and plays bluegrass. We roared in delight and

were shushed by several attendance. I became self-conscious, aware other museum goers were agitated by our boisterous laughter,

but we kept at it, going from room to room.

But then, we found our play silenced by powerful works that demanded our attention,

conceptual works that elicited our stillness. I remember how Brancusi's bird in space, abstracted to a single gesture of flight,

blew our minds. We heard on the surface of a canvas the noisy and

chaotic music of Duchamp's mechanical painting nude descending a staircase.

We were coaxed into the quiet and serenity of the museum.

Today's lyric poem walks us through a villa garden painted on a fresco.

...