Edgar Degas,Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen
I'm having trouble remembering what made me think of this the other day--could have been a dream (I've been having some odd ones lately). Memory is such a strange thing to me. Years ago I visited the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska during a big Degas exhibition there. There was a stunning display of pastels--a medium that always got the better of me--and the unveiling of a new skirt for the museum's Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen. The usual muslin skirt was replaced with one that, as I recall, the curator explained was more typical of what a ballerina would have worn at the time the work was created. I don't care about the ensuing scandal, and I liked the new skirt, actually.
But about my memory: I realized the other day that in the back of my mind, I have an almost memory of the way the skirt felt to the touch. An almost memory that seems quite real to me--for the first few moments I thought about it, I could almost feel it in my hands. But I know I couldn't have touched it because I'm also almost sure that it was displayed in a vitrine (and honestly, gallery attendants somehow know to keep an eye on me). Is it the memory of something else that I've confused with this skirt somehow? I start to ask myself things like "was this before or after my concussion?" (long after, actually). There's no way to solve it, and memories remain strange and disjointed and cloudy whether we realize it or not.
