One more minute in the gallery

THE STORY BEHIND THE SOUND

You had allowed only ten minutes for this gallery. The booklet from the entrance sits folded in a pocket, with circles around several rooms still to visit. Yet a bench in one painting makes you stop. The canvas is large enough to draw attention toward its people and buildings. The unoccupied bench in the corner looks almost like something left until the end.

Long tones overlap and make the surrounding footsteps seem farther away. You take out a sketchbook and try to draw the bench, but the proportions never feel right. Several attempts leave a gray patch where you have erased them. A member of staff does not comment on the resemblance. Instead, they ask whether you have noticed the narrow strip of light beneath the legs.

Only then do you see that you have been drawing an object without looking at its relationship to the room. The light follows a join between floor tiles and stops just before the bench, leaving most of it in shadow. On a fresh page, you begin with that strip rather than the backrest. This time the bench takes only a few lines, yet feels closer to what you hoped to keep.

Before leaving, you erase one part of the schedule written on the booklet. The rooms ahead still deserve attention, but this extra minute now has a weight of its own. At the stairs you look back. The attendant is straightening the entrance rope. The gallery remains quiet, and the painted bench remains empty, although it now seems to contain a small place where you once sat.