I used to have a very special friend. I often felt he was from another world.

He hardly slept. He told me he had been hyperactive all his life, and only slept for two hours a day. The rest of the night he spent reading — an unimaginable number of books. I used to think he was some kind of Peter Pan.

At the time, we were both studying movement, and one day we were sent to a workshop in the big city for a few days. Every spare moment, we wandered the streets, hungry for cultural life. We had come from the countryside, and the city felt immense.

I had no idea where I was. Where to look. Where to go.

When I suggested we check the guidebook and the map, he stopped me.

“No. We are OK. We won’t die. Let’s get lost.”

So for the next few days, we did exactly that. We got lost on purpose, and kept discovering what we encountered by chance. Every corner, every meeting, every unexpected find seemed charged with meaning. It sounds cheap to say it, but it was almost like practising destiny.

I have the same feeling in a bookshop or a library. I get excited by the thought of which book might catch my eye that day. And if I find the one I was somehow meant to find, I always feel — perhaps too dramatically — that it could change my life.

Look for what you were meant to find by chance.

That is also how I begin in a gallery.

Walk around until one artwork catches you.

It pulls at you. It speaks to you. It catches your attention. It seems to wave and say, “Here I am.” Or it may do the opposite: repel you, disgust you, make you laugh, shock you, bore you, send you to sleep, make you want to touch, or make you uneasy.

Whatever it does, you feel it.

Practise feeling that.

That is the one for today.

Then be ready to spend time with it.

Pause.
Be silent.
Do not chatter in your mind.
Do not judge.
Do not reach for knowledge.

It is a shame to hurry around trying to see everything. It is a greater shame to miss the chance to encounter one thing deeply.

And there are people there too. A gallery is not filled only with artworks. There are other bodies, other movements, other presences, all part of the encounter.

What happens when you place yourself inside that wider web of chance, attention, and relation? Life becomes more vivid that way.

I have made a small guide for the preparatory stage of The Inner Museum, called A Quiet Encounter: First Impression. Please sign up here. You can download the PDF and begin immediately.

I hope you will encounter one.

— Shee