While I was in Houston in 2023, I got to visit their absolutely incredible Museum of Fine Arts. Out of all the many amazing pieces I saw there, this was one of my favourite, the Infinity Room by Yayoi Kusama, Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity. It was one of those things where photos simply did not do it justice, so I took a quick video at the end of the single minute I had to myself in the room.

As I enjoyed the experience, then grabbed a quick video before stepping out, I had Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, movement 1, in my head. It was a piece I not only loved, and somehow deemed appropriate for the moment, I had it memorized so I could literally play it through with all the notes in my mind, not just some vague version of it via general recollection.

A half a year later, after I saw what I could do with videos in TikTok, I was able to recreate my experience in that exhibit with the Moonlight Sonata playing to what I saw that was absolutely silent otherwise. People who want that experience from my video can just mute the sound, of course, but what an experience. The next time I am there, if the exhibit is still there as it doesn’t seem to have an end date currently, I will just get a one minute video, having had the experience as it was intended without phone distraction already in most of the time of my first and only experience with the exhibit.

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