Barney got kicked out of Zankel Hall the other night. The program was some tweedly-deedly Baroque music, and the ushers explained to Barnaby, as politely as could be expected under the circumstances, that, however moved he might be by the bassoon parts of Rebel’s "Les Elemens," he could not be permitted to stand up and sway. Picture it: Barnaby Sandwich, in gray sweater and brown corduroy suit, one hand on his prominent belly, eyes shut, head tilted back, other hand in his jacket pocket fondling lifted crudité, and muttering under his breath, as an expression of his deep emotional sympathy for all the reed instruments, "The Fair Flower of Northumberland," since it is the only song he knows. He thinks to himself that for all the much-discussed crises in classical music, it really can’t lose: the less popular it becomes, the better it will serve to demonstrate the culture and cultivation of the people who can still afford tickets. But anyway, he didn’t mind getting kicked out much, since the beautiful Czech mezzo-soprano’s pronunciation of French set his teeth on edge:

"Twah, qui vwah mon car éperdooooo!"

The next day he got kicked out of the Museum of Modern Art. Picture it: crowded onto the walls, every famous painting you know from napkins, notecards, and shower curtains; thronging the steaming galleries, jubilant crowds from France, Italy, Japan, and Long Island, with cell phones bristling and cameras snapping; drifting on the air, the heavy smell of overpriced food from the terrace restaurant. Two men who belong to some sort of Gnostic sect that forbids the use of wall labels speculate about what year "Trafalgar Square" was painted. Barnaby Sandwich, clad in the white painter’s overalls by which he contrives to enter free, and a pink wool hat, leaning in close to look for chisel marks on Brancusi’s "Blonde Negresse" while eating spaghetti marinara out of his bib pocket. And again, the arm of authority was as polite as one might hope, as it explained that in this country, Barnaby is perfectly free to think that Edvard Munch is a moody weirdo, and he is even free to say so, if he speaks at a conversational volume, but he cannot be permitted under any circumstances to write it on the paintings—not to mention the spaghetti. Oh, she had wavy blond ringlets and a silly red dress, the beautiful mezzo-soprano:

"Twah, qui vwah mon car éperdooooo!"

The third day, Tuesday, he went to the New York Public Library, where he worked quietly and unobtrusively for five hours, researching Spiderman, before he had to be dragged, weeping and sniveling, out of the Center for Scholars and Writers. "One stipend!" he cried, "one miserable stipend! One academic year in out of the cold! All I want to do is research for the betterment of mankind and the occasional plate of blintzes!" On this occasion, the agents of the bourgeois status quo did not remonstrate with him, but contented themselves with throwing him down the stairs, after which Barnaby righted himself, dusted off his monocle, and watched with fascination as a stonemason on a portable platform chiseled the names of new high-rollers into the library walls. What would they charge, he wondered, to carve in gold letters "In Memory of B. Mussolini"? On the flip side of bourgeois status quo respectability, Barnaby was once threatened with death by a schizophrenic in the Rose Main Reading Room when he asked him to turn off his radio. As the man muttered and gave Barnaby the stink eye, a middle aged woman sailed behind his chair and whispered in his ear, "Security is coming," but no one else looked up from their work. The man was shortly hustled out, and Barney wrote a poem about lemons. Oh, the program said she was born in Brno, the beautiful mezzo-soprano:

"Twah, qui vwah mon car éperdooooo!"

Finally, on Wednesday, to crown off his wonderful series of run-ins with art-related money and authority, Barnaby was thrown out of Humboldt-Dunkelstein Gallery on Tenth Avenue. "Mr. Ipswich," said the proprietor sternly, "Jeff Koons’s work is not pornography, and you may not jerk off to it!" As Barnaby sheepishly buttoned his coat, the proprietor sniffed, considered, and then delivered himself of an addendum: "That is, unless you buy a catalogue." Yes, the program said she was born in Brno, the beautiful mezzo-soprano!

O you who see my heart dismayed! O beautiful Phoebus Apollo!

("Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul" is up at MoMA till the 8th of May, and there are three restaurants and a gift shop for when you get bored of the paintings. The beautiful mezzo was Magdalena Kozena performing with Les Violons du Roy from Québec, conducted by Bernard Labadie. "Toi, qui vois mon coeur éperdu" is a line from Rameau’s Castor et Pollux, text by Pierre-Joseph Bernard. As far as I know, there is no such gallery as the Humboldt-Dunkelstein, and Jeff Koons is, in fact, a pornographer.)