Song 1 in the Mist

The best reason to be back in my hometown is for no reason at all.

A couple of days in D.C. is reason enough to find things I want to do and drag a willing accomplice along.

Arriving late in the afternoon, the easy default was to go to the National Gallery to see "Picasso's Drawings: 1890-192, Reinventing Tradition."

As a companion piece for last year's VMFA Picasso show, it too traced the development of his career, but with nothing but drawings.

One done at age nine and another at age eleven were mesmerizing for his facility at such tender ages.

Most fascinating was seeing how the artist easily demonstrated his competence in everyone else's style. It was like Ryan Adams" "Rick and Roll," a way for the artist to demonstrate he could do any style he chose.

An attenuated figure of a man was pure Aubrey Beasley.  A drawing of a dancer screamed Toulouse Lautrec.

But it was the one done in the style of Paul Gauguin that was not only an homage to the former banker, but a tribute to one of Picasso's heroes.

So much so that he actually signed it "Paul Picasso" in a nod to Gauguin. Now it's hard to conceive of the egotist Picasso being so worshipful.

My favorite was "Young Man with Arms  Crossed," a gouache and charcoal from 1899-1900, striking to me for the handsome and direct gaze of the subject.

The man's black suit was loosely sketched, barely filled in with lines to suggest the texture of the suit, but irrelevant given the compelling stare that drew this viewer back to his face time and time again.

I got to enjoy a moment of civic pride at seeing "Woman in Kerchief," on loan from our own VMFA and a beautiful image.

From there it was upstairs to see "Civic Pride: Group Portraits from Amsterdam," two large scale works of city fathers done thirteen years apart.

In the earlier image, the old men portrayed in an unadorned, dark hall were serious, sedate and conveyed their ability to make wise decisions.

Fast forward and the new crop of leaders were younger, clearly drinking and far more concerned with conviviality than the business of a city.

Oyster shells littered the floor even as scullery maids brought in platters of more. Nearly everyone has an adult beverage and smiles abound.

What a difference a few years make in now powerful men wanted themselves depicted.

We decided to depict ourselves eating and drinking as well, heading to Palena Cafe for dinner.

Despite a reservation, we let the personable host be the bad guy and rearrange bar sitters so we could have seats at the bar and began with Dutour Chinon Rose "Cuvee Marie Justine."

Sunday night means the Sunday menu (starters, pastas, pizzas and sides) and while I am no pasta lover, that's right where I went.

Tagliatelle a duo guancia promised two kinds of cheeks in a ragout over Neapolitan pasta (also sold in the adjoining Palena Market) and before I could even order it, my companion drolly observed that "Of course you're going to get the most disgusting thing on the menu."

The bartender immediately corrected him, saying, "It's the best thing on the menu" and once he tasted it, agreed that it was an earthy and yet otherworldly dish.

I got to taste his linguine with rock shrimp, Calabrian chilis and lemon bread crumbs, perfectly al dente
and with delicately nuanced flavor, but certainly no cheeks.

The Calabrian chilis also showed up as part of the rapini, providing a new twist on greens.

We finished with a chocolate meringue torte with a red wine reduction that I would kill to see on a  Richmond dessert menu.

The sweetness of the brown sugar meringue was the ideal foil for the bittersweet torte, making the whipped cream superfluous, and the deep flavor of the red wine reduction could have been mistaken for a mature fruit coulis.

We paired it with a 2008 Domaine Perroud Brouilli because beaujolais seemed up to the task of standing up to such a stellar sweet.

For the record,I intend to sing the praises of that dessert to everyone I know who wields a pastry brush or egg white whisk.

Not much could have topped such a lovely meal, but we managed to do so anyway.

No surprise, it was with more art.

The Hirshhorn's new installation is a 360-degree projection by Doug Aitken that shows on the exterior of the cylindrical building from sunset to midnight.

Blending visuals of people singing, driving, working and playing cards, they are set to the classic song "I Only Have Eyes for You" sung by all kinds of singers.

Beck, Devendra Banhart, James Murphy, John Legend, the list of people who sing a few bars of the iconic song is all over the place.

There was a light rain falling when we arrived, so we took an umbrella and began the process of seeing Aitken's "Song 1."

The pleasures of it were myriad; walking through the bricked paths of the sculpture garden afforded new impressions of it with every step.

Sometimes trees were silhouetted against the moving images and sometimes grand sculptures between the viewer and the film combined.

The speakers, we noticed, were positioned well and being played at a far greater volume than even a music lover could have dared wish for.

It was never too loud and yet there was a distinct pleasure to walking away from one speaker only to begin hearing the next.

We watched from across the street, from under trees and projectors, from bricked corners and stairs and remained constantly engaged.

Perhaps it was being in the bubble of the umbrella as raindrops fell on the fragrant garden around us.

Perhaps it was the choice of song, so much an American standard that it could be heard continuously for an hour, albeit by different voices, without ever growing tired of it.

Perhaps it was having the right company for such a meandering day.

Perhaps it was the discussion: was the song meant to be sung to the beloved or sung to the heavens about the beloved?

I'm not even sure the "why" matters.

It was enough being in my hometown on a beautiful damp spring night full of cheeks, chocolate and wine and listening to one of the most beautiful love songs of the past century in a sculpture garden.

To be clear, I still don't want to move back.

But with cities, as with people, it's always satisfying to remember why I fell in love with it in the first place.

Oh, yes. I remember.