Random Thoughts about Stendhal Syndrome

Stendhal Syndrome, which you may or may not know, occurs in certain people when they are exposed to art--they tend to be overwhelmed, breathe funny, pass out. At least, that's how I understand it. I was listening to some songs I hadn't heard in a while, that do tend to overwhelm me, and I started considering the moments that I've encountered art so beautiful that, while it may not have made me pass out, it made me breathe all funny.

1. The Taj Mahal

If I had to choose between getting married and getting to see the Taj Mahal on a regular basis, it would be a toss up. The first time I ever saw it, it was an ecclesiastical experience. A sunny day, my mom is introducing it to me (or me to it) and tells me to close my eyes as I walk through an open-air hallway in a red stone building that is an entrance to the gardens of the Taj. She guides me through, Miracle Worker style, and then tells me to open my eyes. I remember my breath catching, and actually starting to cry. If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen it.

Whenever I go back to India, the Taj Mahal is a mandatory stop on my itinerary. It never gets old. And while every description out there is cliche, the experience is overwhelming for me in every way. Even the air smells better around the Taj. It's not just the gleaming white marble that changes colors with the light, or the pools of water that soften the landscape. It's not just the baghs, gardens, symmetrically surrounding the site and making it look manicured, but not into submission. It's not even the fact that, when you approach the Taj and stand atop its platform, you can walk around to the back and look at the Yamuna cutting like a silver filament through Agra.

I think the beauty is in how it pacifies everyone. Either I go deaf when I'm there or no one speaks above a whisper. This is a building that could bring world peace. If you were to ingest in pill form, you would walk around embracing everyone you ever saw. The bloodshed and pain and turmoil that went into the Taj is transformed into the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

A friend of mine got engaged there, and for a moment I felt a pang of envy, but then realized--I'm not sure I'd want that. I feel like my relationship with it needs to be separate from my relationships with any other people. I don't want to visit the Taj and think about other people, and have it start tainting my experience there. I'm not faithful to many things, but the Taj is one of those things that feels like it stands on its own in my life.

My favorite time at the Taj was in 2005, on July 4th in fact, when it was raining all day long. I was just disgusting, sweaty and soggy and smelly. But I just didn't care because the Taj doesn't care how I look as long as I visit. When I walked slowly up to the marble, it was so slippery, and I had no shoes on. But the wet marble felt very sensual beneath my feet, and the greyness of the air somehow made the building seem whiter. I wished I spoke and read Arabic so I could understand what was inscribed in the main entrance. I walked around the building, looking at the alcoves, looking at the Yamuna, taking pictures and accidentally making it seem that I was interested in some young Indian guys there based on where I was standing and shooting. But normally, where I'd be annoyed and put off, I was blissed out and didn't care and didn't even think to respond bitchily.

Instead, I found an alcove where I could sit and look over the green lush lands (India is alive and beautiful in the rain, more so than any other place in the world I've been to) and just wrote in my diary, words that didn't even make sense, just random synaptic firings from my overwhelmed and ecstatic brain. A random white woman came up to me to ask what I was writing and I couldn't even tell her.

A while later, I went and sat on a bench on the main platform in the middle of the gardens that gives a perfect view of the Taj (it's where everyone stands to take pictures on sunny days--if you've seen a picture of the Taj, 99 to 1 it was taken from this platform). Since it was raining, there were very few people there so I just sat in the middle of the bench with a perfect, unobstructed view. A few hours later (hours, I'm telling you), a Swedish guy about my age asked if he could share my bench. I didn't even mind sharing my bench, even if it meant destroying my symmetric perspective by a degree or two. Johan (Johan, I'm telling you) and I talked for a while with lots of silences in our conversation, silences that were so comfortable because they were filled with admiring the view. Of the Taj, not each other. We talked for a few hours, just about India, his adventures, mine, how much we loved being here, how lucky we were. Probably my favorite 4th of July ever, and there weren't even any fireworks.

2. God Only Knows by the Beach Boys

From the opening bars to the odd first line ("I may not always love you") which then turns ironic ("but long as there are stars above you"), the music and harmonies and softness and confluence of longing and promises of love contribute to one of the most satisfying musical experiences out there for me. If the Taj Mahal dumps me and I have to get married, that's going to be what I walk down the aisle to. Even if I already promised a friend I'd be walking to "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle.

3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Okay, so this is another huge cliche, but I sure don't care. Even if I'm not a synesthete, the words in this book are so loaded with stimuli that my synapses almost burn out. It's the type of book I would make my 10 year old daughter read despite the provocative subject material. It's so beautiful and hysterical and sinister and I can't even imagine what it would be like to put a sentence together worthy of this book. If I'm bored or sad or frequently both, I can pick up the book, turn to any page, read for a few minutes and feel refreshed. I remember when my mom first bought it, in Maryland, many many years ago. I must have been 11 and she went to Waldenbooks where, I'm not kidding, she had to special order it because it was too racy to have on the shelves. She wouldn't let me touch it, let alone read it, which of course started my long fascination with finding and exploring it.

When I finally started to read it, around the age of 13, even though I was around the age of the eponymous heroine, I could completely understand Humbert's insanity and delusion. Even back then, I knew this was the type of story that could exist as a book, that would be destroyed on film (and was). When I found out I was born on Nabokov's birthday, I took it very personally as though this book and I had kind of a "Shining" type relationship. Yeah, it was weird.


So now I'm kind of wondering, if I were to read Lolita, while listening to God Only Knows while sitting by the Taj Mahal, would I need my inhaler? Would my head explode from the sensory overload? It might be worth checking out, though I have to be careful of what edition I brought with me. I brought a copy of "Ada or Ardor" to India, an edition with a picture of a naked woman running through some flowers, and didn't even realize that members of my family might consider the book salacious, or outright pornographic. India's crazy as all get out, but the Taj Mahal redeems it to the point of making it heaven.