Growing up in Boston, I often visited Huntington Avenue around Symphony Hall where the father of my friend Kenny had a guitar and drum shop. He would sometimes take us to Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music, revered by musicians worldwide for its superior acoustics, to hear a jazz ensemble.

Yesterday, I visited a blockbuster exhibit at the MFA (Boston art museum) called “Degas and the Nude”. The gloves, or in this case, the tutus of Degas’ ballerinas are off at the new exhibit. Degas and the Nude reveals a more candid, dramatic theme: the beauty of unguarded moments.

The exhibit shows Degas to be a kind of voyeur who abandons the classical form of putting women on a pedestal in a drawing room in favor of catching them unguarded in their own time and setting, whether it’s a prostitute engaged in shockingly carnal acts or a women just stepping out of an ordinary bath.

I have always thought that one of the things that made me a natural as a coach was my own voyeuristic tendencies, which after long practice, allow me to catch people in unguarded moments, whether in a museum, coffee shop, or train, and gain insight into their souls.

I took a break after an hour from the almost exhaustive exhibit and had a coffee and corn muffin down the street at the Northeastern University Au Bon Pain coffee shop, where my instincts as a professional people watcher were immediately set on edge. I was struck, and indeed captivated, to see the utter indolence of the students, slumped in their chairs like over-ripe bananas, gazing into their smart phones like crystal balls, talking on Skype, nary a one studying.

I thought to myself that, for every young person sitting here just “hanging out,” there is a poor, fifty-year-old bastard slogging away at a soul stultifying job somewhere to come up with the $35,000 tuition so their kid can go to college, and have a shot at the American Dream. I suspected that little did they know about their kid’s lack of passion or purpose about the whole experience.

There was one young Chinese woman who stood out from the crowd, because she had such a purposeful demeanor. She sat straight up in a deep state of concentration, furiously taking notes from a book. She had come to America, perhaps from a poor family, to get a degree from a good school, find a good job, and to create a better life for herself and her parents.

Sitting at a table next to me were three female students, who sat chatting as they sent texts on their iPhones (another entitlement from their moms and dads). One of the girls, who was very well padded, got up and said, “I think I will go to the gym now.”

Posted in Musings and tagged , .