I should be going to sleep, but I got caught up staring at my favorite Flickr album to date: the faces of participants in Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist Is Present” performance, which is closing today at the MoMA.

People came to the museum and sat across from Marina every day that the museum was open, all day long, starting on March 14th. The basic rules for participants were to maintain eye contact with the artist and not do anything obnoxious (apparently, one guy tried to attach a mirror to his face or something, and was escorted out by security) for as long as they wanted: a few minutes or a few hours.

It’s the kind of project that I imagine lots of folks would sneer at. “Just sitting there? Just staring at each other? That sounds so pretentious and boring. And it’s not ‘art’.” But isn’t the purpose of art to connect with the viewer, to transmit some kind of experience, to change people, even for just a short while? Flip through the portraits of the sitters on Flickr. Everybody is fascinating, and so many (in just one moment of their session, which could be hours long) are clearly having a deep, emotional reaction, simply sitting in that special setting across from Marina Abramovic.

It’s a funny thing, this performance piece, for someone like me who is “into meditation,” where the whole idea is that you sit and notice (notice, for example, your breathing, your posture, the sounds in the room, the thoughts popping up in your head), and in that simple act of sitting and noticing, you can be bored, you can be angry, you can be distracted or sleepy, but every so often something in you settles down in a weird way and everything sort of simplifies and sorts itself out and becomes precious, and you feel overwhelmed with a kind of wonderful nonspecific love and tenderness. These moments are why I stick by art and music, too, because I’ve also had those moments while making things and while viewing or listening to things other folks have made.

It’s funny, the things that move you…I love it when it happens unexpectedly. I think it’s a big reason why I want to make things: sometimes the magical stars align, and you surprise yourself by making something that makes you cry, makes you feel super tender and emotional. I think I’m kind of addicted to that feeling. I love it and I want more of it in the world. Yeah, sometimes more “predictable” things can bring it on — images of suffering, or images of love — and then there’s those times when you don’t know what the heck is going on, and you are inexplicably moved for reasons you simply can’t explain. Is there a word for that experience?