this is what half a liberal arts degree does to your brain

So there's a piano in the train station down by the university hospital.

It's not the first piano to occupy that space. The first piano got the shit smashed out of it by what I can only assume was a very drunk gaggle of frat boys. The current piano was donated to replace the old one, and has been there for about 2 years now.

The piano is in rough shape. The frame is dinged and scratched, some of the keys are busted, and the whole thing is covered in tags and graffiti.

The weird thing is, it's actually kind of beautiful.

If cave paintings are any indication, humans have always had the urge to draw on stuff. Maybe it's how we establish a sense of control over the world. Maybe markers are just really fun. Either way, art isn't the sole domain of things you're supposed to gaze at from behind glass. It's something we do almost by instinct, one of the oldest ways in which we communicate.

The piano in the train station went from something used to create art, to art in and of itself--just by virtue of existing in a space through which people move.

That's pretty cool.