seeking syllables
I have access to a schedule. Park to JFK/UMass is in early May and JFK/UMass to Braintree is throughout most of September, which is convenient for me even if they won’t fix anything until next autumn. Unless there's surprise busing. And that damned bridge in South Boston. I hate that bridge more than any other structure in Boston and that includes Artists For Humanity (we almost had something cool but then we got the "put the South Boston industrial junk in a bag of holding and then invert it" and whatever piece of crap is replacing the Shreve, Crump and Low building. Green Line main trunk is done. I mean, it didn’t feel like it was done, but it was done.
The trip to Broadway was more slow than ever but the trip back wasn't bad at all.
Wicky is Polish, though in Poland w is pronounced like Dr. Vink with a va va va. Maybe it isn’t Polish at all but Classical Latin. She has a tattoo of spiders and of the constellation Scorpius with a crescent moon and ringed gas giant representing the zodiac Sign of the Impure. She hasn’t seen the original It with Tim Curry but does like the movie from 2017. Also The Shining, which doesn’t even try to be a faithful adaptation of the book, which I said were the only Stephen King adaptations I liked, though I do admire what Langoliers is doing, and that is a liminal space in story/movie form. Pity everything is either underacted or overacted. Dark Tower is far too long, complicated, and bonkers to film, though I recommended Lifeforce. She has copper hair and a septum piercing and a necklace with a snake pendant. I forgot about The Shawshank Redemption (drama) and The Green Mile (magical realism) but they’re not horror so they don’t count.
She read half the book, which the website AlternateEnding describes as “roughly as many words as the Hebrew Bible, and a substantially more convoluted cosmology.”
All their pierogi talk was making me hungry. She says it’s hard to find good Polish food here but if you go to New York or Connecticut. The last pierogis I had were homemade and she says that’s the best way to enjoy them. I wasn’t hungry for Polish food, though. I was hungry for Jamaican, that is to say, cabbage and carrots, rice and beans, and shrimp curry, and a bottle of Kola Champagne soda which tastes not like cola but like cream soda and bubblegum. They also have pineapple, ginger beer, and Ting, which is grapefruit.
Mary has neon carrot hair with swathes of black and a ponytail in luminous rose. I’m not sure what her zodiac sign is. She has a cat named Beavis but has never in her life owned an animal named Butthead, and a dog who is a mix of different things and is named Adeline. Coincidentally, I was listening to Catherine Wheel. Although I was listening to Fripp. I’ve been obsessed with that song lately.
Tamara showed me a picture she drew of some cephalopods.
I went to the MFA because I had some time to kill. They were sort of in between exhibits but there were a few noteworthy things. One is that the Art of the Ancient World galleries were rearranged, except for that one room that is and has always been Egyptian and that one room that has a map of the ancient Middle East on the floor and is therefore that room where all the ancient Near and Middle East. Oh. Near East and Middle East are the same thing. Here I thought Near East was the Levant and Anatolia and Egypt while Middle East was the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia and Persia. One is that there's a new gallery of Judaica. It’s all based on the idea that objects devoted to God should be beautiful.
Oh, looky, there’s a signature on it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take a picture of the description. Maybe I thought I did but didn’t.
Torah shield, Galicia, near Lviv, Ukraine, 1780s. The ten commandments, a crown symbolizing the Torah, Moses and Aaron.
Back.
Malcah Zeldis - Passover Seder
Shabbat candlesticks. New York City, early 1960s.
Moshe Zabari - Holiday Kiddush cup. 1993 Israel. Engraved with symbols of the festivals: a ram’s horn representing Rosh Hashana, a citron and palm frond for Sukkoth, a lion and decalogue for Shauvot, a loaf of matzah for Passover, and the letter shin for the shabbat. More commonly known as the sabbath.
Deborah Krupenia - Havdalah spice vessel with lid. It ushers in the new week at the end of the shabbat.
Chunghi Choo - spice container
Electroformed layer of metal on a wax form, then melting the wax.
Linda Threadgill - Garden of Lights
Cynthia Eid - Miriam’s Cup
Israel Vitale - Elijah’s Wine Cup. Pre-unification Italy. In Piedmont, the Jews were allowed to work as silversmiths but still had to live in the ghetto. A century later, Hitler strongarmed Mussolini into enacting racial laws against Jewish people, and its owners brought the cup with them to the US.
Torah finials. Persian. The word for finial in Hebrew means pomegranate.
Gregorius van der Toorn - Shabbat hanging lamp. The Hague, 1768. In those days, Jews were kept out of the artist guilds and had to rely on Christian makers. Most of the Jews living there came from Spain (kicked out in 1492) and Portugal (allowed in from Spain because King João II wanted skilled artisans but were then kicked out because Manuel I was going to marry the daughter of the Spanish monarchs. And just so you know, Anne Frank wasn’t one them. Her family fled Germany when the Nazi Party came to power.
Henryk Ross - Man who saved the Torah standing in the rubble of the synagogue on Wolborska Street, destroyed in 1939 by the Germans.
Hey, I remember that exhibit.
Torah mantle, Gift of Joseph Frank and his wife Rosalia, 5638 Livryat haOlam (1877-18780).
Torah binder, late 16th century or early 17th century Italy.
Jurgen Richels - Torah finials. Another set of Christian-made finials. He was the first non-Dutch artist to use the three-tiered hexagonal finials.
Decalogue with Lions - New York, 1930. It comes from one of the many synagogues that closed in the 20th century, sold to churches or converted to apartments or stores. A combination of many things. In Boston, the razing of the West End and Chinatown were the end of that for Boston. We could have had it so much worse. Look up the Inner Belt Expressways. The 1960s were a mistake.
The hands are doing the live long and prosper because Leonard Nimoy based it on a Jewish gesture. My grandfather wasn’t Jewish but he grew up in the same neighborhood as Leonard Nimoy.
Samuel Katz - Torah ark, 1920s Chelsea. Before Chelsea was Salvadoran, it was Russian Empire Jewish. Blame highways. And the second fire. And 80s/90s neglect. The synagogue it was held in eventually closed in 1999. A rabbi from Newton rescued it, although I’m not sure if rescuing means buying with money or just raiding the dumpster once the venture capitalists gut the place, and donated it to the MFA.
I’m not sure what this is. I mean, it’s a lion, sculpted by someone who has seen, if not a real live lion, at least a taxidermied one.
That’s also why weasels in cartoons look all ragged and angry and not cute. They were looking at taxidermied weasels.
Torah finials, Morocco in the late 19th century. I can look at these and tell you where they’re from.
Abraham Lopes de Oliveyra - Torah finials
The artist was the first known Jewish silversmith in English. He was born in Amsterdam. In England, Jews were kicked out in 1290 and they were officially let back in 1656. There were communities of Jews from Spain and Eastern Europe.
Isidor Kaufmann - Hannah
We don’t know who Hannah is, we just know that her name is Hannah because it says so in the upper left corner. She’s probably dressed for a festival, though some say she’s getting married.
Tamar Paley - A Sign Upon Your Hand
Tallit Katan (that’s not a name, it refers to a small prayer shawl, in this case, worn at a bar mitzvah), from 18th century Italy.
It’s Yemenite, but that’s all I know. I think it’s a hair wrap.
Jacob Binder - The Talmudist. The Boston Jewish community found this painting because they wanted to donate something worthy of donating.
Tallit - in this case, it’s from the 18th century Netherlands, and was meant to be worn at morning prayers and for the Day of Atonement.
Haggadah, from late 19th century Puṇē, Mahārāṣṭra, India.
Jaydan Moore - Platter no. 1. From a collection of old silver platters he found in antique shops and junkyards.
Melchior d’Hondecoeter - Animals and Plants of the Forest
Hey, it’s a woodcock! I guess it makes sense that there are woodcocks in Eurasia, as well as various Asian and Pacific islands.
Dirck van Rijwijck - Floral Still Life
Nacre from the South Pacific, rosewood from Indonesia, and blackwood from Africa.
Zemer Peled - Single Hoo Exploring
It looks like some kind of non-vertebrate chordate.
There’s a playlist.
1. Yossi Azulay - Shalom Alehem
2. Ofra Haza - Im Nin’alu, a Yemenite song from the 17th century.
3. Mauren Nehedar - Agadelcha Elohayi Kol Neshama
4. Barbra Streisand - Avinu Malkeinu
5. Maurice Le Gaulois - Der yid in yerusholaym, from central Europe.
6. Cantor Azi Schwartz - Kol Nidrei - liturgy for the Day of Atonement
7. Judy Frankel - Hanuka, in Ladino
8. Ensemble Bet Hagat - Chi sapeva, chi intendeva, a Jewish Italian festival song.
9. Moshe Havusha - Elokay Egdalcha
Surprised they didn’t have Boston’s very own Voice of the Turtle.
There’s also a playlist of Dutch music elsewhere.
Benedictus à Sancto Josepho - Adagio from Trio Sonata no. 1 in C Minor
Jacob van Eyck - Doen Daphne d’over schoone Maeght from Der Fluyten Lust-hof
Benedictus à Sancto Josepho - Salve Jegina
Mein junges leben hat ein end
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Six Variations on Mein Junges leben hat ein end
Performed by the Handel and Haydn Society.
This was drawn on the bus stop glass.
I hung out in the Boston Common and petted dogs.
Felix Mendelssohn - Lieder ohne Worte for cello and piano
It’s a lieder without words. That is to say, the cello takes on the role of the singer.
Sebastian Currier - Vocalissimus for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion.
It takes the Wallace Stevens poem here:
To the Roaring Wind
What syllable are you seeking, Vocalissimus,
in the distances of sleep?
Speak it.
I spent some time looking for descriptions of the eighteen parts but come up with naught. Maybe the idea is for people to form their own interpretation of what the roles mean. I have my own notes, even if I did put the wrong numbers and only realized upon reaching Satirist. I wouldn’t know E-minor from G-minor.
Entitlement - It sounds like some sort of celestial steam locomotive.
Recluse
Formalist - one syllable at a time, faster and faster.
Optimist - Church bells. Piano and flute turn into xylophone. Rising melodies
Pessimist - A bit more threatening. A rumble of thunder. Clatterclatter.
Miser - isn’t listed on Currier’s website for some reason. There are only seventeen songs listed on his website so maybe he just forgot it. It only lasts fifteen seconds. If even that.
Satirist - warbling and comical
Introvert - The singer rests between syllables, to a quiet instrumental drone.
Extrovert - Instead of pausing between syllables, she pauses between phrases. Very loud.
Chameleon - This must be why they picked it. She moves the words around. Percussion and clarinet mostly. Sometimes everything at once. It’s a myth that chameleons change their colors to hide or blend in. Usually when they do, they’re like “This is my branch and if you don’t get off of it right now, I will be forced to do things that are not nice,” or “hey, baby, want to come over to my place and eat some flies?”
Somnambulist - It’s twinkly, like night. Hissed vocals. Hypnagogic flute loops.
Scientist - Modernist. Broken down into syllables.
Mystic - Melismatic singing and droning instruments and twinkling percussion.
Interrogator - Forceful. The last line, “Speak it” repeated. Military drumbeat.
Lunatic - She just screams the words. A scream of terror, a fade to silence. Laughter from the audience.
Child and Dying Woman - Alternates between wistful but sweet and wistful but no longer sweet.
Poet - Clean singing and a piano melody.
Last Call
Johannes Brahms - Piano Quartet in F minor
All people have different ideas about just what the world scherzo means and here Brahms went with “triumphant to the point of parody,” and he’s influenced by Schubert here.
I was also hungry for Moroccan food but by the time the concert concluded, there was no way I would be able to eat something at the Boston Public Market even with the power of chronostasis. So I got an empanada and later some fries at McDonalds.
I also learned that Idaho was once 1/3 Chinese.
Charlotte is from Denmark. She just got back from there so she was a bit jetlagged. Anna is not an artist but her friends are.
burning question: I saw an ad for bitcoin. Who the fuck is still using cryptocurrency? I dunno, maybe it’s great for things of questionable legality.
I think El Salvador is still using it as their official currency because they want to appeal to rich white dudebros and fascists though the Central African Republic backed out, probably because they lack suitable infrastructure. Only ten percent of the population has access to electricity, let alone the internet, and has has been mired in civil war ever since a well-meaning but inefficient rebel group ousted the previous military dictatorship. And now Russia is trying to hook their hands into things. And said ousted military dictator is now organizing the rebel forces. A great place for bitcoin.
The trip to Broadway was more slow than ever but the trip back wasn't bad at all.
Wicky is Polish, though in Poland w is pronounced like Dr. Vink with a va va va. Maybe it isn’t Polish at all but Classical Latin. She has a tattoo of spiders and of the constellation Scorpius with a crescent moon and ringed gas giant representing the zodiac Sign of the Impure. She hasn’t seen the original It with Tim Curry but does like the movie from 2017. Also The Shining, which doesn’t even try to be a faithful adaptation of the book, which I said were the only Stephen King adaptations I liked, though I do admire what Langoliers is doing, and that is a liminal space in story/movie form. Pity everything is either underacted or overacted. Dark Tower is far too long, complicated, and bonkers to film, though I recommended Lifeforce. She has copper hair and a septum piercing and a necklace with a snake pendant. I forgot about The Shawshank Redemption (drama) and The Green Mile (magical realism) but they’re not horror so they don’t count.
She read half the book, which the website AlternateEnding describes as “roughly as many words as the Hebrew Bible, and a substantially more convoluted cosmology.”
All their pierogi talk was making me hungry. She says it’s hard to find good Polish food here but if you go to New York or Connecticut. The last pierogis I had were homemade and she says that’s the best way to enjoy them. I wasn’t hungry for Polish food, though. I was hungry for Jamaican, that is to say, cabbage and carrots, rice and beans, and shrimp curry, and a bottle of Kola Champagne soda which tastes not like cola but like cream soda and bubblegum. They also have pineapple, ginger beer, and Ting, which is grapefruit.
Mary has neon carrot hair with swathes of black and a ponytail in luminous rose. I’m not sure what her zodiac sign is. She has a cat named Beavis but has never in her life owned an animal named Butthead, and a dog who is a mix of different things and is named Adeline. Coincidentally, I was listening to Catherine Wheel. Although I was listening to Fripp. I’ve been obsessed with that song lately.
Tamara showed me a picture she drew of some cephalopods.
I went to the MFA because I had some time to kill. They were sort of in between exhibits but there were a few noteworthy things. One is that the Art of the Ancient World galleries were rearranged, except for that one room that is and has always been Egyptian and that one room that has a map of the ancient Middle East on the floor and is therefore that room where all the ancient Near and Middle East. Oh. Near East and Middle East are the same thing. Here I thought Near East was the Levant and Anatolia and Egypt while Middle East was the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamia and Persia. One is that there's a new gallery of Judaica. It’s all based on the idea that objects devoted to God should be beautiful.
Oh, looky, there’s a signature on it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take a picture of the description. Maybe I thought I did but didn’t.
Torah shield, Galicia, near Lviv, Ukraine, 1780s. The ten commandments, a crown symbolizing the Torah, Moses and Aaron.
Back.
Malcah Zeldis - Passover Seder
Shabbat candlesticks. New York City, early 1960s.
Moshe Zabari - Holiday Kiddush cup. 1993 Israel. Engraved with symbols of the festivals: a ram’s horn representing Rosh Hashana, a citron and palm frond for Sukkoth, a lion and decalogue for Shauvot, a loaf of matzah for Passover, and the letter shin for the shabbat. More commonly known as the sabbath.
Deborah Krupenia - Havdalah spice vessel with lid. It ushers in the new week at the end of the shabbat.
Chunghi Choo - spice container
Electroformed layer of metal on a wax form, then melting the wax.
Linda Threadgill - Garden of Lights
Cynthia Eid - Miriam’s Cup
Israel Vitale - Elijah’s Wine Cup. Pre-unification Italy. In Piedmont, the Jews were allowed to work as silversmiths but still had to live in the ghetto. A century later, Hitler strongarmed Mussolini into enacting racial laws against Jewish people, and its owners brought the cup with them to the US.
Torah finials. Persian. The word for finial in Hebrew means pomegranate.
Gregorius van der Toorn - Shabbat hanging lamp. The Hague, 1768. In those days, Jews were kept out of the artist guilds and had to rely on Christian makers. Most of the Jews living there came from Spain (kicked out in 1492) and Portugal (allowed in from Spain because King João II wanted skilled artisans but were then kicked out because Manuel I was going to marry the daughter of the Spanish monarchs. And just so you know, Anne Frank wasn’t one them. Her family fled Germany when the Nazi Party came to power.
Henryk Ross - Man who saved the Torah standing in the rubble of the synagogue on Wolborska Street, destroyed in 1939 by the Germans.
Hey, I remember that exhibit.
Torah mantle, Gift of Joseph Frank and his wife Rosalia, 5638 Livryat haOlam (1877-18780).
Torah binder, late 16th century or early 17th century Italy.
Jurgen Richels - Torah finials. Another set of Christian-made finials. He was the first non-Dutch artist to use the three-tiered hexagonal finials.
Decalogue with Lions - New York, 1930. It comes from one of the many synagogues that closed in the 20th century, sold to churches or converted to apartments or stores. A combination of many things. In Boston, the razing of the West End and Chinatown were the end of that for Boston. We could have had it so much worse. Look up the Inner Belt Expressways. The 1960s were a mistake.
The hands are doing the live long and prosper because Leonard Nimoy based it on a Jewish gesture. My grandfather wasn’t Jewish but he grew up in the same neighborhood as Leonard Nimoy.
Samuel Katz - Torah ark, 1920s Chelsea. Before Chelsea was Salvadoran, it was Russian Empire Jewish. Blame highways. And the second fire. And 80s/90s neglect. The synagogue it was held in eventually closed in 1999. A rabbi from Newton rescued it, although I’m not sure if rescuing means buying with money or just raiding the dumpster once the venture capitalists gut the place, and donated it to the MFA.
I’m not sure what this is. I mean, it’s a lion, sculpted by someone who has seen, if not a real live lion, at least a taxidermied one.
That’s also why weasels in cartoons look all ragged and angry and not cute. They were looking at taxidermied weasels.
Torah finials, Morocco in the late 19th century. I can look at these and tell you where they’re from.
Abraham Lopes de Oliveyra - Torah finials
The artist was the first known Jewish silversmith in English. He was born in Amsterdam. In England, Jews were kicked out in 1290 and they were officially let back in 1656. There were communities of Jews from Spain and Eastern Europe.
Isidor Kaufmann - Hannah
We don’t know who Hannah is, we just know that her name is Hannah because it says so in the upper left corner. She’s probably dressed for a festival, though some say she’s getting married.
Tamar Paley - A Sign Upon Your Hand
Tallit Katan (that’s not a name, it refers to a small prayer shawl, in this case, worn at a bar mitzvah), from 18th century Italy.
It’s Yemenite, but that’s all I know. I think it’s a hair wrap.
Jacob Binder - The Talmudist. The Boston Jewish community found this painting because they wanted to donate something worthy of donating.
Tallit - in this case, it’s from the 18th century Netherlands, and was meant to be worn at morning prayers and for the Day of Atonement.
Haggadah, from late 19th century Puṇē, Mahārāṣṭra, India.
Jaydan Moore - Platter no. 1. From a collection of old silver platters he found in antique shops and junkyards.
Melchior d’Hondecoeter - Animals and Plants of the Forest
Hey, it’s a woodcock! I guess it makes sense that there are woodcocks in Eurasia, as well as various Asian and Pacific islands.
Dirck van Rijwijck - Floral Still Life
Nacre from the South Pacific, rosewood from Indonesia, and blackwood from Africa.
Zemer Peled - Single Hoo Exploring
It looks like some kind of non-vertebrate chordate.
There’s a playlist.
1. Yossi Azulay - Shalom Alehem
2. Ofra Haza - Im Nin’alu, a Yemenite song from the 17th century.
3. Mauren Nehedar - Agadelcha Elohayi Kol Neshama
4. Barbra Streisand - Avinu Malkeinu
5. Maurice Le Gaulois - Der yid in yerusholaym, from central Europe.
6. Cantor Azi Schwartz - Kol Nidrei - liturgy for the Day of Atonement
7. Judy Frankel - Hanuka, in Ladino
8. Ensemble Bet Hagat - Chi sapeva, chi intendeva, a Jewish Italian festival song.
9. Moshe Havusha - Elokay Egdalcha
Surprised they didn’t have Boston’s very own Voice of the Turtle.
There’s also a playlist of Dutch music elsewhere.
Benedictus à Sancto Josepho - Adagio from Trio Sonata no. 1 in C Minor
Jacob van Eyck - Doen Daphne d’over schoone Maeght from Der Fluyten Lust-hof
Benedictus à Sancto Josepho - Salve Jegina
Mein junges leben hat ein end
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck - Six Variations on Mein Junges leben hat ein end
Performed by the Handel and Haydn Society.
This was drawn on the bus stop glass.
I hung out in the Boston Common and petted dogs.
Felix Mendelssohn - Lieder ohne Worte for cello and piano
It’s a lieder without words. That is to say, the cello takes on the role of the singer.
Sebastian Currier - Vocalissimus for soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion.
It takes the Wallace Stevens poem here:
To the Roaring Wind
What syllable are you seeking, Vocalissimus,
in the distances of sleep?
Speak it.
I spent some time looking for descriptions of the eighteen parts but come up with naught. Maybe the idea is for people to form their own interpretation of what the roles mean. I have my own notes, even if I did put the wrong numbers and only realized upon reaching Satirist. I wouldn’t know E-minor from G-minor.
Entitlement - It sounds like some sort of celestial steam locomotive.
Recluse
Formalist - one syllable at a time, faster and faster.
Optimist - Church bells. Piano and flute turn into xylophone. Rising melodies
Pessimist - A bit more threatening. A rumble of thunder. Clatterclatter.
Miser - isn’t listed on Currier’s website for some reason. There are only seventeen songs listed on his website so maybe he just forgot it. It only lasts fifteen seconds. If even that.
Satirist - warbling and comical
Introvert - The singer rests between syllables, to a quiet instrumental drone.
Extrovert - Instead of pausing between syllables, she pauses between phrases. Very loud.
Chameleon - This must be why they picked it. She moves the words around. Percussion and clarinet mostly. Sometimes everything at once. It’s a myth that chameleons change their colors to hide or blend in. Usually when they do, they’re like “This is my branch and if you don’t get off of it right now, I will be forced to do things that are not nice,” or “hey, baby, want to come over to my place and eat some flies?”
Somnambulist - It’s twinkly, like night. Hissed vocals. Hypnagogic flute loops.
Scientist - Modernist. Broken down into syllables.
Mystic - Melismatic singing and droning instruments and twinkling percussion.
Interrogator - Forceful. The last line, “Speak it” repeated. Military drumbeat.
Lunatic - She just screams the words. A scream of terror, a fade to silence. Laughter from the audience.
Child and Dying Woman - Alternates between wistful but sweet and wistful but no longer sweet.
Poet - Clean singing and a piano melody.
Last Call
Johannes Brahms - Piano Quartet in F minor
All people have different ideas about just what the world scherzo means and here Brahms went with “triumphant to the point of parody,” and he’s influenced by Schubert here.
I was also hungry for Moroccan food but by the time the concert concluded, there was no way I would be able to eat something at the Boston Public Market even with the power of chronostasis. So I got an empanada and later some fries at McDonalds.
I also learned that Idaho was once 1/3 Chinese.
Charlotte is from Denmark. She just got back from there so she was a bit jetlagged. Anna is not an artist but her friends are.
burning question: I saw an ad for bitcoin. Who the fuck is still using cryptocurrency? I dunno, maybe it’s great for things of questionable legality.
I think El Salvador is still using it as their official currency because they want to appeal to rich white dudebros and fascists though the Central African Republic backed out, probably because they lack suitable infrastructure. Only ten percent of the population has access to electricity, let alone the internet, and has has been mired in civil war ever since a well-meaning but inefficient rebel group ousted the previous military dictatorship. And now Russia is trying to hook their hands into things. And said ousted military dictator is now organizing the rebel forces. A great place for bitcoin.