ceci n’est pas un rêve passant

Kate, whose shirt is tan and sparkly, studies illustration. The guy next to her, who had pink hearts tattooed on his neck, showed us some watercolors he did in the public garden.

I got Mamacita for lunch and finished it for dinner. They have GHOST PEPPER HOT SAUCE. I think I got my tongue from my tiny amount of Nigerian ancestry.

It’s a season of farewells and for this reason, he put together a series of works important to him and works from his early years as a conductor. Works from Germany, where his family fled from in 1937. Weber and Brahms come from the turbulence of the Romantic era and Beethoven is the one who ushered it in.
Weber - overture to Der Freischütz (The Sharpshooter. The Freeshooter is the literal translation and it’s sort of like saying that the shooter can overcome the physical laws of nature themselves), and it’s a rarely performed opera about a shooting contest where Max, who wants to marry Agathe, the daughter of the head forester, makes a deal with the devil.
And though love may never quench the endless thirst of your rage, it can overcome the dark.
The rock opera The Black Rider by Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs sticks to the original plot more so, in which the hero accidentally shoots his wife dead and then the Devil takes him to Hell.
Anyways, the overture here is not so much an inverted recapitulation of all the themes but a moodsetter, in a sonata form. Four French horns to represent the forest, a question answered by a falling phrase again and again. A sudden shift of mood; a tremolando, a diminished seventh, and timpani to represent Satan. A second theme for Agatha. The law of Hell binds as sure as iron chains.

Beethoven’s violin concerto isn’t really worth talking about. And by that, he means that it stands on its own well enough. Doesn't help that there's a time limit on these talks.

Brahms’ fourth symphony was written near the end of his life, when he finally emerged from Beethoven’s shadow. While there’s no story, no libretto, no anything, it is full of deep emotions. We just can’t agree upon what moods he’s speaking of. The first movement is filled with falling thirds. It’s a sonata form, as they almost always are.
The second movement is a solemn procession in a Phrygian mode, rising thirds and clarinet melodies, and seven voices pulling it all together.
The third movement is pure joy.
The fourth movement is not just a culmination of the symphony, it’s a culmination of Brahms’ entire oeuvre.


There was a passenger on the Red Line with an ankh necklace partially obscured by her coat and a passenger with permangante violet hair.

burning question: we were were “boarding” for six minutes. What was the freaking holdup?
I think they were somehow out of sync with reality because when I got to Downtown Crossing, it said that the Braintree train was arriving and the one that did arrive was Ashmont.

The City of Boston and it’s raining
No one in the streets, because it’s raining.
No government today, because it’s raining.
Not even any crime, because it’s raining.
Run, little guy, run and hide because it’s raining.
And definitely no crimefighting today, because it’s raining.

The Red Line car was completely empty up until broadway, at which point four people got on, and a lot of the stations looked empty as I passed them. The new red line trains are already uncanny valley, what with the lack of seat patterns (even if they made them plastic for sanitary reasons, they should have put the pattern on the seats, damn it) and lack of advertising telling me there’s 37 million in unclaimed money and I might be able to take a piece of the pie.
The Orange Line never got the memo. Maybe it’s because much of the Green Line’s ridership is also taking the Orange Line because in lieu of buses, they're just having them take that instead. There was a guy at Downtown Crossing singing karaoke in Spanish, which is what Boston needed, unless he's singing about Ushuaia or Peru or Coyhaique.
I had an ūttappam with mixed veggies and two things of chutney (one kind was very definitely coconut cilantro and I know this because Trader Joe's used to sell uttapam) and a bowl of sāmbār (which is a lentil-based stew with tamarind broth) for dinner. Boston Halal got a rebrand/replacement which is nice (yayy) but I can’t get masala fries there (boo). I was contemplating a shawarma earlier but I didn't want to walk that far in the rain plus it was pretty late.

Despite Mahler’s 7th being the second longest of the bunch, we also got Prolog, a premiere from Sofia Gobäjdullina finished by Elena Firsova. I described it as someone playing Mahler while air raid sirens go off, or a hymn caught in an earthquake. It doesn't quite know where it ends or begins. It's paired with the Wrath of God which is itself derived from her oratorio On Love and Hate, which sets various prayer texts in various languages to represent the yearning for a spirituality beyond the material world. She mentioned an oboe solo representing the individual but left nothing about it so Firsova had to compose that stuff herself.

As for Mahler, I saw it with the NEC two years ago and wrote about it then.

Octagon-glasses had to get off at the next stop (Chinatown) but liked her drawing. Patty and Darcy positively loved their drawing even though they were positioned weird and behind that plexy glassy stuff.
Darcy wanted me to draw her family from a phone photo and it’s actually hard because it’s the size of a phone screen and not my entire field of vision.
I asked her if her phone screen was yellow because she kept dropping it. she says probably.
Barramundi and barracudas are both not related and not etymologically related either. Barracuda comes from a Carib word and barramundi comes from an Australian word, much like the word dog in Mbabaɽam.

A tree branch fell on the tracks and I'm not blaming Twitter or even their confirm you're human biometric bullshit but I am blaming Twitter for the fact that the only way to read it on mobile is through a dodgy site filled with pr0n ads because they killed nitter and xcancel. The Red Line was slow and I had to take a bus from JFK to North Quincy.

burning question: And what possibly could your diabolical plan be? Hmm? A stuffed animal? Or maybe you’re gonna throw your big shiny bucket at me.

Don’t be sad it’s over. Be sad that there are only four concerts this year.

Katie's mom is an artist. Another passenger I drew, with black hair, is an artist but I didn't get her name.

I had a taco for dinner. It had chipotle chicken, some grilled veggies, habanero sauce, jalapeños, roasted corn, and sour cream.
I also tried that vissinade stuff and it was quite good.

Avery has red hair and was writing about her day in a hand-written journal.
Shea works with an ice cream truck and plays guitar and piano. Much like Reggie from Phantasm. She wasn’t dressed like Reggie though, she had patterned pants and a blue t-shirt with the logo on the back. Still, the Tall Man can’t stop her.

Prelude concert
Jean Sibelius - Andante Festivo
Very andante, not so much festivo, if that’s what it means.

Por Una Cabeza by Carlos Gardel
It means “by a head” which is a horse-racing term that’s equivalent to “by a hair” here. It’s a tango written for the film Tango Bar which is so obscure it doesn’t have a page on Wikipedia and used in Schindler’s List and True Lies

Somewhere from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein

Coqueteos from Leyendas.
Why you crap for craps! They played this two weeks ago.

Main concert:
Felix Mendelssohn The Hebrides
this i’ve heard before.
Anna Clyne Wild Geese
he dedicated this to the canada geese that have conquered the Esplanade.
I thought I heard this one before. Recently.
Ottorino Respighi Fountains of Rome
La fontana di Valle Giulia all'alba
The Valla Guilia is named aor Pope Julius III who built a villa there. If you’re wondering. I know I was.
“Droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh, damp mists of a Roman dawn” in his words. Well, his words translated from Italian into English, anyway.

La fontana del Tritone al mattino
Opens with four blasts from the horn.
“A joyous call summons troops of naiads and tritons who come running up mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water” except Triton is one sea-god with a human torso and head and fish’s tail, not a type of saltwater elemental.

La fontana di Trevi al meriggio
“Neptune rides his chariot drawn by sea horses (two words) and followed by a train of sirens and tritons.” It ends with faint trumpet blasts.

La fontana di Villa Medici al tramonto
“The air is full of the sound of tolling bells, birds twittering, leaves rustling. Then all dies peacefully into the silence of the night.” Birds translate not to the recording used in Pines of Rome but in the sound of harps and flutes and violas.

Ludwig van Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 3
This is his third attempt to write an overture to his opera Fidelio. And he decided he liked it enough, it just gives away far too much of the plot and it’s also fifteen minutes long, so now it just stands alone.
Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 in C minor, op. 78 “Organ Symphony”
It might be the closest anyone from France will get to writing a traditional symphony. Even Saint-Saëns was like “what I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again” when asked to write another symphony.
The introduction is a four note motif first on the oboe. It lasts a minute or so.
The allegro moderato is rather agitated. The organ isn’t so much something you hear as feel.
The poco adagio evokes the love duet from the opera Samson et Dalila. There’s a pause here. The recording I have splits it in two tracks.
The allegro moderato introduces a piano and was composed around the time he composed Carnaval des animaux and wrote a movement for pianistes forced to perform fingering exercises and scales endlessly for gawking crowds.
The mestoto is a baroque fugue with brass fanfares.

I saw an advertisement for traveling to Ireland for an infinite summer. Excuse me but Ireland is not what I picture when I hear endless summer. Yemen, maybe, or Thailand, or the Philippines or Algeria or Nigeria. Maybe Austria but that’s only because Fennesz is from Vienna.

Well, maybe now with climate change, where fucking Brittany has 110F temperatures. No, Fucking Austria got tired of all the jokes and the sign theft and changed its name to Fugging.

This week’s mbta pipe dream is a second entrance at the other end of Charles/MGH so you don’t have to cross the intersection from hell. Gabriella says they should add a secondary entrance at Braintree because that would also make things convienent. I asked if there used to be one and she said no.
She had a necklace of purple-dyed gastropod shells and earrings that were flowers with dangling stamens.
Last week's MBTA pipe dream was a line that starts at JFK or at North Quincy and curves around so you can get on the orange and green lines when they're busing and they're always busing because even with the slow zones, busing was still even slower.
Also, I wish they'd find an alternative to twitter for announcing delays.
(Katie was like "they'll leave sometime today, anyway)
But at least I can still use sotwe, nitter, or xcancel. Well, maybe not nitter and xcancel thanks to their cease and desist against them but the dodgy twitter web viewers with the pr0n ads that are run out of countries like Hong Kong and Iran or whatever, those work. Hint: try twitterwebviewer.
(Krissy asks who is still using Twitter anyway. My guess is that for a lot of people, the lack of moderation beyond "our AI has determined your behavior is inauthentic" when you like a bunch of tweets.)
(My favorite thing about Elon's Twitter is that even after being locked out of my account for being neither willing nor able to go through with their biometric nonsense to confirm that I'm human, I got suspended for inauthentic behavior even though I didn't do anything wrong. Or anything at all because I'm locked out, you big dumb idiots.)
(I can't imagine there being a push to purge inactive accounts because someone really wants a screen name)

burning question: wtf there are only four concerts this year?

Drake had to see the dermatologist. He met a dog who was at least twice his size and that dog was more afraid of him. Then he tried to get up on the bench but couldn't quite do it so he tumbled over.

I got a shrimp pla salad or something from Kala Thai, which must be a new item because it isn’t on their website or anything. Yelp is useless. Facebook is slow to load because of all the AI garbage and useless. Their instagram hasn’t been updated in years. It had shrimp, it had onions, it had crispy scallions or something. I’ll get back to you in 2027.

Ron told me about a Shakespeare troupe called Dream Role Players, role as in it’s your dream to play the role of so-and-so. I’ve already seen the ones they’ve done so far and I’ve already seen Romeo and Juliet, which they’re doing next year, so yeah. At least it's something. He’s pissed about brown box and also has no idea what happened to Praxis Stage.

The Chelsea High School Orchestra's string section played something called Swamp Thang by Richard Meyer, not to be confused with Swamp Thing by The Chameleons.

The chorus who did the pre-concert sang This Little Light Of Mine, the lullaby from Hansel and Gretel (the one Marvin sings. How I hate the night), Dona Nobis Pacem, and Simple Gifts.

Randall Thompson - The Testament of Freedom (excerpts), that is to say, the first and last movements.
There were three days of my life in which Randall Thompson was alive.
It was composed at the height of World War II. The first movement is a hymn, the second and third movements, here unplayed, are a bit more slow and introspective, and the fourth ends with a recapitulation of the theme from the first.
"The flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them."
That may have been a bit optimistic, in 1821, in 1943, and in 2026.

Giueseppe Verdi - Messa da Reqiuem
This is why there were only two works and why the first one had to be truncated.
Also, I know it's a call to unity for the Italian people but I can't help but think "it's a mass for the dead."

Gabriella gave me an update on her cats.

I'm looking at the last ten or so pages of my sketchbook wondering how long it will take to fill them up.

burning question: what's the opposite of "suicidal empathy?" Because I'm pretty sure that certain right-wing groups have that.

Of all the days I picked, it was the day the food trucks (i think bibimbap, which Trader Joe’s no longer sells, thank you very much) weren’t there (I said something about not even Ben and stinkin’ Jerry’s but they did show up around 6:45) so I got a falafelburger from Black Seed with hummus, tabbouleh, pickles, and tahini and a side of cajun fries, and a Titania’s Fiz, which was “the queen’s favorite mix of lavender, ginger ale, and lime juice. refreshing and floral but with a kick, just the way she likes it.” Oberon’s Enchantment sounds good (blue flower tea, lemonade, raspberry syrup). Puck’s Mischief if you need to stay up all night (a shot of espresso in orange juice and tonic water)
The people on the train were talking about how banana nut muffins from Marylou's are the best and I can't disagree with that, though I like their cranberry orange muffins too.
I met two pugs, one fawn and one black, and a guy in a Metallica shirt who was petting rodos and hoping they remember him and they probably do because while they're not corvids or tits, thy are pretty smart.

There was a guy playing tenor sax near South Station.

They had a pre-show with various opera arias and circus performers.
They started with the apropos Come Now A Roundel from Benjamin Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream sung by Titania (not the Titania who was in the play, just Titania)

Après un rêve isn't an opera aria, it's lieder. While this was happening, a heavily tattooed performer contorted herself.

Serenade from Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince. Nothing about this is expected. The aria was in English, the composer was from Hungary and immigrated here in the early 1900s and not to escape fascism or anything and worked in a pencil factory.

Also apropros wass Sul fil d'un soffio etesio from Verdi's Falstaff, complete with chair balancing.

Youkali by Kurt Weill is in French. They had a cellist as well as a pianist for these last few.

Torna ai felici di is from an obscure Puccini opera Le Villi. Two performers did hand-to-hand.

The last one was a duet from Candide.
It wasn't an encore, it was just hidden by the Arias Aloft newsletter sign up sheet.

Blah blah blah, you know how the plot goes, I've only seen it about six times, blah blah blah. The stage was a heart with a ball pit and colorful lighting.

Theseus and Hippolyta were played by Oberon and Titania, which makes sense because once the fairies show up, they’re out of the picture.
they all came in riding scooters or bicycles bedight in colorful lights.
The fairies had rainbow light-up cloaks. Titania wore a dress of mirrored scales and during her scenes with Nick Bottom, they played 70s pr0n grooves, she reeled him in with a neon whip.

Petra Quince had a Romanian accent.
The man in the moon (or “myuun” as Nick Bottom said it in his attempt at a British accent) had a disco ball helmet.
“Tis is my lanthorn and this is my dog, bark bark bark.”
He’s like DIE DIE DIE DIE GET TO DA CHOPPAH DIE DIE DIE.
He had a BUSTER SWORD and there were materia in the slots. He also had armor made from gold-colored beer cans and heart-print boxers. The lion forgot his lines. Thisbe forgot he was supposed to be using a falsetto voice. I was laughing so hard I cried.

Sage and Pam were at the play too.
The train announcer said that we were on a Braintree train and we’re (referring to me and two different passengers) like “Duh. I mean… duh,” and they think that maybe the guy who made it as far as Quincy Adams before realizing he was supposed to be at Ashmont just woke up.

burning question: What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the fairy queen? What, a play toward! I'll be an auditor; an actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.

Like last time, I drew Erica, who has dark hair and a swan pendant, on the Commuter Rail and then went back to reading Monk and Robot. There was also a shih tzu bijon mix named Rose.

Hope explained the situation as “we moved to Somerville because there’s more space. We’re not doing Figment After Dark right now but maybe some day.” Hope has a Labubu in a Figment shirt.
I said it was a good thing we revived Figment because we need the safe spaces, god fucking damn it.
It actually came back last year but it conflicted with Artbeat. Hope was like yeah, there were a lot of things that day. And we have twice as many art installations as last year.

Discoscope: a disco ball orrery
Chalkus de Milo two statues you could draw on with chalk.
The Leave A Secret Garden. Write a secret on a paper, roll it up, put it in a cubby for people to read.
The write crowd. Read words for a collaborative poem.
A mailbox where you could write a love letter and take a love letter.
“this is my submarine, where I go when I need quiet” which wasn’t there but a guy said that maybe it was an invisible submarine. The description made it sound really cool (a fabric submarine you could go inside and you’d see fabric fish swimming by when you pedal and there was a periscope you could look through) and maybe they’ll bring it next year.
Waterfall, a grid of painted squares that formed a waterfall.
“a friend in the dark” two three-dimensional cubist black cats.
Moire. Two wheels with holes drilled in them. Spin them to make the installation behind them look like an old fashioned projector.
The installation behind them was the Discorn. I’m not sure why it was called that. Oh, discorn as in corn, as in maize, not as in unicorn. There was also a Discow, which was a giant metal cow that shot water out of her udders.
The garden of whimsy. Make a flower.
Roll 4 Henna. You’d roll a d4, a d6, a d8, a d12, and a d20, which are the only platonic solids, and she’d draw a henna design based on those results. I got a flower on my hand. Giocchina has a crescent moon and two dolphins in an eternal circle, maybe henna but maybe actual tattooing, a moon pendant made from white stone or white glass, an amethyst pendant, a phial of dark violet powder, maple pods on the sides of her face, a bandana, a utility belt but not necessarily a Bat utility belt. I mean, one of the philtres or phials may contain carousel reversal spray or shark repellant bat spray but no one can say.

Partial Eclipse of the Heart: Write words on a heart.
Some hanging fuzzy worms with little googly eyes.
Natural Reflections: A kaleidoscope that you could look at flowers but you can’t rotate the scopes, just the potted plants.
2 oujia boards that were linked together with syringes and tubing. they got a bit out of whack and desynced over time.
Finger-Pained Boston
The Metapiano.
Smoke and Mirrors: you might have a hard time getting off of the air mattresses because they're just super squooshy. There's a smoke machine and a speaker playing what sounded like Stars of the Lid. Ash was lying down in one of them, saw me, and was like "cool sketches," and later, I drew a picture of her and her friend. I can’t tell if I made him look like Karl Heisenberg or Weird Al. maybe the vaccine turned his hands magnetic.
She's never seen Final Space. You know why? Because they didn't promote it or anything.

There was a guy with an Umbrella Corporation logo. Another guy with various Studio Ghibli characters tattooed on his leg.

Chelsea has a tattoo of all the characters from Young Frankenstein and people always think it’s Willy Wonka and she’s like “no, but the same actor.” She was raised on Mel Brooks movies. She also has a peacock on her other arm and a portrait of her dog, a paw, and her other dog's favorite toy, and she's trying to think of something from Stu. She also has Tina Belcher on her leg which is how I recognized her in the first place.
Stu is a Great Dane, which means he's a big baby. They had this bison skull and he was fine with it until one day he realized it existed and became terrified by it. And there was the inflatable cartoon moose head. Nope. Too scary for Stu. Meanwhile, the only thing shih tzus fear is bath time.

There was a ride-able fuzzy-cushioned giant tarantula with lights wrapped around the legs and pedipalps that glow green or vioolet, but since it was summer-bright out there and they make the batteries drain even faster, they opted not to use them. and a ride-able turtle sandbox on wheels. When the turtle is under the shade of the trees, you can see the lights underneath. Someone described it as an out of body experience. Someone else said we could joust with them, in fact, we should put a chainsaw or a hammer on them like Battlebots.
The artist of the spider, Arlene, has a luna moth pendant and a crown of flowers.
They put a horn on the turtle because there are a lot of people at some of these things who are just completely out of it.

In Limba Mea, which I recognized as Romanian and recommended A Princess of Roumania to the artist, where you could take letters and use them for poems in your own native languages.

There was a wood nymph with various critters (a woolly bear caterpillar, a snail, a butterfly, a swallowtail caterpillar) on its bark skin and stilts. Wait, that was Sarah. Maybe I’m just so used to seeing her in ballgowns instead.
There was a trash can “robot” covered in stickers that visited every installation

Melissa has tattoos of various fungus: shelf fungus on her arm, some morels and amanitas (?) and some pines (not a fungus) on her leg.

The lavender made her look like she was doing aromatherapy or a reporter. The "CakeTime!" glasses she was wearing gave her a headache so she put them on her hat instead.
Jason was talking about some herb that grows on Mount Olympus and how his grandmother is like "oh, your leg is gone, have some Mount Olympus."
The only Olympos I recognize is the one on Mars. It's 2 and a half times taller than Everest and is about the size of France.

Lily has tattoos of various horrors of the deep and Lovecraft himself, whom I thought was The Tall Man at first but no it makes sense because he’s surrounded by a monster and even has an octopus’ arm coiled around his neck.
They’re not accurate in my drawing but it works because they’re indescribable horrors of the deep. Lily also has a tattoo of the card The Tower, a broken sword.
Taylor has a tattoo of a nude mermaid-cephalopod.

A guy says the ducks here are gentrified. Maybe he was trying to get a silk bag to live longer.

Laurel has a shirt with eyes printed on it and rollerskates with butterflies. She was pushing a guy on the turtle.
George, who was wearing floral overalls, while we were waiting in line for a raspberry lime rickey (me) and a something-chino (George) and I don’t even know (Laurel) (though what I do know is that laurels in your soup enhance its aroma) explained the goings on in the wider world of figment.
it was held on a park that used to be a military base from the colonial era to the 50s and then got really gentrified in the last few years.
and I asked what happened to half of Brooklyn’s plan to flee New York now that Mamdani is mayor and alas, nothing is coming of that.

I recognized Andrew because of his name and he recognized me because of my sketchbook
On the other hand, I thought someone else was Andrew. His name is Tim. There are some who call him… …Tim.

Jeli met me before but at ArtBeat and not Figment.

I wanted An Nam for dinner but everything was some sort of soup and that might have been a bad idea. So I got Cava instead.
I had peri-peri fusion fries from Tribos for lunch.

One of the train passengers I drew had a jellyfish tattooed on her shoulder. one of them had some stuff their niece made, a guy with radiant spokes and a blank white face and black cloak, some abstract sigils, a triangular spiral glyph. I almost missed my stop. I'm not used to the Orange Line. I've used it once since they got rid of the 1960s trains and only one stop, In fact, I've only used it twice before since the pandemic began.
Jules, who has no visible tattoos, really liked my Kurt Vonnegut t-shirt.

I met Cali, a dog, on the Red Line who was mostly white, with spots on one ear, and half her face along with most of her other ear was black.

burning question: guys, can you seriously design your video pages to not jump to the next video in the sequence if my finger so much as gently brushes the surface of the mouse?

At the commuter rail station, someone wrote "something beautiful is about to happen! if you don't give up" and someone else wrote "rats rule."
I drew Lexi on the commuter rail train and then read the entirety of Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur. Whatever it was I was expecting it to be, it wasn’t. In a good way.

Somerville still has Artbeat, despite their subreddit being more interested in fighting housing (because Martsa on Elm is sooooo worth saving) and complaining about the homeless in Davis Square. Cambridge is actually trying to do some good but their arts council quietly canceled the River Art Festival and the least they could have done is made an announcement of sorts as to whether it was just too hard to hold it at the same time as the world cup or if it's not coming back. Ben has no idea what happened to it either.
The theme this year was REVolution to commemorate both the 250th anniversary of the American revolution and to express our need for a new revolution. The mascots this year were a bunny and a frog, who both hop and bunnies reproduce like bunnies, frogs might reproduce fast too but they don't know.

Marley has a tattoo of a hummingbird, a snake, some diamond shapes, and some flowers, and has dangling crescent moon earrings. Ella has a tattoo of a spiral on her shoulder. Rachel had dyed hair.

I had for lunch a skewer of barbecued pork marinated in soy, garlic, and banana ketchup (that's like tomato ketchup except banana instead of tomato paste and it's dyed red for some reason) with a glaze of brown sugar and calamansi juice.

Ruby Grove played indie rock with not just the standard guitar, bass, and drum kit but with flute and keyboard and even some trumpet. Melissa, their lead, has pale blue violet hair, and Savannah, their temporary drummer, has phosphoric green hair.

Mean Black Spider (their name is taken from a song by Robert Lockwood Jr) played Chicago blues stripped down to its basic essence: harmonica, washboard, a single snare drum and a guitar. At least, that's what I think they were. They played a few originals and some covers by Lazy Lester and a song by Johnny Littlejohn about love gone wrong called Bloody Tears. No, not that one.

Cheyenne Mize came here from Louisville, Kentucky, a place with a surprisingly good music scene (Days of the New and Rachel's come from there), and included fiddle, accordion, tambourine, double bass. During the warmup, one of them played Clair de lune by Debussy on the keyboards during warmup, though maybe Chopin’s Prelude XV would fit the weather and Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude would fit the concert theme. They played a song called Raymaker, not Rainmaker as I thought, unless they changed it for that day. When she played in Beṅgaḷūru, another place with a good music scene, she said it was a song about the people who bring you the sunshine in your life. Ben said the riff for the first song they did reminded him of another song. And they gave us all free download cards for braving the rain.

Kotoko Brass plays Ghanian highlife.
I took shelter at Jess' kayaking booth because it was a bit close to Kotoko Brass. Jess is very animated, she says.
The official rainfall, at Logan Airport (yes, I am aware that it is summer and therefore there is much variation) was .09 inches and I am completely bewildered by that.
The good news, anyway, is that it purified the air of all the smoke. See, there's wildfires in Canada and northern Minnesota and in past administrations, we'd have sent equipment and people to help out but instead Trump just wants tariffs. I mean, Iran's Golestān Palace and Čehel Sot̰ūn aren't going to bomb themselves.

Dr. Beaver plays indie rock in mostly Mandarin (you will hear 我 and 你 if you know anything about the language) though one of their songs was in the dialect of Min spoken in the Mazu Islands.
One of the other people watching had a tattoo of a great blue heron on her back and a daffodil and other flowers and a fern on her arm.

The Kingfisher Contra Dance Party sounded fun but I think they had to cancel it due to the lack of shelter from the rain. Contra Dance is a New England folk dance.

Lucy's not an artist, she was just checking out the stuff.

The Revolutionary Snake Ensemble plays New Orleans jazz.

La Diaspora Combo plays

Intac opened their set with a reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Sarah (yes, that Sarah, the one from Figment) was wearing a ballgown you could color. Because it’s made of fabric and rather loose-fitting and floaty fabric at that, it’s actually harder than you’d think.
Someone drew the S is for Sucks dragon on it. I almost thought it was Trogdor but he has a long triangular head with a top mark and completely lacks majesty. You need consummate v’s for his teeth, spinities, and angry eyebrows.

A guy playing the bagpipes played the Star Wars theme.
Phoenix (Marley is Phoenix's girlfriend) was like “Oh yeah.”
“How did you not recognize it.”
“Because I grew up on Star Trek.”
“You know you can just like both things, right?”
“That’s not how we did things.”
“Huh.”
“Because my dad and I have the same kind of autism, that’s why.”
Phoenix’s favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episode is The Inner Light. As it should be.
Then Phoenix had to leave to watch a movie, and Anna, who is small and has dark curly hair took over.
Tess is small and has a star pendant. Hayley has gauge earrings, a choker with a rose clasp, and a bandana. Bebby has a sun earring and a moon earring and a bandana.

I met a dog named Mazzy Star.

Mary had Scotland the Brave stuck in her head afterwards. She has blue hair and a crown of pansies, a golden insect brooch.
I showed her Pennywise Laughing In The Forest Temple and she almost lost it. The Forest Temple is already creepy, she says.
You gotta be whimsical at all times when you're part of the faery troupe. In fact, you can’t stop being whimsical just because you’re off the clock. That’s not how whimsy works.
And, besides, the fae would brave the rains.

I got larb for dinner and lo and behold, it started to rain again. not hard but enough to be annoying. They had taken away the booth tents for the day, and there were no benches under awnings or anything (homeless people could benefit from that!) but there were some benches outside Davis Station with a canopy of leaves that weren’t quite leakproof but did the job.
I pointed this out to Tess, Anna, and Hayley. I probably could have eaten with them but I had assumed they had also left.

Ashley, who has curly dark pink hair and a tattoo of a nude reclining in a martini glass that she got in Somerville isn’t an artist, but Megan, who has butterfly or bird earrings, goes to school for art.

The Spanish language club thing had a globe that still had a unified Sudan and Serbia & Montenegro and she’s like “they should have a date on the globe so we could tell” and I ask
burning question: isn’t that the fun of it, so we can look at the globe and find clues that tell us when it was made?
and she’s also like maybe it’s from 2010 but they just got lazy.
she never realized Kazakhstan was so big.
if I considered East Timor, I could have narrowed it down to 4 years.

After many setbacks and much bad luck, I finally got to see the MFA’s garden exhibit. It's all stuff from their collection and they were missing one work of fantastical flowers I can't remember the name of or the artist's name but it was still pretty cool.

I thought there was a toy dinosaur on the train tracks but it turned out that a coyote or a gray fox tried to hide under the rail and got himself stuck there.

I thought there was a toy dinosaur on the train tracks but it turned out that a coyote or a gray fox tried to hide under the rail and got himself stuck there.

My drawing of Oksana looks like she has only sclera, no iris nor pupil but that’s only because she has defined curves on her eyelids.
Julia had to get off way too soon and has a hand of fatima necklace.
Avery’s a graphic design student. Her bag’s covered in heart-shaped charms.

For lunch, I had tuna crudo (that’s raw tuna) with coriander, fennel, and rhubarb aguachile.
The day before, I had a burger with homemade hoisin sauce, carrots, and spicy Asian slaw. I don’t know if I’d call it spicy but then again I use scotch bonnets.

Smoke is gray with white paws and a white bib and likes to sploot, Angel is tan, and Luna is white with brown spots and a few larger-sized splotches on her behind and face. Her ears are brown too.
(this was a couple of weeks ago)
Carolyn has a senior dog named Isis and I said she could call her Wusa or Rusat because that's the proper Egyptian name and not the Greek one.

( clicky clicky )

burning question: when the muppets all got together in Attleboro and played the Elegy of Empiness, what instruments do you think they played?

I went to Mamacita for lunch and got a bowl with yellow rice, tajin shrimp, pineapple salsa, pickled onion, black beans, diced onions and cilantro, and topped with salsa verde.

There were four days of this and the sunday one was packed. I’m not sure about the other days but I assume they were too.
harmonium takes one poem by John Donne and two poems by Emily Dickinson and sets them to music. It was Adams’ first major orchestral work. I guess they latched on to Adams this year because it’s been 250 years since the Declaration of Independence and John Adams does share his name with the signer/president.
The first movement is set to John Donne’s Negative Love, which is a poem about defining what love is by defining what it isn’t. His original idea was to sing vowels and syllables and then growing them into greater forms, an idea used in the sadly lost or possibly apocryphal Pax symphony by Heitor Villa-Lobos, but then he decided he’d use actual texts instead. You can hear vestiges of it in the opening. The title is taken from Wallace Stevens’ poem collection, and he decided that’d not work out either.
Negative Love builds up to this wall of sound which is why I think you need to hear this live.
The second movement (Because I could not stop for Death) takes its time just as Death takes his time. It stays quiet throughout and ends with an instrumental passage, the bardo that bridges the world of the dead with the world of the living.
It seamlessly segues into Wild Nights, a burst of ecstasy and sound. Midway through, the chorus repeats the word rowing as sound flows on top of it, and it ends as it began in silence.

If you want to know what love is, it’s a snoot poking you under your arm.

As for beethoven, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know how it goes. get off my cloud. They tried to prove me wrong by pairing it with something but they didn’t try to prove anyone wrong by doing it without the chorus.

Carmen, who has an amplified hadeopelagic shade of magenta hair tried to draw me but I had to get off at the next stop.
and i was in a hurry because i wanted to get to the commuter rail so I could take that instead of getting on a bus, going through the jfk dropoff and dropping people off, and then getting on the highway. Gas, brake, honk. Gas, brake, honk. Honk, honk, PUNCH! Gas, gas, gas.

burning question: I know I could ask the same thing about a hundred billion or even a billion but what do you even do with ten trillion dollars? Like he’s Dr. Evil or something. Like, you could find every shark in the world, attach fricking laser beams to their heads, and still have money left over.

Caroline likes that I drew her freckles and her friend said the drawing looked just like her. She has a choker with a six-petaled flower on it and a nose ring.
I got a soujuk shawarma for dinner.
In my drawing, Emily looks rather short compared to Amanda, who is dark-haired and dark eyed and has earrings made from interlocking square bits, and Briana, who has a pendant with a flower on it. Briana said the train wanted to tell me its name too, which was Urrrrrrrhhhgh. We were at that curve near Boylston.

I saw this in 2022 and then checked that post and here are some new things about Mahler's 3rd symphony.

We all know the opening tune of Mahler’s third symphony and we can all sing along.
There’s two kinds of music, as there are two seasons if you’re talking climatology. There’s the music of winter; funereal with menacing horns, ominous, foreboding. tam-tams, violence from the violins. Music that has ceased to be music. And there’s the music of summer, full of life and creativity and tenderness, with marches and birdsongs and joy.
Pan lent his name to panic and pandemonium, and that’s what we see. But summer is too powerful.
The day of the concert was 60 degrees. The day after was 50. So summer has not yet triumphed in the real world.
In a story, the cuckoo dies and the birds ask the nightingale to take over. If they were American, they’d use the catbird instead. Brazil would ask the uirapuru and only the uirapuru, definitely not the capuchinbird or the bellbird or the screaming piha or horned screamer. Maybe if someone puts on Cantus Arcticus or the Amerindia symphony.
There’s a video on Youtube of a male Kauai ‘o’o calling out to a female but he’s the last of his kind so he’s answered only with the chirps of crickets.
Somehow, the oboe makes a glissando.
Had Mahler lived longer, maybe he’d have composed like Schönberg.

burning question: if the right hates refugees so much, why the fuck do they love creating them?
I feel there is an actual answer in that it leads to more power for them.