your shadow on a cloud

I hope nobody needed that mattress coupon. It was on the train floor and I used it to clean my hands. My guess is some guy was planning to buy a mattress at his new apartment now or that a children's hospital that's opening soon can't get a discount on their mattresses, there will be no hospital then.

An androgynous looking man had Zeromus' sigil between two antlers tattooed on his arm. I didn't think to ask what his birthday was.

I saw a double-crested cormorant in the fens. There's a rose garden out there that I've never seen, which has a fountain and a replica of a Deconsol statue in Barcelona. There are a lot of geese and some people with dogs.

Outside the MFA was Kyle because I guess every name is going to become feminine eventually unless men take back Hope and Jade but I think men's rights activists are too busy writing manifestos about how there are differences between men and women and those differences prevent women from being good at tech blah blah blah, who says that she's an artist, just not a very good one, and has on her arm a tattoo of a woman standing in front of a twisted tree, in one hand, she holds a red apple, in the other, a purple plum or maybe a fig, a snake is coiled around the tree and is trying to steal the plum, while under her arm, she has three interlocked gears. Her hair is dyed a flaxen color.
I think what's even more outrageous is that Julian Assange is talking about respect for women. Like, maybe don't rape them, Julian. Don't write think pieces about how they're too neurotic to be techies, Damore. Don't get me wrong, I think they're perfect for each other.

A woman in the Gardner Museum had blue hair in braids. A man in the Gardner Museum had three cats with evil facial hair, one with a top hat and one with a monocle, plotting world domination or playing Risk or whatever it is cats do. He says that if cats could play anything, they'd play Risk.

There was a site that had more detailed descriptions of the various sound art installation and I can't seem to find it anymore and I'm not sure if it's vanished into the aether or if it's just hidden from Google's search bots. In lieu of that, I attempted to summarize the descriptions.

Sound for Insomniacs, Su-Mei Tse
Photographs of her five cats in closeups with headphones and recordings of each cat purring. She suggested that insomniacs could be lulled to sleep by listening to these sounds.

Sublimated Music, Philippe Rahm
It takes the melody of Claude Debussy's Bells Through The Leaves and breaks it down, playing each note independently on one of 56 speakers on the walls, while lamps associate each note with a color. As you get closer to the window, the lights get higher up and more diffuse on the ground.


Municipals, Helen Mirra and Ernst Karel
Quadraphonic urban field recordings at the Boston Public Library and City Hall, with Mirra playing echo harmonica, wood block, and morchang, with recordings from Mirra on bass drum, tom tom, and snare played at the Cyclorama.
This only happens on Friday. In lieu of that, there was a band called the Hyde Square Task Force playing.

Small Conversation, Lee Mingwei
Lee Mingwei uses voice to imitate the sounds of cicadas, crickets, and frogs, something absent from an indoor garden.
I could hear it but it was mostly drowned out by Josh Knowles, an electric violinist. He's a member of the band Nemes, which is pronounced like the striped Pharaoh headcovering, not like the Hungarian surname.

Sentient Veil, Philip Beesley
Small glass ampules with gold and blue liquids, LED lighting, and acoustic resonators. The sculpture only makes noise when people move around in the room.


Your Shadow on a Cloud, David Grubs
A sound collage made from old flamenco records owned by Isabella Stewart Gardner, chamber music, and Japanese classical music.

Undertone, Moritz Fehr
The sounds of a low voice and a seventeenth century song called Shadow of My Lover played on harpsichord emanate from where the Concert once hung.
There was a scavenger hunt where you spin a wheel three times and do what the number tells you to do. They are as follows:
1. find the frames of three (3) of the stolen paintings.
2. Locate art that includes gold, silver, or bronze. I'm pretty sure the lamps in the first floor hall around the garden are made from bronze but there aren't any descriptions of them.
3. Find the ostrich egg.
4. Draw the courtyard from the 3rd floor.
5. What year did Mrs. Gardner open the museum?
6. Pose like a tango dancer in the spanish cloister. I met some people from Spain while doing this so they know their shit about flamenco. I'd say something about Ashley but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to call her at this point. Anyways, it's hard to tell what she's doing with her legs in the painting because she's wearing a skirt and not shorts like I was, and I'm not sure I could get my arm to look like that without a sledgehammer. It looks like he captured the dancer in motion.
7. Rename an art piece. I didn't get this one but I'd probably rename one of the stolen paintings with the dimensions of the frame, whatever those are, as an ode to John Cage's 4'33"
8. Take a selfie with Mrs. Gardner.
9. Draw your favorite plant. My favorite plant is the fern tree.
10. Locate part of Mrs. Gardner's rare book collection.
11. Surviving on art: You are stranded on an island. Pick three (3) items in the museum you would bring you to survive. It would probably be best to bring one of the sound and light instatllations so you could signal for help, or maybe you have magickal powers to take the food in the painting and make it real or maybe summon a hippogriff or Cupids to help you fly off the island.
12. Love is in the Air! Find Cupid. He's resting on the third floor in the Titian room.
13. Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my! The woman at the table with the wheel says that there is only one tiger to her knowledge but plenty of lions.
14. Making connections. Take two selfies. Work of art you connect with: Work of art you do not connect with:

The prize was a Hershey's kiss so they'll just take your word for it
I think if the prize was more fantabulous than that, like a replica of the Concert if it were painted by Marc Chagall or Yoshitaka Amano, you probably couldn't half-ass it. They wouldn't offer hints either.

There was a Trinidadian band called Tempo International Rhythm Section playing in an inner garden. Outside was a procession of Brazilian percussionists called Grooversity, some stilt dancers dressed in clothing evocative of the Raphael Room, some dancers in zebra masks. There was Beat Bus with Maria Finkelmeier, who created an electronic bucket drumming instrument and has purple hair.

The bird they have is doing perfectly well, he's just elsewhere for huge noisy events. In his place were squares and right triangles and isosceles triangles and equilateral triangles and squares that were four times as big as the other squares, all made from clear plastic with magnets on their ends.

I told Courtney "I'm not going to bring a bag. I'm just bringing a book and a sketchbook. Maybe I'll pick up a pamphlet or two at the Gardnder Museum, and then it turns out I went to the North End."
She says she's seen one other person doing this who has a similar style, not me, though. This is a woman who owned a restaurant in a town north of Boston that I can't think of right now, and she doesn't own the place anymore so who knows if her sketches are still up.

A man I met who got off at Downtown Crossing was a fellow sketch artist.

Natalia has tattoos of a goat with Adrammelech's sigil (I'm the first person to notice this) a spiderweb on one arm, a butterfly and a lotus flower and a star on her neck and shoulders, some song lyrics and a shark wearing a business suit and a seahorse and a squid's eye on her other arm.
Her hair is the color of withered and blighted lavender.
Felipe has a tattoo of the Gunslinger or perhaps it's the Man in Black. Neither of them are artists.
There was a dog sitting in one of the seats.

burning question: When will there be a safe space for white men who think women are inferior?