Places

Bibliomancy: The weight of this sad time we must obey

BY Author In Choi | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Audile, Bibliomancy, Foudroyant, Manhattan
A production of King Lear at BAM on Apr 28 2018

New York has always had a special place in my heart for me. Even as a kid watching American movies in Korea, I loved the images of NYC: populous streets, people in sophisticated dark suits, and opulent classic American breakfast dishes with sweet and gooey pancakes (Do they really eat those as breakfast?! Phew…).

Although I’ve failed to make New York my home, it will always be a special place for me. Where else would I be able to meet Barbara Hammer in person and see an awesome production of King Lear at BAM on the same day? On the subway coming back from the theater, I remember thinking about the last lines of King Lear spoken by Edgar. I would be lying if I said I completely understood them, but since then I’ve thought about them often. How fitting they are in so many circumstances…

Twitter in the tree, an unheard of sight by a non-audile.

BY Author Erik Schurink | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Audile, Brooklyn

I’m not an AUDILE by any means, yet I do at times associate sound with image. When I see a bird I know it’s associated with sound, a species-specific song even. The sight of a bird often stops me in my track, as I anticipate a song, and the joy of hearing and emulating it. I remember my surprise on a vacation in Maine, when I learned that the cormorant doesn’t have a song, that the cormorant is mostly silent. And when it isn’t silent, it grunts like a pig as it takes offs or lands.
Anyhow, when I wake up in the morning, and I open the curtains I see a beautiful birch tree. One fall morning I noticed the shape of what could be a bird in its branched, its body. I took a photo of it. All I needed to do was add feet, wings, an eye, and a beak, and I did so with sound in mind.

The birch seen from tar beach, my safe escape into the outdoors, yielding this CULMINANT view

The Money Man

BY Author Rebecca Shapass | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Staten Island, Welkin

Flying high above us, aiming for the pure blue welkin, the Money Man presides over my street. The gentleman who tends to him lives across the street, listening to opera and classic rock in his garage all day long. I never noticed before, but now I see him daily. Our routines collide under strange circumstances.

He sees my admiration for his money man, strung up from the tree– sort of fun, sort of eerie. We chat across the black concrete that fills the earth between sidewalks.

A new friend, closer than before but still at a distance.

The safest dance of all…in the time of Covid

BY Author Lynne Sachs | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Brooklyn, Nosogeography

I am working as hard as I can to understand this virus. If the politicians had listened to the public health experts earlier, they would have understood the NOSOGEOGRAPHY of this disease, and would have warned us sooner to prepare. In the “spirit” of social distancing, this gal takes to the dance floor with her guitar and her tutu, completely alone.

A lone dancer who understands the NOSOGEOGRAPHY (geographical causes of disease) of the virus, where she is and where everyone else is.

Above as a Constant

BY Author Rebecca Shapass | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Foudroyant, Staten Island

An unusual New York City sight: empty streets as Spring breaks. Unfurling my legs– down the steps and to the sidewalk, they lead, familiar with the paths of isolated walks and socially distanced strolls.

Past the empty schoolyard, I pause under a cherry blossom tree. It reaches its arms up to the sky, basking in the sun’s midday rays. Its petals fall to the ground. Its cycle is constant.

No one could vaticinate this.

BY Author Lynne Sachs | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Brooklyn, Vaticinate

There were scientists who warned us, be we didn’t listen. There were doomsday shouters, but we didn’t hear them. I sit in my house looking outside, through a piece of film, like rose colored glasses, allowing me to see what I want to see. I cannot vaticinate today, cannot prophesize tomorrow. I know enough to know what I do not know.

Could you vaticinate this?

Yashmak at the Metropolitan Museum: Savage Beauty or Armor?

BY Author Lynne Sachs | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Manhattan, Yashmak

I just recently discovered that designer Alexander McQueen commissioned jeweler Shaun Leane and sculptor Annika Hellgren to revamp the traditional YASHMAK from Muslim women’s culture into a bejeweled, non-gendered medieval-style piece of armor. It’s now in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  You can see a video of the piece being worn for the Savage Beauty exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London here.  It’s a daunting work.

Sonnet in the Village

BY Author Kyle Beechey | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Culminant, Manhattan

This video is an interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76. Words can still resonate even hundreds of years later and in strikingly different contexts. It was recorded at the West Village institution, Kettle of Fish. A moment with Shakespeare on a winter evening. Certainly culminant. A fine actor and no better words written.

Bowling in the Bronx

BY Author Ana Almeyda-Cohen | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Bronx, Quidnunc

Gun Hill Road and Boston Road, Bronx, NYC

When you think of The Bronx, is bowling the first word that comes to mind? I would guess to answer no. Gun Post Lanes, though, at the corner of Gun Hill Road and Boston Road, is a look inside the ordinary thrills of The Bronx by engaging in a less-frequented activity. Most New Yorkers usually travel through The Bronx, go to Yankee Stadium to watch a baseball game, or visit local attractions such as the New York Botanical Garden or The Bronx Zoo. What about seeing The Bronx from the inside by doing an activity at a place that is not known for that activity? Being inside Gun Post Lanes, between the sounds of the bowling balls hitting the wooden alley and pins falling to the back drop of a dark hole, you can envision a Friday night in the 1950s with the out-dated wall decor and QUIDNUNCS filling the room and chatting away. In this post-war scenario, you can also hear DIGLOTS VATICINATING the outcome of the ball’s movement and the pins destiny. What if we all engaged with less-frequented parts of New York City from the inside out, thinking about the old and the new?