Thin air is like thinking

[sovay]

Tonight after our respective appointments spatch and I ventured out into the bone-aching wind chill because otherwise Ancient Nubia Now was going to leave the MFA before I had a chance to see it. It closes on Monday, but if you are local and have not made a visit, I strongly recommend you do so. It's a monumental and meticulously beautiful exhibition and it confronts the historical distortions of the civilization that flourished for more than three thousand years in the Sudanese Nile Valley as much as it celebrates the civilization itself. I have seen some of its objects before in the museum's collections; they are better in context, a complex history of conflict and coexistence and just plain existence memorialized in gold and faience and rock crystal and carnelian and fragile wood and polished granodiorite and intricately netted gazelle-skin. Photographs of pyramids. Reproductions of funeral beds. A shrine of weathered sandstone from which the god has been scooped, leaving only the adoring carven kings to either side. I am not normally into video interviews, but the four here are well-chosen, especially the photographer for whom time is just the other side of a border and the student who speaks of finally seeing herself and her young sisters as queens. The illuminated display of shwabtis is a beautiful installation in its own right. Also I really want to read Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood (1902) now.

1. Before my appointment, I bought a pistachio-and-cherry tart from the Tatte on Main Street and walked down to the water-split roadway of Edwin H. Land Boulevard to check out the ex-drawbridge I had noticed last week. There were clouds piled so low on the horizon they looked like a second, snow-capped skyline. I had brought a coffee cup of hot water against the very bright and icy afternoon, but then I forgot that I would have to take my gloves off in order to take pictures on my phone and in any case I was standing around watching the water of the canal ruffle under the wind like cormorant feathers, feeling the metal decking of the disused bridge leaves vibrate with every passing car. I reproduce below the captions with which I sent the photos to Rob.



Guess who forgot a real camera?



The last of Broad Canal.



Definitely an ex-drawbridge. [I have no idea why this image smallified when it came off my phone. We're working on it.]



Doing my best with a phone here.



The other direction of traffic is in much greater disrepair.



Also I am (a) losing the light (b) freezing my hands off.



Last shot before I lose my fingers.



Eh, fingers.

2. I found this rather nice set of screenshots from Casting the Runes (1979), including a much finer-grained look at the "fearful fiend" than you get in the panic-jolt real time of the film. I want to do something myself with that smoked-glass winter landscape. ashlyme gave me a title a few days ago; maybe it belongs.

3. Courtesy of handful_ofdust: I have never heard great things about The Return of Doctor X (1939), but apparently I don't care so long as it contains hot mad science Humphrey Bogart. On a similar theme: mad scientists and their assistants.

I must sleep before Arisia.

Comments

[sholio]

I wish I could go to the exhibit! It sounds very much my thing, and I'm glad you were able to go.

Very unrelatedly, thanks to Amazon's used book market, I have gotten my hands on The Illustrated Roger Zelazny from 1978 and it is glorious 1970s bonkers-ness with several pages of Amber illustrations. I will wait 'til you're back from Arisia to post scans so you too can glory in it.

ETA: Also, those are lovely finger-numbing photos.

[strange_complex]

Wow, those screenshots are amazing, and really do credit to the art direction! I'll still need to do a few of my own for the locations, but they are splendid to behold.

I'm glad you got to go to your exhibition.

[skygiants]

Casting the Runes really is better-shot than it has any right to be.

[moon_custafer]

I love Return of Doctor X! Apart from leering, gothed-up Humphrey Bogart, it also offers an intriguing look at late-thirties medical technology as it pertained to blood donation!

Nubians

[lauradi7dw]

in the 1990s sometime we did a double header that the Globe (?) recommended, first seeing the small Nubian exhibit at The Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists http://ncaaa.org/the-museum/ and then, fortified with the knowledge of bias, saw the Egyptian section of the MFA, carefully looking for Nubian artifacts.

[pameladean]

Cormorant feathers! Oh, I know just what you mean.

The Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge, south and west of Minneapolis some hour and change, has an area of pools, marshes, and mud flats controlled by a series of Victorian-looking valves, pipes, dams, and culverts. It is full of water birds, and one pool is, in season, particularly full of cormorants. We crane our necks eagerly to see if they are decorating the numerous snags in their favored pool like very goth holiday ornaments. You have to use binoculars to see any detail, and then you realize that in addition to drying their feathers in the dead branches of the snags, where they periodically enact what we call "doing a vampire" -- slowly spreading both wings way way out as if they were thinking of transforming into enormous bats -- they are also floating in the water and preening, standing on floating logs and small tuffets of grass and shaking water droplets from themselves, and diving abruptly amidst a flock of eensy diving ducks. They are our favorite thing.

P.

[gwynnega]

Those are beautiful screenshots. I love how much British TV could accomplish with great art direction in the pre-CGI era. (By contrast, a lot of CGI tends to leave me cold.)

Pretty much all I remember of The Return of Doctor X is Bogart, but maybe it deserves a second look.

[sovay]

I wish I could go to the exhibit! It sounds very much my thing, and I'm glad you were able to go.

Thank you! It was furnished entirely from the museum's own collections, so I don't know that it will travel, but I hope something similar comes near you.

nd it is glorious 1970s bonkers-ness with several pages of Amber illustrations. I will wait 'til you're back from Arisia to post scans so you too can glory in it.

I appreciate that very much! And look forward with some slight trepidation.

ETA: Also, those are lovely finger-numbing photos.

Thank you! My camera really was not designed to be a phone, but it's surprisingly good at light.

[sovay]

I'll still need to do a few of my own for the locations, but they are splendid to behold.

It uses color so strikingly. And they got really lucky with the weather.

I'm glad you got to go to your exhibition.

Thank you!

[sovay]

Casting the Runes really is better-shot than it has any right to be.

I truly had no expectations when you described it to me in December and I'm so happy with how it turned out.

[sovay]

Apart from leering, gothed-up Humphrey Bogart, it also offers an intriguing look at late-thirties medical technology as it pertained to blood donation!

So noted!

[thawrecka]

Those are great shots!

Re: Nubians

[sovay]

first seeing the small Nubian exhibit at The Museum of the National Center of Afro American Artists and then, fortified with the knowledge of bias, saw the Egyptian section of the MFA, carefully looking for Nubian artifacts.

That sounds great. The current exhibit confirmed something I had been feeling disoriented about for years, which is that I could have sworn the MFA had a permanent gallery dedicated to ancient Kush or at least the Kingdom of Meroë, except that I could never find it. It had existed when I was in high school and college; it was closed in 2006. I am hoping an aftereffect of Ancient Nubia Now will be to reopen at least a version of it. It would be useful to have the materials together.

[sovay]

and then you realize that in addition to drying their feathers in the dead branches of the snags, where they periodically enact what we call "doing a vampire" -- slowly spreading both wings way way out as if they were thinking of transforming into enormous bats -- they are also floating in the water and preening, standing on floating logs and small tuffets of grass and shaking water droplets from themselves, and diving abruptly amidst a flock of eensy diving ducks.

That's wonderful! We see them a lot around the Charles, and I will have to watch for their vampire poses now.

[sovay]

Those are beautiful screenshots.

It's such good winter mood. (I say, preparing to head out into the freezing teens in order to make my first panels at Arisia.)

I love how much British TV could accomplish with great art direction in the pre-CGI era. (By contrast, a lot of CGI tends to leave me cold.)

It's a really effective transfer of James' style, too, where everything is elliptical and suggestive and then all of a sudden something shocks you with what you can see just too much of and then it's ellipsis again, but now you know what's waiting.

Pretty much all I remember of The Return of Doctor X is Bogart, but maybe it deserves a second look.

At this point I am honestly willing to look at it just for Bogart, although moon_custafer says the science itself is also neat.

[sovay]

Those are great shots!

Thank you!

[asakiyume]

The exhibit sounds fabulous--and I like the idea of you racing to to Dreamwidth and beating Tiny Witt--nice job.

Thank you also for the shot of the Broad Canal, such as it remains.

PS: I realize I've conflated your two most recent entries--Tiny Witt was the one after this one. D'oh!

[sovay]

Thank you also for the shot of the Broad Canal, such as it remains.

You're welcome! It seems to run into the back of Kendall Square; I want to check it out further. I have these two lovely books on Boston landmaking that I suspect can tell me more.

PS: I realize I've conflated your two most recent entries--Tiny Witt was the one after this one. D'oh!

I still appreciate the encouragement!

[brigdh]

The exhibit sounds excellent! I've been wanting to learn more about Ancient Nubia for a while, but haven't gotten around to it; it seems like such a fascinating period of history.

Your photos are wonderful, and don't at all suffer for being taken on a phone!

[sovay]

I've been wanting to learn more about Ancient Nubia for a while, but haven't gotten around to it; it seems like such a fascinating period of history.

Does the Met have a permanent exhibit? (I don't believe this one will travel, but I'm hoping other museums follow its lead.)

Your photos are wonderful, and don't at all suffer for being taken on a phone!

Thank you! It is a very old and very un-smart phone and I am actually very fond of it.

[brigdh]

Does the Met have a permanent exhibit? (I don't believe this one will travel, but I'm hoping other museums follow its lead.)

Not specifically, alas. They have individual Nubian items in their Ancient Egyptian collection, but without, as you say, context, and you'd only notice them if you read the info placards closely.