Ah, the Breath of Autumn

     

Sorry to say but this so-called September note is verging into an early October dateline. Stay tuned below!

     Then embarrassingly enough, the days become a new month and an entirely new outlook: more on future than past. Weather creates a model, a pattern of slow-slow, quick-quick. Temperatures up and down. Hot and cool. Delicious to observe, to enjoy changes.

    Beware: What you see as often as not really can be believed, even more so if music is supplied. But what if what you are dealing with A1 magic and its wizardly rays? What you see then is likely perhaps a fantasy, some mechanical imagination. And, imagine, even when it's happening outdoors!

    So it was on Sunday the 24th on the grounds of Kennedy Center's Reach Plaza, when a so-called data sculpture was on show in an enormous 10 square meter black cube created by digital artist (so the Wash Post said) Refik (could that be 're-fixed?) Anadol (anagram of?) in homage to the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. A soundscape with moving parts that seemed to make sense only to listeners and viewers who already knew the music. The sound blared, the children played - how few of them seemed really curious beyond trying to touch the screen. The tape or whatever it was kept rolling, repeating insanely for a 16-minute run. Ok: so what if a Czech billionaire was the sponsor (and major Kennedy Center donor). The spectacle isn't a new one apparently:  commissions are the artist's forte for dramatic settings such as the opening of the Las Vegas sphere last year. It took a newspaper article to explain what was going on - so pity those who stumbled upon the scene without having done their homework. "Dvorak Dreams" is the title. Results, admittedly - even to critics, are uneven. But long live the creative process in whatever form. 

    The danger I felt is its capacity to anethesize an audience. Spontaneity, live musicality, are naturally elusive in such work. I don't question that my immediate reaction was to pursue more seriously than ever the value of reaching out to people - strangers - in casual encounters, to feel elicit some real contact the way someone might feel listening to a live concert performed by human beings who have mastered the ability to create sound and make it seem spontaneous.

    

    So much of Washington's history and 'culture' (in broadest sense) is lost - or can be - to outsiders, tourists, etc. Residents don't often catch up to the best of it all unless by accident or by paying close attention to the online announcements that proliferate endlessly on emails and gmails. To wit, I grew fond of the still-nascent institution DC History Center (complicated by a better known Washington history section at the  MLK Library downtown) by a casual visit to the elegant former Carnegie Library building that occupies a block of Mt. Vernon Square. Which IS the square, in fact. Apple is spread over the entire first floor. DC History is downstairs with a commanding feature on the still evolving history of so-called home rule.  But this past weekend (we now are talking  October 5, the Center sponsored a number of free tours - one on the building itself and another (both of them an hour long) on the colorful alleys that can be found only by looking off the main streets.

     Think the neighborhood of Shaw, and the name Blagden Alley, one of the best preserved-while-still=evolving landmarks. It is, most of it now, under an historic preservation statute so that a tour such as one I had on a bustling Saturday could only happen under auspices of the Center and their foresight in hiring a commercial business called Off the Mall Walking Tours, led by a spirited Katie Kirkpatrick. She does as many as three different themed tours on peak days each month.. Blagden was a draw for sure. She encompassed history and present day worlds - so that at one time we are hearing about immigration of formerly enslaved people from the South (and before that the fact that  DC land was forested or swampy, never just what famous Pierre L'Enfant brought to bear later). How visual and vital such an area was throughout its slow settlement. Who lived there and how. Up to present day residents in habiting proudly what were formerly stables and even hospitals for horses and dogs, plus the mysterious fronts of several other closein addresses. (Insomniac - a bar? Death reads one plaque: a restaurant or a joke?)

    So much to take in and so lively a scene. Indeed, one sign points to an alley history center all its own - likely encompassing many other similar hidden spaces though few as well maintained as Blagden is today.

    Other thoughts on the season: Skies are clear and air clean enough that sometimes it's possible to hear background noises in a neighborhood that could be equally a political demonstration or a church service, the Marine Baracks on Capitol Hill  playing taps or the sound of someone's car radio through open windows.