Atlas Minor • Ritual

Marble statue of a fighting Gaul, 2nd or 1st century B.C.

C. and I returned to the Met this afternoon. It’s my favorite activity in the world: wandering the halls of a museum with her while we chatter about our projects and plans. And today we began plotting some interesting new directions for Ritual Fields.

The pilgrimage to inspect a painting or ancient relic is inherently ritualistic, and it felt even more so as we stood before statues, scrolls, and gelatin prints in hushed galleries with masks covering our mouths. The scene brought to mind one of my favorite moments at the Met: the fragmented statue of a soldier from two thousand years ago, a mixture of marble and steel that looks like a collision of the past and future.

Bersarin Quartett – Futur II

Methoden und Maschinen | Denovali Records, 2019 | Bandcamp

Each night in 2020, I wrote a short post for a series called Notes From the End of a World because I wanted to etch these days into my memory. Before the world changed completely.