This jazz quintet scurried into the garden this morning for a quick photo opp. Maybe they can only read music and therefore the 8 million signs that prohibit walking amongst the plantings eluded them. Anyway, they got their photo and seconds later it began to rain on their instruments so they scurried out again, without a playing a single note.
Tonight is the big bash that Friends of the High Line is hosting to celebrate next month’s the opening of Section Two. For the past hour or so ladies and gentlemen in black tie have been parading past our little patch on 22nd – 23rd street. Ho hum. More interesting: even the birds decided to clean up their act for the big night. These little guys were having a lovely bird bath in the sun deck area.
And did I mention that it’s 7:13 and Atlantis, a child’s toy phone, is sounding in Stephen Vitiello’s exhibit A Bell For Every Minute. See here for the sound map.
Note to the Friends of the High Line: can’t you find a way to keep this wonderful exhibit in the park?
I’m trying not to be obsessive about this, but I have a feeling that many people will look back on the early days of the High Line when the bells rang, minute by minute, and remember that these were the glory days. Or, as Aretha Franklin might say, “the good old days, the good old days.”
I started this post at 7:46, consulted Stephen Vitiello’s “sound map” and discovered that at this moment the bells of Kettles & Co. are sounding.
I didn’t know what this meant so I Googled them and came here, to a website that explains that Kettles & Co. is “New York City’s leading percussion, timpani and celesta global rental service.” This company rents out instruments that I couldn’t possibly describe — “3 octaves of almglocken,” “5-octave Schiedmayer Celestas, Estey Harmonium, Jenco Keyboard Glockenspiel, Pedal Glockenspiel, Bass Chimes for Mahler, Shostakovich and Berlioz,” and many others with equally inscrutable names. On the company’s website you can watch YouTube videos of orchestras using Kettle & Co. instruments.
When I began this post — now ten minutes ago — a “Swiss cowbell” was ringing.
Where else are you going to find this????
The High Line is set to open its new section next month and the blogosphere is clanging. (See 0:54: New York Transit Museum, subway bell.) But no one is talking about what we will lose in the process.
You have six weeks to enjoy “A Bell For Every Minute.” It’s hard to imagine that the good people who run the High Line can come up with anything even close to this remarkably wonderful exhibit.
Go now. It’s 8:10. The bell of Gracie Mansion’s historic clock is ringing.
It’s 5:03: time for the Coney Island Dreamland bell…
Stephen Vitiello’s wonderful exhibit, “A Bell For Every Minute,” goes silent on June 20th. For me the The Bells has always been a central, defining part of the High Line. Every walk I’ve taken has had the accompaniment of New York’s orchestra of sounds, courtesy of Vitiello. So get there while you can and enjoy it; next month it ends for good.
The artist was kind enough to share with readers of LivinTheHighLine.com his “sound map” for “The Bells of New York.” You can download the pdf here. It lists each bell by name and minute and includes a rough map of New York to indicate the place where the original bell is located.
And now it’s 5:32: not only are the Delacorte Park bells ringing but the animals are spinning ’round the clock, playing their instruments for all the kids to see. Of course the city’s sounds will always be here to enjoy, just not on a schedule that has been organized by an artist.
“If lawn mowing feels like copying the same sentence over and over, gardening is like writing out new ones, an infinitely variable process of invention and discovery.” — Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
I’ve been waiting for this moment: the sound of the screeching lawn mower, right here in the middle of Manhattan.
The grass has been getting awfully long down there on the High Line and last week I found myself muttering (like a restless housewife) “they better get that lawn cut…” In fact the fellow with the mower did struggle today; he kept having to stop his work to clear big, wet clumps of grass from both the lawn and his machine, stuffing them in a burlap bag before moving on to the next row. But this young fella had good manners: he shut down the machine every time he had to pause, then cranked it back up when he was ready to continue, thus sparing us all unnecessary noise and fumes.
I would have been happier with a grove of birch or flowering fruit trees down there. A lawn seems so pedestrian compared to the glorious diversity of plants in the rest of the park. But that grass is gorgeous and thick, and it’ll give me pleasure — a small blast from the country — to hear the mowing and the weedwhacking each week. And the smell of cut grass is a mighty fine accompaniment to a hot cup of Lapsang Suchong in the morning.
I know why Michael Pollan ended his argument about lawns with this sentiment: “Yes, there might well be a place for a small lawn in my new garden.”
