Bluejay
There is something about the dream, the reality and the memory—a trivium of the lower division—grammar, rhetoric and logic—connected threads running parallel and perpendicular. A droplet of water creates a soggy remnant where one instance seems more alive than it actually was. Or maybe it is alive and we are the soggy remnants. It’s like our eyes are narrowing inside ourselves—trying to see a period or a comma. A character passes and we wonder about their purpose —squinting to see the specs. They become, for some, real, remembered and dreamt. They become these obscurities that happen to us as children, these indeterminate moments we are unable to reconcile or forget. Two propositions lacking validity yet forming what seems like a geometric figure—a figure that reappears over and over again throughout our lives.
I dreamt I was in Syria. I was meant to go to Morocco but I ended up following a question mark in the form of a friend. There was dust and darkness, people carrying cups and filling them with spoonfuls of something. Something that sat in bowls—something in the middle of the street —cars silently passing like snow drops along the periphery. Something at the edge of a doorway or atop a roof. Something that looked like liquid and lumps or rocks and rivers—I could have been standing at the edge of the Euphrates or Souq Midhat Pasha—the oldest inhabited street in the world—commas, periods, pathos, logos. Some were wrapped in a soggy substance and some were raw and jiggly—more fragile than the rest. In one of the bowls I scooped there was an eyeball amidst the lumps. Question mark told me to drink around it so I did—using my teeth as a barricade. I wasn’t supposed to avoid them all, just the eyeball they said. The man who offered me the bowl watched me with a smirk on his face. I could feel shame and embarrassment in the dream—shame for being watched, embarassment for trusting him—hyperbolic sentiments rooted in the landscape of other countries. Memory said I will try anything so my teeth dissipated and the eyeball slid along the back of my tongue. Dream said, I never turn down a gift of sustenance. Reality said, I was being punished. I dropped the cup and ran leaving the question marks and exclamation points behind.
Awake for a moment— phone ringing in the distance, it would be Dave Harding I thought. That’s what my parents called him, they referred to him with both names—never dave without harding, never a period without a capital. He was a 3amer—a man who called in the night. Our bedrooms were close enough that we didn’t even have to raise our voices to hear each other. My dad answered groggily— hello . . . oh Dave— is that you? I couldn’t hear Dave’s response of course but I imagined it—purpose required context. I’d go into my parents room after they hung up and ask who they were talking to. My dad explained that it was a man he was in the army with. A good man that had a messed up life and sometimes forgot where he was—a man without punctuation. How does he remember to call you I’d ask and my dad would say—people tend to hold on to certain characters or moments in their life and I guess he held onto me. My dad was an appeal dave harding couldn’t forget. His dream, his reality, his memory.
The next town we went to in the dream was supposed to be a town of academics. A town filled with books and knowledge holders wearing robes with no shoes. I was surprised when we got there because it seemed similar to the darkness and the dust I disliked in the last town There were bowls and cups and spoons in this town too and then there were these platters holding stacks of old pages. I watched the others as they picked up a page, lay it in one hand and scooped lumps onto them—possible eyeballs, possible fallacies. Then, they wrapped the lump in the page and when it was neatly covered — all the corners spoken for, like the second half of metaphors, they lifted it to their mouths and bit. When it was my turn I looked around to make sure no one was watching me and then I mimicked the process and bit too. I was pleasantly surprised at the taste. It seemed like dried rice stuffed with some sort of sweet gue that gushed. As I chewed I saw a man trying to kiss my friend— she said no and went from a question mark to a exlamation point. The gushing was palpable.
Dave Harding talked for hours and I usually heard my mother telling my father to get off the phone now. I learned later that it was because Dave would start talking about a murder. A murder he may or may not have committed. Maybe it was actually himself he was talking about. My father said he was drunk or high or both. I’d stay up in my bed listening to them talk and wonder what Dave sounded like on the other side of the line. My dad seemed to like him—he said things that hinted at it at least. Things like—remember that time we . . . or, yeah I considered you a great friend as well—euphemisms, pleasentries. Dave was leading the conversation and sometimes it was clear that he wasn’t sharing memories of good times but that he was being mean or sharing anger. My dad didn’t get offended he laughed and tried to help bring Dave back with that lighthearted fatherly tone he used with me sometimes - the one that said, I am going to pretend you are joking instead of getting offended. The one that removed the period and created those long flowing cumulative sentences instead. I’m going to pretend you are dancing in the wilds instead of punching me in the gut right now. It was a gift he carried—the ability to make light of the most serious of issues for the good of the other person and himself. A valid argument with false premises.
In the morning I’d think I have to remember this. Remember the words, the tastes, the feelings. Although, there are parts I can’t recall— not then, not now. Whole sentences and ideas. There is rain pitter pattering on the windowsill. I am tired. The coffee is down and somewhere along the line Syria became Iraq and Dave became the man who gave me the eyeball and watched as I closed the gates. The magical realism that is me.
Transmissions 2018
Birds-Eye-View Spotlight Artist
If you want more from The Birds — Check out Concetta Abbate— Concetta Abbate is a classically trained violinist turned improviser and composer. Grammy.com describes her original performances as a mix of “Violin and delicate vocals that float between the worlds of Modern Classical, Neo-Folk, and poignant and poetic verse”
As a neurodivergent artist living with synesthesia, her original work often crosses disciplines of poetry, visual art, body movement and tactile art.
Abbate has performed as a violinist and singer with ensembles in NY including PARK Quartet, Femmelody Chamber Music Collective and the Creative Music Orchestra. She has worked as a studio recording artist for bands including Cornelius Eady Trio, Mariachi Flor de Toloache and the Latin music group Inti and the Moon. She has released four full length studio albums of her original music spanning genres of New Classical, Jazz, Experimental and Folk.
Her original electroacoustic composition for the film “L'attessa” (directed by Vera Comploj) premiered at the International Fashion Film Festival of Milan 2017. Her Dance scores, made in collaboration with choreographers from Arch Contemporary Ballet and WO Dance Company, have been performed at Lincoln Center, Sheen Center for Performing Arts as well as Theatre for the New City in New York.
Her album Mirror Touch released in 2020, was performed as part of the Convergence Seminar at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp in 2022 and was referenced in the academic publication "Music and Synesthesia, abstracts from a conference in Vienna" (Jörg Jewanski, Sean A. Day, Saleh Siddiq, Michael Haverkamp, and Christoph Reuter (Eds.)). The album explores the experience of synesthetic empathy.
Most recently, her composition, LAMINARIA (A Folk Horror Chamber Music Suite) has received funding from the New Music USA Foundation, the Alice Ditson Fund of Columbia University, the Howard Gilman Foundation,The Amphion Foundation,The Cheswatyr Foudation, ASCAP and BMI.
Abbate has attended notable artist residencies including TAKT Gallery in Berlin (2016 and 2018) as well as the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva Island, Florida (2019).
In 2014 she founded a Music Education program called Teacup Music which provides sliding scale music lessons to students in Brooklyn. Through this program she is a mentor to a vibrant community of students. Her teaching work has received grants and recognition from Brooklyn Arts Council, The Roothbert Fund and the Charles Mayer Foundation.
Abbate is a trained community Death Doula through Going With Grace and she and her dog Pepper provide volunteer therapy at nursing home facilities through NYC’s Good Dog Foundation.
Concetta is a voting member of the Grammys Recording Academy. She holds degrees in Music, Education and Cultural Studies from Smith College (BA) as well as Columbia University (MA).
Photography: Alice Teeple
