Every once in a while I'm floored all over again by just how impossibly good the early Pixies were. Today this thought took the form of wondering at just how many wicked good bands had come out of the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Thinking there were likely others I hadn't discovered, I googled bands from boston just to see what would come up. One unfamiliar name that caught my eye was Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. I looked them up.
If that vintage woodcut-style drawing of a toothy black pterosaur looks familiar, you might be thinking of my 2020 post "A Pterodactlyus and a globe of light."
Although I wrote that post in October, the experiences it recounts took place in February, and I specifically mention St. Valentine's Day. The first track on the Birdsongs of the Mesozoic EP is called "Sound Valentine." One of the other tracks (out of only five total) is called "The Orange Ocean." In my September 29 post "The death of Nelson," I wrote this:
Note Wyllie's unusual choice, in this painting depicting the death of Nelson, to portray the sea as yellowish-orange in color. A similar choice was made by Pixie Smith (1878-1951) in her design of the Three of Wands card for the classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck.
In all other posts about the Three of Wands, I have described the sea simply as "yellow," but for whatever reason I decided to be more specific in that post. I typically attribute Rider-Waite design choices to Waite, but in that post I decided instead to credit the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, and to call her by her nickname, Pixie. As I've just explained above, it was musing about the Pixies that led me to discover "The Orange Ocean."
(Unfortunately, "The Orange Ocean" appears to be sufficiently obscure that it has not been uploaded to YouTube.)
Also note that Birdsongs of the Mesozoic was released by Ace of Hearts Records. This is a tiny indie label that "recorded and released Boston area post-punk and garage rock bands in the early 1980s," only a handful of those bands being sufficiently well known to have a Wikipedia article. The Ace of Hearts has been an important sync theme around here for some time.
Less than an hour after making the above discoveries, I stopped at a convenience store to pick up a package for my wife. The guy in front of me in line was wearing this T-shirt:
Running into any reference to Boston in Taiwan would be unusual, but the fact that it was in connection with a music festival makes it a stronger sync.
Apparently, this music festival was just called Music Festival. Probably a great place to meet fellow kids.
Speaking of music labels, just a week ago I posted "Elektra and Beatles vs. Stones," mentioning Elektra Records and noting the "unusual spelling" with a k rather than a c. Last night I ran across this in an English reading comprehension test:
Question 11 refers to record label conglomerate Warner-Elektra-Atlantic (now Warner Music Group) but misspells Elektra with a c.
4 comments:
Boston was an interesting little word to chase down in this context. I was curious where the word came from.
Boston comes from either "Botwulf's Stone" or "Botwolf's Settlement". I think both work really well here, but I will focus on the Stone aspect (of course).
Botwulf is a reference to St. Botolph of Thorney. I'd never heard of this person before, but he is the patron saint of "boundaries, and by extension, of trade and travel, as well as various aspects of farming." This caught my attention and fits very well with by guess as to the Rose Stone and its owner.
Mercury-Hermes and his Caduceus has been strongly linked to Eonwe and the Rose Stone. Mercury-Hermes is the mythical God equivalent of Botolph, since he is the patron god of boundaries, travel, trade/ commerce, etc. Mercury=Botolph in this symbol, basically.
So, we have a reference to Mercury's Stone or the Rose Stone, in the name of Boston, maybe.
Further, going back to the notion of "Butolf's Settlement/ Town", we also have a reference to Zion in your syncs, since in my tale that same Being founded that city in the form of Enoch. As you mention, the Ace of Hearts has come up plenty of times before, and has been associated with Zion ("of one heart...").
And to top it off, your title mentions Pixie dust. In Peter Pan, it is pixie dust that enables Peter and the children to fly to the "second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning", or Neverland.
That place was invoked in my 2020 words in the form of a family being able to fly up to the clouds and go to that place. Further, I just thought right now that Michael Jackson, another very specific symbol I used, called his estate Neverland.
I hadn't really thought of Boston as a name, but once you brought it up I immediately noticed its palindrome potential. Compared to the Pixies or the Dropkick Murphys, for example, Aerosmith is "not so Boston," since neither Steve Tyler nor any of the other founding members is actually from Boston.
Assuming such an obvious palindrome had been discovered before, I googled it. It has, but only in the form "Not so, Boston!" rather than is the adjectival sense of "That's so Boston."
One of the first sites to come up -- listing the Boston palindrome last, at the end of a very long list -- was this one, which just happens to be hosted in Tucson, Arizona.
https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/icon/oddsends/palinsen.htm
Cattle belong to the genus Bos, so setting the real etymology to one side, we could also see Boston as a synonym for Cowtown.
Ha! There was a "red rum" palindrome on that list, too. I hadn't yet seen your comment about that when I posted the comment above.
The mention of Cow came up in my dream this morning, also attached to a name, in this case mine.
In the dream, there was some army that I was leading, and there was, although unseen, some enemy that seemed insurmountable. In preparation for some conflict, the idea was formed to equip each member of the army with some kind of "light armor", and that this was going to be sewn together, or something like that - like some kind of cloth or fabric.
As this armor manufacturing was going on, I thought of the odds, and found myself thinking "Yes, but how are we going to win?". To this thought, a voice replied "Use your mastery of percolation". Which seemed like an odd key to victory.
Right before I woke up, a sign or something was held up with the word "Cowbill", which I took as a play on words for Cowbell, just replacing Bill for Bell.
When I woke up, I looked up "Percolate", finding this meaning "the act of straining or filtering through some porous material". This would seem to get at this notion of "Holes" as I've used them in my story. Porous material is made of small perforations or holes. In percolations, something is filtered in through a very small hole, with some things getting through, and other things not.
One of the notions in my mind of the "Brittany Spears" or likening the Stones to Spears is their ability to pierce or create a hole, potentially in the fabric of spacetime itself. I don't know how accurate that thought is, though.
So, I got thinking with respect to the "Light clothing" that was being made for the army in my dream. If the key to winning for this army indeed has something to do with percolation, or straining something through a small hole, it could be that this is why this armor was so important, and could represent the change to our bodies that needs to happen in order to perform such percolations. I then started thinking about the "Juice"... this stuff seems to create a change to our bodies, and perhaps that is involved here. In any case, it would appear that the armor wasn't important for any kind of fighting, but rather to facilitate the flight or travel to somewhere else. In other words, it is consistent with the theme that 'winning' means going away - no actual direct conflict, and this matches to scriptures regarding the future of Zion.
There is also the temple endowment symbolism or parallels here as well, where patrons are fitted with new clothing on top of their current garments before then passing through an opening in the veil.
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