So the time of endings has come.
Our focus, the cemetery of Vale Park, alas a place to rest. Our first trip into the underworld begins as Ilene from the Schenectady museum takes us in in through the lower entrance, it is like climbing through long wavy hair just let down and filled with snarls and locks and smooth curls. This year (in the fall) is the cemetery’s 150th anniversary.
The Vale is a rural cemetery meaning that it began after the period of slushy bony graveyards infectiously died out. The Rural cemetery movement started with Mount Auburn, in Cambridge MA a frequent spot visited in my nearby high school days and nights. As death became less final and religiosity and the glow of afterlife set in, cemeteries were lanscaped in picturesque areas so people had respite from the cities and could picnic and hang out. When Vale began in 1857, many of the graves and stones were moved from the stockade section of town. One day this old old post will have links to the songs we write about each of these instances!, well for that one was a really morbid song called again about the moving of the graves, what a horrible job that must have been, and then would they really put them with the marker, and many bones and bodies lost along the way. The illusion of rganisation with grave markers imaining the body underneath.
Back to the Vale, after a few years, they realized that graves that needed to be taken care of in ravines and on overlooking hills and secluded groves really was very time consuming, who has that kind of time but the eternal time keeper! So the lower fallen hair section became old as the upper more flat area became the place to be buried. There is such a dramatic feeling as you go from the lower part over the last hill and onto flat ground, like you have been in the sea tumbled around and found a rock that you boost yourself onto. It is like the darker underside of what touches the sun.
Ok, so by the way, we have actually in retrospect now already completed our last song of this tour and my lips are still moving but only this blog comes out, as I should now be sterile of song, save for karaoke singing of Barry Manilow. This is both an introduction and an ending.
Jesse will hopefully soon put up the songs we sang about this consuming stop. As well if you are in or near Schenectady you can stop by the museum, hear the songs and see the 13th screen. More editing will come when my internet rises again.
–Carrie
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