The New Yorker, Jane Siberry, and Symmetry

When I was a teenager, I made an impulse buy of a vinyl album ("No Borders Here") based on the cover and the fact that one of the tracks was titled "Symmetry (the way things have to be)".   Those were the days!  We would just flip through a bin of LP's, take a look and then, sometimes, make that purchase and have an epic discovery moment at home when you dropped that needle.  In this case, I was knocked out by every track on the album (as soon as I heard Jane Siberry put that pause between "When he kissed me over there he usually  kissed me over here.... too", I became a fan). and I went on, over the years, to purchase all of the albums pictured below:

My freshman college roommate was a random pairing with a Hoosier named John Zello,  Luckily, we got along and became good friends for our undergraduate years.  He was a graphic design major and watching him work on his projects and explain the why's and what's of what he was doing was a real eye opener to this physics major.  It really is true that a major part of your college education is the variety of people you meet!

Years later I was in New York City, reading through the latest issue of The New Yorker (thinking about how I remember my father reading issues when I was a kid in Huntsville).  In that issue, I was struck by an advertisement featuring an laughing woman.  It wasn't clear to me what the ad was for nor why she was laughing nor what she was doing... but there was something about it that just caught my eye and I can still remember it now, decades later.  I skimmed the "goings on about town" section, realizing that I actually lived in New York City so it could possibly be relevant for once.   I see "Jane Siberry performing at The Bottom Line" on the list.  It had today's date and the show started in one hour.  The Bottoms Line was only a few blocks over!  So I caught her in concert just like that.  Amazing!  (a quintessential New York City experience if ever there was one!)

A week later, I met up with John as I had found out he was working for advertising company uptown.  I met him in his office and, amidst all his work, I saw a sketch detailing how a woman should be laughing enigmatically.  I pointed to that and asked "Is that your work?" "Yes." "Wow, I just noticed that ad in the New Yorker the other day!"  Turns out he didn't know where the ads were run, he just designed them to be eye catching and intriguing.  Talented guy that John Zello.

One day in 1988 Zello was flipping through an M C Escher book in our dorm room and I looked over his shoulder and remarked on that picture "looks like Bonifacio in Corsica".  He looked at me incredulously and said "how did you know that?" and said "well, i've been there and it looks just like that"

I'm blogging this today because I picked up my daughter from her freshman dorm room yesterday to bring her home for the weekend.  On the car ride home, she pointed out a building that reminded her of the Flatiron building in New York City.  I responded "Your uncle Eugene once worked in that building and he invited me into his boss' office which had a window on that triangle edge.  Very cool."  (years later my buddy Eugene would introduce me to his cousin Irene!)

"This is what I'm thinking

The reason your eyes keep returning to the fire

Is because it divides your sight

Into left and right, and dark and light and dark

Like a fine dividing wire

...

Symmetry is the way things have to be

Symmetry is the way things have to be"

-Jane Siberry, 1983