I’m hoping you can answer this question for me.
A friend and I drove up to the Montalvo Arts Center last weekend from San Diego. As we drove up to and past the Villa, we noticed signs along the road that were all abbreviated. We could interpret most of them, except the last two. It had something to do with a journey in the forest…
Could you please tell me what all the signs meant? It drove my friend and me crazy!
Thank you,
AW
Thank you very much for your e-mail! I remember being puzzled by those signs the first time I visited Montalvo, too.
The signs are the work of a former Montalvo artist-in-residence Seyed Alavi, entitled 404 . They are the first few lines of Dante’s Inferno translated into text message speak or “lingo.” So, Dante’s verse:
“Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
becomes
n d midl
of d jrne
of r lyf
i fownd
mself
in a drk 4st
4t str8 wa
was 404
(When you try to access a webpage and the page can’t load, you get a “404” error meaning that the page could not be found).
I hope that you and your friend had a good visit when you were up in Saratoga!