One Hundred Tears

“One Hundred Tears” is an interesting collection of ideas and images on 45-rpm records. For me, they represent the essence of Decade in the Dark.

The quote on the back of the record sleeve is from the writings of Friederich Schiller, the late 18th century German poet and dramatist who is all but forgotten today. I stumbled upon his work while researching Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is the subject of the two recordings on the 45s.

Schiller actually wrote “Ode to Joy,” and I find his work to be very timely still. On the front of each record sleeve is an individual page from my grandfather’s F.B.I. file, comprised of hundreds of pages of personal information that the F.B.I. collected about him over the four decades that he was active as a Russian scholar and professor at such institutions as Harvard and Columbia University. It took my father,Richard Simmons, years to acquire the file under the Freedom of Information Act.

My grandfather, Ernest Simmons, wrote about Russian literature, and his final book, Tolstoy, is dedicated to my sister, Robin, and me. Finally, each sleeve also has an individual photograph from my travels to Vladivostok, Russia. I had so many wonderful images from the trip nd “One Hundred Tears” seemed like the perfect way to showcase them.