My image of Heidi Whitman’s work at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

From Chapter 36 of Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (Herman Melville; 1851):

While the mate was getting the hammer, Ahab, without speaking, was slowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if to heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly humming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and inarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his vitality in him.

The focal point of Whitman’s installation put me in mind of this passage, which, as it turns out, occurs in the chapter from which I read at this year’s marathon.