Friday, September 25, 2015

"Here's my station But if you say just one word i'll stay with you" ~ Christine and the Queens


http://www.sergioalbiac.com/

Toutes les formes de l'amour , de la souffrance , de folie ; il cherche lui-même , il épuise en lui tous les poisons , et préserve leurs quintessences . Tourment indicible, où il aura besoin de la plus grande foi, une force surhumaine , où il devient tous les hommes le grand malade , le grand criminel, le grand maudit - et le scientifique suprême ! Pour qu'il atteigne l' inconnu! Puisqu'il a cultivé son âme , déjà riche , plus que quiconque!

http://tinyurl.com/og8jgg6
“A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed--and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!” 
Arthur Rimbaud




9/25/15
Tell me where is fancy bred.  Or in the heart or in the head?  How begot, how nourished?  It is engendered in the eyes, With gazing fed, and fancy dies In the cradle where it lies.  Let us all ring fancy's knell I'll begin it.  - Ding, dong, bell.  ~ Merchant of Venice III, 2, 3

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Upcoming Exhibit: "The Red that Colored the World" (Bower's 11/1/15)

of matthewsgalleryblog.com
RED. [v3]

I.
The Matador.
The flag extends in arm outstretched, for sake of bold.
His eye drops along its frame.  The cloth, a sign,
Draped on, in spite of sense, unfurled; it's lack of fold
An offense to the braying monster beyond.

II.
The Bar.
They, shadowed about the pate of varnished wood, says
Little.  Thoughtful quiet, in the reflective glow
are words enough.  For the undulating buzz
of abqjournal.com
Contemplation is found in the gloss of spilled drink.

III.
The Revolutionary.
On her lips the warring colour, the warning one,
Revolt declared by those fierce eyes: ready, wet.
The masses in struggle, civil thoughts undone,
Smoke rose, the fire lit, as she moves to the fore.

IV.
The Couplet.
Alternating tones, its force as the same,
of animpartationofcolor.blogspot.com
Color of wanting, and, by degree, claim.
~ JE, 9 Songs, 9 Stories, 9 Poems

THE EXHIBIT: "The Red that Colored the World" coming to Bower's Museum 11/1/15, displays the power behind the color red and how the American Cochineal creates this dye (see below).  A deeper dive of the exhibit is available at WSJ.

"I always saw, I always said If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red As fine as you could see,..
And he would be a gallant one, With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun, And lips too warm for lies.
I always saw us, gay and good, High honored in the town.
Now I am grown to womanhood....I have the silly gown." ~ Dorothy Parker, The Red Dress



Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Ode ~ Arthur O'Shaugnessy

"We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams; -
World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems"
- O'Shaugnessy, 1873, Music and Moonlight

Fascinating thing his Ode, is the first line has been used over a dozen times in song and film.  Of course, the line in Willy Wonka is arresting, but I enjoy Sodheim's Merrily We Roll Along, with "These are the movers / These are the shapers / These are the people / That fill the papers".  It is a delicious bit of alternating trimeter and tetrameter lines (odd is tri and feminine; even is tetra and masculine).

The poem is merely fun to say.  In feminine rhyme, we match two or more syllables at the end of the respective lines, and, where they are unstressed.  It has its roots, since it is sprung rhythm, in English folk songs.  The first beats are stressed with a variety of unstressed beats.  And why it feels as if you are singing, though you may be only speaking.

"For we are afar with the dawning And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning Intrepid you hear us cry—
How, spite of your human scorning, Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning That ye of the past must die.

"Great hail! we cry to the comers From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers; And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers, And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers, And a singer who sings no more."


Henri Gervex Le Bal de l'Opera.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

...Verge of a Cusp...

Edges illumed as they lay, burning on the cusps of thought
Tinder sparking warmless embers into the sky
Smoke smoke it moves through my outstretched fingers
Smelling of plastic and angry trees
Guiling on like egrets flowering their grey flat
Shall I cry the hue and rage and mark beginnings
That fail falter, richness folly
'was sollen wir aber constitiuents'
I breathe it in, the grey and the naught
The shifts that settle
Jaunty repose and recompense
Etherous
Illium
'dachte über alles'

edwardianjackal on DeviantArt

Friday, September 11, 2015

...for you...

...an echo spanned and fulfilled in reply
I hear you
For you
Me....

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

...Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus...













"When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation.  I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base."
- 9.6 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein


What's fascinating about the success of Frankenstein is that its genesis is as queer a tale as the titular horrors of the doctor's story.  As well known as it is, that Mary Shelley wrote this at the urging of her lover, Lord Byron, during a lightless summer of 1816, when possessed by 'grim terrors'.  She had struggled for several days to come up with a ghost story, until the galvanizing effects of stress struck this visual chord within her.

If you have not read it, and with Halloween mere weeks away, I'd entreat you to try.  It is not only Gothic, and, both, Romantic - it is the height of fantastical fiction, or science fiction, or fantasy.  Mary wrote it as if the factual world of Dr. Frankenstein existed in some other universe and she fully culled all of his resources as if it were a research document.

And, if you have a chance, or the money, I was lucky to be introduced to artist Bernie Wrightson's rendition of the novel back in '83.  Of all the illustrations his is the most haunting and the most familiar.  The creature is the height of perversity and failure of Science - and, yes, Science does fail at times.  Yet, the outcome of the experiment brought forth a creature we fear, but ultimately pity.  He has no place in the world.

Wrightson drew 47 black ink plates, each one will sear into your memory.

The most inexpensive place to purchase it is Barnes and Noble either as a hardcover or as an e-book.  The illustrations are all over the web, of course, but I would hope that you would want to hold the book as was meant, with the light striking from its surface and not glowing into your retina.  (No, I don't hate technology, in fact, I wrangle it more than I come across!)  http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bernie-wrightsons-frankenstein-mary-shelley/1102472254?ean=9781595822000#productInfoTabs


The Romantics include William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.  http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-romantics

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

...a dream of maps, a dream of seas...

"He beheld an image of the Earth in his hands, held aloft.  He no longer saw it as it was commonly perceived: it was no longer the amalgam of its constituents.  The blindness erupted, he opened ancient eyes upon a faceted jewel.  He shifted the sphere in the sun's singular beam.  At once there shone the red core, the next the warming thrum of topaz, the next the clearest blue.  The world shifted, but he controlled its pitch, he controlled its effect." ~ The Lipherious Gazette, 08SEP15

As a child, what factors would draw you into a book?  It's cover most likely.  Next would be the author.  Perhaps a provocative title.  It's shape, paper weight, heft, smell, print, pictures, inlay, fore edge, fly leaf, end sheets, pastedown...things known and not yet known.  All of them combined were constituents to an experience.  You will hear this from me often: a book is technology.  From the standpoint of knowledge the democratization of the printed book has enjoyed a much greater lifespan of revolution, progress, education than the internet.  The internet would not exist if not for the book.  The erudition of the human citizen would be far less certainly.

What drew me well after a story was read, as a child, was the fictional map in the end sheets.  The maps of well known stories can instantly recall the hero's journey.  It can, in an instance, provide the eye all of the salient points of a book.  It allowed a child to dream.  To run a finger over rivers, across roads, feeling the courseness of the paper and the 'realness' of a story.

End sheet maps run the gamut of monotone or color.  If authenticity of age is required, the monotone sepia of the past lends credence.  Color is immediate and modern.  Each tell a story in different ways.  Here are a few of the ones that have led me on an endless journey to seek more...

The Princess Bride
Thinking more over it on the long weekend, it reminded me of Daniel J. Boorstin's The Discoverers.  Boorstin's strength in narrative is to take the recognizable and lucidly move outward then back inward, reaching out for the largesse then pulling it back to reflective ideas.  Discoverers looks at time (as clock), the earth (through its maps), nature (cataloging), society (community of knowledge).  Considering the (lack of) conventions of our age, Boorstin does not fit any singular continuity, but, I feel, allows for judgement and exploration of ideas.

"The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." - 86

Narnia
"For [Gutenberg] was a prophet of newer worlds where machines would do the work of scribes, where the printing press would displace the scriptorium, and knowledge would be diffused to countless unseen communities." - 510

IT is within these maps that democratized imagination.  As Stanislav Grof said, "Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious."

The Discoverers is available everywhere.

The Hobbit

Treasure Island

"Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased." - John Steinbeck

Friday, September 4, 2015

...here is proven that indifferent cruelty...

Here is proven that indifference
The uncaring, the cruelty, the muted heart
Written in your fragility,
That gentle hair lapped by soulless waters
Greeted by repulsion
The outrage would last but a day
Perhaps two if we can turn our eyes toward this
This...then where?
Where shall our eyes turn to tomorrow?
And this casket, it is woeful small

But it is a home

The patter above is not of rain
A father who sought only a peaceful shore
A promise he said a thousand times
A promise like a prayer
Into your ears
Saint Pancras
And you, just happy to hear that serious tenor
As it tickled in your head
And you beamed
Like a light
I must protect you a thousand times

The shore was reached.

You were owed a modicum of consolation
But not there, not here
You came from an asylum writ large: unstable sands
Broken walls
Sanity spilled out in red finality
These are children pursued and swallowed
By monsters
How shall we make account but by a census
Of the chattering teeth of Baal
As he swallows endlessly
And he is fed?

{Pancras knew, a child himself,
The indifferent works of Diocletian
Then Saint, martyred well, where shall we set our hand
For vengeful peace and fated justice?}

Give for the Syrian Refugees
http://www.ifrc.org/syria-crisis
http://www.churchinneed.org/site/TR/Events/UnitedInFaith?fr_id=1100&pg=entry
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/07/has-the-world-looked-the-other-way-while-christians-are-killed/