Dundas & Keele, Toronto ON 19 Jun 2020

An Alphabetical Catalogue Philosophy and Alchemy ..... Him whom Three that are to Fit thy house to thy what thou ...... as deque Magno Mundi Mysterio languages. purg, 1609, ..... In 1528, Paracelsus proceeded to Colmar. issuu.com/accipio777/docs/lives_of_the_alchemystical_phil...

John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, imperialist[5] and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy.Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels and demons in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities". en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee

 

Colmar, La Maison des Têtes, 1609. A thoroughly disquieting individual, with his bonhomous countenance, jester’s gear, seeming lack of arms and cloven hoves below shackled ankles. The whole facade is filled with heads of all sorts, 102 in facade . Another dour-looking fellow, equally from 1609.Warts, Imperfect Pearls and Baroque Thoughts

 

Baroque is a curious term, familiar by almost more by connotation and innuendo than by actual content and context. Even more curiously, its origins, via a tortuous trail through Portuguese barroco, French Baroque, Spanish barrueco, or Italian barocco are ultimately unknown. (My educated guess is the street.) In 18th-century French it meant “irregular”, from the Portuguese word for an imperfect pearl. A near neighbour is Spanish barucca (wart). According to Fuseli’s translation of Winkelmann in 1765: “This style in decorations got the epithet of Barroque taste, derived from a word signifying pearls and teeth of unequal size.”

It also appears to be largely a derogatory term, only rehabilitated by art historians in the mid-1800’s, which in itself is ever more curious – how could an art from, which lasted and defined a century and a half of colossal construction – churches, palaces, avenues, in a sweeping urbanism that erased huge tracts of earlier building – be labelled with what is basically a slanderous sobriquet? Perhaps explained by the gulf that existed between the royal and titled families of Europe and their royally taxed peoples – Versailles for example, seen from a tawdry and insalubrious slum that might well have shocked any self-respecting citizen from a few centuries before, may not necessarily have brought kind thoughts and words to mind and tongue. Perhaps explained by the faltering of the faith that made Gothic shoot skywards – Baroque churches are hardly pious and restrained (that is reserved for straight-laced Reformers and three coats of quicklime after the dust settles) with their gilding and profusion of decoration, they seem to look more at themselves than at the face of the Maker. (The most baroque of Baroque edifices are to be found in Meso and South and Meso-America, where unrestrained imperialism financed by a steady flow of pilfered gold and riches takes Baroque on a building spree to the full extent of excess – returning ships riding low in the water, holds foul with gold, also paid for a good number architectural extravagances in Europe – but further enriched by local culture, in the same way that Baroque music in the Americas has an added texture.)

In many ways, it is an abandonment of form for a surfeit of decoration (rococco abandons even pretense, and relies on meringue – pastry applied to architecture). Structure is everywhere engulfed by embellishment, peppered with putti and smothered with stucco. That’s why popular art in architecture from that period always seems so intriguing. There must be thousands of long thin men from the 17th and early 18th centuries starting down from cornerposts throughout Europe. With their willingness to scrunch their shoulders up and dangle their arms in front of their tube-like torsos and turn their squared toes inward, accepting the limitations of structure and working within those strictures, popular figurative Baroque can be awkward, ill-poised, elongated and curiously aloof. They also often seem to have a ferocious mein, these long thin men, they don’t look benevolent or amenable, they are stern and a little frightening, something of the ogre in them despite their emaciated silhouettes. None of the sack-of-potatoes physiques so dear to the Renaissance and taken up again by Rubens with such gusto, little of the relaxed Classical nudity, not a hint of the desperate lightness and frivolity of the early 1700’s, this crowd are of a hungrier, harsher, buttoned-at-the-collar kind. It’s hard imagining them in the same world as Fragonard’s Swing** when upper-crust Baroque had lost all semblance of gravitas and taken the rocaille garden path of Rococco (a distinction they blithely left to be made much much later by art historians).

www.john-howe.com/blog/2008/02/16/on-the-absolute-necessi...

 

The other day, on a business trip (I love saying “business trip”, it makes this cockeyed profession of drawing pictures sound somehow actually respectable) to the Alsace, we took a couple of hours to wander around Colmar before heading home. Much of what has been built in the 20th century, since we’ve been creating new building materials which are not cut down in forests, cut from quarries, smelted from ore or the product of judicious alchemy – plaster, stucco, brick, ceramic, glass) is a form of denial of time. It takes on little attractiveness with age, simply decrepitude. I doubt there can be a modern equivalent of the Deutsche Romantik movement with what the industrial era has to offer as ephemera. Modern ruins don’t trigger romanticism, it’s hard to imagine Caspar David Friedrich painting abandoned abutments, deserted overpasses and vacant lots with the same unshakeable optimism and unbridled nostalgia. Now, this is most definitely NOT a criticism of industrial development (inevitable), not a nostalgic rant for things gone by (puerile), but simply a regret for a connection which is lost (paradoxically, in a society obsessed with “connectivity”). Removing a piece of nature and fashioning it into an element of human expression does not negate the material itself, which of course will continue what it has been doing before – gently eroding under wind and rain and frost.

That’s why I was literally stopped in my tracks in Colmar the other day. By a bannister colonnade of the steps of the Koifhus, or Ancienne Douane, doubtlessly many-times-replaced in a warm ochre sandstone. I was transfixed by the transformation of a row of ordinary balusters* into something by Giacometti. (Giacometti Descending a Staircase, even.) Reinforced concrete won’t do that for you. It seems clear enough to me that modern architecture, for all its advantages and undeniable capacity to house us comfortably, puts us once again slightly out of joint with time. A reinforcement of mortality by an estrangement of sorts from things that age the way nature ages simply leaves us with fewer references and a narrower context. Modern urban decrepitude contains little connectedness with nature, despite brave weeds and scrubby persistent grass in vacant lots.

Goodpost-apocalyptic film sets or big dollars for developers, but no emotional involvement other than mayhap a fleeting case of the blues..All that curiously coupled with our infatuation with ancient ruins, which we dig up. reassemble, cordon off, pay to admire, work to preserve. (We’re tireless in our efforts to arrest time.) We’re better informed than our ancestors, but we’re certainly no more intelligent, so where DOES that put us? But, we’ve not lost touch entirely. A little erosion can go a long way.Names of Angels, Archangels, fallen angels, guardian angels, seraphim, ... with anthropomorphic features, or they have one face each of man, ox, lion, and eagle . ..... Funny Names, Rainbow Names,

 

Secret Names, Shadow Nam.judicious alchemy

 

– plaster, stucco, brick, ... That's why I was literally stopped in my tracks in Colmar ... for all its advantages and undeniable capacity to house us ... Left: Colmar, La Maison des Têtes, 1609. a noble family in his teen years ..... Swiss alchemist and physician (died 1577) Deaths April 6 – Albrecht Dürer, .... Paracelsus visits Colmar in Alsace.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca - Expand Your Mind - Revolvy

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La spagyrie ou la médecine de Paracelse par Patrick Rivière, JL Garillon . En effet, ni la Médecine Homéopathique et ni, à fortiori, la Médecine Allopathique, ne peuvent s'en réclamer à bon droit, tant cette "Médecine de Paracelse" offre des aspects originaux et multiples . Paracelse emprunta largement à "l'Hermétisme" médiéval - voilant pudiquement les termes "d'alchimie" et de "magie naturel-le" - la matière ésotérique de son oeuvre. En réalité, loin de se cantonner à la seule pratique de la médecine hippocratique", Paracelse s'avéra être un authentique "philosophe par le feu" ("philosophus per ignem"), c'est-à-dire un remarquable "alchimiste" doublé d'un médecin doté d'une réelle efficacité (2). D'ailleurs, n'écrivait-il pas à cet égard, à l'encontre du caractère péjoratif entachant "l'Alchimie" : "L'alchimie qu'ils déshonorent et prostituent n'a qu'un but : extraire la quintessence des choses, préparer les Arcanes, les Teintures, les Elixirs capables de rendre à l'Homme la santé qu'il a perdue". Il s'agissait bien en effet pour lui, de concilier des expériences d'origine apparemment empirique à la sublime réalisation de "l'Ars Magna". Il y parvint magistralement car lui seul sut fidèlement transposer les lois "alchimiques" dans le domaine médical ou "Iatrochimique" (de "iatros" = médecin) "Je vous ferai connaître la Teinture, l'Arcane ou la Quintessence donnant la clef de tout mystère. Chacun peut se tromper et ne doit se fier qu'à l'épreuve du feu. En spagyrie, comme en médecine, il faut toujours attendre que le feu ait séparé le vrai du faux. La lumière de la Nature nous indique ce que nous devons ad-mettre" ("De la teinture des physiciens", chap. I). C'est ainsi que Paracelse fut amené à appliquer les lois "alchimiques" dans le domaine médical, sous le terme générique qu'il innova : la Spagyria (la "Spagyrie"), pour désigner la "Médecine hermétique" et la préparation des remèdes thérapeutiques qui en émanent directement. Et c'est grâce à cette "médecine" - révolutionnaire en soi -, à des heures de celles d'Hippocrate et de Galien, que Pa-racelse contribua très largement à enrayer de son temps de nombreux fléaux, tels la peste, certaines maladies nerveuses, l'épilepsie, l'hystérie, etc. Aussi peut-on lire l'épitaphe suivante déposée sur sa tombe à Salzbourg: 'Celui qui a fait disparaître par son art merveilleux les plaies cruelles, la lèpre, la podagre, l'hystérie, et d'autres maladies incurables. Que recouvrait donc le terme de Spagyrie? Paracelse s'était attaché à appliquer la devise "alchimique" : solve et coagula ("dissous et coagule") pour la préparation particulière de ses nombreux remèdes. Le terme même de "spagyrie" s'en trouvait directement issu ainsi que son étymologie ne manquait pas de le souligner : "spao" signifiant en grec "extraire" et 'ageiro, agerein", "rassembler" ; or, pour séparer et extraire, ne fallait-il pas nécessairement dissoudre, ainsi que pour recombiner, ras-sembler, ne convenait-il pas de coaguler ! Mais de quoi s'agissait--il au juste, sinon des principes essentiels résidant au sein des trois règnes végétal, minéral et animal. Le dessein principal de la Spagyrie consiste donc bien à séparer la matière subtile de la matière grossière et tangible d'un "mixte" - corps composé, de l'un des trois règnes - dans un but de "purification" et, par voie de conséquence "d'évolution", afin de transmettre les vertus régénérées du "mixte" à tout individu dont la santé est éprouvée par un quelconque déséquilibre. "La Spagyrie est une science qui nous apprend à diviser les corps, à les résoudre (réduire) et à en séparer les "principes" par des voies, soit naturelles, soit violentes. Son objet est donc l'altération, la purification et même la perfection des corps, c'est-à-dire leur génération et leur médecine. C'est par la solution (putréfaction animale, fermentation végétale ou liquéfaction minérale) que l'on y parvient et l'on ne saurait y réussir si l'on ignore leur construction et leurs "principes" (le mot "principe" signifie ce de quoi une chose tire son origine et ce qui constitue l'essence de cette même chose). On sépare les parties hétérogènes et accidentelles pour avoir ensuite la faculté de réunir et de conjoindre les homogènes. La méthode spagyrique dérive de la science hermétique ; tous les êtres sublunaires sont constitués par trois 'principes" (3) : le sel, le soufre et le mercure. Toutes les maladies sont inhérentes à un déséquilibre dans l'action de ces trois "principes". C'est pourquoi tout véritable remède est destiné à entretenir cet équilibre dans le corps et à le ramener si l'un des principes vient à dominer les deux autres avec trop de violence..." (4) Ainsi, en observant "dans la lumière de la nature et dans le miroir de la vérité" (selon l'expression chère à Paracelse), tout ce qui vit sous le soleil est d'essence triple, bien qu'étant "un" en apparence, qu'il s'agisse d'un minéral, d'une plante ou d'une substance animale. Chacun de ces composants subtils porte le nom de "principe de la matière" ; en analogie avec la tripartition métaphysique de l'Homme :"Corps - Ame - Esprit", les principes spagyriques se dénomment "Sel -Soufre - Mercure" -, ces derniers ne correspondant pas aux substances chimiques du même nom mais faisant référence à des notions infiniment plus subtiles. Paracelse traduisit cette division en ces expressions succinctes :"l'Art les isole et les rend visibles, et ainsi- ce qui brûle, c'est le "Soufre",- ce qui s'élève en fumée, c'est le "Mercure",- ce qui se résout en cendres, c'est le "Sel". Et de préciser en son "Traité des trois Essences Premières" "l'un est une liqueur, c'est le "Mercure", l'autre est une "oléité" ("oleitas", sorte d'huile), c'est le "Soufre", le troisième est un alkali, c'est le "Sel" de l'unité, tirez le nombre ternaire et ramenez ensuite le ternaire à l'unité." Cela implique donc que dans la pratique il convient d'extraire ces trois substances - voilées sous les vocables de "mercu-re", "soufre' et "sel" - de les purifier séparément, puis finale-ment de le conjoindre harmonieusement. Voilà qui donne bien tout son sens au terme de "Spagyrie" (extraire et rassembler). Quant aux processus d'extraction, ils seront bien entendu variables en fonction de la nature de la "matière" utilisée ; car, extraire le "soufre" des végétaux (huile des plantes) est chose aisée, mais des minéraux et des métaux, c'est évidemment bien plus complexe. Les opérations "spagyriques" tendent à procéder des lois naturelles, c'est-à-dire qu'elles semblent reproduire au sein du laboratoire ce qui se déroule à grande échelle dans la Nature. " ... la Spagyrie sépare dans chaque mixte des trois genres (les trois règnes) tout ce qu'il y a d'impur ou d'étranger" (6). Et de prendre pour exemple concret le "mécanisme de nutrition" qui entretient la vie dans le corps en rejetant les "grossièretés et superfluités" de la digestion par l'entremise de l'intestin ! "(les termes de "pur" ou "d'impur" se différencient ici du critère actuel de "pureté chimique" ; il s'agit davantage d'une notion de pureté énergétique, voire "spirituelle", que nous pouvons qualifier plutôt de "vitalogène"). Selon les Anciens "tous les corps sont faits de matière et d'esprit. La Matière est passive et inerte, tandis que l'Esprit est le principe vital-actif, empreint de l'Idée divine qui est cause d'évolution. Il est donc clair que la vertu des mixtes (corps composés d'atomes ou de molécules et tirés de la Nature) est dans l'esprit, et que cet esprit est beaucoup plus actif lorsqu'il est dé-livré de sa prison corporelle. Tout le côté physique de l'Art spagyrique réside dans cette séparation ou extraction. Pour obtenir cet es-prit en puissance de son maximum de vertu, il le faut exalter ; pour l'exalter, il le faut mûrir (faire évoluer), et pour le mûrir, il faut cor-rompre son corps, à la façon dont le grain se putréfie dans la terre avant que de pouvoir germer. Or, cette putréfaction n'est autre que l'évolution de la matière, par laquelle les atomes de la substance se séparent des hétérogénéités, se resserrent, se purifient, s'exaltent et s'élèvent à une altitude beau-coup plus noble que n'était leur état primitif. Tout l'Art Spagyrique consiste à provoquer l'évolution de la matière pour la purifier et l'exalter, ce qui ne peut se faire que par de subtiles et longues opérations que les auteurs anciens ont laissées dans l'ombre". En quoi consiste la pratique spagyrique: Les techniques de préparation des remèdes spagyriques exigent une connaissance approfondie de la Nature et du Cosmos : pour effectuer les récoltes (lieux et moments propices), pour mettre en oeuvre les fermentations, distillations, cohobation, sublimations, calcinations, digestions, etc..Ces manipulations de Laboratoire de nature "spagyrique" définis-sent l'ensemble des "opérations sur le minéral, le végétal, ou l'animal"; dans ce dernier cas, il s'agit le plus souvent de sous-produits animaux. Autrefois, le nombre des différentes opérations était plus conséquent ; pas moins d'une cinquantaine de manipulations sont décrites dans les ouvrages anciens, dont beaucoup sont tombées en désuétude, telles que "l'assation", la "réverbération", la "réincrudation", etc...Les plus importantes qui se pratiquent couramment sont au nombre de sept: 1- dissolution ou décomposition (avec décantation et filtration),2- fermentation ou putréfaction,3- distillation et rectification (avec circulation ou rotation), 4- calcination ou cémentation, - sublimation ou exaltation, 5- cohobation ou ré-union,7- coagulation ou fixation.

Dans son "Cours de Chymie, contenant la manière de faire les Opérations qui sont en usage dans la Médecine", publié en 1687, Nicolas Lémery livre "l'explication de plusieurs termes des-quels on se sert en Chymie" : - 1"Circulation" : c'est un mouvement que l'on donne aux liqueurs (liquides) dans un vaisseau de rencontre, en excitant par le moyen du feu les vapeurs à mon-ter et à descendre ; cette opéra-t-on se fait pour subtiliser les liqueurs ou pour ouvrir quelque corps dur qu'on y a mêlé. - 2"Coagulation" : c'est donner une consistance aux liquides, en faisant consumer une partie de leur humidité sur le feu, ou bien en mêlant ensemble des liqueurs de différente nature. - "Cohobation" : façon de réitérer la distillation d'une même liqueur, l'ayant renversée sur la matière restée dans le vaisseau. Cette opération se fait pour ouvrir les corps ou pour volatiliser les "esprits". 4- "Fermentation" : c'est une ébullition causée par des esprits qui, cherchant issue pour sortir de quelque corps et rencontrant des parties terrestres et grossières qui s'opposent à leur passage, font gonfler et raréfier la matière jusqu'à ce qu'ils en soient détachés. Or, dans ce détachement, les esprits divisent, subtilisent et séparent les principes, en sorte qu'ils rendent la matière d'une autre nature qu'elle n'était auparavant. 5- "Rectification" : c'est faire distiller les esprits, afin d'en séparer ce qu'ils peuvent avoir enlevé avec eux des parties hétérogènes. - 6"Sublimation" : c'est faire monter par le feu une matière volatile en haut de l'alambic ou du chapiteau. Il serait pour le moins fastidieux de décrire toutes les autres opérations qui nécessitent de patientes et minutieuses manipulations dans le seul but de faire "évoluer" un végétal ou un minéral jusqu'à sa perfection optima-le, en délivrant ce que Paracelse qualifiait de Quintessence :7 "La Quintessence est une certaine matière extraite de toutes choses que la Nature a produites et de chaque chose qui possède sa vie corporelle en elle-même, une matière la plus subtilement purgée de toute impureté et de toute mortalité, et séparée de tous éléments. D'après ceci, il est évident que la Quintessence est, pour tout dire, une nature, une force, une vertu, et une médecine, à la fois, en vérité, enfermée en toutes choses, mais désormais libre de tout domicile et de toute incorporation extérieure."

En effet, à l'opposé de la pharmacologie moderne qui cherche à isoler le "principe actif chimiquement pur", la spagyrie parvient à purifier la totalité du "mixte" (= plante ou minéral ou substance animale) pour en faire une 'entité supérieure" apte à libérer les forces de régénération de l'individu en correspondance avec ce mixte, ou plus exactement en correspondance avec la signature astrale de celui-ci. C'est particulièrement dans le cas de substances toxiques, comme par exemple des plantes vénéneuses : Aconit, Hellébore, ... ou des métaux toxiques: Plomb, Antimoine, ... que le phénomène de purification spagyrique s'observe le mieux, puis-que ces substances deviennent par l'Art de "souverains remèdes". En libérant les 3 principes de leurs impuretés initiales, la Spagyrie élimine totalement les poisons contenus dans les mixtes pour faire place à une sorte de perfection, ou "quintessence", au service de l'homme. Ainsi, la Spagyrie est souvent dé-nommée "Art des Quintessences" dont on dit que les remèdes sont ouverts et orientés, ce qui signifie qu'ils sont devenus totalement assimilables par l'organisme et qu'ils sont en correspondance énergétique et cosmologique avec les organes à traiter.

En quoi consiste la loi de correspondance: "Le savoir traditionnel a pour premier caractère une conception unitaire du Cosmos" écrit l'anthropologue Gilbert Durand dans "Science de l'Homme et Tradition" (Ed. Berg International). En effet, 'la création du Monde étant la création par excellence, la cosmogonie devient le modèle exemplaire de toute espèce de créa-t-on" ajoute Mircea Eliade dans 'Aspects du Mythe" (Ed. Gallimard). Et la très fameuse "Table d'Émeraude", dite d'Hermes Trismégiste énonce clairement: 1 - "Il est vrai, sans mensonge, certain et très réel, 2 - Ce qui est en bas est comme ce qui est en haut, et ce qui est en haut est comme ce qui est en bas, Pour l'accomplissement des mi-racles d'une seule chose. 3 - Et comme toutes choses sont et proviennent d'Un. Ainsi toutes choses sont nées de cette chose unique, par adaptation. 4 - Le soleil en est le père, la Lune en est la mère, Le vent l'a porté dans son ventre, La terre est sa nourrice et son réceptacle. 5 - Le père de tout le Thélesme du monde universel est ici.Sa force ou puissance reste entière, si elle est convertie en terre. 6 - Tu sépareras la terre du feu, le subtil de l'épais, doucement avec grande industrie..." Jusqu'à la fin du Moyen-âge, l'homme s'est toujours senti lié au Cosmos et c'est par la pensée analogique qu'il a pu effectuer des rapprochements subtils entre les innombrables domaines du monde manifesté. Paradoxalement, cette forme de pensée verticale ou spirituelle qu'est l'analogie ne s'oppose en rien à la pensée rationnelle ou scientifique que nous pouvons qualifier d'horizontale. D'ailleurs, certaines sciences modernes telles que l'écologie ne redécouvrent-elles pas cette interdépendance universelle que les Anciens respectaient tant sous le nom de "Théorie des Signatures" ? Comment s'applique la Doctrines des signatures . Il faut étudier à nouveau Paracelse pour poser les bases de cette quête philosophico-scientifique: - au sujet d'une philosophie de l'invisible : "Qu'est la nature sinon la philosophie, et la philosophie sinon la dé-couverte de l'invisible nature ? " (VIII, 71) "Les étoiles sont visibles, mais elles ne constituent pas pour au-tant le Ciel" (XII, 38) "Le ciel agit en nous, mais pour connaître l'essence de cette action, il faut connaître les propriétés du ciel et des astres..." (Parra-minum I) "Celui qui désire devenir un vrai thérapeute doit chercher à comprendre la composition d'une prescription selon la conjonction des herbes et des astres du firmament." (Peste I)

- au sujet de la nature en sa Lumière : "La nature donne une Lumière par laquelle elle peut être connue dans sa clarté propre." (XIV, 115). "La nature est une lumière qui luit plus que la lumière du soleil... au-dessus de tout regard et de toute puissance des yeux. Dans cette lumière, les choses in-visibles deviennent visibles." - au sujet des signatures :

"Il n'y a rien sur quoi la nature n'ait apposé sa marque, et c'est par là que nous pouvons con-naître ce que recèlent les choses ainsi signées." (XII, 91) Cette fameuse doctrine des Signatures a été reprise par Jacob Boehme en 1622 dans son "De signatura rerum", attestant des correspondances naturelles dans les trois règnes avec le Ciel ! En réalité, cet-te théorie est une application pure et simple de la loi d'analogie naturelle qui constitue un des piliers de la sagesse hermétique (cf supra : la Table d'Émeraude), "laquelle suppose la conscience d'une solidarité cosmogénétique de toutes les formes vivantes de l'univers. Cette solidarité cosmogénétique se fonde sur une correspondance astrologique". (in "Médecines traditionnelles sacrées." ( Cf Brelet-Rueff, Ed. Celt. 1975). Il est intéressant d'observer que le règne minéral a toujours fasciné par les formes symétriques des mi-néraux. Cette symétrie ainsi que la perfection des faces des cristaux résultent de lois naturelles qui captivèrent déjà Aristote et Théophraste de la Grèce antique : cette symétrie devait résulter d'une dis-position intérieure particulière. Par une méthode d'extraction spagyrique, il est possible d'obtenir le "Sel Fixe" d'un mixte, cette fraction minérale cristallisable est véritablement caractéristique de la signature du mixte considéré. A titre d'exemple, voici quelques "signatures astrales" bien connues

Planètes Métaux Plantes Organes fonctionnels SOLEIL Or

Arnica, Romarin Coeur, Energie vitale LUNE Argent Nénuphar, Pavot Cerveau, Estomac MARS Fer Ortie, Oignon Bile, Sang, Muscles MERCURE Mercure Lavande, Valériane Poumons, Syst. nerv. JUPITER Etain Pissenlit, Mélisse Foie Métabolisme

VENUS Cuivre Achillée, Ulmaire Reins, Peau, Glandes SATURNE Plomb Houx, Prêle... Rate, Os, Articulations Un tel tableau de correspondance astrale mériterait un ouvrage complet à lui seul. Retenons simplement que la Tradition nous enseigne deux types de conjonctions astrales : - les conjonctions harmonieuses: Mars = Vénus Vénus = Jupiter

Mars = Jupiter Soleil = Lune - les conjonctions dissonantes Soleil Mars Lune Mars Jupiter / Mercure Soleil / Saturne

Vénus / Saturne Ce phénomène nous permet de mieux appréhender certaines réalités subtiles inexpliquées à ce jour, telles que les affinités et les répulsions entre végétaux (bien connues des agro-biologistes sous le non de 'plantes compagnes" et "plantes ennemies"), de même que les phénomènes de complémentarité (= synergie) et incompatibilité reconnus dans le domaine thérapeutique : phytothérapie, aromathérapie et bien en-tendu homéopathie. trois siècles avant le fondateur de l'homéopathie, Samuel Hahnemann, qui avait énoncé la loi de Similitude ('les semblables sont guéris par les semblables"), le grand Pa-racelse avait écrit la loi universelle : "L'Astre est guéri par l'Astre", la-quelle doit gouverner toutes nos actions au sein du vivant. (1) - P. Rivière: "La Médecine de Paracelse", El. Traditionnelles, Paris, 1988. (2) - P. Rivière : "Alchimie & Spagyrie...". Ed. de Neustrie, Caen, 1986 (3) - Le traité des 3 essences première de Paracelse (4) - Extrait du dictionnaire Mytho-hermétique de Pernéty (5) - P. Rivière: "La Médecine de Paracelse", El. Traditionnelles, Paris, 1988. (6) - in Le Breton : "Les Clefs de la Philosophie Spagyrique qui donnent la connaissance des Principes et des véritables Opérations de cet Art dans le Mixtes des trois genres.' 1722 (7) - J. Mavéric : "La Médecine Hermétique des Plantes", Ed. Bélisane.

www.miroir.com/spagyrie/main3.html

 

ISSUU - Occult17 by Versigoe

issuu.com › pairebleue › docs › occult17

8 juil. 2014 - Duveen 31 “The most important English alchemical text. ...... With less of original genius than Paracelsus, he has more ...... 38)” The Labourd witch-hunt of 1609. ...... in 1565 and was made first physician of the city of Colmar.An Alphabetical Catalogue Philosophy and Alchemy ..... Him whom Three that are to Fit thy house to thy what thou ...... as deque Magno Mundi Mysterio languages. purg, 1609, ..... In 1528, Paracelsus proceeded to Colmar. issuu.com/accipio777/docs/lives_of_the_alchemystical_phil...

Toronto On 12 Jul 2020

Overmits ik de ganse maand november nog niet richting onze beminde zuiderburen was gegaan, volgde er op 2 november dan toch eindelijk een fotodag in Wallonië. Aanvankelijk was gepland om ten laatsten male naar het atelier van Merelbeke te gaan, doch na een telefoontje naar ginder kwam het uiterst teleurstellende bericht: in tegenstelling tot wat ik eerder had vernomen, bleek het atelier bereids op vrijdagmiddag 26 oktober zijn deuren toegedaan te hebben.

 

Enfin, het geplande bezoek aan Merelbeke kon derhalve geen doorgang vinden, zodat de koers werd verlegd naar het francofone deel van België. Ik had nog een tweetal plekken in gedachten, een dier plaatsen betrof het goederenstation van Tertre. De planning voor die dag zag er als volgt uit: vanuit Zeeland met de bus naar Zelzate gereisd, waar ik op de koude bushalte Klein Rusland kon overstappen op een Vlaamse bus naar Gent. Daar had ik gepland om de P-trein vanuit Poperinghe naar Schaerbeek te nemen, die mij naar Brussel zou vervoeren. Vandaaruit had ik de directe trein naar Mons gepland, daarna de omnibus naar Saint-Ghislain en tot slot de autobus naar Tertre.

 

Het begin van de dag verliep bijzonder voorspoedig, zodat ik tegen zeven uur aan de halte 'Klein Rusland' de bus naar Gent stond te verbeiden. Tot mijn vreugde was dit wederom een oude bus, zodat ik op een comfortabele zetel kon genieten van de reis die doorheen de havens voerde. Nademaal ik aan het station van Gent-Sint-Pieters was toegekomen, was een overstap voorzien op de voornoemde P-trein naar Brussel. Zoals gepland was dit een ram M4, die gelukkig niet zeer druk was. Eensklaps volgde daar echter het onheilspellende bericht: wegens een defecte trein, zouden wij via L50A/3, Denderleeuw en L50A/2 worden omgeleid. Dit zou voor minder dan een kwartier vertraging zorgen, maar het leidde er wel toe dat mijn overstap in groot gevaar kwam...

 

Doordat de vertraging nog ietwat opliep, kon ik bij het binnenrijden van Bruxelles-Midi daadwerkelijk mijn trein naar Mons zien vertrekken, die had ik dus gemist... Enfin, de eerstvolgende mogelijkheid richting Saint-Ghislain zou de Quiévrain Express zijn, doch vanwege de grote wachttijd koos ik ervoor om de S2 naar Halle te nemen en daar nog even te wachten op de trein naar Quiévrain, hetwelk mijns inziens een der welluidendste plaatsnamen van België is. Toen ik even later in Halle in de semi-direct naar Quiévrain instapte, begon ik later nog eens te denken over mijn planning. Daar ik de autobus naar Tertre niet had gehaald en de volgende eerst een uur later zou rijden, ontstond hierdoor ergens een langere overstap, waarschijnlijk zou dit Saint-Ghislain worden. Plots bedacht ik me het volgende: het ware mogelijk om ofwel in Jemappes ofwel in Quaregnon af te stappen, daar nog een foto te maken en dan met de omnibus die ruim een halfuur achter de semi-direct zat naar Saint-Ghislain te reizen, de overstap aldaar op de autobus naar Tertre was zeker wel te halen.

 

Het enige waar ik nu nog uit moest kiezen was de kwestie of ik in Jemappes of in Quaregnon uit zou stappen. In Jemappes zou ik enkel de semi-direct naar Liège-Guillemins kunnen vastleggen, doch in Quaregnon kon daarenboven ook nog de omnibus naar Quévy worden gefotografeerd. Deze zou echter door een Désiro worden verzekerd als alles liep zoals voorzien, zodat het mij om het even was of ik in Jemappes of Quaregnon af zou stappen. Het enige waar mijn beslissing nog van zou afhangen, was de vraag waar ik het minste last had van de schaduwen, iets wat vanzelfsprekend belangrijk is voor allen die des winters fotograferen. Bij aankomst in Jemappes viel dat station echter af, het monumentale stationsgebouw en zijn omgeving zou te hinderlijk zijn in mijn ogen. Ondergetekende bleef dus nog enkele minuten zitten in de semi-direct en hoopte dat het in Quaregnon minder schaduwrijk zal zijn... Deze wens werd gelukkig werkelijkheid: indien men het stationsgebouw meenam in de compositie en slechts het einde van het perron in beeld had, was er betrekkelijk weinig schaduw aanwezig.

 

Toen de trein vertrokken was en ik even rondliep om te bepalen waar ik zou gaan staan voor de foto, viel het me op dat Quaregnon toch wel echt zo een typisch Belgisch station is uit de vorige eeuw. We noemen U de volgende elementen, die hier alle tesamen terugkwamen op de foto:

 

- Een laag perron van omtrent 25 centimeter hoog.

- Een perron, dat ter hoogte van de ingang betegeld is, doch verderop verwordt tot een perron dat uit grind is opgebouwd.

- De witgeblokte perronboorden, die hier overigens niet conform de regel zijn aangebracht. De regel schreef immers voor, dat bemande stations een witte doorgetrokken streep op de perronboord hadden. Daar de perronboord ver voor de sluiting van het loket op 28 juni 2013 was aangebracht, is de witgeblokte boord slechts sedert een vijftal jaren conform de situatie in Quaregnon.

- De oude armaturen, die elk uit twee lampen bestaan en heden ten dage meer en meer vervangen worden door moderne armaturen.

- Rechts in beeld de welbekende hekkens van het type 'Roeselare', die hier in de witte versie present zijn - elders vindt men de betonkleurige versie.

- Een der oudste - wellicht wel het oudste - type stationsborden van België, namelijk een blauw bord met witte letters van het lettertype Alfabet, dat in 1945 geïntroduceerd werd bij de SNCB.

 

Resumerend kunnen we zeggen dat vrijwel alle aanwezige elementen op het station van Quaregnon relicten zijn uit een soms al ver verleden, het moderne wachthokje op het linker perron mag de enige dissonant vormen op de foto, maar ach, een kniesoor die daarop let.

 

Gelijkerwijs ik in eht hiervoor geschrevene al had aangehaald, kon ik op dit station de semi-direct richting Liège fotograferen. Deze semi-direct verbindt op werkdagen de grensplaats Quiévrain met de metropool Liège, de belangrijkste stad van Wallonië. De treinverbinding loopt niet direct naar Liège via Namur, doch gaat na Mons richting Brussel en Leuven, en pas daarna richting Liège. Tot aan Mons stopt de trein op alle stations, daarna gaat de semi-direct verder richting Brussel en Liège en stopt enkel nog op de grotere tussenstations. Dankzij het feit dat deze semi-direct een rijtijd van bijna drie uur heeft en louter wordt verzekerd door treinstellen van het type AM '80, mag dit wel het bolwerk genoemd worden van de Breaks. In de piekuren zijn treinen van tot wel vier stellen lang geen uitzondering, zodat men optimaal mag genieten van het comfort van deze treinstellen. Helaas zijn de ongemoderniseerde stellen in het Memlingkleedje bijkans verdwenen, zodat vrijwel alle Breaks in deze semi-direct in de New Lookkleurstelling rijden.

 

Ik koos ervoor deze semi-direct in Quaregnon op foto te zetten, een middelgrote gemeente die in het centrum van de Borinage ligt, een voormalige mijnstreek gelegen ten westen van Mons. De plaats is bekend van de zogenoemde Chartre de Quaregnon, een door Emile Vandervelde in 1894 gepresenteerde verklaring die de socialistische doctrine omvat. Deze verklaring was circa 85 jaren lang het richtsnoer van de Belgische socialisten en is dientenvolge van grote betekenis geweest voor de partij. De Borinage is, samen met de regio's rondom Charleroi en Liège, tot op heden een bolwerk van het socialisme gebleven, hetgeen duidelijk naar voren komt in de gemeenteraad. Deze telt 25 zitjes, waarvan er ten tijde van de opname maar liefst twintig (!) waren bezet door de Parti Socialiste. Ofschoon er sedert 2019 nog maar achttien zitjes resteren dankzij de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen, mogen we vaststellen dat de socialisten nog altijd oppermachtig zijn in de gemeente Quaregnon.

 

Terwijl de zon uitbundig scheen op deze koude dag, kwam na enig wachten in de verte een Break tevoorschijn met het nummer 383, die zeer proper bleek te zijn! Alhoewel het stel reeds als zesde van de reeks werd gemoderniseerd en bijna zevenenhalf jaren in de nieuwe kleurstelling rijdt, viel de hoeveelheid graffiti hier ontzettend mee. Vermoedelijk is het stel enkele dagen geleden gewassen, want anders zou er allang weer graffiti op zitten. Met een stel minder dan voorzien is de losse Break onderweg als semi-direct 1710 naar Liège-Guillemins en passeert hier de opgetogen fotograaf, die even later in de omnibus naar Saint-Ghislain stapte om daar alsnog de autobus naar Tertre te nemen.

Yayo, yayo

Moo-la-lah

Yayo

 

Better have my money!

Y'all should know me well enough

Better have my money!

Please don't call me on my bluff

Pay me what you owe me

Ballin' bigger than LeBron

Give me your money

Who y'all think y'all frontin' on?

Like brrap, brrap, brrap

 

Louis XIII and it's all on me, n**** you just bought a shot

Kamikaze if you think that you gon' knock me off the top

S***, your wife in the backseat of my brand new foreign car

Don't act like you forgot, I call the shots, shots, shots

Like brrap, brrap, brrap

Pay me what you owe me, don't act like you forgot

 

Bi*ch Better Have My Money - Rihanna

 

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Blog Post: Coming Soon

.Q. - Dissonant Outfit

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Bloor & Dufferin, Toronto ON 5 Jul 2020

Highway 410 to 401, Mississauga ON, 20 Jun 2020

Adobe Illustrator.

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Inspirations, influences and illustrative facets lifted from a variety of places for a variety of reasons. I've just begun to love The Dillinger Escape Plan, but not until very recently. In high school when I first heard of them, I was still going through my hard rock/screamo phase and didn't really like the extreme discord and dissonant anger Dillinger offered. The music is just brutal, in-your-face, wall-to-wall noise, chaos and unbridled sonic fury at breakneck speed.

 

So I wrestled for a time with how best to convey that brutality. I was stuck for a time until I remembered their song "Sunshine the Werewolf," re-watched The Devil's Rejects and came to the conclusion that Dillinger were dog (wolf) people (even before seeing their PETA interview). Add a bit of exploratory research on John Dillinger (spearheaded by my excitement for Public Enemies), and the the design just fell together beautifully.

 

So this is how I realize The Dillinger Escape Plan's entity: a pissed off werewolf in a tattered suit, getting ready to unload a second volley of Tommy gun bullets into the faces of whatever unsuspecting unfortunates cross his path, parting the fur exploding from his collar to unleash a brutal, violent scream.

 

I think it's safe to say this is one of my favorite posters so far.

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Listening To: The Dillinger Escape Plan - Panasonic Youth.

.milestsang(dot)com.

.facebook love.

hotspot #4 - o fotógrafo

Paul Klee (18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color theory, writing about it extensively; his lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance. He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture. His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.

 

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, as the second child of German music teacher Hans Wilhelm Klee (1849–1940) and Swiss singer Ida Marie Klee, née Frick (1855–1921).[a] His sister Mathilde (died 6 December 1953) was born on 28 January 1876 in Walzenhausen. Their father came from Tann and studied singing, piano, organ and violin at the Stuttgart Conservatory, meeting there his future wife Ida Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a music teacher at the Bern State Seminary in Hofwil near Bern until 1931. Klee was able to develop his music skills as his parents encouraged and inspired him throughout his life. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where they eventually, in 1897, after a number of changes of residence, moved into their own house in the Kirchenfeld district [de]. From 1886 to 1890, Klee visited primary school and received, at the age of 7, violin classes at the Municipal Music School. He was so talented on violin that, aged 11, he received an invitation to play as an extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association.

 

In his early years, following his parents’ wishes, Klee focused on becoming a musician; but he decided on the visual arts during his teen years, partly out of rebellion and partly because of a belief that modern music lacked meaning for him. He stated, "I didn't find the idea of going in for music creatively particularly attractive in view of the decline in the history of musical achievement." As a musician, he played and felt emotionally bound to traditional works of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, but as an artist he craved the freedom to explore radical ideas and styles. At sixteen, Klee’s landscape drawings already show considerable skill.

 

Around 1897, Klee started his diary, which he kept until 1918, and which has provided scholars with valuable insight into his life and thinking. During his school years, he avidly drew in his school books, in particular drawing caricatures, and already demonstrating skill with line and volume. He barely passed his final exams at the "Gymnasium" of Bern, where he qualified in the Humanities. With his characteristic dry wit, he wrote, "After all, it’s rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks." On his own time, in addition to his deep interests in music and art, Klee was a great reader of literature, and later a writer on art theory and aesthetics.

 

With his parents' reluctant permission, in 1898 Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. He excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense. He later recalled, "During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint." During these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists' models. He had an illegitimate son in 1900 who died several weeks after birth.

 

After receiving his Fine Arts degree, Klee went to Italy from October 1901 to May 1902 with friend Hermann Haller. They stayed in Rome, Florence, and Naples, and studied the master painters of past centuries. He exclaimed, "The Forum and the Vatican have spoken to me. Humanism wants to suffocate me." He responded to the colors of Italy, but sadly noted, "that a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color." For Klee, color represented the optimism and nobility in art, and a hope for relief from the pessimistic nature he expressed in his black-and-white grotesques and satires. Returning to Bern, he lived with his parents for several years, and took occasional art classes. By 1905, he was developing some experimental techniques, including drawing with a needle on a blackened pane of glass, resulting in fifty-seven works including his Portrait of My Father (1906). In the years 1903-5 he also completed a cycle of eleven zinc-plate etchings called Inventions, his first exhibited works, in which he illustrated several grotesque characters. He commented, "though I'm fairly satisfied with my etchings I can't go on like this. I’m not a specialist." Klee was still dividing his time with music, playing the violin in an orchestra and writing concert and theater reviews.

 

Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906 and they had one son named Felix Paul in the following year. They lived in a suburb of Munich, and while she gave piano lessons and occasional performances, he kept house and tended to his art work. His attempt to be a magazine illustrator failed. Klee's art work progressed slowly for the next five years, partly from having to divide his time with domestic matters, and partly as he tried to find a new approach to his art. In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which then traveled to three Swiss cities.

 

In January 1911 Alfred Kubin met Klee in Munich and encouraged him to illustrate Voltaire's Candide. His resultant drawings were published later in a 1920 version of the book edited by Kurt Wolff. Around this time, Klee's graphic work increased. His early inclination towards the absurd and the sarcastic was well received by Kubin, who befriended Klee and became one of his first significant collectors. Klee met, through Kubin, the art critic Wilhelm Hausenstein in 1911. Klee was a foundation member and manager of the Munich artists' union Sema that summer. In autumn he made an acquaintance with August Macke and Wassily Kandinsky, and in winter he joined the editorial team of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter, founded by Franz Marc and Kandinsky. On meeting Kandinsky, Klee recorded, "I came to feel a deep trust in him. He is somebody, and has an exceptionally beautiful and lucid mind." Other members included Macke, Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin. Klee became in a few months one of the most important and independent members of the Blaue Reiter, but he was not yet fully integrated.

 

The release of the almanac was delayed for the benefit of an exhibition. The first Blaue Reiter exhibition took place from 18 December 1911 to 1 January 1912 in the Moderne Galerie Heinrich Thannhauser in Munich. Klee did not attend it, but in the second exhibition, which occurred from 12 February to 18 March 1912 in the Galerie Goltz, 17 of his graphic works were shown. The name of this art exhibition was Schwarz-Weiß, as it only regarded graphic painting. Initially planned to be released in 1911, the release date of the Der Blau Reiter almanac by Kandinsky and Marc was delayed in May 1912, including the reproduced ink drawing Steinhauer by Klee. At the same time, Kandinsky published his art history writing Über das Geistige in der Kunst.

 

The association opened Klee's mind to modern theories of color. His travels to Paris in 1912 also exposed him to the ferment of Cubism and the pioneering examples of "pure painting", an early term for abstract art. The use of bold color by Robert Delaunay and Maurice de Vlaminck also inspired him. Rather than copy these artists, Klee began working out his own color experiments in pale watercolors and did some primitive landscapes, including In the Quarry (1913) and Houses near the Gravel Pit (1913), using blocks of color with limited overlap. Klee acknowledged that "a long struggle lies in store for me in this field of color" in order to reach his "distant noble aim." Soon, he discovered "the style which connects drawing and the realm of color."

 

Klee's artistic breakthrough came in 1914 when he briefly visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet and was impressed by the quality of the light there. He wrote, "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter." With that realization, faithfulness to nature faded in importance. Instead, Klee began to delve into the "cool romanticism of abstraction". In gaining a second artistic vocabulary, Klee added color to his abilities in draftsmanship, and in many works combined them successfully, as he did in one series he called "operatic paintings". One of the most literal examples of this new synthesis is The Bavarian Don Giovanni (1919).

 

After returning home, Klee painted his first pure abstract, In the Style of Kairouan (1914), composed of colored rectangles and a few circles. The colored rectangle became his basic building block, what some scholars associate with a musical note, which Klee combined with other colored blocks to create a color harmony analogous to a musical composition. His selection of a particular color palette emulates a musical key. Sometimes he uses complementary pairs of colors, and other times "dissonant" colors, again reflecting his connection with musicality.

 

A few weeks later, World War I began. At first, Klee was somewhat detached from it, as he wrote ironically, "I have long had this war in me. That is why, inwardly, it is none of my concern." Klee was conscripted as a Landsturmsoldat (soldier of the reserve forces in Prussia or Imperial Germany) on 5 March 1916. The deaths of his friends August Macke and Franz Marc in battle began to affect him. Venting his distress, he created several pen and ink lithographs on war themes including Death for the Idea (1915). After finishing the military training course, which began on 11 March 1916, he was committed as a soldier behind the front. Klee moved on 20 August to the aircraft maintenance company[b] in Oberschleissheim, executing skilled manual work, such as restoring aircraft camouflage, and accompanying aircraft transports. On 17 January 1917, he was transferred to the Royal Bavarian flying school in Gersthofen (which 54 years later became the USASA Field Station Augsburg) to work as a clerk for the treasurer until the end of the war. This allowed him to stay in a small room outside of the barrack block and continue painting.

 

He continued to paint during the entire war and managed to exhibit in several shows. By 1917, Klee's work was selling well and art critics acclaimed him as the best of the new German artists. His Ab ovo (1917) is particularly noteworthy for its sophisticated technique. It employs watercolor on gauze and paper with a chalk ground, which produces a rich texture of triangular, circular, and crescent patterns. Demonstrating his range of exploration, mixing color and line, his Warning of the Ships (1918) is a colored drawing filled with symbolic images on a field of suppressed color.

 

In 1919, Klee applied for a teaching post at the Academy of Art in Stuttgart. This attempt failed but he had a major success in securing a three-year contract (with a minimum annual income) with dealer Hans Goltz, whose influential gallery gave Klee major exposure, and some commercial success. A retrospective of over 300 works in 1920 was also notable.

 

Klee taught at the Bauhaus from January 1921 to April 1931. He was a "Form" master in the bookbinding, stained glass, and mural painting workshops and was provided with two studios. In 1922, Kandinsky joined the staff and resumed his friendship with Klee. Later that year the first Bauhaus exhibition and festival was held, for which Klee created several of the advertising materials. Klee welcomed that there were many conflicting theories and opinions within the Bauhaus: "I also approve of these forces competing one with the other if the result is achievement."

 

Klee was also a member of Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four), with Kandinsky, Lyonel Feininger, and Alexej von Jawlensky; formed in 1923, they lectured and exhibited together in the USA in 1925. That same year, Klee had his first exhibits in Paris, and he became a hit with the French Surrealists. Klee visited Egypt in 1928, which impressed him less than Tunisia. In 1929, the first major monograph on Klee's work was published, written by Will Grohmann.

 

Klee also taught at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1931 to 1933, and was singled out by a Nazi newspaper, "Then that great fellow Klee comes onto the scene, already famed as a Bauhaus teacher in Dessau. He tells everyone he's a thoroughbred Arab, but he's a typical Galician Jew." His home was searched by the Gestapo and he was fired from his job. His self-portrait Struck from the List (1933) commemorates the sad occasion. In 1933-4, Klee had shows in London and Paris, and finally met Pablo Picasso, whom he greatly admired. The Klee family emigrated to Switzerland in late 1933.

 

Klee was at the peak of his creative output. His Ad Parnassum (1932) is considered his masterpiece and the best example of his pointillist style; it is also one of his largest, most finely worked paintings. He produced nearly 500 works in 1933 during his last year in Germany. However, in 1933, Klee began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his fatal disease, which made swallowing very difficult, can be followed through the art he created in his last years. His output in 1936 was only 25 pictures. In the later 1930s, his health recovered somewhat and he was encouraged by a visit from Kandinsky and Picasso. Klee's simpler and larger designs enabled him to keep up his output in his final years, and in 1939 he created over 1,200 works, a career high for one year. He used heavier lines and mainly geometric forms with fewer but larger blocks of color. His varied color palettes, some with bright colors and others sober, perhaps reflected his alternating moods of optimism and pessimism. Back in Germany in 1937, seventeen of Klee's pictures were included in an exhibition of "Degenerate art" and 102 of his works in public collections were seized by the Nazis.

 

Klee suffered from a wasting disease, scleroderma, toward the end of his life, enduring pain that seems to be reflected in his last works of art. One of his last paintings, Death and Fire, features a skull in the center with the German word for death, "Tod", appearing in the face. He died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on 29 June 1940 without having obtained Swiss citizenship, despite his birth in that country. His art work was considered too revolutionary, even degenerate, by the Swiss authorities, but eventually they accepted his request six days after his death. His legacy comprises about 9,000 works of art. The words on his tombstone, Klee's credo, placed there by his son Felix, say, "I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is as much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough." He was buried at Schosshaldenfriedhof, Bern, Switzerland.

 

Klee has been variously associated with Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction, but his pictures are difficult to classify. He generally worked in isolation from his peers, and interpreted new art trends in his own way. He was inventive in his methods and technique. Klee worked in many different media—oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching, and others. He often combined them into one work. He used canvas, burlap, muslin, linen, gauze, cardboard, metal foils, fabric, wallpaper, and newsprint. Klee employed spray paint, knife application, stamping, glazing, and impasto, and mixed media such as oil with watercolor, watercolor with pen and India ink, and oil with tempera.

 

He was a natural draftsman, and through long experimentation developed a mastery of color and tonality. Many of his works combine these skills. He uses a great variety of color palettes from nearly monochromatic to highly polychromatic. His works often have a fragile childlike quality to them and are usually on a small scale. He often used geometric forms and grid format compositions as well as letters and numbers, frequently combined with playful figures of animals and people. Some works were completely abstract. Many of his works and their titles reflect his dry humor and varying moods; some express political convictions. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation. The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about Klee in 1921, "Even if you hadn’t told me he plays the violin, I would have guessed that on many occasions his drawings were transcriptions of music."

 

Pamela Kort observed: "Klee's 1933 drawings present their beholder with an unparalleled opportunity to glimpse a central aspect of his aesthetics that has remained largely unappreciated: his lifelong concern with the possibilities of parody and wit. Herein lies their real significance, particularly for an audience unaware that Klee's art has political dimensions."

 

Among the few plastic works are hand puppets made between 1916 and 1925, for his son Felix. The artist neither counts them as a component of his oeuvre, nor does he list them in his catalogue raisonné. Thirty of the preserved puppets are stored at the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern.

 

Some of Klee's early preserved children's drawings, which his grandmother encouraged, were listed on his catalogue raisonné. A total of 19 etchings were produced during the Bern years; ten of these were made between 1903 and 1905 in the cycle "Inventionen" (Inventions), which were presented in June 1906 at the "Internationale Kunstausstellung des Vereins bildender Künstler Münchens 'Secession'" (International Art Exhibition of the Association for Graphic Arts, Munich, Secession), his first appearance as a painter in the public. Klee had removed the third Invention, Pessimistische Allegorie des Gebirges (Pessimistic Allegory of the Mountain), in February 1906 from his cycle. The satirical etchings, for example Jungfrau im Baum/Jungfrau (träumend) (Virgin on the tree/Virgin (dreaming)) from 1903 and Greiser Phoenix (Aged Phoenix) from 1905, were classified by Klee as "surrealistic outposts". Jungfrau im Baum ties on the motive Le cattive madri (1894) by Giovanni Segantini. The picture was influenced by grotesque lyric poetries of Alfred Jarry, Max Jacob and Christian Morgenstern.[68] It features an cultural pessimism, which can be found at the turn of the 20th century in works by Symbolists. The Invention Nr. 6, the 1903 etching Zwei Männer, einander in höherer Stellung vermutend (Two Men, Supposing to be in Major Position), depicts two naked men, presumably emperor Wilhelm II and Franz Joseph I of Austria, recognizable by their hairstyle and beards. As their clothes and insignia were bereft, "both of them have no clue if their conventional salute […] is in order or not. As they assume that their counterpart could have been higher rated", they bow and scrape.

 

Klee began to introduce a new technique in 1905: scratching on a blackened glass panel with a needle. In that manner he created about 57 Verre églomisé pictures, among those the 1905 Gartenszene (Scene on a Garden) and the 1906 Porträt des Vaters (Portrait of a Father), with which he tried to combine painting and scratching. Klee's solitary early work ended in 1911, the year he met and was inspired by the graphic artist Alfred Kubin, and became associated with the artists of the Blaue Reiter.

 

During his twelve-day educational trip to Tunis in April 1914 Klee produced with Macke and Moilliet watercolor paintings, which implement the strong light and color stimulus of the North African countryside in the fashion of Paul Cézanne and Robert Delaunays' cubistic form concepts. The aim was not to imitate nature, but to create compositions analogous to nature's formative principle, as in the works In den Häusern von Saint-Germain (In the Houses of Saint-Germain) and Straßencafé (Streetcafé). Klee conveyed the scenery in a grid, so that it dissolves into colored harmony. He also created abstract works in that period such as Abstract and Farbige Kreise durch Farbbänder verbunden (Colored Circles Tied Through Inked Ribbons). He never abandoned the object; a permanent segregation never took place. It took over ten years that Klee worked on experiments and analysis of the color, resulting to an independent artificial work, whereby his design ideas were based on the colorful oriental world.

 

Under the impression of his military service he created the painting Trauerblumen (Velvetbells) in 1917, which, with its graphical signs, vegetal and phantastic shapes, is a forerunner of his future works, harmonically combining graphic, color and object. For the first time birds appear in the pictures, such as in Blumenmythos (Flower Myth) from 1918, mirroring the flying and falling planes he saw in Gersthofen, and the photographed plane crashes.

 

In the 1918 watercolor painting Einst dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht, a compositional implemented poem, possible written by Klee, he incorporated letters in small, in terms of color separated squares, cutting off the first verse from the second one with silver paper. At the top of the cardboard, which carries the picture, the verses are inscribed in manuscript form. Here, Klee did not lean on Delaunay's colors, but on Marc's, although the picture content of both painters does not correspond with each other. Herwarth Walden, Klee's art dealer, saw in them a "Wachablösung" (changing of the guard) of his art.[74] Since 1919 he often used oil colors, with which he combined watercolors and colored pencil. The Villa R (Kunstmuseum Basel) from 1919 unites visible realities such as sun, moon, mountains, trees and architectures, as well as surreal pledges and sentiment readings.

 

His works during this time include Camel (in rhythmic landscape with trees) as well as other paintings with abstract graphical elements such as betroffener Ort (Affected Place) (1922). From that period he created Die Zwitscher-Maschine (The Twittering Machine), which was later removed from the National Gallery. After being named defamatory in the Munich exhibition "Entartete Kunst", the painting was later bought by the Buchholz Gallery, New York, and then transferred in 1939 to the Museum of Modern Art. The "twittering" in the title refers to the open-beaked birds, while the "machine" is illustrated by the crank.

 

In 1931, Klee transferred to Düsseldorf to teach in the Akademie; the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus soon after.[78] During this time, Klee illustrated a series of guardian angels. Among these figurations is "In Engelshut" (In the Angel's Care). Its overlaying technique evinces the polyphonic character of his drawing method between 1920 and 1932 .

 

The 1932 painting Ad Parnassum was also created in the Düsseldorfer period. With 100 cm × 126 cm (39 in × 50 in) it is one of his largest paintings, as he usually worked with small formats. In this mosaic-like work in the style of pointillism he combined different techniques and compositional principles. Influenced by his trip to Egypt from 1928 to 1929, Klee built a color field from individually stamped dots, surrounded by likewise stamped lines, which results in a pyramid. Above the roof of the "Parnassus" there is a sun. The title identifies the picture as the home of Apollo and the Muses. During his 1929 travels through Egypt, Klee developed a sense of connection to the land, described by art historian Olivier Berggruen as a mystical feeling: "In the desert, the sun's intense rays seemed to envelop all living things, and at night, the movement of the stars felt even more palpable. In the architecture of the ancient funerary moments Klee discovered a sense of proportion and measure in which human beings appeared to establish a convincing relationship with the immensity of the landscape; furthermore, he was drawn to the esoteric numerology that governed the way in which these monuments had been built."[81] In 1933, the last year in Germany, he created a range of paintings and drawings; the catalogue raisonné comprised 482 works. The self-portrait in the same year – with the programmatic title von der Liste gestrichen (removed from the list) – provides information about his feeling after losing professorship. The abstract portrait was painted in dark colors and shows closed eyes and compressed lips, while on the back part of his head there is a large "X", symbolizing that his art was no longer valued in Germany.

 

In this period Klee mainly worked on large-sized pictures. After the onset of illness, there were about 25 works in the 1936 catalogue, but his productivity increased in 1937 to 264 pictures, 1938 to 489, and 1939 – his most productive year – to 1254. They dealt with ambivalent themes, expressing his personal fate, the political situation and his joke. Examples are the watercolor painting Musiker (musician), a stickman face with partially serious, partially smiling mouth; and the Revolution des Viadukts (Revolution of the Viadukt), an anti-fascist art. In Viadukt (1937) the bridge arches split from the bank as they refuse to be linked to a chain and are therefore rioting.[83] Since 1938, Klee worked more intensively with hieroglyphic-like elements. The painting Insula dulcamara from the same year, which is one of his largest (88 cm × 176 cm (35 in × 69 in)), shows a white face in the middle of the elements, symbolizing death with its black-circled eye sockets. Bitterness and sorrow are not rare in much of his works during this time.

 

Klee created in 1940 a picture which strongly differs from the previous works, leaving it unsigned on the scaffold. The comparatively realistic still life, Ohne Titel, later named as Der Todesengel (Angel of Death), depicts flowers, a green pot, sculpture and an angel. The moon on black ground is separated from these groups. During his 60th birthday Klee was photographed in front of this picture.(Wikipedia).

 

Peace Not War is a revival of an event we first organised in March 2022, just before we opened DecadencE. At that time, we created a hangout space called The Place of Disclosure, where people living through the war in Ukraine or helping at the Polish border — nurses, volunteers, friends and families — could connect, and also a huge maifestation of artists in SL sharing their work.

  

Exhibition :

 

Wednesday, October 22nd, We present you the artwork of more than 100 SL resident with whom we connected, who participated on photoshooting with us also.

  

Musical Programme :

 

1 pm : Whispers of Tomorrow by Zahra (Live guitar)

 

Zahra‘s guitar speaks without words, carrying the rhythm of hope across borders and hearts.

Each note burns with passion yet heals with tenderness, reminding us that beauty can rise from pain.

 

2pm : David Shea's message : "Inner Peace - The Heart Sutra (Live Piano)

 

We tend to view peace as creating peace in the world around us , The end of war and external conflicts, but our inner war , our inner sense of peace is a source of this outer chaos and often given less attention. This concert will focus on the practice of listening , listening to ourselves, to sound and to our inner life. Our sense of harmony and disharmony. To be aware of the sounds around us and the ones that need our attention , the sounds of our desires , connections to others, and making peace with our past, as a source of cultivating peace in the world around us.

 

The Heart Sutra is a poem of the Buddha , written 1500 years ago , a song that is used as a meditation to quiet the mind and make it receptive to something beyond thought, a song that can be sung everyday to reflect the internal world and to transform our external world.

 

This concert will be a combination of new and traditional music , acoustic and electronic music , and explore the reality of trying to find peace in a violent chaotic world and the struggle to find balance within it. The Heart Sutra will be the focus of the music , in spoken word and sung verse and musical traditions , harmonic and dissonant forces colliding as the sounds of the natural world , urban world and internal world. They are brought together in a composed work, and live performance, that travels through the classical traditions and the practice of listening as musical experience. Piano , Chinese Sheng, Singing Bowls , Electronics, live ensemble and natural field recordings will be used to create a musical experience and a type of spoken guided meditation where you may participate at home as you listen.

 

Join us for this hour of music , and let's take this hour together to turn our attention to our inner lives and create balance for ourselves so we may share it and create both inner peace in ourselves, our relationships and the world around us. "

 

3pm : Resilience by Zima Blue (Live Guitar & Songs)

 

Let's enjoy the vibes of Zima Blue, this singular artist, with his guitar and his voice who will talk to our soul.

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Burn2%20Event%20Horizon/32/36/24

A reading of the sonnets is now available here:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE3kxlyfzp0

 

Downland Paths

 

Downland paths are arched to contours;

their flexed backs maned with broomrapes

and orchids. I have felt them shudder

when I walked them, as though vexed

by flies. Nostrils flare: sullen holes

where beeches have blown over. There are

vast eyelids lashed with stubble; dewponds

are their glazed corneas. A walker risks

being flipped over by a fetlock, when

the wind hits gale-force. There are tracks

which end in hooves. Approach them

from the wrong angle, and they'll throw you

into a tangle of nettles and whin. You'll

wear them down, but they'll not be broken in.

 

Downland Mists

 

Sometimes on the downs, day is postponed,

and at the end of the barley-field, mist

melts into a sea of glumes. The vale

is an etching in glass, a glimpsed mosaic

of pale illuminations; there is no horizon,

or there are many. Old swathes are green

trails leading nowhere. The whole scene

might be sedimentary: a slow settling

of silts and silica beneath the glaze.

 

Time and space condense, precipitate;

earth, crops and air make a smoked pane

of faded layers - whites, beiges, greys.

Spaces yawn. My soul is formed of chalks,

clays and the failing breath of dawn.

 

Ramparts

 

How many miles of mist-shrouded ramparts

have I walked, soaked to the knees in dew,

with the solitary crow ever sentinel

ahead of me on a bare branch, the vale below

invisible, or emerging in puddles of light

as though the clouds were melting ice -

and I have melted too - melded with chalk,

gone eye-high to grasses, become a thistle,

a path, a thorn, moulded myself to contours

blurred by stubble, learned the slow and

glacial art of undulations, condensed

life, love and sense into an urchin test

as the crow has gazed, surveyed with his

wise black eye, evaporated into flight?

 

The Hind Leg of the White Horse

 

The curve of it is perfect: pure, hammered chalk,

calcium-coloured, cutting out and then conforming

to the line and sweep of the ancient coombe. Sunlight

enlivens it: a whole landscape's equine embodiment.

Put your ear to the turf: hear the urgent thrum

of his warhorse-heart, white lime coursing through

his pale aorta, and the inrush of downland air

through a blanched trachaea, into loamy lungs.

 

The downs become an amphitheatre of respiration:

grass-roots get nutrients out of dead bivalves

thrown to ground out of some antediluvian

sea-bottom. Evening sweats out golden oxygen

until the horse's breath is set to spill, like

powdered dreams, out into space from the holy hill.

 

The Spine of the Downs

 

The escarpment lay down to sleep, weary of flight.

Its closed eye became raised ground, flattened

at the summit; a long muzzle probed the Vale.

The furnace in those lungs burned down to a single,

buried cinder, too deep to warm the sward.

The tail, vaned as a stegosaur's, threshed about

a time or two, then subsided into the Manger.

Great, interlocking vertebrae arched themselves,

making Downs, calcified the whole heaving hill

into solid chalk. The breathing shallowed itself

to a whisper. About the hollow, dewy coombe,

dragon-legends echoed. Twayblades split the turf.

 

Some days, sunlight stimulates the circulation.

The long spine flexes. The creature almost wakens.

 

Downland Light

For Joe Thurston

 

It beams in at a slant, lending nimbus-

fringes to thistles, blades of grass. Land

is prone to tilting; time and distance

turn illusory; perspectives shift, or wilt.

Rooks glint white at a moment's glance,

lapse into silhouettes. Towns obscure

themselves in vapours. Horizons blur;

clouds confuse themselves with hills.

 

The Vale folds into verticals, pleats

itself inwards. We can't be convinced

we're not at the edge of earth. Chalk

flutes and shadows taper into voids.

Here, one could slip between creases, lose

grip on delusion, lean outward and let go.

 

The Moon Above the Downs

 

The moon gave half of herself over

for the chalking-in, surrendering

to the lapwing's deception. The skylark

eclipsed her, sang, then looped down

to the wind-flattened grass. Hares

caught sight of her, turned bulge-eyed

and bolted crazily, negotiating unseen

mazes. Primeval ways revealed themselves:

paths made by sheep and glaciers. Wind

continued her slow and whittling work,

bearing chalk-dust, spiderlings and seeds

into a stratosphere so immaculate that

the lapwings fluted starward psalms,

and moonglow etched out ancient forms.

 

Downland Harvest

 

Whittled down to stubble, the cut straw reveals

the hills' taut musculature, as though the blade

were practised in the art of making-plain.

The thin skin of earth is stretched, tight

as drum-leather, over every flex and distension.

 

A bird in flight might pick out striations,

bunched tendons, and high on the escarpment,

ancient scars, soiled and grassed over: the only

angular things for miles. Hillsides are fusiform:

gigantic lines and curves, laid naked, draped

for life-class, one scored with an arching, bleached

tattoo. Cold water-courses source themselves

in groins; armpits bristle with husks of oats.

 

Have patience - wait - and feel the respiration.

 

Downland Thorns

 

They cling to places that can't be tilled -

ramparts, edges of escarpments, sullen slopes -

and thrust out thorns with a wise misanthropy,

as if to say, "Axe me, and I'll spill blood."

Only the wind is obeyed: it sculpts them,

wakes them, withers them in the sere,

and when they die, uproots them, rolls

their gorgeous torsoes down the coombes.

 

Others have a gnarled agreement with gales,

thrust deeper roots, fleck the frozen air

with withered haws, their sagging arms

laden with the sodden wool of lambs.

They earn the permanence of stones,

stark as menhirs guarding ancient tombs.

 

Swallows at West Kennet Long Barrow

 

There were dull susurrations in the clouds,

and a stirring in the ripened wheat,

the burial mound sagging under its burden

of wildflowers. Those great sarsens

were dark sentinels, lichen-mottled

and looming at the threshold of the tomb.

 

As I probed, the swallows flecked out

like smuts stirred from a dormant furnace,

whirling into the atmosphere, the quick,

dissonant chit-chits of their distress

borne thinly on the wind, rising and

plunging whole fathoms, out of fear.

I withdrew. Rain fell. I turned to dust.

Like struck sparks, they swept into their nests.

 

A Thistle at Avebury

 

Rampart, ditch and stone have been here

four or five thousand years; the butterflies,

bees and hoverflies were pupal soup

just days ago, resolving themselves into

miracles of wings and compound eyes.

Tourists are more ephemeral, clouding

like midges, dallying at the Cove, humming

around the Barber Stone, fleeing for pubs

and buses - but it's the thistle I've come for,

with its chalk-riddled roots, stem fibrous

as a hempen rope, and that serried armoury

of spines. I crouch, admire, shudder.

 

It's already higher than the smaller stones,

spiked for survival, determined not to die.

  

Scabious

 

Let your eyes slip out of focus, and the blooms

are lilac interpunctions in a meadow almost gold.

In a wind, they turn to blurs, and bumblebees

must cling with all six claws, their eyes knocked

by pastel-coloured stamens. The unopened flowers

are a stippled green. Petals break out at their edges,

turn spatulate. At the centres, half-formed corollas

are crosshatched with stamens. Fat spiders crouch,

expecting hoverflies, and haired stems are astir

amongst the longer grasses. Walk through them: a spider

drops insensate; butterflies flit to more distant

flowers. The heat-haze wafts and sways.

 

Come closer. Stand beside me, with that quietness

of yours, in the gilded meadow all splashed with sky.

 

Downland Poppies

 

The sepals fall. Petals flare, crumpled

as tissue-paper torn from a gift, and a thin

fringe of anthers scatters pollen on the wings

of hoverflies. Landscapes recede: chalk

fresh dug for drainage, a blurring slope

of blue-stemmed wheat, a hedgerow marking

a road, recumbent breasts of downland hills

and wind-sculpted beech hangers, all slipping

out of focus. The petals flake away like

filo-pastry, scatter their wilting crimson

on the heated earth, and the haired stems

lengthen, catch themselves in wind, knock

against the sky. Seeds pour out like smoke,

or black ashes from an urn half-unsealed.

  

The Meadow

 

The drier blades are brittle as grasshoppers' legs,

the swathe hissing in the heat. Yellowhammers' voices

punctuate the lazy hums of bumblebees, tweezering

the air with needled crescendos. Purpled knops,

yellow rattles, bright orchis-smudges, sky-echoing

scabious and cranesbills, bow under the weights

of insects: marbled whites, ringlets rich as chocolates,

tortoiseshells flashing open, and pairs of little

skippers, dropping their hindwings as they drink.

Lizards still themselves, heartbeats visible

beneath their skins. Snakes bask on tussocks.

A burnet-moth slips out of a chrysalis, half-way

up a grass-stem, as my soul begins to flit across

the meadow, lit up with memories, ephemeral as a skipper.

 

Downland Sunset

 

It all smashes into silhouette.

 

You'd think the beech branches had turned

to cracks in the enamel - fortuitous breakages -

and gradually the sun scorches its course

down the glass, obliterating smaller twigs

in a network of explosions. Sometimes

it is eclipsed behind some impossible knot,

thicker than a trunk, where the hanger-trees

have coalesced - or perhaps a whole channel

has been bashed out into blackness - great

ruptures in the pane, snaking like rivers

with inky oxbows, whirlpools and ominous blots

of beechwood. If you could walk through soil,

you'd see: questing roots do much the same to chalk.

 

All poems Copyright Giles Watson, 2013.

  

French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron in the Chanteurs series, no. 8. Photo: B. Alary.

 

German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.

 

Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.

 

Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.

 

In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.

 

Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Photographer: Nick Rock, 1969

www.mickrock.com

 

(Roger) Syd Barrett: Photographer unknown (anyone with info. please pipe in!)

B: 06 January 1946, Cambridge, England

D: July 7, 2006, Cambridgeshire, England

Genre(s): Psychedelic Rock

Affiliation(s): Pink Floyd, Stars

Label(s): Harvest/EMI

Years Active: 1965 - 1972

 

Many artists have acknowledged Barrett's influence on their work. Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend were early fans; Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Brian Eno, and The Damned all expressed interest in working with him at some point during the 1970s. In fact, Bowie recorded a cover of "See Emily Play" on his 1973 album Pin Ups. On a VH1 program, honoring rock bands and artists, Pete Townshend gave a speech honoring Syd Barrett, and telling a story where he told Eric Clapton that he had to come see this guy play, who was Barrett. Townshend called Barrett legendary. Syd was one of Townshend's many influences, along with John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley and even Joe Walsh. Syd as guitarist was remarkable for his free-form style in playing chords (and not the echo, the tapes or the effects); his rhythmic guitar, as well as his minimalist and dissonant solos, and can be seen as a major influence on punk, post-punk and grunge guitarists.

 

Barrett's decline had a profound effect on Roger Waters' song-writing, and the theme of mental illness would permeate Pink Floyd's later albums, particularly 1973's Dark Side of the Moon and 1979's The Wall. One track from Dark Side of the Moon, entitled Brain Damage, contained a specific reference to Barrett's mental illness. A later line in the song references "the band you're in starts playing different tunes," which is a situation Barrett often got into when suffering from the symptoms of his mental illness. Wish You Were Here (1975) was a conscious tribute to Barrett. Other artists that have written tributes to Barrett include his contemporary Kevin Ayers (of the Soft Machine), who wrote the song "Oh Wot a Dream" as a tribute (Barrett provided guitar to an early version of Ayers' "Singing a Song in the Morning"). Barrett fan Robyn Hitchcock is repeatedly compared to Barrett, has covered many of his songs live and on record, and has paid homage to his forebearer with the songs "The Man Who Invented Himself" and "(Feels Like) 1974." The Television Personalities track "I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives" from their 1978 album And don't the kids love it is another well-known tribute, apparently based on fact.

 

R.E.M. has covered the haunting "Dark Globe", as have Soundgarden, Placebo and Lost and Profound. The Smashing Pumpkins have covered "Terrapin." Gary Lucas and Voivod have covered "Astronomy Domine". The Industrial collective Rx composed of Kevin Ogilvie (Nivek Ogre) and Martin Atkins have recorded a version of "The Scarecrow." At the Drive-In's frontmen (now the main members of The Mars Volta) covered "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk" and have claimed that they tried constantly to emulate The Piper at the Gates of Dawn's sound in their music. Slowdive covered "Golden Hair," which was a Syd Barrett version of the poem by James Joyce, on their EP "Holding Our Breath." Phish has performed several Barrett solo songs in concert, including "Love You," "Terrapin", "Baby Lemonade," "It's No Good Trying," and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn track "Bike."

 

Other artists/bands that have claimed influence and/or covered Barrett's work include Étienne Daho, This Mortal Coil, Marc Bolan, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Robert Smith (of The Cure), Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths), Kevin Shields (of My Bloody Valentine), Primal Scream, Voivod, The Libertines, Dirty Pretty Things, The Beta Band, Lone Pigeon, Julian Cope, Robyn Hitchcock, The Flaming Lips, R.E.M., Mercury Rev, Replicants (featuring former members of Tool and Failure), East Bay Ray (of the Dead Kennedys), Camper Van Beethoven, Voivod, The Three O'Clock, Pearl Jam, Love and Rockets, Elevator To Hell, The Melvins, Transatlantic, Phish, Dream Theater, Graham Coxon (formerly of Blur), John Frusciante (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), Eppo, Skobot Bzzzz, and the Vinyl Skyway.

 

Most bands in the Elephant 6 collective, such as Of Montreal, have a very distinct Barrett influence in their music, and Italian group Jennifer Gentle (named after a line from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn's "Lucifer Sam") emulates the sound of Piper and Barrett's solo work.

 

Highway 401, Mississauga ON, 26 Jun 2020

Inspired by cover illustrations from old pulp novels and 1950s, schlock, science-fiction films.

 

Entire head tissue and bone heinously converted by dissonant, dastardly disco melodies into a giant orb of metal grief!

 

"Look to the stars, atop the void of the sky. The chamber awakens and it plays a tune..." - Unknown

 

Opportunities as brought forth by an encounter with the enigmatic Sonoluminescent:

 

We see you have arrived here at last.

Do you know your purpose of your arrival?

The supreme reality that subjugates you is subjugated itself.

Who is responsible? A divine higher order?

Surely, one is not as divine as the universe.

What of the multiverse? Are they all of the same fate?

We understand you lack answers.

We understand you possess questions.

We understand very well.

This is why we had called you here: to seek power...

...that isn't yours.

If reality is subjugated, then why are you not in control yet?

Are you afraid of fear? Or is the temptation unbearable?

Do you feel yourself breaking away?

It's time to sing a song now.

It's believed that songs unite beings of life.

Songs adhere to the law of this realm.

For you, a rhyme to behold within your helm.

Let us strike a chord of dissonance.

Gaze upon this shifting resonance.

For this will be your ultimate penance.

You may exit our sanctuary now.

 

QEW/Gardiner Eastbound 21 Mar 2020

 

“It is conventional to call ''monster'' any blending of dissonant elements. I call ''monster'' every original inexhaustible beauty.”

 

quote by Alfred Jarry

 

Last selfi from these beautiful woods. This was a bid more difficult as i had to rap myself in plants and they had lots of buggs and spiders in them ... well i figured since in Australia everything is poisonous i may as well embrace nature as it means no harm in Ireland :0).

 

View LARGE as requested

QEW/Gardiner Eastbound 21 Mar 2020

buy from bluetapes.co.uk/product/blue-nineteen-the-library-of-babel

 

C30 + download code

 

Unconscious gasps of breath. Finger skin sliding on metal strings. An acoustic guitar is flanked by cello and double bass in a relationship that at times feels almost parental - the two bigger instruments keeping a watchful eye over the junior one as it gambols ahead, constantly investigating and testing.

 

This is a very special release. If what this label has relished in before is pairing occult, abstract instances of sound to partly-erased images and letting the spectator simply make of it what it wishes, a new strategy for Blue Tapes might be to try and apply that lovingly rendered abstraction to music - things people might actually want to hear. Records, some people call ‘em.

 

So, without compromising our position, it would be an exciting experiment to attempt to curate releases that anyone could hear and get something from. Even if - especially if - the hypothetical listener weren’t quite sure what it was they were getting out of this.

 

I think the nineteenth release in the tape series, by The Library of Babel, achieves this. This music is delicate, intricate - an intimate conversation in real-time between three gorgeous-sounding instruments. So intimate, in fact, that as a listener you imagine yourself between the instruments, the sounds slipping and buzzing around you, the warm breath of the players on your neck; sometimes even more intimately you feel yourself between the the strings, the notes, sliding as they ring and you vibrate.

 

The music has an instinctive narrative although the playing is improvised. Fans of blue twelve: Tashi Dorji, in particular, will appreciate this - especially as guitarist Shane Parish and bassist Frank Meadows are friends and regular collaborators of Tashi in their hometown of Asheville, NC. The sounds the pair make with cellist Emmalee Hunnicutt potentially have wide appeal, though, caressing the dopamine centres of brains wired for jazz and free folk alike.

 

Gratifyingly, though, there is an absence of any real genre to call a home for this music. It is animalistic in its intuition and motives. Seemingly oblivious to its own wisdom and only concerned with the moment.

 

I love this music very much. I hope something in it captures you too.

 

Praise for blue nineteen:

 

"Blue Tapes rarely disappoints, but even by their standards this is an intensely special recording." - The Quietus

 

"The singularly eclectic Blue Tapes label is known for its promotion of experimental musicians such as Stillsuit, Trupa Trupa and Tashi Dorji and for its challenging and often dissonant improvised and electronic music that isn’t performed or recorded for significantly large audiences. The Library Of Babel’s album is a little different though. Retaining the improvisational approach and also bringing a defined structure to the compositions, either accidentally or deliberately, The Library Of Babel have recorded an album of some very cool, minimalistic yet highly atmospheric chill-zone sounds, an album that consistently reveals new layers of ability from its performers, both as a group and individually." - DOA

 

"If you’ve listened to any of the release from this particular label before you’ll know to expect experimentation at its most beautiful and Library of Babel is no exception." - SCRZ Magazine

 

"There are chaotic moments that translate to the gibberish and there are beautiful moments where everything seem to makes sense" -Dying for Bad Music

Toronto ON 4 Jul 2020

A lovely bit of waxing gibbous was happening last night. Beauty amid the suburban ennui.

Part 2 of 3 : Basins, hygiene and spirituality

 

These architectural basins are certainly some of the most intriguing elements to this sprawling and fascinating prehistoric megasite. A fifth architectural example is visible below - a steep basin in the form of a lozenge.

 

Whilst history marks with invention, it can also move forward by assimilation and appropriation. Some small areas of these sculpted monoliths, for example sides to the large flat basin lower left, may show the marks of metal tools. For the most part, the metallic signature lines of history have either eroded away or were never present. These formations have not been dated. There are two fine dolmens at either side of the same vista and argumentation needs to see if any of the many basins on this site are contemporary to the late neolithic and how their function might be measured. At least one of the adjacent dolmens has smaller basins carved into its table and onto the side of a support.

 

I have split my analysis over more than one picture. This is the second part. The first part is attached to the photo below and covers issues of food production, 'alters' for sacrifice and rites and hygiene.

 

The spectrum for human ‘washing and hygiene’ style is wide. If we look at 'history', today, there are some people who shower twice a day. Contrast this with the French King Louis XIV who had just two baths in his whole life. These examples have been tweaked first by advertising and secondly by a fad from civilization, and whilst there will have been differences between clans in prehistory, hygiene will have kept within more reasonable boundaries than these examples. Cuts and wounds would be cleaned, hair brushed with combs (see below), teased with prongs, or cut with flint or copper. Mud will have been washed away from precious hand-made items and off legs, hands and faces.... Wanderers and hunting parties might get as dirty as they do today, and some decoratively beaded youths might spend more time than strictly necessary preening and grooming. Today, men look in mirrors and straighten their ties before leaving to sit on a train next to women who have painted their lips red and heightened the outlines of their eyes. Our cousin primates assign hours to look after each others fur - we simply carried on into our myriad of cultures and expressions. Neolithic people may have washed less than we do today, but that did not keep them away from the language and habits of appearance and health. There are times from prehistory and protohistory when a red ocre, oiled or powdered, was systematically spread onto the entire body. Before adding the earth pigments, the skin must be clean to assure the overall effect. Here, ticks, cuts, splinters, aches and fungi can all be monitored, and in so doing, improve the general well-being of the clan. We might expect one or two examples of clans that turn towards a speciality focus on spiritual health and well being. Hedonism does not have to be drunk, and it can be argued that the Epicurean 'clan', described from protohistoric writings, was an example of the range of ways of being available to prehistory.

 

There still seem to be too many basins for a simple neolithic community keen to stand over rising steam or baste in infusions of herb. The site is currently associated with a Medieval priory. Perhaps the basins were part of a pagan religion with the sacred hill appropriated in history? Spiritual communities attract visitors, which can help assure the exchange of basic goods. The hill in question is on-route towards the aged hills of the Massif Central, a geography which gives birth to the great rivers that navigate much of the length of the Pyrenees. The same Grandmont hill remains close to the sea breeze of the Mediterranean – so it may be understood as a focal point on a then ancient avenue of exchange and movement. The fire to heat stones, and the steam from the basins would mark out the hill from the distance, and rites of water would reward people arriving for a visit from potentially dissonant backgrounds. Here the flows helps to unify the prospects of visitors who arrive from afar, and avoids potential conflict of suspicion. Suddenly a range of basins and spiritual and practical functions makes sense.

 

Prehistory faded through the ages of copper, bronze and iron to settle as a patchwork oft described as Gaul, a post prehistoric identity that coalesced only as a reaction to the Roman invasion and an identity that existed, for the most part, as a mosaic. Were these architectural basins to date from this pre-Roman protohistoric period, issues of trade, passage, and spirituality might also have coalesced on this hill top. I will argue that the most coherent cultural dynamic for such a cluster may be the Chalcolithique (5,500 - 3,500 ybp) with the site having grown from smaller late neolithic basins.

 

The text continues on the adjacent photo marked 'Part 3'.

 

AJM 05/05/17

German promotion card by Büro Michael Schöbel, Berlin. Photo: Amber Gray. Promotion for the CD Big Band Explosion by Nina Hagen & Leipzig Big Band.

 

German singer, songwriter, and actress Nina Hagen (1955) is known for her theatrical vocals and is often referred to as the ‘Godmother of Punk due to her prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During her 40-years-career she appeared in several European films.

 

Catharina ’Nina’ Hagen was born in 1955) in the former East Berlin, German Democratic Republic. She was the daughter of scriptwriter Hans Hagen and actress and singer Eva-Maria Hagen (née Buchholz). Her paternal grandfather died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (her father was Jewish). Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and growing up, she saw her father infrequently. At age four, she began to study ballet, and was considered an opera prodigy by the time she was nine. When Hagen was 11, her mother married Wolf Biermann, an anti-establishment singer-songwriter. Biermann's political views later influenced young Hagen. Hagen left school at age sixteen and went to Poland, where she began her career. She later returned to Germany and joined the cover band, Fritzens Dampferband (Fritzen's Steamboat Band). She added songs by Janis Joplin and Tina Turner to the ‘allowable’ set lists during shows. From 1972 to 1973, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon graduating, she formed the band Automobil and released in 1974 the single Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You Forgot the Colour Film), a subtle dig mocking the sterile, gray, Communist state. Nina became one of the country's best-known young stars. She also appeared in several East-German films and TV films sometimes alongside her mother Eva-Maria Hagen, including Heiraten/Weiblich/Marrying/Female (Christa Kulosa, 1975), Heute ist Freitag/Today is Friday (Klaus Gendries, 1975), Liebesfallen/Love Traps (Werner W. Wallroth, 1976) and Unser stiller Mann/Our Quite Man (Bernhard Stephan, 1976). Her career in the GDR was cut short after her stepfather Wolf Biermann's East German citizenship was withdrawn from him in 1976. Hagen and her mother followed him westwards to Hamburg. The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised concert in Cologne, but denied permission to re-cross the border to his adopted home country.

 

Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from CBS Records. Her label advised her to acclimatise herself to Western culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height of the punk rock movement. Hagen was quickly taken up by a circle that included The Slits and Sex Pistols. Back in Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg district. In 1978 they released their self-titled debut album, Nina Hagen Band, which included the single TV-Glotzer (a cover of White Punks on Dope by The Tubes, though with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof Zoo, about West Berlin's then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten station. The album also included a version of Rangehn (Go for It), a song she had previously recorded in East Germany, but with different music. The album received critical acclaim for its hard rock sound and for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the straightforward singing of her East German recordings. It was a commercial success selling over 250,000 copies. Relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated over the course of the subsequent European tour. The band released one more album Unbehagen (Unease) before their break-up in 1979. It included the single African Reggae and Wir Leben Immer... Noch, a German language cover of Lene Lovich's Lucky Number. Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media uproar. She starred in two films. In Germany she made the experimental film Bildnis Einer Trinkerin/Portrait of a Female Drunkard (Ulrike Ottinger, 1979) with Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma and Eddie Constantine. She also acted with Dutch rocker Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in the Dutch film Cha Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979). Brood and Hagen would have a long romantic relationship that would end when Hagen could no longer tolerate Brood's drug abuse. She would refer to Brood as her ‘soulmate’ long after Brood committed suicide in 2001. In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be the Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, who died in 1988, and she moved to Los Angeles. Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica in 1981. In 1982, Hagen signed a new contract with CBS and released her debut solo album NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk, funk, reggae, and opera. Her first English-language album became also her first record to chart in the United States. She then went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra. Her next album the Giorgio Moroder-produced Fearless (1983), generated two major club hits in America, Zarah (a cover of the Zarah Leander song Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen) and the disco/punk/opera song, New York New York, which reached no. 9 in the USA dance charts. She followed this with one more album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy (1985), which featured a 1979 recording of her hardcore punk take on Paul Anka's My Way. The album fared less well and her contract with CBS expired in 1986 and was not renewed. Hagen's public appearances became stranger and frequently included discussions of God, UFOs, her social and political beliefs, animal rights and vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. In 1987 she released the Punk Wedding EP independently, a celebration of her marriage to a 18-year-old punk South African nicknamed 'Iroquois'.

 

In 1989, Nina Hagen was offered a record deal from Mercury Records. She released three albums on the label: Nina Hagen (1989), Street (1991), and Revolution Ballroom (1993). However, none of the albums achieved notable commercial success. In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France, with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen (b. 1990). In 1992 Hagen became the host of a TV show on RTLplus. She also collaborated with Adamski on the single Get Your Body (1992). In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1996, she married David Lynn, who is fifteen years younger, but divorced him in the beginning of 2000. In 1999, Hagen became the host of Sci-Fright, a weekly science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi Channel. In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, alongside Max Raabe. She also appeared as a witch in the German-Russian fairy-tale film Vasilisa (Elena Shatalova, 2000). At IMDb, Howard Roarschawks writes: “I saw this eye-popping film at the 2001 Sarasota Film Festival. I entered the theater without expectations, having chosen the film randomly. From shot one, my jaw dropped slack and my eyes waxed wide. Vasilisa is a gorgeously filmed, brilliantly scripted, boldly acted, confidently directed, lushly designed masterpiece of unseen cinema.” Hagen made her musical comeback with the release of her album Return of the Mother (2000). In 2001 she collaborated with Rosenstolz and Marc Almond on the single Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe that reached no. 22 in Germany. Later albums include Big Band Explosion (2003), in which she sang numerous swing covers with her then husband, Danish singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by Heiß, a greatest hits album. The following album, Journey to the Snow Queen, is more of an audio book — she reads the Snow Queen fairy tale with Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker in the background. Besides her musical career, Hagen is also a voice-over actress. She dubbed the voice of Sally in Der Albtraum vor Weihnachten, the German release of Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas (1993), and she has also done voice work on the German animation film Hot Dogs: Wau - wir sind reich!/Millionaire Dogs (Michael Schoemann, 1999). She appeared as the Queen opposite Otto Waalkes and her daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen as Snowwhite in the comedy7 Zwerge – Männer allein im Wald/7 Dwarves – Men Alone in the Wood (Sven Unterwaldt Jr., 2004) which follows the fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the second most popular film in German cinemas in 2004, reaching an audience of almost 7 million. She returned in the sequel 7 Zwerge – Der Wald ist nicht genug/Seven Dwarves - The Forest Is Not Enough (Sven Unterwaldt, 2006). She wrote three autobiographies: Ich bin ein Berliner (1988), Nina Hagen: That's Why the Lady Is a Punk (2003), and Bekenntnisse (2010). She is also noted for her human and animal rights activism. After a four-year lapse Nina Hagen released the album Personal Jesus in 2010. William Ruhlmann at AllMusic: “Personal Jesus, which featured 13 faith-based tracks that dutifully blend rock, blues, soul, and gospel into a sound that’s distinctly hers.” It was followed by Volksbeat (2011). Her latest films are Desire Will Set You Free (Yony Leyser, 2015) with Amber Benson and Rosa von Praunheim and Gutterdämmerung (Bjorn Tagemose, 2016) with Henry Rollins, Grace Jones and Iggy Pop.

 

Sources: William Ruhlmann (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Half plate American ambrotype

photographer unknown, late 1850s-early 1860s

Theodor E. Ulieriu-Rostás collection. Accession number: amb.2010.09.

 

Ambrotype of an American couple, coming from an estate in Norfolk, Virginia (Park Place or West Ghent) - thus, there is a great probability that the two were Virginians.

 

A portrait of a rather dissonant couple, which exhibits some poignant details. The man is well habituated to his middle class clothes, but his hair seems more likely unarranged than programatically romantic, and his gaze has nothing comforting in it. The woman seems to be pregnant, considering that late 1850s crinolines didn`t have the kind of front protuberance seen here, as well as the unusual position of her hands. However, no wedding ring - a highlighted item in many early photographs - is visible here. The woman wears a fingerless lace glove of the type that came into fashion in the second half of the 1850s - but only one glove. This is definitely not the usual engagement/marriage portrait, but still an important occasion for a grand 1/2 plate photograph... They might be brother and sister, but that doesn`t fill all the symbolic holes in the picture. I`ve seen enough early portraits to judge prudently the apparent distress on the photographed ones` faces, but this portrait leaves a question unanswered.

 

Some conservation info: the ambrotype was broken at some point of its history in 11 fragments, which have been glued on a glass, resulting a rather heavy assembly of 3 glass plates which barely fit in the brass preserver. Some of the fragments had began to move, without much damage though. On the long term, the glue might degrade the plate, but it would`ve been more dangerous to try to disassemble the glued glass, so I`ve decided only to clean the upper glass sheet and to seal all the three very tightly with archival paper tape, like a daguerreotype, in order to prevent the friction between the moving fragments.

 

***

 

View this ambrotype on Ipernity.

Done in Ai, Finalized in Photoshop and Photoscape X.

 

Role: High Necromancer of Tenebris Dei

 

Born of prophecy and sculpted by Severance, Vashtel Aerenyx is the only Hollowborn who retained a name — not as a gift, but as a burden. She leads the ritual bindings, resurrection rites, and soul-walkings within the Sepulchral Vaults, commanding the Hollowborn like an orchestra of forgotten wills.

 

Her armor is crafted from voidshell bone and threaded with crimson soul-embers, pulsing like a choir in agony. Her sword is inscribed with grave-runes, its edge humming with dissonant echoes.

 

She does not serve Nyxariel out of faith — she echoes her will, like a dark hymn given flesh.

  

San Francisco Street Scene. San Francisco, California. May 29, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.

 

Walls, doors, gates, conduits, signs, trash containers, peeling paint, reflections along a San Francisco street

 

I'm indulging my fascination with street scenes once again today. This photograph comes from a morning spent walking across San Francisco late last week. I arrived early in the City by train, got off, and walked by an unplanned and mostly spontaneous route across downtown, across Chinatown, through North Beach, and almost to the touristy Pier 39 before looping back to my starting point on The Embarcadero to catch a train back home.

 

I think of this little vignette as being a quintessential San Francisco scene, though I have to admit that I could find similar spots in many other urban areas. In a world where we often see things that have been carefully designed and unified, spots like this seem to occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. It would be easy to walk past and not see it — I've certainly done so many times — but once I stop and look I'm often amazed at the density of visually dissonant elements that are thrown together. Almost everything seem like it was initially utilitarian, but gradually a sort of near randomness seems to have crept in, and now the colors are wild and contrasting, paint is peeling, textures are varied, a few signs intrude, trash cans lean against doorways, and the sidewalk tilts.

  

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

  

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Yoko Ono

 

It was a sad and a little spooky to walk into the Dakota on this dark and rainy winter night, an evening not unlike the one on which John Lennon was killed here twelve years earlier. It seemed like no time had passed since I stood here in shocked silence with hundreds of others on the terrible day after, the old iron gate woven with flowers. And now I was back at that same gate, but this time with an appointment to go inside and talk to Yoko. To enter the old building, one passes through the bleak guard’s station, a gloomy room made more mournful by the recognition that this was where John staggered and fell, before being taken to the hospital.

 

But none of this gloom pervades the warm, elegant interior of Yoko’s apartment, with it’s enormous windows overlooking Central Park, the rainy streets below sparkling like glass. As you enter the apartment, you’re asked to take off your shoes in traditional Japanese style (having known this in advance I wore my best socks), and ushered by one of her assistants into the famous “white room,” with its giant white couch and tuxedo-white grand piano. It was at that keyboard that John was filmed performing “Imagine” as Yoko slowly opened up the blinds, letting in light.

 

Suddenly she arrived- she didn’t seem to walk in the room, but somehow simply appeared- and her gentle demeanour and warm smile instantly caused all nervousness to dissolve. As soon as I met Yoko, I understood why John loved her. She’s charming and beautiful, with a gentle smile in her eyes that photos never seem to reveal. Though she was a few months shy of 60 when we met, she looked younger and prettier than ever, especially without the dark aviator shades she wore like a veil through much of the last decade. In their place, she wore clear, round spectacles, the kind still commonly referred to as “John Lennon glasses.” She was barefoot, and in blue jeans, and nestled comfortably on the white couch.

 

Yoko’s speaking voice is soft and melodious, her accent bending English into musical, Japanese cadences. Contrary to the usual depictions of her in the press, she’s quite humorous, joking frequently and punctuating her comments with little bursts of laughter. She’s also quite humble about her work and her influence on John and other artists. “People can listen to the music,” she suggested softly, “and make their own judgement.”

 

“spring passes

and one remembers one’s innocence

summer passes

and one remembers one’s exuberance

autumn passes

and one remembers one’s reverence

winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance

there is a season that never passes

and that is the season of glass”

 

-Yoko Ono, 1981

 

She wrote this poem more than a decade ago now, a time she said “passed in high speed.” And like so many of the songs she wrote herself and with John, the truth in them remains constant, undiminished by passing time. In this verse she miraculously conveyed what millions around the world were feeling during those dark days following that darkest day in December of 1980 when John died. That this was a season that wouldn’t pass, a tragedy that wouldn’t be trivialized by time, a wound that wouldn’t heal. And in a way, we didn’t want it to.

 

But perhaps the one thing that has shifted since then is that the work of Yoko Ono can begin to be seen in a new light. Rykodisk Records released a six-CD set of Yoko’s recorded works call Onobox in 1992, and for the still uninitiated this collection serves well as a revelation about one of the world’s most famous yet still misunderstood songwriters.

 

Known for the high-pitched, passionate kind of “Cold Turkey” wailing she has employed through the years- what she refers to as “voice modulations”- in truth she sings the majority of her songs in clear and gentle tones, usually wrapped in rich layers of vocal harmonies. When her father discovered that Yoko as a teen wanted to be a composer, he objected and suggested instead that she become a professional singer. “I knew the whole world would laugh”, she said, cognizant of the common misconceptions about her music, “but I had a good voice.” She studied piano and music theory while growing up in Japan, and can both read and transcribe music- something none of the Beatles ever learned.

 

She’s a musician who worked in experimental music for years before she inspired and aided in the creation of “Revolution 9,” the most avant-garde track ever included on a Beatles’ album. In New York circa 1965, along with the composer John Cage and others, Yoko delved into areas of “imaginary music” and “invisible sounds,” concentrating on the creation of an unwritten music, a music that transcended our need to notate. “You can’t translate the more complex sounds into traditional notation,” she said. “I wanted to capture the sounds of birds singing in the woods…”

 

She put on concerts with great jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden in the years before John insisted she record her songs with some of his “friends,” an above-average assemblage of musicians that included George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Klaus Voorman and Ringo Starr. Most of her work with this group were jams at first, musical improvisations based on her poems. But gradually she started crafting songs, composing melodies as eloquent as her poetry. And contrary to the idea that John arranged and produced her songs, Yoko always had a firm grasp on the translation of her inner visions into recorded music. “Though, of course, you do make little mistakes,” she admitted, laughing.

 

She’s known both dire poverty and great wealth in her life, and has boomeranged between the two. She was born in Tokyo into a wealthy banking family in March of 1933, the Year of the Bird. The descendant of a ninth century emperor, she was raised mostly by servants as her father was often away on business in America, and her mother tended to social obligations. When she was 11 in wartime 1945, much of Tokyo was being destroyed by American bombers, and her family were forced, in her father’s absence, to flee from their home. Yoko was sent by her mother with her brother and sister to a small village called Karuizawa. Until the end of the war they lived there in a little house on a cornfield, raising money by selling off kimonos and other possessions until they simply had to beg for food from door to door. Yoko and the other children were almost always hungry. After the war the family was able to gradually return to their wealthy lifestyle.

 

Yoko’s father decided to pursue business in America, and the family moved to suburban New York. Yoko attended Sarah Lawrence College in Scarsdale and began spending a lot of time in Manhattan. It was there that she met a young Japanese composer named Toshi Ichiyangi who was studying at Juilliard. In time she moved into a loft with Toshi and married him, much to her parent’s dismay, and the two experienced a repeat of the poverty Yoko knew as a child.

 

In New York Yoko began to gradually establish a reputation for herself as an avant-garde performance artist. She put on a series of shows at the Carnegie Hall Recital Hall, performances such as the infamous “Cut Piece” in which she sat onstage in a black shroud holding scissors and invited the audience to step up and cut away portions of her gown, which they did, until she was nearly naked. She also wrote and published a book of instructions on how to see the world in new ways called Grapefruit, and launched a movement known as “Bagism” in which people would be invited to come onstage and get into large black bags with other people, their mysterious shapes creating an ever-moving art piece. She divorced Toshi around this time and married New York artist Tony Cox, with whom she had a daughter, Kyoko.

 

Yoko met John Lennon in London 1966 at the Indica Gallery. It was the ninth of November, the number nine always prominent in their lives. When they eventually came together, many months after that evening, they made art before they ever made love, collaborating on the experimental recording Two Virgins until sunrise.

 

For days before John died, he and Yoko had been busy in New York’s Hit Factory working on a song that surprised both of them for its fire and passion, Yoko’s amazing “Walking on Thin Ice.” Though they had released their dialogue of the heart, Double Fantasy, only weeks earlier and it was racing up the Top Ten, nothing on it matched the pure electric fury of this record. “It was as if we were both haunted by the song,” Yoko wrote in the liner notes for the single. “I remember I woke up in the morning and found John watching the sunrise and still listening to the song. He said I had to put it out right away as a single.”

The next music of Yoko’s we heard was the album she started working on just months after John’s death, Season of Glass. It’s a phenomenal work, expressing the sequence of emotions she experienced, passing through shock, denial, outrage, madness, horror, pure sadness, and ultimately unconditional, undying love. It’s an undeniable masterpiece of songwriting straight from the soul, and even critics who routinely attacked her music for years recognized in print the pure, naked power of this album.

 

Some of Yoko’s sweetest love songs are here, such as the Spanish-tinged “Mindweaver,” “Even When You’re Far Away,” and the irrepressible “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do.” It also contains recordings of found sounds that expressed this time in her life: gunshots, screams, and her son Sean’s voice. As always, she left no barriers between her life and her art, which is immediately apparent on the album’s cover. It’s a photograph she took in early morning with the skyline of Manhattan across Central Park looking purple and blurry in the background. In the forefront there’s a table top on which sits the clear-rimmed spectacles John was wearing the night he was shot, one half splattered with blood, reflected in the transparent surface of the table. Beside the spectacles is a glass halfway full of water.

 

As Yoko expected, many people were outraged by this image. But they missed the fact that she was simply revealing the actuality of her life in her art as she always has, refusing to hide the real horror she had to endure. “It was like I was underwater,” she confirmed. “Like I was covered in blood.”

 

People also missed the fact that on the back of the album Yoko included a sign of hope. She’s sitting beside the same table by this same window, and in the same spot where John’s glasses were now sits a potted geranium, happily reaching towards the trees and blue Manhattan sky. Next to that germanium is a glass of water. And the glass is full.

 

From the beginning of her career, Yoko Ono’s message has been a positive one. Though dark and negative motivations have consistently been attributed to her, any analysis of her songs reveals a dedicated optimist at work more than anything. A quick survey of titles makes this clear; “Give Peace A Chance” (written with John, of course), “It’s Alright,” “I See Rainbows,” “Hard Times Are Over,” “Goodbye Sadness,” and so on. When John first met Yoko at her art exhibit at London’s Indica Gallery on that legendary day in 1966, it was the fact that her message was positive, that there was a magnified “Yes” at the top of the ladder he climbed, that bought them together. And when I asked her about her hardships as a child during the war, she remembered the light in the darkness, “I fell in love with the sky during that period,” she said, “The sky was just beautiful in the countryside. The most beautiful thing about it.”

 

Through the eighties after John was gone, again and again her mission has been to give hope, and the exuberance of her music was reflected in this affirmation. It’s Alright, which followed Seasons of Glass, is one of the most hopeful and inspiring albums ever made.

 

Despite all of it, though, Yoko Ono has been subject to some of the most extreme and bitter criticism any songwriter has ever had to endure. For years, hordes have held on to the notorious notion that she “broke up the Beatles,” still refusing to give John Lennon credit for making his own choices. That John’s life, both personal and professional, was entirely transformed when he fell in love with this woman, was never Yoko’s fault. If anything, she deserves praise for her profound influence on his art. He felt reborn when he and Yoko came together, and his enthusiasm for artistic expression was renewed. “I was awake again,” he said. “[Yoko] inspired all this creation in me. It wasn’t that she inspired the songs. She inspired me.”

 

When the criticism came, though it wasn’t ever easy to abide, it was anything new for Yoko Ono. When she was a kid growing up in Japan, her writing was roundly rejected by schoolteachers who objected to the fact that it didn’t fit into existing forms and that she had no desire to make it fit. “It’s not that I consciously tried not to conform,” she explained, smiling, “I was just naturally out of the system.” Since that time she’s bravely made her art regardless of whether it was embraced or rejected by the critics of the world. “It cost me my dignity sometimes,” she recalled. “But who needs dignity?”

   

When did you first start writing songs?

I was sort of a closet writer [laughs]. I was writing in the style of atonal songs but with poetry on top of it. I liked to write poetry and I liked to make it into music, into songs. It was something I liked very much to do anyway.

 

And then in London I think I was writing a couple of songs before getting together with John. The songs were in quite an interesting style, really. I don’t know how to put it. Maybe there’s some tape that’s left.

 

It was some interesting stuff I was doing. It was mostly acapella, because I didn’t have any musicians with me in London. And doing a kind of mixture of Oriental rhythm & blues, I suppose [laughs].

 

I think “Remember Love” was the first so-called pop song that I wrote but before that, before I met John, I wrote a few songs and one of them was “Listen, The Snow is Falling.” I made that into a pop song later. “Remember Love” was probably the first one I wrote as a pop song from the beginning.

 

Do you generally have the same approach to writing songs?

I can’t stand being in a rut, so I sort of always jump around. That’s me.

[Laughs]

 

Do you write on piano?

Yes. I use the piano because I don’t know any other instrument, really. I tried the guitar once and it hurt my fingers so much and I didn’t like it. John said, “Try it” so I tried it in L.A., when we stayed in L.A. But I didn’t like it at all. So, I just naturally go to the piano.

 

If I’m not at the piano, I can write riding in the car. And I just write down the notes and bring it in to the piano later.

 

Do you find your songs come in a flash, or do they come from the result of a lot of work?

No, it’s always a flash. And if I don’t catch it [laughs] and write it down, or put in a tape [softly], it just goes. Never comes back. Isn’t that funny?

 

Can you control when that flash comes? Do you ever sit down to write a song?

No, I never did that. But I mean, the point is that sometimes words do come back. The words are a different thing. Sometimes I will forget to write the music down and I’ll have only the words. And then I’ll put it to music at the piano, and it becomes a totally different song, you know.

 

When you first me John, did you have much enthusiasm for rock music?

Well, I started to have an incredible enthusiasm. In the beginning when I was sitting in the Beatles’ sessions, I thought that it was so simplistic. Like a kind of classical musician, avant-garde snobbery. And then I suddenly thought, “This is great!” I just woke up. And then I really felt good about it.

 

There’s an incredible energy there. Like primitivism. And no wonder. It’s a very healthy thing an no wonder it’s like a heartbeat. It’s almost like the other music appealed to a head plane, like brain music, and then they forgot about the body.

 

[Softly] It’s a very difficult to go back to your body. You know that bit about without the body we don’t exist. You forget that! It’s almost like we can just live in our heads. And a lot of intellectual, academic people, they tend to be that.

 

So I thought, “This is great!” It’s a total music.

 

Then I realized what was wrong with the other music. It was removed from the body. It lost that kind of energy. And I thought, “No wonder I was just sort of wondering around. Okay, well, this is great.” I went back to my body. It’s true.

 

It seemed that you had a big effect on their music by being there. Even McCartney said that he felt that he had to be more avant-garde when you were around.

I don’t know. It might have affected them that way on a peripheral level, the fact that I was there. But I was just living my own world inside. Dream world. [Laughs] I was sitting there just thinking about all the stuff I’m doing in my head. So I was there and in a way I wasn’t there.

 

Some of your die-hard fans felt that being with John Lennon was detrimental to your art, while other have said that your work blossomed in a new way.

 

Probably it would have been easier for me, career-wise, if I didn’t get together with him. In a way, I lost respectability or dignity as an artist. But then, what is dignity and what is respectability? It’s a kind of thing that was a good lesson for me to lose it. What am I supposed to be doing, carrying respectability and dignity like a Grand Dame of the avant-garde for twenty years? That would have been… boring. [Laughs]

 

That was a kind of option that was open to me, you know, and [softly] I didn’t take it. It was quite more fun to go forward into a new world.

 

John’s famous song “Imagine” originated from an idea in one of your poems from Grapefruit about imagining a different world. Do you feel people ever understood the source?

No. A song like that, it’s a political statement in a way, and it’s about changing people’s heads. And I think that people don’t have to understand anything except the message of the song, and hopefully that will get to them.

 

With John, people have named his songs to get his response, but no one has done that with you. May I?

Oh, sure. Do you mind if I just get my cigarettes? I still can’t shake it, you know?

 

“Dogtown.”

I was in an apartment on Bank Street with John. It was early in the morning and John was still asleep in the other room. I was at the window and the window was in such a way that the front room was very dark. The room was a few steps down from the pavement so from the window you would kind of look at people walking. It was like that feeling. Early morning. It was just that. I lit my cigarette and listened to the early morning sounds. The song was almost like a diary, describing what I was doing.

 

I didn’t want to wake up John. I had an electric piano that you can tone down very very quiet, and you’re the only one who can hear it, you know? That’s how I made “Dogtown.” [Laughs]

 

So it started as a quiet song.

Well I wasn’t thinking quiet, I was just making sure that he couldn’t hear.

 

“Death of Samantha.”

Oh, yeah. I know that one. There was a certain instant and I felt like I was really sad, so that’s when it happened. Something terribly upsetting happened to me and then the next time we were at the studio, while the engineers were sort of putting the board in order, it flashed to me. So I just wrote it down.

 

This is funny because with “Death of Samantha,” while I was writing I sort of saw this graveyard. It’s not a graveyard, because when you think of a graveyard, you think of many, many gravestones. It’s just a kind of grey kind of day, grey scene, and grey people standing around like somebody has died. And after John’s death people said, “You were writing about his vigil, did you know that?” And I read the lyrics that they sent me from “Death of Samantha” and I just reread it and realized, oh, that’s true. Of course, I didn’t realize it then. So it’s very strange. You know, images come to me.

 

Many of your songs told future things.

It’s scary in a way.

 

Why do you think that is?

I don’t know what it is. So I’m very careful about what I say or what I think or do. Cause it could mean something later.

 

“Yang Yang.”

Oh, “Yang Yang” was based on a chord change. I like to use, kind of an ascending harmonic change. I showed it to John that instead of ascending by half-notes, you can ascend by whole notes, and that gives a kind of vital power that is interesting. And “Yang Yang” is the first thing that came to me with those chords.

 

That song is in E minor and a lot of songs from this period are also in that key. Do keys have different significances for you?

Yeah. Each chord has a difference significance astrologically. I use F# a lot, and E minor too. And I’m thinking why, and it seems like it’s agreeable to my astrology.

 

I was also thinking why I sometimes use the key of C [major] because C is so simplistic, most composers probably avoid it. But I don’t avoid it. Why not? Why do I do that? C s a key of communication, I understand. So I used it in a song I had to communicate. The kind of songs that I wrote in the key of C or rewrote in the key of C, like “Give Peace a Chance” or that sort of thing, it’s all to do with communication, of course. The widest communication you want, so you go back to the simplest key, which is C.

 

That’s interesting. I’ve noticed that TV commercials are often in C, probably for the same reason.

Oh, yeah. It’s fascinating. And I think that most writers instinctively go for something simple to communicate.

 

Your song “Silver Horse” is in C major.

Yeah. [Laughs] You know what it was? “Silver Horse” is like a fairy-tale. It’s like a story that you tell your child. It just happened, you know. It’s that kind of nursery rhyme feeling I was trying to give.

 

I love the spoken part on that song when you say, “I came to realize the horse had no wings,” and then you ask yourself, “No wings?”

[Laughter] Oh, by the way, John loved that song. Yeah. He kept saying, “Oh, that’s a great song” because he liked the fact that I say, “It wasn’t so bad, you know.” [Laughs]

 

I know John also loved your song, “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do,” which has a wonderful chord progression.

Yeah, he liked the chord sequence. It’s a chord sequence that is probably pretty prevalent in country music but you don’t use that much in rock.

 

That’s one of your happiest songs, and yet you bring in the sadness in the line, “The feeling of loneliness hangs over like a curse…”

We’re all complex people, you know. You can’t just sort of be happy all the time, you know, like zombies. [Laughs]

 

Another one of your happiest songs, which was also on the It’s Alright album, is “My Man.”

You like that?

 

Very Much.

I wanted to make a real pop one, you know? A lot of people think that wasn’t artistic, like it’s sort of silly or something. Which is true: “Bab-a-lou, bab-a-lou.” I liked that. [Laughs] Dumb but nice, you know?

 

On “Woman of Salem,” you used the year 1692 without knowing that was the actual year of the witch trials?

Isn’t it amazing that I didn’t know that year? After I finished Salem, you know, I just thought of it. It’s incredible. It’s uncanny, isn’t it?

 

Yes. Any explanation?

No. [Laughs] I went to see her house and I was nearly crying. I mean, you talk about witches and it’s not a witch at all. It’s a sensible doctor’s house, you know? Very intellectual, artistic kind of person living there, you just know it.

 

It makes me think of your song, “Yes, I’m A Witch” in which you say “I don’t care what you say, my voice is real and speaking truth.”

Yeah, I know. That’s me.

 

“A Story.”

Okay., “Story.” That, again, is like a nursery rhyme. It’s a simple story, you know? I think it was in C, wasn’t it?

 

One of the songs I’ve been especially loving on Onobox is “Yume O Moto” which you sing in Japanese.

That’s nice, isn’t it?

 

Very. What does it mean?

Let’s have a dream. Yume o moto.

 

Do you find that it’s more natural or pleasing to sing in Japanese than in English?

I don’t think so. I don’t feel that way.

 

The author Vladimir Nabokov said that English is like a blank canvas, that it doesn’t have an inherent beauty the way other languages do. Do you find that?

I don’t find that. I think English is a very beautiful language. All languages are beautiful, really.

 

Do you think in English?

Sometimes I think in Japanese, sometimes I think in English. But mainly in English at this point, you know. I mean, when I’m talking in English, of course I think in English.

 

Do you dream in English?

Yeah!

 

“Yume O Moto” was from an album called A Story which you recorded in 1973 during your separation from John, what you both called your “lost weekend.” You decided not to release it at the time, and have included it here as the final disk of the Onobox. There are so many great songs on it, hearing it now it’s surprising that you didn’t want to put it out.

Well, you know, there are many things that I just chucked, you know, or shelved, you know. Like from my early days, like the stories that I wrote, that it was just in the course of going from one country to another or one relationship to another. Something I lost or whatever. It was one of those things. I didn’t think that much about it.

 

John recorded Walls and Bridges during that time and he released it.

I know, John can do it, I can’t right? There’s a difference.

 

Many of your best songs, such as “Loneliness” and “Dogtown” came from that album. Had you released it, do you think people might have recognized you as a songwriter earlier in your career?

Well, I couldn’t put it out then, anyway. Let’s put it that way.

 

Why not?

Well, I don’t know, it’s just… Look. Listen to Feeling the Space. That’s a pretty good album. There’s some good songs in there too, you know that, right? So? That was out there but nobody cared. It’s the same thing. Now you say that people might have known I was a songwriter. At the time, putting out Feel the Space, people should have know, or putting out Approximately Infinite Universe, people should have known that I’m a songwriter, and they didn’t, so what are we talking about? You know, one more album is not going to help, you know?

 

In a way, it’s good that came out now. You get it? Then if people hear it, without kind of the Yoko-bashing… I didn’t think so. I thought it was going to be bashed again. But obviously they’re taking it differently now. I don’t know why. Let’s put it that way. I’m very lucky because I could have died without hearing about it.

 

I think there’s a small group of hardcore fans who had to literally go through the same bashing that I went through just because they like my music. So I’m doing it for them, too, this box. I felt I really had to make sure that every note was right. For them.

 

I’ve been surprised by some of the resistance to your work, especially when Season of Glass came out, because it was such a meaningful album.

I wasn’t too aware of what was going on then, but it seems that it’s easy to concentrate on the kind of things that I was doing, it was easier to concentrate on that than to go into the outside world.

 

“It’s Alright.”

Oh, that was so difficult. It was a very difficult one to make, really. But I loved it. That was after John’s death and everything and I was really trying to get into music. So it was like getting into harmony, and putting in all the harmonies. There were many things that I wanted to get in, so I intentionally made it so that there were holes in it. And I filled those in with different kinds of little choruses. It was like a collage, and it was a big production. A big production with not many people, not many musicians. In other words, all those sort of overdub things that I did.

 

“Mindweaver.”

Oh, “Mindweaver,” oh… [Pause] I wanted to make it like a duet with the guitar and my voice. And I was thinking of basically making it like a Spanish mourning song. It has that kind of dignity.

 

“It Happened.”

Oh, “It Happened” was actually composed in 1973 and at the time it had to do with moving away from each other. But then, when John died, I thought, “Oh, that’s what it was about” [laughs] and I put it on the back of “Walking on Thin Ice.”

 

I look at that period of separation like a rehearsal.

 

A rehearsal for what?

For the big separation that I didn’t know would happen. It was very good that I had that rehearsal in terms of moving along. That helped me later.

 

“Cape Clear.”

“Cape Clear” was first called “Teddy Bear.” [Laughs] I was writing at the piano. I was writing at this piano in The Dakota and in Cold Spring Harbour. In those days I still had Cold Spring Harbour. And it was just one of those songs. Central Park gave me that inspiration, you get it? Like the girls are sitting in the park and the clouds passing by, you know? I was looking over Central Park and I was thinking, “Oh. I could be sitting there.” It sort of flashed in my mind.

 

How about “Walking on Thin Ice”?

Oh. [Laughs] “Walking on Thin Ice.” What about it?

 

It’s such a powerful songs, both musically and lyrically. Do you recall where it came from, or how you wrote it?

I was thinking of Lake Michigan. I went to Chicago. And Lake Michigan is so big that you don’t know the end of it when you look at it. I was visualizing Lake Michigan. I was just thinking of this woman that is walking Lake Michigan when it is totally frozen, and is walking and walking but not knowing that it’s that huge. [A siren sound starts from outside, getting louder.] I’m like one of those people. “Oh it’s ice but I can walk on it.” I walk like that in life.

 

That song is about yourself?

Yes. I think so. The spoken part, “I knew a girl…” and all that, that feeling came to me after we recorded it. But I wasn’t sure about it. I just knew it had something to do with a girl who is walking. Then I sang the song, and I was still sitting in the chair by the mike, waiting for them to change the tape. That’s when it just came. So I just wrote it down quickly. I said, “I got it!” And I told them I was just going to do something after the singing, and I just did it.

 

Where do you think those kinds of thoughts come from?

No idea. It’s very interesting because it could be something that came totally from somewhere else. But, of course, it’s about me, and that’s how I was looking at it. But then, I don’t know. I didn’t think it was about me, really. I was just looking at this girl who is walking, you know.

 

It seems like a visual message. You see, in my mind, sound and visual is all very closely connected. It’s mixed almost. So when I hear sound, I almost hear it in colour as well.

 

When you listen to something like “What a Bastard the World Is,” or something, you probably see something, some filmic image.

 

Many of your songs are very visual.

Yes. Because that’s how I see it and I hear it. Seeing and hearing is very closely connected.

 

When I said, “I knew a girrrl…,’ that I thought was to accentuate certain syllables that it’s odd to accentuate. And that was like Alban Berg. Let’s do like Alban Berg.

 

That’s some of John’s most passionate guitar playing.

Oh, incredible. He did great guitar playing on “Woman Power” and “She Hits Back.” Very good. But also, not talking about those normal ones, what did you think about “Why”? He’s so good, isn’t he?

 

Yes. On something like that or on “Walking On Thin Ice” did you give him the kind of sound or direction that you heard in your head?

Kind of, yeah. I mean, we’d talk about it. Like I would say, “I’m going to go like this, you go like this.” I don’t mean “go like this” in terms of notes, but just the mood of it.

 

It depends. On “Cambridge” he wanted to know how to do it, so I kind of explained it to him before we went to Cambridge. With “Why” I was talking about the kind of dialogue we could do in terms of my voice and his guitar. But it’s not like telling him what note to play.

 

Speaking of a dialogue, you also wrote songs in dialogue on Double Fantasy.

Yes. We sort of vaguely had this idea about doing a dialogue album. But some of the songs, like “I’m Moving On,” were written before. In putting together an album, I’d bring out a song and say, “What about this then?” When you do ‘I’m Losing You’ I’ll do this.” That part of the dialogue was a conscious sequence.

 

“Sisters O Sisters.”

“Sisters O Sisters” was written for a rally in Michigan for John Sinclair in 1971. When we were in Ann Arbor, Michigan at the concert, John said, “She’s got something, Yoko’s got something,” I said, “This is for the sisters of Ann Arbour, Michigan.” And we sung it, and that was the premiere. [Laughs] And afterwards I didn’t think much of it until we were making Sometime in New York City, which probably was in ’72. At the time we did that, we did it in the recording studio for the first time with Phil Spector. And the way I’m singing in Ann Arbour, Michigan is very different from the way I sung in the Phil Spector version. And I think Phil Spector version is a good one.

 

Seasons of Glass was such a powerful record, and so meaningful at that time for so many people.

When I made Season of Glass, I felt like I was still like walking underwater or something, so I didn’t really know people’s reaction.

 

In that poem you wrote, “There is a season that never passes, and that is the season of glass.” Which echoed the way so many felt after John’s death, that this is a time that won’t pass. Do you feel that we’re still in the season of glass?

I don’t know, because I may have been talking about something more than John’s death in a way. At the time, of course, I was talking about my private experience. But I’m doing a piece right now for a gallery show which is about a family that is sitting in the park at meltdown time, and I was thinking in terms of the meltdown of the human race and the endangered species. And somebody said that it looked like genocide as well.

 

So it’s like the season of glass is still here in terms of the whole world. We’re still not reaching a point of not having… bloody glasses.

 

A very positive message you put out that I think people have missed is that on Season of Glass, on the back cover, the glass of waster that was half-full on the front is now full.

Yeah, Oh, you mean you noticed it? Very few people noticed that.

  

Do you think your positive messages often were overlooked?

Well, some people got them and some didn’t. It depends on the person, too. I mean, you noticed something, you know? [Laughs] But most people didn’t notice it.

 

So many of your songs are positive. Does an artist have an obligation to have a positive message?

No. Some artists are writing depressive songs and killing themselves, you know? [Laughs] It depends on the artist. There are some depressive moments in my work, but, yeah, generally I try to fight back.

 

John was attracted to the word “Yes” in your art show when you first met.

Yeah. Well, we just have to, you know? It’s not like I don’t know that the world has various negative aspects. But writing about that is not going to help anybody.

 

Would it be okay if I asked you your response to some of John’s songs?

Sure.

 

“Strawberry Fields.”

I love it. You know what it is? That was the first John Lennon song that I encountered. And there was a party at the editor of the Art Magazine’s house in London. And I went to that, and I think I was a bit earlier than the others and I was in the house and the editor said, “Oh, listen to this, Yoko. When a pop song comes to this point, what do you think?”

 

And he played “Strawberry Fields,” in London. And I thought, “Hmmmmm…” Because there were some dissonant sounds and I thought it was pretty good. For a pop song. [Laugh]

 

It thought it was cute. I thought it was some cute stuff. Because I was making songs with all dissonant sounds. It impressed me. I was surprised a pop song could be that way.

 

I like the song. Musically, it was very terrific. And there’s a lot of connections about it. I mean, I think of John as an artist, a songwriter, a fellow artist. But also, he was my husband, you know. And I remember all his pain as a child, sort of looking at Strawberry Fields, which was an orphanage, you know. He always told me about his Aunt Mimi saying, whenever he was out of hand, Mimi would say, “You can go there. You’re lucky you’re not there, John.” So, Strawberry Fields to him was connected with this strange kind of fear and love, love for the kind of children that were very close to his condition. John was in a better position. So there’s that love and that strange fear for it.

 

It’s very strong thing for him. That sort of painful memory that he had of Strawberry Fields, he transferred that into a song. And made it positive. And that song was transferred into a park. [Laughs] It’s a very strong thing that I witnessed. So it means a lot to me.

 

“Come Together.”

Oh. Oh, that’s a beautiful song. Well, that’s very John. That’s a very John song. And a lot of people came together to his music. It’s like a symbol of that, you know?

 

“Starting Over.”

Well… that’s a nice song, isn’t it? [Laughs]

 

Yeah. It’s very happy.

Like me and him, right? [Laughs]

 

“Across the Universe.”

Oh, “Across the Universe.” That’s beautiful poetry. And also, “Across the Universe,” the kind of melody and rhythm and all that, reminds me of the beginning of the so-called New Music.

 

“Bless You.”

Oh, “Bless You,” of course. I have a special emotional thing about it, don’t I? I remember when he first came and played it to me.

 

“Julia.”

Well, that’s very beautiful. I was there when he wrote it. I think it’s such a strong melody.

 

He wrote so many beautiful melodies, yet McCartney has the reputation for being the melody writer.

No, no, no, no. It’s not true at all. John was a great melody writer.

 

Is it true that “Because” was based on “The Moonlight Sonata” which he asked you to play backwards?

When you really listen to it, you see that he did play the chords backwards at one point but I think eventually it cleaned up a bit into a pop format. So he didn’t use all the chords. But that was the initial inspiration.

 

There were many songs he wrote with your name in it, such as “Dear Yoko,” “Oh Yoko,” “The Ballad of John & Yoko” in which you became almost a folk hero…

Well, I don’t know about that. I think that from where I come from, in the art world, Picasso’s always painting the wife, or Modigliani only had one model, who was his wife, so that kind of thing is normal. So it didn’t strike me as anything unusual.

 

Did you and John ever discuss songwriting?

For me, it’s so natural to use so many different chords. Because in classical music, you just do this. The kind of thing he would show me was that instead of using so many different chords, just use two chords. It’s funkier. That’s a great trick. That’s the kind of thing that classical musicians or composers lost, of course.

 

Do you have a favourite song that John wrote?

“In My Life” is a pretty good one, isn’t it?

 

McCartney’s son “Get Back” seemed to be directed at you.

We thought that.

 

Did you have any inner response to that?

No. I don’t know. That’s another thing that is the strength of an artist, probably. Artists always think, “Oh, maybe they’re trying to hurt me,” or whatever. You think that but in the next minute you’re thinking about your own songs, your own art or sculpture or films or whatever. So by doing that, you shake it off. So it doesn’t stick so much.

 

You’ve had a lot of tragedy in your life. Do you feel that tragedy helps an artist to open up in any way?

I think that tragedy comes in all forms. No one should encourage artists to pursue tragedy so that they might become a good artist. I wouldn’t encourage that. You don’t have to have tragedy to create, really.

 

Was there ever a feeling on your part that you would want to leave the Dakota, and live elsewhere?

Not really. It was the spot that my husband died, you know? It was… like you don’t want to leave there, you know?

 

These days this place represents teenagers, Sean and Sean’s friends. It’s quite a different scene, and it’s very nice.

 

Early in your career you worked with John Cage and you called “imaginary music” and music that can’t be notated. Later you said you felt that the pop song was more powerful because it could reach more people. What do you think now?

I still feel that there’s kind of an extra-sensory perception kind of area where you can pursue that sort of communication and sound vibration on that level, et cetera. But, yes, I really think the pop song, or rock, is a very good means of communication.

 

Do you think the songform is restrictive?

Yes.

 

You once said that you felt songs were like haikus.

Yes, definitely. But also it’s either way. Even when it’s twenty minutes or an hour, in the context of the big world, it’s very small [laughs], you know what I mean? It’s all very relative, you know.

 

Was it difficult for you to continually create in the face of people’s negative energy? Even when you were a little girl, your teachers were harsh with your writing, yet you always had the bravery to do your art regardless.

In a sense because of that I lost many writings. Because they would discourage me so I would keep on writing, but I wouldn’t hold onto them. And the same with the tapes. A lot of tapes I did, like “London Jam” kind of things with John, it’s a pity that they’re lost. And the reason why they were lost was because there was so much antagonism about it.

 

I would insist on going on and doing something, but I wouldn’t keep them. It’s not like I would intentionally destroy them. But it’s like easy to let it slip out of your hands. That’s how it’s manifest.

 

In looking back at all this work, do you have a favourite song?

That’s a difficult question, isn’t it? I wouldn’t know. The other day I was listening and I thought, “What Did I Do” was one I liked very much. But that’s just in passing. I did like, “No, No, No” a lot but now I don’t feel like listening to it. It’s like different times, you know, something fixes in your head. Of course, I did like “Walking on Thin Ice” but [laughs] how long can you like “Walking on Thin Ice”? I got over it.

 

The number nine has been significant in your life, and we’re in the nineties. Are you optimistic about these times, and times to come?

Yeah, I think that we’re going back to a good age. The 1980s were hard because it was a material age and people were just into materialism, I think. But I always liked it that I didn’t go into that expansion thing. I think that this decade people are going to start to sober up a bit, and start to really understand or appreciate the value of real things. So you can’t just con them with a bit of commercial music. People are going to be more interested in real music. Genuine emotion.

 

Do you think songwriters can still write real songs?

We have to strive to be real, that’s all. Being real is not something that just happens to you. You have to sort of keep at it.

 

In “Dogtown” you write about “the true song I never finished writing all my life.” Do you feel that you have finished yet or are you still working on it?

I’m still working [laughs]

 

Do you feel that songs are timeless, and that they can last?

Oh, sure. I think that if you’re really communicating on a basic level, you’re going to be communicating all the time. Once it’s there. Once a song becomes a song, it has its own fate.

 

after a run of a few glorious sunny days we are back into a short stint of rain and wind which gives me well appreciated downtime not having to garden , mow, paint the fence, dig clay out, do stuff ... so I re-read a few bits written earlier for altogether different purpose and I felt an urge to let them out, let them walk about and see other people ...

 

so let's make it "Show But Tell" series.

because words have nothing to do with the image.

or do they?

 

belated tribute to Sinead

 

Prince for me is the artist, musician #1 of the last 50 years, no contest. Nobody touches Prince as a performer, musician, guitar artist. Trying to cover a Prince track is a reckless endeavor. Certain things you simply do not go near. Nobody ever succeeded to do justice to a Prince track let alone doing it better. It is humanly impossible.

 

With one exception.

 

It takes a mad as a box of frogs Irish girl to make Prince's song her own and leave Prince no chance to ever reclaim his song back.

 

The video of a strikingly beautiful girl with eyes of a movie star from the black and white era of Hollywood and a shaved head, dressed in a black cape, a reversed monk getup. Hollywood glamour meets monk-punk. This clip was on heavy rotation on MTV in 1990. It seemed it would play once an hour. And every time it played I could not take my eyes off that girl, mesmerized, transfixed by her face and her voice. She looked straight into your eyes delivering percussive phrases, barely singing, with "2U" landing in a strange, bordering on dissonant, place.

 

At the time I didn't know it was a Prince song. Years later when my admiration to Purple Rain album developed into a full-on obsession with anything done by Prince I heard a few live recordings of him doing the number. This was the only time when I was ever disappointed in Prince. Every time I heard him going at it, with enthusiastic audience reception, I was left feeling "I'd rather hear her instead". It also felt like he accepted his defeat from Sinead. He saw that he could not possibly surpass sheer desperate intensity she'd put into the song. So he often offered a somewhat ironic, almost tongue-in-cheek delivery, exchanging a joke with the audience singing a line back to him:"I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant"

"Oh, yeah?!"

 

Prince trying to charm the crowd with his delivery could never work after Sinead's short sharp shock of each line.

 

Sinead has gone on to prove that she was quite as mad and quite as great as the clip suggested. I have her records are on constant rotation including records in Irish. It takes a remarkable singer and performer to compel you to listen to songs in a language you don't understand.

 

I never knew what kind of relationship, if any, Sinead had with Prince. What led to her singing the song? Have they ever met? Then her memoirs surfaced painting her fiery encounter with Prince ending up with her spitting on him.

 

If it wasn't true I still choose to think it was.

 

It takes a mad genius to spit on Prince.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk

  

Gouache on paper

9.5 x 8.5 inches, 2011

Private Collection

 

tomburtonwood.com

0.2

Very Best On Black

   

www.pierpol.com

With my chauffeur, Cutforth, taking a week off to visit his invalid sister in Wiveliscombe, and my butler, Beach, nowhere to be found, I thought I might as well take the Lanchester to the garage myself. It had developed a vulgarly dissonant magneto whine. It was an invigorating morning and I walked back to Bentos Towers, distributing farthings to peasant children along my route as my bodyguards, Waring and Gillow, beat back supplicant tenants ("give us bread") with staves believed to have been used as bastinado and brought back from Smyrna as souvenirs by my ancestor Oughtred Bentos, author of A Journey Through Armenia, Afghanistan and Conterminous parts of Asia Minor in the Year of our Lord 1810 and Chargé d'Affaires at Constantinople at a time when Bonaparte's ambitions threatened Britain's lines of communication with India.

I took this on the way back. My Agfa Isolette, when folded, slips unobtrusively into one of the capacious pockets of my Tweedside with Ghillie collar. I wonder why I encumber myself with the inconvenience and avoirdupois of twin-lens-reflex and 6X9cm medium format cameras when the results from this basic 120 folder seem hardly inferior. "Zone" focusing and, for practical purposes, two shutter speeds ...1/50th and 1/200th... yet I don't seem to make errors of exposure more calamitous than those I make with better cameras. The speeds don't even correspond to the usual progression given on "modern" light meters ...60, 125, 250, 500th. By the time I climbed the steps of the House it was breakfast time and I'd worked up an appetite. Beach had been doing the morning rounds of the henhouses, where I keep a much-admired flock of Orpingtons. As he pulled aside the great door, a paradisial aroma of eggs and kippers rose from the kitchens.

Highway 401, Mississauga ON, 26 Jun 2020

On the one hand, I suspect he hates our government's socialist tyranny (that's a Trump flag below the American one); on the other, he seems to want it to squelch free enterprise and deprive a company of its property rights.

20160902_4878

 

no idea if the color has always been on the facade of the side wall, but it is certainly not a dissonant

 

ik weet niet wat hier in dit ensemble bij elkaar hoort maar het pandje met de trapgevel is het korendragershuisje, een rijksmonument met een overkaagde zijgevel (nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korendragershuisje#/media/File:Zakk...)

World-renowned Australian pianist, Simon Tedeschi undertakes one of the greatest works in keyboard literature in this sublime all-Russian programme.

 

Tedeschi traverses the tumultuous sounds of ever-changing Russia in this exquisite performance embracing the nostalgic beauty of Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young, the dark dissonant textures of Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives and Mussorgsky’s magnificent, Pictures at an Exhibition - a masterpiece and imposing mountain for any concert pianist. Inspired by Mussorgsky’s friend, the celebrated Russian artist Viktor Hartmann, this masterwork offers audiences a walk inside Mussorgsky’s mind as he surveys an exhibition of Hartmann’s work in a country where at times, art has been the only beacon of hope and transformation.

 

Celebrating the launch of his highly anticipated solo album for ABC Classics, the ARIA Award-nominated Tedeschi brings his trademark virtuosity and captivating magic to these works in an unforgettable afternoon of iconic, Russian classical music.

Highway 401 westbound 21 Mar 2020

"When the sun has swept upon the waveless lake

And the mists steal in with ease

Covened wolves arc their eerie dissonant napes

In adoration of the moon and thee

 

"They call as I to thee..."

 

And I will come, as if in dream

My languid, dark and lustrous Malaresian Queen

Of vengeful, ancient breed

Gilded with the pelts of many enemies

Erishkigal, raven-haired

Thy seduction haunts the castle in erotic despair

I can taste thy scent by candlelight

Legs of porcelain traced and laced to their lair

Appease the beast on spattered sheets

Dyed unearthly red as sobriety weeps

Nocternity...

She shall come for me

 

A black velvet painting sprung to elegant life

Like a poignant Madonna perverted to night

And I have ridden from the westerning light

To expend my lust

Tear away the funereal dress

Know that I will escape from my death

Surrendered to the splendour of her sharpened caress

 

Lo! The pale moonlight

Weaves a poetic spell of vital death and decline

Of mist and moth and the hunger inside

Kisses took to fever and fever, demise

 

"Through twilight, darkness and moonrise

My scarlet tears will run

As stolen blood and whispered love

Of fantasies undone"

 

Countess swathed in ebony

And snow-white balletic grace

Rouge-filmed lips procure the wish

For lust and her disgrace

 

Dusk and her embrace

 

We shall flit through the shadows

Like a dream of (were)wolves in the snow

Under deady nightshade

Still warmed with the kills of afterglow

 

Beneath the stars thy flesh bedevils me

(Beneath the stars taste the death in me)

Bequeath to me thy fiery kiss

To sever thin mortality

 

Elizabeth

My heart is thine

Thy fragrant words

Warm within like wine...

 

"Let me come to thee

with eyes like Asphodel

Moon-glacing, loose desires free

To writhe under my spell"

 

Erishkigal, raven-haired

Thy seduction haunts the castle in erotic despair

I know thy scent by candlelight

Immortal flesh I yearn to share

Appease the beast on spattered sheets

Dyed malefic red as sobriety weeps

Nocternity

She shall come for me...

 

Unfurl thy limbs breathless succubus

How the full embosomed fog

Imparts the night to us"

 

- Lyrics by CoF

Mijaíl Ivánovich Glinka (en ruso: Михаил Иванович Глинка; Novospásskoie, provincia de Smolensk, 1 de junio de 1804-Berlín, 15 de febrero de 1857) fue un compositor ruso, considerado el padre del nacionalismo musical ruso.

Durante sus viajes visitó España, donde conoció y admiró la música popular española, de la cual utilizó el estilo de la jota en su obra La jota aragonesa. Recuerdos de Castilla, basado en su prolífica estancia en Fresdelval, «Recuerdo de una noche de verano en Madrid», sobre la base de la obertura La noche en Madrid, son parte de su música orquestal. El método utilizado por Glinka para arreglar la forma y orquestación son influencia del folclore español. Las nuevas ideas de Glinka fueron plasmadas en “Las oberturas españolas”.

Glinka fue el primer compositor ruso en ser reconocido fuera de su país y, generalmente, se lo considera el 'padre' de la música rusa. Su trabajo ejerció una gran influencia en las generaciones siguientes de compositores de su país.

Sus obras más conocidas son las óperas Una vida por el Zar (1836), la primera ópera nacionalista rusa, y Ruslán y Liudmila (1842), cuyo libreto fue escrito por Aleksandr Pushkin y su obertura se suele interpretar en las salas de concierto. En Una vida por el Zar alternan arias de tipo italiano con melodías populares rusas. No obstante, la alta sociedad occidentalizada no admitió fácilmente esa intrusión de "lo vulgar" en un género tradicional como la ópera.

Sus obras orquestales son menos conocidas.

Inspiró a un grupo de compositores a reunirse (más tarde, serían conocidos como "los cinco": Modest Músorgski, Nikolái Rimski-Kórsakov, Aleksandr Borodín, Cesar Cui, Mili Balákirev) para crear música basada en la cultura rusa. Este grupo, más tarde, fundaría la Escuela Nacionalista Rusa. Es innegable la influencia de Glinka en otros compositores como Vasili Kalínnikov, Mijaíl Ippolítov-Ivánov, y aún en Piotr Chaikovski.

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mijaíl_Glinka

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Cinco_(compositores)

  

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаил Иванович Глинка; 1 June [O.S. 20 May] 1804 – 15 February [O.S. 3 February] 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music.

Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, not far from the Desna River in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Yelninsky District of the Smolensk Oblast). His wealthy father had retired as an army captain, and the family had a strong tradition of loyalty and service to the tsars, while several members of his extended family had also developed a lively interest in culture. His great-great-grandfather was a Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman, Wiktoryn Władysław Glinka of the Trzaska coat of arms.

As a small child, Mikhail was raised by his over-protective and pampering paternal grandmother, who fed him sweets, wrapped him in furs, and confined him to her room, which was always to be kept at 25 °C (77 °F); accordingly, he developed a sickly disposition, later in his life retaining the services of numerous physicians, and often falling victim to a number of quacks. The only music he heard in his youthful confinement was the sounds of the village church bells and the folk songs of passing peasant choirs. The church bells were tuned to a dissonant chord and so his ears became used to strident harmony. While his nurse would sometimes sing folksongs, the peasant choirs who sang using the podgolosochnaya technique (an improvised style – literally under the voice – which uses improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced the way he later felt free to emancipate himself from the smooth progressions of Western harmony. After his grandmother's death, Glinka moved to his maternal uncle's estate some 10 kilometres (6 mi) away, and was able to hear his uncle's orchestra, whose repertoire included pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. At the age of about ten he heard them play a clarinet quartet by the Finnish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell. It had a profound effect upon him. "Music is my soul", he wrote many years later, recalling this experience. While his governess taught him Russian, German, French, and geography, he also received instruction on the piano and the violin.

At the age of 13, Glinka went to the capital, Saint Petersburg, to study at a school for children of the nobility. Here he learned Latin, English, and Persian, studied mathematics and zoology, and considerably widened his musical experience. He had three piano lessons from John Field, the Irish composer of nocturnes, who spent some time in Saint Petersburg. He then continued his piano lessons with Charles Mayer and began composing.

When he left school his father wanted him to join the Foreign Office, and he was appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Public Highways. The work was light, which allowed Glinka to settle into the life of a musical dilettante, frequenting the drawing rooms and social gatherings of the city. He was already composing a large amount of music, such as melancholy romances which amused the rich amateurs. His songs are among the most interesting part of his output from this period.

In 1830, at the recommendation of a physician, Glinka decided to travel to Italy with the tenor Nikolai Kuzmich Ivanov. The journey took a leisurely pace, ambling uneventfully through Germany and Switzerland, before they settled in Milan. There, Glinka took lessons at the conservatory with Francesco Basili, although he struggled with counterpoint, which he found irksome. Although he spent his three years in Italy listening to singers of the day, romancing women with his music, and meeting many famous people including Mendelssohn and Berlioz, he became disenchanted with Italy. He realized that his mission in life was to return to Russia, write in a Russian manner, and do for Russian music what Donizetti and Bellini had done for Italian music. His return route took him through the Alps, and he stopped for a while in Vienna, where he heard the music of Franz Liszt. He stayed for another five months in Berlin, during which time he studied composition under the distinguished teacher Siegfried Dehn. A Capriccio on Russian themes for piano duet and an unfinished Symphony on two Russian themes were important products of this period.

When word reached Glinka of his father's death in 1834, he left Berlin and returned to Novospasskoye.

While in Berlin, Glinka had become enamored with a beautiful and talented singer, for whom he composed Six Studies for Contralto. He contrived a plan to return to her, but when his sister's German maid turned up without the necessary paperwork to cross to the border with him, he abandoned his plan as well as his love and turned north for Saint Petersburg. There he reunited with his mother, and made the acquaintance of Maria Petrovna Ivanova. After he courted her for a brief period, the two married. The marriage was short-lived, as Maria was tactless and uninterested in his music. Although his initial fondness for her was said to have inspired the trio in the first act of opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), his naturally sweet disposition coarsened under the constant nagging of his wife and her mother. After separating, she remarried. Glinka moved in with his mother, and later with his sister, Lyudmila Shestakova.

A Life for the Tsar was the first of Glinka's two great operas. It was originally entitled Ivan Susanin. Set in 1612, it tells the story of the Russian peasant and patriotic hero Ivan Susanin who sacrifices his life for the Tsar by leading astray a group of marauding Poles who were hunting him. The Tsar himself followed the work's progress with interest and suggested the change in the title. It was a great success at its premiere on 9 December 1836, under the direction of Catterino Cavos, who had written an opera on the same subject in Italy. Although the music is still more Italianate than Russian, Glinka shows superb handling of the recitative which binds the whole work, and the orchestration is masterly, foreshadowing the orchestral writing of later Russian composers. The Tsar rewarded Glinka for his work with a ring valued at 4,000 rubles. (During the Soviet era, the opera was staged under its original title Ivan Susanin).

In 1837, Glinka was installed as the instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir, with a yearly salary of 25,000 rubles, and lodging at the court. In 1838, at the suggestion of the Tsar, he went off to Ukraine to gather new voices for the choir; the 19 new boys he found earned him another 1,500 rubles from the Tsar.

He soon embarked on his second opera: Ruslan and Lyudmila. The plot, based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin, was concocted in 15 minutes by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time. Consequently, the opera is a dramatic muddle, yet the quality of Glinka's music is higher than in A Life for the Tsar. He uses a descending whole tone scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor who has abducted Lyudmila, daughter of the Prince of Kiev. There is much Italianate coloratura, and Act 3 contains several routine ballet numbers, but his great achievement in this opera lies in his use of folk melody which becomes thoroughly infused into the musical argument. Much of the borrowed folk material is oriental in origin. When it was first performed on 9 December 1842, it met with a cool reception, although it subsequently gained popularity.

Glinka went through a dejected year after the poor reception of Ruslan and Lyudmila. His spirits rose when he travelled to Paris and Spain. In Spain, Glinka met Don Pedro Fernández, who remained his secretary and companion for the last nine years of his life. In Paris, Hector Berlioz conducted some excerpts from Glinka’s operas and wrote an appreciative article about him. Glinka in turn admired Berlioz’s music and resolved to compose some fantasies pittoresques for orchestra. Another visit to Paris followed in 1852 where he spent two years, living quietly and making frequent visits to the botanical and zoological gardens. From there he moved to Berlin where, after five months, he died suddenly on 15 February 1857, following a cold. He was buried in Berlin but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and re-interred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Glinka was the beginning of a new direction in the development of music in Russia Musical culture arrived in Russia from Europe, and for the first time specifically Russian music began to appear, based on the European music culture, in the operas of the composer Mikhail Glinka. Different historical events were often used in the music, but for the first time they were presented in a realistic manner.

The first to note this new musical direction was Alexander Serov. He was then supported by his friend Vladimir Stasov, who became the theorist of this musical direction. This direction was developed later by composers of "The Five".

The modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov thus summed up: "There is not the development of Russian musical culture without...three operas – Ivan Soussanine, Ruslan and Ludmila and the Stone Guest have created Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Soussanine is an opera where the main character is the people, Ruslan is the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue, and in Guest, the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound." Two of these operas – Ivan Soussanine and Ruslan and Ludmila – were composed by Glinka.

Since this time, the Russian culture began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in world culture.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Glinka

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_(composers)

 

As stale thoughts disappear,

Through Morpheus pathways.

I am in wake but dreaming.

 

View on BLACK

World of Pleasure 2016

4 June 2016

Utrecht, Netherlands

World of Pleasure 2016 is a Hardstyle Festival with various stages. Beside the hard music you can find various rides on a beautiful areal. Hardstyle is an electronic dance genre mixing influences from hard techno and hardcore. Hardstyle typically consists of a deep, hard-sounding kick drum, intense faded or reversed basslines accompanying the beat, a dissonant synth melody, and detuned and distorted sounds. Many hardcore artists produce hardstyle tracks as well, and many newer Hardstyle tracks are written in compound time.

 

World of Pleasure's electronic pop-up wonderland will be back in Utrecht next June for a day of bold and brilliant staging, soundtracked by DJs that sweep from EDM to hardstyle with sprinkles of house.

 

Setting up various stages on the site of Down Under – a lakeside wooded area – World of Pleasure's lineup of both our favourite DJs and psychedelic pyrotechnics and visuals are sure to make a Saturday to remember.

 

Now regarded as one of the best boutique festivals in Europe, World of Pleasure's authentic Dutch party is yet another reason to make the trip to Utrecht.

World of Pleasure 2016 Lineup

The Mad Mainstage (EDM/House)

 

Jay Hardway, The Partysquad, Vato Gonzalez & MC Tjen, TONY JUNIOR, La Fuente, Lucas & Steve, Holl & Rush, Mike Williams

 

The Freaky Factory (Hardstyle - hosted by Dedicated)

 

Frontliner, Frequencerz, E-Force, Titan, Regain, Sub Sonik vs Artifact, Audiotricz, Avana

 

The Crazy Carrousel (Eclectic/ Urban - hosted by The Backyard)

 

GIOCATORI ft. Lil Kleine, DYNA, Lady Bee, Freddy Moreira, Moombahteam, ChildsPlay, DROPSHOT, GIO BROWN, George Felix

World of Pleasure 2016 Venue

Down Under

Ravensewetering 1

3439 ZZ Utrecht

Netherlands

Watersports, paintballing and boot camps are usually the order of the day at Down Under – an open space with its own lake and woodland in Utrecht. But when World of Pleasure takes over, it turns into a fairground of wonder under the summer sun. EDM is featured on the main stage, while Hardstyle plays in a tent. dancegeo.com/event/world-of-pleasure-2016/

"A clean jewel of steel and glass softened by the trees of St. Mary's Square, the narrow three-story box looks less like a building than a pristine diagram that happens to be displayed amid battered masonry and happily dissonant cable cars. An especially deft touch is the circular staircase; placed in the most visible corner, it makes the interior life of the building part of the overall design." A.E. Waegerman, 3 stories, 1964

 

Excerpt from the book CITYSCAPES by John King

A moving lens test for a Tair 3 300mm lens with a little Carl Zeiss 135mm filmed on a Pentax K3.

 

The music is Aka Pygmy. There is a good map on this page www.wikiwand.com/en/Aka_people that shows the geographical relationship between the Baka, Aka and Mbuti Pygmies - all heavily studied and listened to for their contribution to polyphony and music itself. It's also worth clicking on the 'Twa' links to compete the map for Pygmy populations from further to the south.

 

In western culture, we are all very aware of phatic conversations, and there is a sense that these repeated social contacts are 'sung' rather than spoken in Pygmy culture, along with song themes of comic derision and songs of rites, quotidian and season. The tribes move in the forest from time to time, and their new loci greet new variations of melody and composition. Creative skills are thus favoured. In this song, it's interesting to hear the two voices floating apart and then coming together aside the same note - a 'quarter' note apart - offering a pleasant and slightly dissonant ring. These close alliages of voice may be compared with some aspects of Basque polyphony and Bulgarian ancestral polyphonic music amongst other examples - each individual helping to make a new quality of sound outside of themselves. The free floating duet of this song is labelled as a lullaby, and whilst this seems credible, it is important to hear the thoughts of a good translator as there are papers on the subject of song-topics that take issue regarding the weights and measures of some semantic interpretations.

 

Bondo: Mbola, pt 2

Copyright is through Believe for Ocora B00007B5TP

 

AJM March-Sept 2019

 

Press play and then 'L' and even f11. Escape and f11 a second time to return.

  

Mijaíl Ivánovich Glinka (en ruso: Михаил Иванович Глинка; Novospásskoie, provincia de Smolensk, 1 de junio de 1804-Berlín, 15 de febrero de 1857) fue un compositor ruso, considerado el padre del nacionalismo musical ruso.

Durante sus viajes visitó España, donde conoció y admiró la música popular española, de la cual utilizó el estilo de la jota en su obra La jota aragonesa. Recuerdos de Castilla, basado en su prolífica estancia en Fresdelval, «Recuerdo de una noche de verano en Madrid», sobre la base de la obertura La noche en Madrid, son parte de su música orquestal. El método utilizado por Glinka para arreglar la forma y orquestación son influencia del folclore español. Las nuevas ideas de Glinka fueron plasmadas en “Las oberturas españolas”.

Glinka fue el primer compositor ruso en ser reconocido fuera de su país y, generalmente, se lo considera el 'padre' de la música rusa. Su trabajo ejerció una gran influencia en las generaciones siguientes de compositores de su país.

Sus obras más conocidas son las óperas Una vida por el Zar (1836), la primera ópera nacionalista rusa, y Ruslán y Liudmila (1842), cuyo libreto fue escrito por Aleksandr Pushkin y su obertura se suele interpretar en las salas de concierto. En Una vida por el Zar alternan arias de tipo italiano con melodías populares rusas. No obstante, la alta sociedad occidentalizada no admitió fácilmente esa intrusión de "lo vulgar" en un género tradicional como la ópera.

Sus obras orquestales son menos conocidas.

Inspiró a un grupo de compositores a reunirse (más tarde, serían conocidos como "los cinco": Modest Músorgski, Nikolái Rimski-Kórsakov, Aleksandr Borodín, Cesar Cui, Mili Balákirev) para crear música basada en la cultura rusa. Este grupo, más tarde, fundaría la Escuela Nacionalista Rusa. Es innegable la influencia de Glinka en otros compositores como Vasili Kalínnikov, Mijaíl Ippolítov-Ivánov, y aún en Piotr Chaikovski.

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mijaíl_Glinka

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Cinco_(compositores)

  

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаил Иванович Глинка; 1 June [O.S. 20 May] 1804 – 15 February [O.S. 3 February] 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. Glinka's compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka's lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music.

Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, not far from the Desna River in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Yelninsky District of the Smolensk Oblast). His wealthy father had retired as an army captain, and the family had a strong tradition of loyalty and service to the tsars, while several members of his extended family had also developed a lively interest in culture. His great-great-grandfather was a Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman, Wiktoryn Władysław Glinka of the Trzaska coat of arms.

As a small child, Mikhail was raised by his over-protective and pampering paternal grandmother, who fed him sweets, wrapped him in furs, and confined him to her room, which was always to be kept at 25 °C (77 °F); accordingly, he developed a sickly disposition, later in his life retaining the services of numerous physicians, and often falling victim to a number of quacks. The only music he heard in his youthful confinement was the sounds of the village church bells and the folk songs of passing peasant choirs. The church bells were tuned to a dissonant chord and so his ears became used to strident harmony. While his nurse would sometimes sing folksongs, the peasant choirs who sang using the podgolosochnaya technique (an improvised style – literally under the voice – which uses improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced the way he later felt free to emancipate himself from the smooth progressions of Western harmony. After his grandmother's death, Glinka moved to his maternal uncle's estate some 10 kilometres (6 mi) away, and was able to hear his uncle's orchestra, whose repertoire included pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. At the age of about ten he heard them play a clarinet quartet by the Finnish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell. It had a profound effect upon him. "Music is my soul", he wrote many years later, recalling this experience. While his governess taught him Russian, German, French, and geography, he also received instruction on the piano and the violin.

At the age of 13, Glinka went to the capital, Saint Petersburg, to study at a school for children of the nobility. Here he learned Latin, English, and Persian, studied mathematics and zoology, and considerably widened his musical experience. He had three piano lessons from John Field, the Irish composer of nocturnes, who spent some time in Saint Petersburg. He then continued his piano lessons with Charles Mayer and began composing.

When he left school his father wanted him to join the Foreign Office, and he was appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Public Highways. The work was light, which allowed Glinka to settle into the life of a musical dilettante, frequenting the drawing rooms and social gatherings of the city. He was already composing a large amount of music, such as melancholy romances which amused the rich amateurs. His songs are among the most interesting part of his output from this period.

In 1830, at the recommendation of a physician, Glinka decided to travel to Italy with the tenor Nikolai Kuzmich Ivanov. The journey took a leisurely pace, ambling uneventfully through Germany and Switzerland, before they settled in Milan. There, Glinka took lessons at the conservatory with Francesco Basili, although he struggled with counterpoint, which he found irksome. Although he spent his three years in Italy listening to singers of the day, romancing women with his music, and meeting many famous people including Mendelssohn and Berlioz, he became disenchanted with Italy. He realized that his mission in life was to return to Russia, write in a Russian manner, and do for Russian music what Donizetti and Bellini had done for Italian music. His return route took him through the Alps, and he stopped for a while in Vienna, where he heard the music of Franz Liszt. He stayed for another five months in Berlin, during which time he studied composition under the distinguished teacher Siegfried Dehn. A Capriccio on Russian themes for piano duet and an unfinished Symphony on two Russian themes were important products of this period.

When word reached Glinka of his father's death in 1834, he left Berlin and returned to Novospasskoye.

While in Berlin, Glinka had become enamored with a beautiful and talented singer, for whom he composed Six Studies for Contralto. He contrived a plan to return to her, but when his sister's German maid turned up without the necessary paperwork to cross to the border with him, he abandoned his plan as well as his love and turned north for Saint Petersburg. There he reunited with his mother, and made the acquaintance of Maria Petrovna Ivanova. After he courted her for a brief period, the two married. The marriage was short-lived, as Maria was tactless and uninterested in his music. Although his initial fondness for her was said to have inspired the trio in the first act of opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), his naturally sweet disposition coarsened under the constant nagging of his wife and her mother. After separating, she remarried. Glinka moved in with his mother, and later with his sister, Lyudmila Shestakova.

A Life for the Tsar was the first of Glinka's two great operas. It was originally entitled Ivan Susanin. Set in 1612, it tells the story of the Russian peasant and patriotic hero Ivan Susanin who sacrifices his life for the Tsar by leading astray a group of marauding Poles who were hunting him. The Tsar himself followed the work's progress with interest and suggested the change in the title. It was a great success at its premiere on 9 December 1836, under the direction of Catterino Cavos, who had written an opera on the same subject in Italy. Although the music is still more Italianate than Russian, Glinka shows superb handling of the recitative which binds the whole work, and the orchestration is masterly, foreshadowing the orchestral writing of later Russian composers. The Tsar rewarded Glinka for his work with a ring valued at 4,000 rubles. (During the Soviet era, the opera was staged under its original title Ivan Susanin).

In 1837, Glinka was installed as the instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir, with a yearly salary of 25,000 rubles, and lodging at the court. In 1838, at the suggestion of the Tsar, he went off to Ukraine to gather new voices for the choir; the 19 new boys he found earned him another 1,500 rubles from the Tsar.

He soon embarked on his second opera: Ruslan and Lyudmila. The plot, based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin, was concocted in 15 minutes by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time. Consequently, the opera is a dramatic muddle, yet the quality of Glinka's music is higher than in A Life for the Tsar. He uses a descending whole tone scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor who has abducted Lyudmila, daughter of the Prince of Kiev. There is much Italianate coloratura, and Act 3 contains several routine ballet numbers, but his great achievement in this opera lies in his use of folk melody which becomes thoroughly infused into the musical argument. Much of the borrowed folk material is oriental in origin. When it was first performed on 9 December 1842, it met with a cool reception, although it subsequently gained popularity.

Glinka went through a dejected year after the poor reception of Ruslan and Lyudmila. His spirits rose when he travelled to Paris and Spain. In Spain, Glinka met Don Pedro Fernández, who remained his secretary and companion for the last nine years of his life. In Paris, Hector Berlioz conducted some excerpts from Glinka’s operas and wrote an appreciative article about him. Glinka in turn admired Berlioz’s music and resolved to compose some fantasies pittoresques for orchestra. Another visit to Paris followed in 1852 where he spent two years, living quietly and making frequent visits to the botanical and zoological gardens. From there he moved to Berlin where, after five months, he died suddenly on 15 February 1857, following a cold. He was buried in Berlin but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and re-interred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery.

Glinka was the beginning of a new direction in the development of music in Russia Musical culture arrived in Russia from Europe, and for the first time specifically Russian music began to appear, based on the European music culture, in the operas of the composer Mikhail Glinka. Different historical events were often used in the music, but for the first time they were presented in a realistic manner.

The first to note this new musical direction was Alexander Serov. He was then supported by his friend Vladimir Stasov, who became the theorist of this musical direction. This direction was developed later by composers of "The Five".

The modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov thus summed up: "There is not the development of Russian musical culture without...three operas – Ivan Soussanine, Ruslan and Ludmila and the Stone Guest have created Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Soussanine is an opera where the main character is the people, Ruslan is the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue, and in Guest, the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound." Two of these operas – Ivan Soussanine and Ruslan and Ludmila – were composed by Glinka.

Since this time, the Russian culture began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in world culture.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Glinka

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_(composers)

 

No Photoshop or Lightroom - just RAW

Using an archive 135mm fixed focal Pentax-M on a K-50

 

A late iron age walled settlement on the west coast of the Isle of Arran.

 

This type of earthwork focal settlement is known as a Dun. This Dun is just outside of Sliddery. The current translation of Dun is 'fort' - as in hill fort. The problem with the word 'fort' is that it implies a military function. This dun earthwork is aside a freshwater river by a beach that might provide harbor for small vessels. The raised nature of this earthwork lifts a set of settlement essentials above periods of flooding. The raised earthwork boundary served to secure fencing against storm winds, helping to assure simple roofs when they are most needed.

 

As a military position this dun seems to be awkward at best. Off picture to both the left and right are low cliffs. The military advantages of placing a 'fort' onto a hill are many but do not seem to have been deemed relevant for this project. The camera rested on a fence post that was on a hill looking down. Outflanking the dun and running at speed from this camera position would have been all too easy. Today an attractive and functional proud settlement would not be known as a military barrack. Of the UK's 3,300 hill 'forts' from the late bronze age and Iron age, there are some that have obvious military earthworks with practical war forethought in the same way that some of histories villages had military walls build around them. Because some medieval villages were military does not.make them all military, even if they were built on high visibility hills, with the word 'fort' seeming to pamper to those who see man's progress as a battle with inevitable bloodshed and tribal immiscibility.

 

Defending against 'bandits' is closer to issues of 'policing' than organized military power between different dissonant peoples, and this dun will have offered protection from rogue individuals or small groups - protection for key livestock, prestigious goods and young or old individuals.

 

The idea of a military 'fort' is associated with issues of boundaries between peoples. Rather than at an edge, a raised earthworrk settlement can be a hub for a dissipation of activities out into the adjacent influence. Height also gives presence and elevation to the identity of a community. Sound and light travel further - should communication be attractive. Sacred hills may also be harsh but logical loci for admiration and foundation.

 

A raised earthwork settlement (RES) might be modified to look tough, it might be modified for real military use or remain relatively passive and attractive for visits and markets. When modified it might join the continuum of active military 'forts' and "macho statement" settlements, otherwise - life goes on...

 

AJM 6.11.17

  

William A. Austin - Commit the Sins

Newsstand Library U165, 1961

Cover Artist: Robert Bonfils

 

"Her passions swirled with the smoke, as dissonant and savage as the jazz from the stand, building up into a wild and frantic crescendo."

 

My adoration spreads wings

 

When thou commandest me to sing

it seems that my heart would break with pride;

and I look to thy face, and tears come to my eyes.

All that is harsh and dissonant in my life

melts into one sweet harmony -

and my adoration spreads wings

like a glad bird on its flight across the sea.

 

I know thou takest pleasure in my singing.

I know that only as a singer I come before thy presence.

I touch by the edge of the far-spreading wing of my song

thy feet which I could never aspire to reach.

Drunk with the joy of singing I forget myself

and call thee friend who art my lord

  

GITANJALI

Songofferings

by Rabindranath Tagore

ADJECTIVES 101 ~ Dissonant