View allAll Photos Tagged Periphery
President Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt toured the Gaza periphery area, visited Ziv Hospital in Safed, and the Old City of Jerusalem, August 29-30, 2017.
Periphery & Animals As Leaders @ Brooklyn Bowl 11.22.2017
2017 © Fred Morledge - www.PhotoFM.com
For licensing or prints of these images, please contact Fred@PhotoFM.com
Periphery & Animals As Leaders @ Brooklyn Bowl 11.22.2017
2017 © Fred Morledge - www.PhotoFM.com
For licensing or prints of these images, please contact Fred@PhotoFM.com
President Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt toured the Gaza periphery area, visited Ziv Hospital in Safed, and the Old City of Jerusalem, August 29-30, 2017.
President Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt toured the Gaza periphery area, visited Ziv Hospital in Safed, and the Old City of Jerusalem, August 29-30, 2017.
Periphery
Summer Slaughter Tour
@ House Of Blues
Hollywood, CA
July 20, 2012
All Photos © Kaley Nelson - www.KaleyNelson.com
If ever there was a band that deserved a better place to play for this night, it is Periphery. The stage was almost non-existent and the lighting was horrible. There were times when you could not even see the band since the lighting was so uneven. My pictures reflect this. However, Periphery did not disappoint. They are technical wizards on their respective instruments. And they have fun on stage!
Si jamás fuera una banda que mereciera un mejor sitio para tocar, sería Periphery. Casi no existía algo que se llamaría un escenario y la iluminación era horrible. Había ocasiones en las que ni siquiera se podía ver la banda debido a las luces tan inconsistentes e irregulares. Mis fotos reflejan esto. No obstante, Periphery no me desilusionó. Todos los integrantes son magos técnicos en sus instrumentos respectivos. ¡Y se divierten en el escenario!
From left to right: Mark Holcomb, Jake Bowen, Misha Mansoor, Spencer Sotelo, and Matt Halpern
A quick photo of Periphery right outside of Oceanic Recording studio in bethesda right after European Dream Theater tour and just before Protest the Hero tour.
I got to listen to some of the songs they've recorded and let me tell you, i cannot wait for the world to listen to their new album, it's EPIC!
Strobist:
One light AB800 into octabox right camera feathered.
Fonte official FB page:
Over the course of Devin Townsend’s storied career, a single constant has persevered: change. As far back as Steve Vai’s Sex & Religion, which Townsend fronted, to 2001’s landmark full-length Terria to the multi-instrumentalist’s country rock outfit Casualties of Cool to his stunning new album Transcendence, the Canadian isn’t too interested in keeping an even musical keel. To stay the proverbial course is, well, anathema. For certain, he’s far too impatient to write the same Strapping Young Lad song over and over—which is why he folded the band in 2007—and it’s likely there will never be a fourth or fifth Ziltoid album (a third if we’re lucky) because by that point he’ll be in a totally different frame of mind for galactic puppets gone awry.
“The Devin Townsend Project is still essentially a solo project,” he reminds. “One of several, but the difference is that I've had a dedicated team of talented folks here that really had great ideas. of the ways I consciously stepped out of my comfort zone was to the solicit feedback from not only the band, but also to production and engineering. Opinions from people I trust at the management and label, and all with a sense of building a kind of archetype of the DTP sound that would not ostracize people who enjoy the style, but keeping it fresh for me as well. One of the things I did was present my vision—which I’ve always done—and within that framework, I’d massage it with the team. For this record, in those sections, I’d bring it to the band and say, ‘Look guys, here’s what it’s supposed to do. This is how it’s supposed to make me feel. And how the audience is supposed to feel. This is how it interacts with the parts prior and after. That’s why it exists. It’s not complicated because we’re trying to jerk off here. It’s complicated because, in my mind, the emotional component of the section is complicated. But in lieu of how quickly I tend to purge music I’m thinking: how can we make it cooler while I can still move quickly? 'Here’s the basic chord structure guys, this is what I think it should basically do, be it angular or in thirds or whatnot... Dave [Young; guitars] and Mike [St-Jean; keyboards] Ryan (VanPoederooyen: drums) and Brian (Waddell: bass) , can you think of something cooler there? I’ll be back tomorrow.’”
“It took a year to try and figure out a template for what DTP should be and still be of interest to me,” remembers Townsend, “And as much as I’ve been a control freak for so long, I’m also at an age where I recognize those elements—like friends—in my life are ultimately more important than music, and the need to control something like the DTP at this point is more rooted in insecurity now that necessity. I do enjoy being part of a team. I like to think after so many records with these guys that I don't really have to be at the center of everything. I can trust a team of people—the right people—to help where I need help. I need an engineer who has better ears than me. My ears are getting tired after all these years. If you put together a team whose strengths are better than yours, and then you put in your strengths, then what comes out of it, for no other reason than for an experiment, is really cool. And in line with my need for a project to have a theme to draw me into it, That’s what this records theme became. It’s an experiment put to music. If anything really kick started the inspiration for the record, it was that. The desire to get the DTP 'right' for what it is.”
Recorded at The Armoury Studios in Vancouver, Canada with Townsend and Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood (Periphery, Animals as Leaders), Transcendence sounds absolutely massive. From the moment ‘Truth’—a re-work from the Infinity album—monstrously blends into the soul-stirring ‘Stormbending’ to the undulating cool of mid-point jam ‘Secret Sciences’ and Ween cover ‘Transdermal Celebration’, Townsend and crew have engineered a modern-day classic. The sheer scale of tracks like ‘Failure’, ‘Higher’, and the majestic title track is at once daunting and inviting. Transcendence pulls the listener in like a movie score. It has the emotional heft of Rosenman’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and the mega-riff power of Black-era Metallica.
Even if Transcendence had its 'bikini wax' moments—(Townsend metaphorically refers to his process as 'professionally hitting myself in the face with a hammer')—the final product is fantastic. In many ways, it’s typical The Devin Townsend Project, however there is now an inviting sense of depth and relative breathing room in the sound. Always professional and sonically awash in darks, lights, and colors between, it turned out not only to be an acceptable new DTP record, but arguably one of the best. What also added to the overall quality was the addition of five guest musicians—including but not limited to ex-The Gathering vocalist Anneke Van Giersbergen, vocalists Ché Aimee Dorval and Katrina Natale—and a five-person choir called Tigers In A Tank. Their contribution to Transcendence’s overall ambiance is noteworthy and necessary.
“Well, I love working with female vocalists because I’m not particularly fond of singing and I really react emotionally to female voices,” posits the frontman. “I kind of fell into singing. I could never find someone who would sing like I wanted, so I begrudgingly took the job. Anneke’s obviously worked with me for a while now. Ché was on this record because she was with me in Casualties of Cool. And Katrina sang one song on the Ghost album. Also, I wanted the three of them on this record if this was to be the last DTP record. They bring it all together. So, sticking with the same people is the same reason I’ve been married for so long. Once I find great people, I have no need to look elsewhere for the similar things. It’s kind of great as it eliminates option paralysis in that area, though as different needs arise, often things evolve as well. As for the choir, it’s typically been inefficient. For the last record, I went to Amsterdam and it was crazy. I went to Sweden and it was cool but super-expensive. On Epicloud, I had a gospel choir, but had to over-dub a lot. For this one, I asked my buddy Eric [Severinson] to find three capable women and two men. I was able to create the choir by doing over-dubs and recording on-the-fly. It turned out great and it was very efficient.”
With over 60 songs in the bag for Transcendence, (not all, he is quick to point out, of the same quality) Townsend obviously had to pare down. The songs that made it, however, are breathtaking in their scope, beautiful in their presentation, and heavy—noticeably—enough to out-bombast the sum of The Devin Townsend Project’s previous full-lengths. Certainly, Townsend knows how he feels about the songs on Transcendence (and its accompanying second disc). Each song, from ‘Truth’ and ‘Secret Sciences’ to ‘Stars’ and ‘Offer Your Heart’, provoked a reaction from the man.
“My litmus test for whether or not a song or a record is working is really about my visceral reaction to it,” Townsend says. “If I react to it, then it’s correct, for me. That reaction could be repulsion, it could make me cry, it could irritate me, I could be loving it, it’s pretty much all the same. As long as I’m affected by the song, then I know I have something accurate.”
As for the Townsend’s loyal fans? The very fans who’ve been waiting with bated breath for Transcendence?
“If it gives me a reaction, then I hope it’ll contribute something to their world. Ultimately, I'm happy to contribute my observations to the massive sea of music. If there's anything that became clear to me throughout this all is the value of being part of something as opposed to being too concerned about 'being' the thing'
August 26th, 2016 - Periphery performs live at Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit, Michigan. Credit: Mirak Habbiyyieh. www.schwegweb.com
President Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt toured the Gaza periphery area, visited Ziv Hospital in Safed, and the Old City of Jerusalem, August 29-30, 2017.
Fotos para This is Rock
Su música
Please visit my site: www.hectorvila.es
Follow me on Twitter or Facebook
Don't use this image without my permission
"My candle is dead, I have no more fire", he has no more light, he seeks the light, he has no more fire (second reference to the 4 elements!) and it is indeed an initiatory idea to want to warm oneself with a candle. "Open your door to me", there, doubt is no longer possible, he asks for entry, for the door to be opened to him, "knock and it will be opened to you" says the ritual, especially if it is in the name of the love of God which in Scottish alchemy.. But the second stanza is even more edifying.
"In the moonlight", again, (he insists heavily), and Pierrot answers, as the inner guardian answers when the petitioner knocks at the door. And what does he say to him? I have no pen and someone who has no pen, he does not know how to write and if he does not know how to write one can imagine that he does not know how to read either and someone who knows neither read nor write...
"I", what is the hidden meaning of this sentence, I am in my bed? What do we do in our bed? ... I ask you... To be born and to die essentially, which are for the initiate two aspects of the same reality, to die to the profane life, to be born to the initiatory life. From this we can deduce that if the first character is in the reflection room and the master of ceremonies forgot to put a feather in it and that, obeying a moment of panic, this candidate tried to escape through the window and that by opening the draft extinguished his candle, Pierrot, himself, is already initiated or in the process of being initiated.
But, let's continue, "go to the neighbor's, I think she's there", what is the symbolism of the neighbor? I ask you... but, it's clear, the neighbor is the third term that allows us to go beyond the duality of the binary of Pierrot and his companion. In addition, she is the one who has all the feathers.
"Go to the kitchen", the kitchen, the place of transformations where by fire we transmute matter, this immediately makes us think of alchemy, which is confirmed by the last sentence of this second stanza: "we strike the lighter". The lighter, what is it if not what can give light to everyone. I will spare you the last two verses, because they seem to have been added later, everything is said in these first two verses.
Brot&sist, s doubt still possible? We have several references to the moon, the northern column, we have the 4 elements, fire, air in the draft that extinguished the candle, earth in the idea of the bed, therefore death, therefore to the coffin therefore to the cemetery and to water, the liquid element that is not explicitly revealed but suggested since it is not said that there is no ink to write. In addition, these are entire sections of our ritual that we find in this song.
Pierrot (/ˈpɪəroʊ/ PEER-oh, US also /ˈpiːəroʊ, ˌpiːəˈroʊ/ PEE-ə-roh, PEE-ə-ROH; French: [pjɛʁo] ⓘ), a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell'arte, has his origins in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne. The name is a diminutive of Pierre (Peter), using the suffix -ot and derives from the Italian Pedrolino. His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine (who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin). Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim and, more rarely, with a conical shape like a dunce's cap.
Pierrot's character developed from that of a buffoon to become an avatar of the disenfranchised.[1] Many cultural movements found him amenable to their respective causes: Decadents turned him into a disillusioned foe of idealism; Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer; Modernists made him into a silent, alienated observer of the mysteries of the human condition.[2] Much of that mythic quality ("I'm Pierrot," said David Bowie: "I'm Everyman")[3] still adheres to the "sad clown" in the postmodern era.
Origins: 17th century
Antoine Watteau: Italian Actors, c. 1719. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Pierrot is sometimes said to be a French variant of the sixteenth-century Italian Pedrolino,[4] but the two types have little but their names ("Little Pete") and social stations in common.[5] Both are comic servants, but Pedrolino, as a so-called "first" Zanni, often acts with cunning and daring.[6] an engine of the plot in the scenarios where he appears.[7] Pierrot, on the other hand, as a "second"' Zanni, stands "on the periphery of the action".[8] He dispenses advice and courts his master's young daughter, Columbine, bashfully.[9]
His origins among the Italian players in France go back to Molière's peasant Pierrot in Don Juan, or The Stone Guest (1665).[10] In 1673, the Comédie-Italienne made its own contribution to the Don Juan legend with an Addendum to "The Stone Guest",[11] which included Molière's Pierrot.[12] Thereafter the character—sometimes a peasant,[13] but more often now an Italianate "second" Zanni—appeared fairly regularly in the Italians' offerings, his role always taken by one Giuseppe Giaratone (or Geratoni, fl. 1639-1697).
Among the French dramatists writing roles for Pierrot were Jean de Palaprat, Claude-Ignace Brugière de Barante, Antoine Houdar de la Motte, and Jean-François Regnard.[14] They present him as an anomaly among busy social personalities around him.[15] Columbine laughs at his advances;[16] his masters who are in pursuit of pretty young wives brush off his warnings to act their age.[17] His isolation bears the pathos of Watteau's portraits.
18th century
France
Antoine Watteau: Gilles (or Pierrot) and Four Other Characters of the Commedia dell'Arte, c. 1718. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Nicolas Lancret: Actors of the Comédie-Italienne, between 1716 and 1736. Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Jean-Honoré Fragonard: A Boy as Pierrot, between 1776 and 1780. The Wallace Collection, London.
An Italian company was called back to Paris in 1716, and Pierrot was reincarnated by the actors Pierre-François Biancolelli (son of the Harlequin of the banished troupe of players) and, after Biancolelli abandoned the role, the celebrated Fabio Sticotti (1676–1741) and his son Antoine Jean (1715–1772).[18] But the character seems to have been regarded as unimportant by this company, since he appears infrequently in its new plays.[19]
The character appeared often in the 18th century on Parisian stages. Sometimes he spoke gibberish, sometimes the audience itself sang his lines, inscribed on placards held aloft.[20] He could appear as a valet, a cook, or an adventurer; his character is not strictly defined.[21]
In the 1720s, Pierrot came into his own. In plays such as Trophonius's Cave (1722) and The Golden Ass (1725),[22] one meets an engaging Pierrot. The accomplished comic actor Jean-Baptiste Hamoche portrayed him with success.[23] After 1733, he rarely appears in new plays.[24]
Pierrot also appeared in the visual arts and in folksongs ("Au clair de la lune").[25] The art of Claude Gillot (Master André's Tomb [c. 1717]), of Gillot's students Watteau (Italian Actors [c. 1719]) and Nicolas Lancret (Italian Actors near a Fountain [c. 1719]), of Jean-Baptiste Oudry (Italian Actors in a Park [c. 1725]), of Philippe Mercier (Pierrot and Harlequin [n.d.]), and of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (A Boy as Pierrot [1776–1780]), features him prominently.
England
As early as 1673, just months after Pierrot had made his debut in the Addendum to "The Stone Guest", Scaramouche Tiberio Fiorilli and a troupe assembled from the Comédie-Italienne entertained Londoners with selections from their Parisian repertoire.[26] And in 1717, Pierrot's name first appears in an English entertainment: a pantomime by John Rich entitled The Jealous Doctor; or, The Intriguing Dame. Thereafter, until the end of the century, Pierrot appeared fairly regularly in English pantomimes (which were originally mute harlequinades; in the 19th century, the harlequinade was a "play within a play" during the pantomime), finding his most notable interpreter in Carlo Delpini (1740–1828). Delpini, according to the popular-theater historian, M. Willson Disher, "kept strictly to the idea of a creature so stupid as to think that if he raised his leg level with his shoulder he could use it as a gun."[27] Pierrot was later displaced by the English clown.[28]
Denmark
In 1800, a troupe of Italian players led by Pasquale Casorti performed in Dyrehavsbakken. Casorti's son, Giuseppe (1749–1826), began appearing as Pierrot in pantomimes, which now had a formulaic plot structure.[29] Pierrot is still a fixture at Bakken, at nearby Tivoli Gardens and Tivoli Friheden in Aarhus.[30][31]
Francisco de Goya: Itinerant Actors (1793). Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Germany
Ludwig Tieck's The Topsy-Turvy World (1798) is an early—and highly successful—example of the introduction of the commedia dell'arte characters into parodic metatheater (Pierrot is a member of the audience watching the play).
Spain
The penetration of Pierrot and his companions of the commedia into Spain is documented in a painting by Goya, Itinerant Actors (1793). It foreshadows the work of such Spanish successors as Picasso and Fernand Pelez, both of whom also showed strong sympathy with the lives of traveling saltimbancos.
19th century
Pantomime of Deburau at the Théâtre des Funambules
Auguste Bouquet: Jean-Gaspard Deburau, c. 1830
The Théâtre des Funambules was a little theater licensed in its early years to present only mimed and acrobatic acts.[32] It was the home, beginning in 1816, of Jean-Gaspard Deburau (1796–1846),[33] the most famous Pierrot ever. He was immortalized by Jean-Louis Barrault in Marcel Carné's film Children of Paradise (1945).
Deburau, from the year 1825, was the only actor at the Funambules to play Pierrot,[34] and he did so in several types of pantomime: rustic, melodramatic, "realistic", and fantastic.[35] His style, according to Louis Péricaud, formed "an enormous contrast with the exuberance, the superabundance of gestures, of leaps, that ... his predecessors had employed".[36] He altered the costume: he dispensed with the frilled collaret, substituted a skullcap for a hat, and greatly increased the wide cut of both blouse and trousers. Deburau's Pierrot avoided the crude Pierrots—timid, sexless, lazy, and greedy—found in earlier pantomime.[37]
The Funambules Pierrot appealed to audiences in the faery-tale style which incorporate the commedia types. The plot often hinged on Cassander's pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine, having to deal with a clever and ambiguous Pierrot. Deburau early—about 1828—caught the attention of the Romantics.[38] In 1842, Théophile Gautier published a fake review of a "Shakespeare" pantomime he claimed to have seen at the Funambules.[39] It placed Pierrot in the company of over-reachers in high literature such as Don Juan or Macbeth.
Pantomime after Baptiste: Charles Deburau, Paul Legrand, and their successors
Nadar: Charles Deburau as Pierrot, 1854
Deburau's son, Jean-Charles (or, as he preferred, "Charles" [1829–1873]), assumed Pierrot's blouse the year after his father died.[40] Another important Pierrot of mid-century was Charles-Dominique-Martin Legrand, known as Paul Legrand (1816–1898; see photo at top of page). He began appearing at the Funambules as Pierrot in 1845.[41]
Georges Wague in one of the cantomimes (pantomimes performed to off-stage songs) of Xavier Privas. Poster by Charles Léandre, 1899.
Legrand left the Funambules in 1853 for the Folies-Nouvelles, which attracted the fashionable set, unlike the Funambules' working-class audiences. Legrand often appeared in realistic costume, his chalky face his only concession to tradition, leading some advocates of pantomime, such as Gautier, to lament that he was betraying the character of the type.[42] Legrand's Pierrot influenced future mimes.
Pantomime and late 19th-century art
France
Popular and literary pantomime
Atelier Nadar: Sarah Bernhardt in Jean Richepin's Pierrot the Murderer, 1883. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Anon.: Poster for Hanlon-Lees' Superba, 1890–1911. Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.
Jules Chéret: Title-page of Hennique and Huysmans' Pierrot the Skeptic, 1881
Paul Cézanne: Mardi gras (Pierrot and Harlequin), 1888, Pushkin Museum, Moscow
In the 1880s and 1890s, the pantomime reached a type of apogee, and Pierrot became ubiquitous.[43] Moreover, he acquired a female counterpart, Pierrette, who rivaled Columbine for his affections. A Cercle Funambulesque was founded in 1888, and Pierrot (sometimes played by female mimes, such as Félicia Mallet) dominated its productions until its demise in 1898.[44] Sarah Bernhardt even donned Pierrot's blouse for Jean Richepin's Pierrot the Murderer (1883).
But French mimes and actors were not the only figures responsible for Pierrot's ubiquity: the English Hanlon brothers (sometimes called the Hanlon-Lees), gymnasts and acrobats who had been schooled in the 1860s in pantomimes from Baptiste's repertoire, traveled (and dazzled) the world well into the 20th century with their pantomimic sketches and extravaganzas featuring riotously nightmarish Pierrots. The Naturalists—Émile Zola especially, who wrote glowingly of them—were captivated by their art.[45] Edmond de Goncourt modeled his acrobat-mimes in his The Zemganno Brothers (1879) upon them; J.-K. Huysmans (whose Against Nature [1884] would become Dorian Gray's bible) and his friend Léon Hennique wrote their pantomime Pierrot the Skeptic (1881) after seeing them perform at the Folies Bergère (and, in turn, Jules Laforgue wrote his pantomime Pierrot the Cut-Up [Pierrot fumiste, 1882][46] after reading the scenario by Huysmans and Hennique).[47] It was in part through the enthusiasm that they excited, coupled with the Impressionists' taste for popular entertainment, such as the circus and the music-hall, as well as the new bohemianism that then reigned in artistic quarters such as Montmartre (and which was celebrated by such denizens as Adolphe Willette, whose cartoons and canvases are crowded with Pierrots)—it was through all this that Pierrot achieved almost unprecedented currency and visibility towards the end of the century.
Visual arts, fiction, poetry, music, and film
He invaded the visual arts[48]—not only in the work of Willette, but also in the illustrations and posters of Jules Chéret;[49] in the engravings of Odilon Redon (The Swamp Flower: A Sad Human Head [1885]); and in the canvases of Georges Seurat (Pierrot with a White Pipe [Aman-Jean] [1883]; The Painter Aman-Jean as Pierrot [1883]), Léon Comerre (Pierrot [1884], Pierrot Playing the Mandolin [1884]), Henri Rousseau (A Carnival Night [1886]), Paul Cézanne (Mardi gras [Pierrot and Harlequin] [1888]), Fernand Pelez (Grimaces and Miseries a.k.a. The Saltimbanques [1888]), Pablo Picasso (Pierrot and Columbine [1900]), Guillaume Seignac (Pierrot's Embrace [1900]), Théophile Steinlen (Pierrot and the Cat [1889]), and Édouard Vuillard (The Black Pierrot [c. 1890]). The mime "Tombre" of Jean Richepin's novel Nice People (Braves Gens [1886]) turned him into a pathetic and alcoholic "phantom"; Paul Verlaine imagined him as a gormandizing naïf in "Pantomime" (1869), then, like Tombre, as a lightning-lit specter in "Pierrot" (1868, pub. 1882).[50] Laforgue put three of the "complaints" of his first published volume of poems (1885) into "Lord" Pierrot's mouth—and dedicated his next book, The Imitation of Our Lady the Moon (1886), completely to Pierrot and his world (Pierrots were legion among the minor, now-forgotten poets: for samples, see Willette's journal The Pierrot, which appeared between 1888 and 1889, then again in 1891). In the realm of song, Claude Debussy set both Verlaine's "Pantomime" and Banville's "Pierrot" (1842) to music in 1881 (not published until 1926)—the only precedents among works by major composers being the "Pierrot" section of Telemann's Burlesque Overture (1717–22), Mozart's 1783 "Masquerade" (in which Mozart himself took the role of Harlequin and his brother-in-law, Joseph Lange, that of Pierrot),[51] and the "Pierrot" section of Robert Schumann's Carnival (1835).[52] Even the embryonic art of the motion picture turned to Pierrot before the century was out: he appeared, not only in early celluloid shorts (Georges Méliès's The Nightmare [1896], The Magician [1898]; Alice Guy's Arrival of Pierrette and Pierrot [1900], Pierrette's Amorous Adventures [1900]; Ambroise-François Parnaland's Pierrot's Big Head/Pierrot's Tongue [1900], Pierrot-Drinker [1900]), but also in Emile Reynaud's Praxinoscope production of Poor Pierrot (1892), the first animated movie and the first hand-colored one.
Belgium
In Belgium, Félicien Rops depicted a grinning Pierrot who witnesses an unromantic backstage scene (Blowing Cupid's Nose [1881]). James Ensor painted Pierrots obsessively, in various poses from prostrate to bowing his head in despondency, sometimes even with a smiling skeleton. The Belgian poet and dramatist Albert Giraud also identified with the Zanni: the fifty rondels of his Pierrot lunaire (Moonstruck Pierrot, 1884) inspired generations of composers (see Pierrot lunaire below), and his verse-play Pierrot-Narcissus (1887) offered a definitive portrait of the poet-dreamer. The choreographer Joseph Hansen staged the ballet Macabre Pierrot in 1884 in collaboration with the poet Théo Hannon.
England
Aubrey Beardsley: "The Death of Pierrot", The Savoy, August 1896
Pierrot figured prominently in the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, and various writers referenced him in their poetry.[53][54][55] Ethel Wright painted Bonjour, Pierrot! (a greeting to a dour clown sitting disconsolate with his dog) in 1893. The Pierrot of popular taste also spawned a uniquely English entertainment. In 1891, the singer and banjoist Clifford Essex, resolved to create a troupe of English Pierrot entertainers,[56] and called them the seaside Pierrots who, as late as the 1950s, performed on the piers of Brighton, Margate, and Blackpool.[57] They inspired the Will Morris Pierrots, named after their Birmingham founder. They originated in the Smethwick area in the late 1890s and played to large audiences in the Midlands. Walter Westley Russell committed these performers to canvas in The Pierrots (c. 1900).
Pierrot's mask claimed the attention of the great theater innovator Edward Gordon Craig.[58] Craig's involvement with the figure grew with time. In 1897, Craig, dressed as Pierrot, gave a quasi-impromptu stage-reading of Hans Christian Andersen's story "What the Moon Saw" as part of a benefit performance for theater artists in need.[59]
Austria and Germany
Although he lamented that "the Pierrot figure was inherently alien to the German-speaking world", the playwright Franz Blei introduced him enthusiastically into his playlet The Kissy-Face: A Columbiade (1895), and his fellow-Austrians Richard Specht and Richard Beer-Hofmann made an effort to naturalize Pierrot—in their plays Pierrot-Hunchback (1896) and Pierrot-Hypnotist (1892, first pub. 1984), respectively—by linking his fortunes with those of Goethe's Faust.[60] Still others among their countrymen simply sidestepped the issue of naturalization: Hermann Bahr took his inspiration for his Pantomime of the Good Man (1893) directly from his encounter with the exclusively French Cercle Funambulesque; Rudolf Holzer set the action of his Puppet Loyalty (1899), unapologetically, in a fabulous Paris; and Karl Michael von Levetzow settled his Two Pierrots (1900) in the birthplace of Pierrot's comedy, Italy.[61]
Paul Hoecker: Pierrots with Pipes, c. 1900. Location unknown.
In Germany, Frank Wedekind introduced the femme-fatale of his first "Lulu" play, Earth Spirit (1895), in a Pierrot costume. In a similar spirit, the painter Paul Hoecker put cheeky young men into Pierrot costumes to ape their complacent burgher elders in Pierrots with Pipes (c. 1900) and swilling champagne in Waiting Woman (c. 1895).
Italy
Canio's Pagliaccio in the famous opera (1892) by Leoncavallo is close enough to a Pierrot to deserve a mention here. Much less well-known is the work of two other composers—Mario Pasquale Costa and Vittorio Monti. Costa's pantomime L'Histoire d'un Pierrot (Story of a Pierrot), which debuted in Paris in 1893, was so admired in its day that it eventually reached audiences on several continents, was paired with Cavalleria Rusticana by New York's Metropolitan Opera Company in 1909, and was premiered as a film by Baldassarre Negroni in 1914.[62] Its libretto, like that of Monti's "mimodrama" Noël de Pierrot a.k.a. A Clown's Christmas (1900), was written by Fernand Beissier, one of the founders of the Cercle Funambulesque.[63] (Monti would go on to acquire his own fame by celebrating another spiritual outsider much akin to Pierrot—the Gypsy. His Csárdás [c. 1904], like Pagliacci, has found a secure place in the standard musical repertoire).
The portrait and genre painter Vittorio Matteo Corcos produced Portrait of Boy in Pierrot Costume in 1897.
Spain
In 1895, the playwright and future Nobel laureate Jacinto Benavente wrote rapturously in his journal of a performance of the Hanlon-Lees,[64] and three years later he published his only pantomime: The Whiteness of Pierrot. A true fin de siècle mask, Pierrot paints his face black to commit robbery and murder; then, after restoring his pallor, he hides himself, terrified of his own undoing, in a snowbank—forever. Thus does he forfeit his union with Columbine (the intended beneficiary of his crimes) for a frosty marriage with the moon.[65]
North America
Pierrot and his fellow masks were late in coming to the United States, which, unlike England, Russia, and the countries of continental Europe, had had no early exposure to commedia dell'arte.[66] The Hanlon-Lees made their first U.S. appearance in 1858, and their subsequent tours, well into the 20th century, of scores of cities throughout the country accustomed their audiences to their fantastic, acrobatic Pierrots.[67] But the Pierrot that would leave the deepest imprint upon the American imagination was that of the French and English Decadents, a creature who quickly found his home in the so-called little magazines of the 1890s (as well as in the poster-art that they spawned). One of the earliest and most influential of these in America, The Chap-Book (1894–98), which featured a story about Pierrot by the aesthete Percival Pollard in its second number,[68] was soon host to Beardsley-inspired Pierrots drawn by E.B. Bird and Frank Hazenplug[69] (the Canadian poet Bliss Carman should also be mentioned for his contribution to Pierrot's dissemination in mass-market publications such as Harper's).[70] Like most things associated with the Decadence, such exotica discombobulated the mainstream American public, which regarded the little magazines in general as "freak periodicals" and declared, through one of its mouthpieces, Munsey's Magazine, that "each new representative of the species is, if possible, more preposterous than the last".[71] And yet the Pierrot of that species was gaining a foothold elsewhere. The composers Amy Beach and Arthur Foote devoted a section to Pierrot (as well as to Pierrette, his Decadent counterpart) in two ludic pieces for piano—Beach's Children's Carnival (1894) and Foote's Five Bagatelles (1893).
The fin de siècle world in which this Pierrot resided was clearly at odds with the reigning American Realist and Naturalist aesthetic (although such figures as Ambrose Bierce and John LaFarge were mounting serious challenges to it). It is in fact jarring to find the champion of American prose Realism, William Dean Howells, introducing Pastels in Prose (1890), a volume of French prose-poems containing a Paul Margueritte pantomime, The Death of Pierrot,[72] with words of warm praise (and even congratulations to each poet for failing "to saddle his reader with a moral").[73] So uncustomary was the French Aesthetic viewpoint that, when Pierrot made an appearance in Pierrot the Painter (1893),[74] a pantomime by Alfred Thompson, set to music by the American composer Laura Sedgwick Collins, The New York Times covered it as an event, although it was only a student production. It was found to be "pleasing" because, in part, it was "odd".[75] Not until the first decade of the next century, when the great (and popular) fantasist Maxfield Parrish worked his magic on the figure, would Pierrot be comfortably naturalized in America.
Of course, writers from the United States living abroad—especially in Paris or London—were aberrantly susceptible to the charms of the Decadence. Such a figure was Stuart Merrill, who consorted with the French Symbolists and who compiled and translated the pieces in Pastels in Prose. Another was William Theodore Peters, an acquaintance of Ernest Dowson and other members of the Rhymers' Club and a driving force behind the conception and theatrical realization of Dowson's Pierrot of the Minute (1897; see England above). Of the three books that Peters published before his death (of starvation)[76] at the age of forty-two, his Posies out of Rings: And Other Conceits (1896) is most notable here: in it, four poems and an "Epilogue" for the aforementioned Dowson play are devoted to Pierrot (from the mouth of Pierrot loquitur: "Although this pantomime of life is passing fine,/Who would be happy must not marry Columbine").[77]
Another pocket of North-American sympathy with the Decadence—one manifestation of what the Latin world called modernismo—could be found in the progressive literary scene of Mexico, its parent country, Spain, having been long conversant with the commedia dell'arte. In 1897, Bernardo Couto Castillo, another Decadent who, at the age of twenty-two, died even more tragically young than Peters, embarked on a series of Pierrot-themed short—"Pierrot Enamored of Glory" (1897), "Pierrot and His Cats" (1898), "The Nuptials of Pierrot" (1899), "Pierrot's Gesture" (1899), "The Caprices of Pierrot" (1900)—culminating, after the turn of the century (and in the year of Couto's death), with "Pierrot-Gravedigger" (1901).[78] For the Spanish-speaking world, according to scholar Emilio Peral Vega, Couto "expresses that first manifestation of Pierrot as an alter ego in a game of symbolic otherness ...".[79]
Central and South America
Inspired by the French Symbolists, especially Verlaine, Rubén Darío, the Nicaraguan poet widely acknowledged as the founder of Spanish-American literary modernism (modernismo), placed Pierrot ("sad poet and dreamer") in opposition to Columbine ("fatal woman", the arch-materialistic "lover of rich silk garments, golden jewelry, pearls and diamonds")[80] in his 1898 prose-poem The Eternal Adventure of Pierrot and Columbine.
Russia
In the last year of the century, Pierrot appeared in a Russian ballet, Harlequin's Millions a.k.a. Harlequinade (1900), its libretto and choreography by Marius Petipa, its music by Riccardo Drigo, its dancers the members of St. Petersburg's Imperial Ballet. It would set the stage for the later and greater triumphs of Pierrot in the productions of the Ballets Russes.
19th-century legacy
The Pierrot bequeathed to the 20th century had acquired a rich and wide range of personae. He was the naïve butt of practical jokes and amorous scheming (Gautier); the prankish but innocent waif (Banville, Verlaine, Willette); the narcissistic dreamer clutching at the moon, which could symbolize many things, from spiritual perfection to death (Giraud, Laforgue, Willette, Dowson); the frail, neurasthenic, often doom-ridden soul (Richepin, Beardsley); the clumsy, although ardent, lover, who wins Columbine's heart,[81] or murders her in frustration (Margueritte); the cynical and misogynistic dandy, sometimes dressed in black (Huysmans/Hennique, Laforgue); the Christ-like victim of the martyrdom that is Art (Giraud, Willette, Ensor); the androgynous and unholy creature of corruption (Richepin, Wedekind); the madcap master of chaos (the Hanlon-Lees); the purveyor of hearty and wholesome fun (the English pier Pierrots)—and various combinations of these. Like the earlier masks of commedia dell'arte, Pierrot now knew no national boundaries. Thanks to the international gregariousness of modernism, he would soon be found everywhere.[82]
Pierrot and modernism
Main article: Cultural references to Pierrot
Pierrot played a seminal role in the emergence of modernism in the arts. He was a key figure in every art-form except architecture.
With respect to poetry, T. S. Eliot's "breakthrough work",[83] "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), owed its existence to the poems of Jules Laforgue, whose "ton 'pierrot'"[84] informed all of Eliot's early poetry.[85] (Laforgue, he said, "was the first to teach me how to speak, to teach me the poetic possibilities of my own idiom of speech.")[86] Prufrock is a Pierrot transplanted to America.[87] Another prominent Modernist, Wallace Stevens, was undisguised in his identification with Pierrot in his earliest poems and letters—an identification that he later complicated and refined through such avatars as Bowl (in Bowl, Cat and Broomstick [1917]), Carlos (in Carlos Among the Candles [1917]), and, most importantly, Crispin (in "The Comedian as the Letter C" [1923]).[88]
As for fiction, William Faulkner began his career as a chronicler of Pierrot's amorous disappointments and existential anguish in such little-known works as his play The Marionettes (1920) and the verses of his Vision in Spring (1921), works that were an early and revealing declaration of the novelist's "fragmented state"[89] (some critics have argued that Pierrot stands behind the semi-autobiographical Nick Adams of Faulkner's fellow-Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway,[90] and another contends that James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, again an avatar of his own creator, also shares the same parentage).[91]
In music, historians of modernism generally place Arnold Schoenberg's 1912 song-cycle Pierrot lunaire at the very pinnacle of high-modernist achievement.[92] And in ballet, Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka (1911), in which the traditionally Pulcinella-like clown wears the heart of Pierrot,[93] is often argued to have attained the same stature.[94]
Students of modernist painting and sculpture are familiar with Pierrot (in many different attitudes, from the ineffably sad to the ebulliently impudent) through the masterworks of his acolytes, including Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Georges Rouault, Salvador Dalí, Max Beckmann, August Macke, Paul Klee, Jacques Lipchitz—the list is very long (see Visual arts below).
As for the drama, Pierrot was a regular fixture in the plays of the Little Theatre Movement (Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo [1920], Robert Emmons Rogers' Behind a Watteau Picture [1918], Blanche Jennings Thompson's The Dream Maker [1922]),[95] which nourished the careers of such important Modernists as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and others.
In film, a beloved early comic hero was the Little Tramp of Charlie Chaplin, who conceived the character, in Chaplin's words, as "a sort of Pierrot".[96]
As the diverse incarnations of the 19th-century Pierrot would predict, the hallmarks of the modernist Pierrot are his ambiguity and complexity.
One of his earliest appearances was in Alexander Blok's The Puppet Show (1906), called by one theater-historian "the greatest example of the harlequinade in Russia".[97] Vsevolod Meyerhold, who both directed the first production and took on the role, dramatically emphasized the multifacetedness of the character: according to one spectator, Meyerhold's Pierrot was "nothing like those familiar, falsely sugary, whining Pierrots. Everything about him is sharply angular; in a hushed voice he whispers strange words of sadness; somehow he contrives to be caustic, heart-rending, gentle: all these things yet at the same time impudent."[98]
Pierrot lunaire
Main article: Pierrot lunaire (book)
The fifty poems that were published by Albert Giraud (born Emile Albert Kayenbergh) as Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasques in 1884 were set to music several times. The best known version is by Arnold Schoenberg, i.e., his Opus 21: Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds Pierrot lunaire (Thrice-Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's Pierrot lunaire—Schoenberg was numerologically superstitious). This led, among other things, to ensemble groups' appropriating Pierrot's name, such as the English Pierrot Players (1967–70).[99] The Pierrot behind those cycles has invaded worlds well beyond those of composers, singers, and ensemble-performers. Theatrical groups such as the Opera Quotannis have brought Pierrot's Passion to the dramatic stage; dancers such as Glen Tetley have choreographed it; poets such as Wayne Koestenbaum have derived original inspiration from it.[100] It has been translated into still more distant media by painters, such as Paul Klee; fiction-writers, such as Helen Stevenson; filmmakers, such as Bruce LaBruce; and graphic-novelists, such as Antoine Dodé.[101] A passionately sinister Pierrot Lunaire has even shadowed DC Comics' Batman.[102] Pierrot is aptly honored in the title of a song by the British rock-group The Soft Machine: "Thank You Pierrot Lunaire" (1969).[103]
Carnivals
Pierrot appears among the revelers at various international carnivals. His name suggests kinship with the Pierrot Grenade of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, being a satire on the richer and more respectable Pierrot. Pierrot Grenade was a finely dressed masquerader and deeply supreme scholar/jester proud of his ability to spell any word in his own fashion and quoting Shakespearean characters as Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, and Othello at length.
Pierrot, also retrospectively known as Gilles, is an oil on canvas painting of c. 1718-1719 by the French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Completed in the later phase of Watteau's career, Pierrot measures 184.5 by 149.5 cm, which makes up somewhat unusual case in the artist's body of work. The painting depicts a number of actors portraying commedia dell'arte character types, with one as the titular character set in the foreground.
By the early 19th century, Pierrot belonged to Dominique Vivant, Baron Denon, the first director of the Louvre Museum; it later passed to the Parisian physician Louis La Caze, who bequeathed his sprawling art collection to the Louvre in 1869.[1]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierrot_(Watteau)
Identified
EVIDENCE
Provenance evidence: Inscription
Location in book: Title Page
Comments:
This copy inscribed by the author to Gil Ott and Julia Blumenreich in February 1989
IDENTIFICATION
Owner: Ott, Gil
Owner: Blumenreich, Julia
Other: Fitterman, Robert, 1959-
COPY
Repository: Penn Libraries
Call number: PS3606.I87 L4 1988 Ott copy
Collection: Ott Collection
Copy title: Leases
Author(s): Fitterman, Robert, 1959-
Published: New York City, 1988
Printer/Publisher: Periphery
FIND IN POP
Misha Mansoor
Centro Dinámico Pegaso. October 28, 2017.
This photo was taken with a cell phone camera at KnotFest Mexico 2017. Centro Dinámico Pegaso, Toluca, Edo. Mex.
August 26th, 2016 - Periphery performs live at Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit, Michigan. Credit: Mirak Habbiyyieh. www.schwegweb.com
I had a meeting scheduled on the periphery of Winchester but unfortunately the other participant was let down by the bus service, the bus totally failing to materialise. After a half hour wait in the cold, he went home. I was already at the venue when I picked up his email message on my iPad so decided to go down into Winchester for a walkabout with my camera.
I drove into town, confronted the parking problem and made my way into the centre.
Approaching the main street, I heard a beautiful male voice and, turning the corner, found a man singing expressively and a small crowd of people listening intently, one or two taking photos on iPhones. I crossed over and indicated as I usually do that I'd like to take a photo. I took one or two and then Miguel, as I found he was called, stopped singing so I explained my strangers' project and asked if I could include him in it.
He wanted to know where the photo would be published so I described 365 Project and my dedication to it and also said that the photo would be posted on Flickr (where I have a newly opened account). Miguel was then happy to say yes and I took a few more photos, some in colour, others in b&w.
I thought Miguel might be Spanish or Italian but he replied 'Latin American'. Later in the conversation I learned that his native country is Peru but he has lived in England for some 20 years.
Miguel handed me his card with his email and his website details. This was welcome as I had nothing to write with and nothing to write on. In addition to a camera, a notebook and a pen should now be standard on my person, I think, as I often unexpectedly happen on opportunities for a portrait.
We agreed I should use the website for a little more information to accompany the portrait as I, for one, was conscious of folk waiting for the singing to begin again.
I discovered that Miguel is Miguel Moncloa, a tenor, and one half of a classical duo, Sul Fiato, formed in 2012, the other half being Naomi Scott de Moncloa, an Australian soprano.
Sul Fiato is Italian, meaning ‘on the breath’. On the website this is described as 'The ultimate technical goal for any classical singer, it also refers to the link between the breath and the soul or human spirit.'
Once again from the website: 'on the importance of music to him', Miguel says, “Music is the only way that I connect fully with my fellow human beings.
I have photos to email to Miguel. I was very appreciative of his time and interested to learn about his professional life.
This is my #12 submission to the Human Family Group. To view more street portraits and stories visit:
www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily/
This photo is also in The Portrait Group and STRANGERS!
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The SAAB B31 was a Swedish jet-powered multirole aircraft, originally designed to serve as a tactical bomber, ground attack, reconnaissance and interceptor aircraft. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Sweden set about the rebuilding and modernization of its armed forces. Regarding aviation, jet propulsion had been identified as the powerplant of the future, and experience with the SAAB 21R, which had been converted from a propeller-pusher aircraft into a jet-powered fighter and attack aircraft in 1947, bolstered confidence in the home industry’s competence. The Saab 21R was only an interim solution, though. One hundred and twenty-four aircraft were planned but this number was reduced to only 64 and they were mainly used as fighter-bombers. The Flygvapnet’s standard post-war bomber, the Saab 18, a twin piston-engine design from 1944, was outdated, too, and its performance was regarded as inadequate for the Fifties. This led to a major development initiative for modern jet aircraft for the Flygvapnet in 1946, which spawned the Saab 29 ‘Tunnan’ fighter and the Saab B31 light bomber. Both aircraft were initially designed around the de Havilland Goblin turbojet of British origin, but when the more powerful de Havilland Ghost became available, this was chosen as the standard powerplant. Both aircraft incorporated such modern features as swept wings or ejection seats.
The Saab B31 was originally developed as a straightforward tactical bomber replacement for the Saab 18, called the Saab B31, which would carry its free-fall ordnance internally in a bomb bay. The Saab B31 had a streamlined, drop-shaped fuselage. A crew of two were envisioned, the pilot and a navigator/bomb aimer. They would sit in separate cabins, a generously glazed nose section with an optical bombsight and a navigational/bomb aiming radar in a shallow blister underneath, and in a fighter-type cockpit on top of the hull, respectively. Swept wings were planned that would offer a good compromise between speed benefits and range/lift. Due to the aircraft’s size and weight, two de Havilland Ghost engines were required, but integrating these bulky centrifugal flow engines with a relatively large diameter turned out to be a design challenge.
Several layouts were evaluated, including engines buried in the rear fuselage with side air intakes, or engines mounted in wing root fairings with individual exhausts at the wings’ trailing edge. Eventually the Saab B31’s powerplants were directly mounted in nacelles under slightly swept (20°) shoulder wings, what made access and maintenance easy and kept the fuselage free for a huge fuel capacity, a generous bomb bay, and a conventional tricycle main landing gear. The latter’s tread width was quite narrow, though, which might have caused handling problems, so that during the bomber’s design refinements the landing gear arrangement was radically changed into a tandem layout. It eventually comprised of two main struts featuring large low-pressure twin wheels, supported by small outrigger wheels that semi-retracted into fairings under the bulbous engine nacelles. While unusual, this arrangement had the side benefit that the bomb bay could be lengthened and the fuel capacity in the fuselage could be increased without a center of gravity shift, with the rear/main landing gear strut well placed further aft, well behind the aircraft’s center of gravity. This, however, prevented normal rotation upon take-off, so that the front strut was lengthened to provide the aircraft with an imminent positive angle of attack while rolling, giving the Saab B31 a distinctive nose-up stance on the ground.
The enlarged bomb bay could hold up to four free-fall 340 kg bombs, the B31’s primary weapon. Additional ordinance, typically two further single bombs of up to 500 kg caliber, pods with unguided missiles, or drop tanks to extend range, could be carried on a pair of hard points outside of the engine nacelles. The maximum total payload was 2.400 kg. No offensive or defensive guns were carried, the B31 was supposed to rely only on speed and agility. Large air brakes on the aircraft’s flanks were introduced to prevent the exceeding of the B31’s design speed limit of Mach 0.9 in a dive, and they also helped to slow down the aircraft upon landing. To reduce the landing run length further a brake parachute was housed in an extended teardrop fairing on the fin that also held the swept horizontal stabilizers.
Overall, the Saab B31 reminded vaguely of the Soviet Yak-120/25 (NATO code Flashlight A) and of the French Sud-Ouest SO.4050 Vautour, which were both under development at the same time. Beyond the original tactical bomber role that was supposed to supersede the Swedish B 18, the Saab B31 was also intended to fulfill night/all-weather reconnaissance missions, outfitted with a camera and sensor pallet in the bomb bay and flash bombs on the wing hardpoints. Furthermore, the aircraft was proposed to become, in a second step, the basis for a jet-powered long-range all-weather fighter, a type of aircraft that was direly needed by Flygvapnet during the late Forties. The situation was so severe and urgent that the Swedish Air Force did not want to wait for a J31 development and had to procure sixty radar-equipped de Havilland Mosquito NF.30 night fighters from Great Britain as a hasty stopgap solution – a totally outdated model in the late Forties, but it was the best and only readily available off-the-rack solution.
In parallel, both engine and aircraft technology underwent dramatic developments and literally made leaps: In December 1948, an initial contract for the design and mockup of Saab's newly proposed P.1150 design was issued, a modern swept-wing design that already represented the next, transonic fighter aircraft generation. The resulting aircraft would become the Saab 32 ‘Lansen’ and it literally overtook the B31’s intended role as the Saab 18 bomber and attack aircraft replacement. However, a modern all-weather fighter with long range and a powerful radar was still not on the horizon, and, consequently, the Saab B31’s original bomber/reconnaissance version was dropped completely in favor of an optimized interceptor derivative with a powerful on-board radar: the J31. This was, however, also just a stopgap solution until an all-weather fighter version of the favored Saab 32 would be ready for service, so that a single aircraft type would take over multiple military roles and therewith simplify production, maintenance and logistics.
From that point on the Saab B31 was re-designed and optimized for a principal fighter role, with an attack capability as a secondary capability. However, due to its bomber origins and its intended mission profile the J31 was not intended to be a typical sleek and nimble dogfighter (that was the contemporary Saab 29’s role as a day fighter, even though a radar-equipped version of the Tunnan was on Saab’s drawing boards, too, yet not realized because compact systems were not available), but rather as a standoff night fighter which would loiter on station and patrol the air space, search for targets and then identify and engage them.
The bomber’s large air brakes were a welcome feature to position the approaching fighter behind a potential slower target, which were primarily relatively cumbersome bombers that would come in at medium to high altitude and at subsonic speed. This mission profile heavily influenced the J31 design and also set boundaries that were later hard to overcome and develop the aircraft’s potential further. While the light bomber basis would meet the required demands concerning range, speed and limited agility, the obligatory radar and its periphery to fulfill the N/AW fighter mission led to a major re-design of the forward fuselage. A large radar dish under a solid nose radome now occupied the formerly glazed nose section, and the radar operator was placed together with the pilot in a new pressurized side-by-side cockpit under a common canopy. A large and relatively flat forward windshield was used; while not conducive to high-speed flight, it provided distortion-free external visibility, something that was particularly valued for a night fighter at that time. Both pilot and navigator/radar operator had full steering equipment, what also made a dedicated trainer version unnecessary. Both sticks were extendable so that more force could be exerted upon it by the pilot as a fallback measure in the event of a hydraulic failure. Bleed air from the engines was used to de-ice the wings’ and tail surfaces’ leading edges and the engines’ air intakes, so that the aircraft could operate even in harsh climatic conditions.
Radar and fire control system for the J31 were created and produced by Ericsson and called “Gryning” (= Dawn). The system was quite advanced for the time even though complex: a combination of three different radars, each performing separate functions. The system comprised a search radar, a tracking radar, both located in the nose under a huge mutual radome, and a tail warning radar with a separate, smaller antenna. The search radar covered the front hemisphere and could detect aircraft at distances up to 35 kilometres (about 20 miles) away while the tracking radar could achieve a weapons lock up to 4 km (2.5 miles) away. Additionally, the Gryning system had a limited look-down capability, being able to detect aircraft that flew underneath the J31 at an altitude of down to 800 m (2.600 ft). The tail-mounted surveillance radar was effective up to 15 km (almost 10 miles) away. The complexity of this vacuum tube-based radar system, produced before the advent of semiconductor electronics, required a lot of internal space and intensive maintenance to keep it operating properly – and it would have been much too big or heavy to fit into the more modern but also more slender Saab 32 airframe.
The armament was changed, too. While the B31 bomber was intended to carry no guns at all the fighter derivative was now armed with four 20 mm cannon in the lower nose, plus two retractable unguided air-to-air missile racks in the former bomb bay in tandem, carrying a total of 96 projectiles, which were supposed to be fired singly, short bursts or in one or more massive salvoes against bomber formations, covering a huge field of fire and ensuring a takedown even with a single hit. This core armament was complemented by a pair of underwing hardpoints outside of the engine nacelles which could carry pods with further 18 unguided missiles each, iron bombs of up to 500 kg calibre for a secondary attack capability, or 570 l drop tanks to extend the J31’s range and loiter time.
An initial order for three prototypes was placed by the Swedish government, and on 16 October 1950, the first J31, even though still lacking the radar, conducted its maiden flight. The flight test program proceeded relatively smoothly, but the performance was rather poor for a fighter. More powerful engines were required, but choices for Saab were very limited. The use of the Saab 29’s indigenous afterburner variant of the Ghost (which was by then license-produced in Sweden as the Svenska Flygmotor RM2) was deemed inefficient for the large aircraft, so that attempts were made to improve the Ghost’s dry thrust for the J31 without an increased fuel consumption through reheat. This new indigenous engine variant became the RM2F (“förstärkt” = “powered-up”), which provided 5,400 lbf (24.02 kN) of thrust with water-alcohol injection instead of the RM2’s original dry 5,000 lbf (22 kN) maximum thrust. The tank for the required water-alcohol mixture was carried in the rear half of the former bomb bay and replaced one of the unguided missile racks. These were hardly ever used operationally, though, and soon completely removed, replaced by a second water-alcohol tank, which gave the aircraft enough endurance of 30 minutes at the increased thrust output level.
A follow-on order for six pre-production aircraft was soon received, which were still equipped with the weaker original RM2 and designated J31A. These machines were delivered to F 1 Västmanland Flygflottilj at Hässlö air base in Central Sweden, which just had been converted from a bomber to a night fighter unit, having been equipped with the J 30 Mosquitos. There the J31 was evaluated against the J30 until early 1951 and deemed superior in almost every aspect. With these satisfactory results, a full production order for 54 more aircraft was placed in mid-1951. These machines were now outfitted with more powerful RM2F engines and other refinements and designated J31B. This became the type’s operational main variant. All were delivered to F 1 where they were exclusively operated and gradually replaced the J 30s. In service the J31 received the unofficial nickname “Val” (= Whale), due to its bulky yet streamlined shape, but it was officially never adopted.
During regular maintenance in the following two years, the six early J31As received the stronger RM2F, together with the second water-alcohol tank as well as some avionics updates and were accordingly re-designated J31Bs. Further updates included wipers for the windscreen (a serious issue esp. at slow speed and while taxiing) and two smaller brake parachutes instead of the single large original one.
All J31s were delivered in a natural metal finish and retained it throughout their career; only two machines ever received camouflage during trials, but this measure was deemed unnecessary for the aircraft due to their role. Some aircraft of F 1’s 3rd squadron and operated by the unit’s staff flight had the aircrafts’ fins painted in dark green, though, to improve the contrast to the tactical code letters’ colour, yellow or white, respectively. The J31s’ radomes were made from fiberglass and originally tinted in opaque black. During maintenance and after damage, however, some machines received newly produced replacement fairings which were untinted/semi-transparent.
The only major update the J31B received was rolled out starting in 1958, when the IR-guided Rb24 (AIM-9B Sidewinder AAM) was introduced in the Swedish Air Force. Together with the J29 Tunnan fighters the J31s were outfitted to carry launch rails on the wing hardpoints – even though only a single pair could be carried in total. This, however, markedly improved the type’s combat efficiency, and it would take until the Saab 35F in 1965 with its Rb27/28 Falcon missiles to introduce more capable guided anti-aircraft missiles. Since the Rb24s extended the J31’s weapon range considerably, a potential gun upgrade with 30 mm cannons was not executed and Saab’s resources rather allocated into the Saab 32’s development.
Even though the J31B was a capable night and all-weather fighter for its time, it was limited due to its outdated weaponry and quickly superseded by advancing radar, engine and aerodynamic technologies. It did its job but lacked development and performance potential – and it was a large and complicated aircraft that required lots of maintenance. However, the J31 turned out to be a very stable and robust weapon platform, and it was quite popular among the crews because of the spacious cockpit, even though the field of view on the ground was very limited, due to the tall landing gear front leg, and several J31s were involved in taxiing accidents. Due to its twin engines and radar intercept operator, pilots gained more confidence on long missions in the remote northern areas of. Sweden, esp. on mission over open water.
When the Saab 32’s fighter version, the J 32B, eventually became operational in 1958, it was clear that the heavy and highly limited twin-engine J31B would not remain in service for much longer. By 1963 all machines had been retired from frontline service, initially stored in reserve but scrapped by 1970. Two machines remained operational, though: as flying test beds for the Swedish Air Force’s Försökscentralen (FC) at Malmen AB, where they served until 1981 – primarily to test radar and missile guidance systems, and as radar targets for war games and anti-aircraft unit trainings.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 15,76 m (51 ft 7 1/2 in)
Wingspan: 16.96 m (55 ft 2/3 in)
Height: 4,21 m (13 ft 9 1/2 in)
Wing area: 45 m2 (480 sq ft)
Empty weight: 9,000 kg (19,823 lb)
Gross weight: 17,500 kg (38,546 lb)
….Max takeoff weight: 19,000 kg (41,850 lb)
Fuel capacity: 5,100 L (1,350 US gal / 1,120 imp gal) maximum internal fuel
plus 2x 570 L (150 US gal, 120 imp gal) optional drop-tanks
Powerplant:
2× Svenska Flygmotor RM2F centrifugal-flow turbojet engine (Rolls Royce Ghost), each with
4,750 lbf (21.1 kN) dry thrust at 10,250 rpm and
5,400 lbf (24.02 kN) with temporary water-alcohol injection
Performance:
Maximum speed: 1,090 km/h (677 mph, 588 kn; Mach 0.9) at 10,000 ft (3,000 m)
Cruise speed: 732 km/h (455 mph, 395 kn)
Stall speed: 150 km/h (92.8 mph, 80.6 kn) with approach power
Combat range: 1.850 km (1,145 mi, 995 nmi) on internals
Ferry range: 2.200 km (1,375 mi, 1,195 nmi) with 2× 570 l drop-tanks
Service ceiling: 16,200 m (53,062 ft)
Rate of climb: 40 m/s (7.681 ft/min)
Wing loading: 87.1 lb/sq ft (388 kg/m²)
Thrust/weight: 0.32
Armament:
4× 20 mm (0.79 in) akan m/47C (license produced Hispano Mark V) autocannon with 220 RPG
48× 75 mm (3.0 in) srak m/55 (Bofors 75 mm (3.0 in) rocket "Frida") unguided air-to-air missiles
with contact fuze high-capacity warhead on retractable rack in ventral bay
(not used operationally, later completely deleted in favor of a second water-alcohol tank)
2× wet underwing hardpoints outside of the engine nacelles for 600 kg (1.321 lb) each;
alternatively a pair of Rb24 (AIM9-B Sidewinder) IR-guided air-to-air missiles
The model and its assembly:
While it does not look spectacular, the J31 (actually my second use of this designation for a Swedish Fifties all-weather fighter, the first was an A.W. Meteor NF.14, but the “31” was lent from the Spitfire PR.XIX in Swedish service as S31) was a major creation feat. It all started with a discussion with fellow Swedish board member Pellson at whatifmodellers.com about Saab prototypes, esp. the early designs. That made me wonder about a twin-jet engine aircraft, something that could replace the Saab 18 bombers much like the BAC Canberra with the RAF’s Mosquito – and looking at similar international projects of the time like the Soviet Il-29 and Yak-25 as well as the French S.O. 4050 Vautour I thought that something similar could work well for Sweden, too.
My concept started with a primary light bomber and attack role, much like the B18 and the Canberra, with the outlook to develop a radar-bearing all-weather fighter from it, which was direly needed in Sweden in the Mid-Fifties and led to the procurement of two interim types in real life, the J30 (Mosquito night fighter) and the J33 (Venom night fighter), while plans were made to equip the J29 with a radar and the Saab 32 already on the drawing boards, even though the latter’s fighter version would be delayed well into the Sixties.
The core of the build was a leftover fuselage from a Matchbox F3D Skyknight – from an incomplete kit that came OOB with one of its three sprue trees double (even though in different colours!). The canopy was also still there, and now I eventually found a good use for it. However, not much more would be taken over from the Skyknight, because the overall layout would be much different, dictated by the bulky centrifugal flow engines that were (only) available to Sweden in the late Forties and which also powered the successful J29 Tunnan. The engines could, due to their diameter and the need for ducts, not be buried in the fuselage, so that they would go under the wings, directly attached to them as in the Il-29 and Vautour. The wings would be slightly swept (around 20°), as a compromise between modernism (as on the J29) and good range/endurance, and shoulder-mounted for good ground clearance and to avoid FOP (an issue of the Yak-25).
Since the engine pods should not be too large and bulky I decided that the main wheels would not retract into them (à la Il-28) and rather follow the Vautour route: with a tandem arrangement retracting into the fuselage and with small outrigger wheels. This had, for the original bomber version, the benefit, that the internal bomb bay could become longer than with a more conventional tricycle landing gear arrangement that would full retract into the hull, much like the Douglas A3D/B.66, with a wider track. And it would look more exotic, too.
With this concept I started a donor parts safari and started work on the fuselage. First major feat was to clean the F3D’s flanks from its original engine fairings – thankfully the Matchbox kit provides them as separate parts, so omitting them was simple, but there were enough major recesses and areas beyond the F3D’s basically teardrop shape hull that had to be filled and PSRed, including the original wing attachment points in the hull’s middle.
Another issue was the cockpit, which was missing through the double sprues. I was lucky to find an original Matchbox F3D tub in the spare box, from my first Skyknight build ever in the late Eighties (then built as a Vietnam era EF-10). New seats were procured as well as two (ugly) pilot figures and a dashboard from an Italeri Tornado IDS. However, the cockpit would later cause some more trouble…
The nose was generously filled with steel balls to keep it down (you never know…), and once the hull was closed, I implanted a new rear landing gear well. In the meantime, I kept searching for engine nacelle and wing parts – both turned out to be challenging. Not that I had not enough material to choose from, but I wanted to make the parts to be as authentic as possible – the nacelles conveying a centrifugal engine inside (see the Gloster Meteor for reference), and the light wing sweep angle as well as the desire for a not-too-modern look made the wing choice really hard.
The nacelles were completed first. I remembered some leftover parts from a Matchbox Meteor night fighter, mainly the intakes, which would be perfect. But the rest of the nacelles took a while to materialize. Eventually I found engine pods from a Hobbycraft Su-25, which are separate pieces. They had a more or less square diameter shape, but their size was good and so I combined them with the round (and bigger!) Meteor NF.14 intakes, after having added trimmed-down intake cones from a Trumpeter Il-28 inside, and PSRing the different shapes into something …more natural. Even though outrigger wheels would later be added I omitted eventual wells at this point, because I had to define the stance through the tandem main wheels first, and this was still tbd.
The wing donors became a lengthy affair. At one point I became so desperate that I tried to use the wing tips from a VEB Plasticart 1:100 Tu-20/95 bomber, but that failed (thankfully!) because the parts turned out to be warped and simply too ugly for the build. I did not find any suitable material in The Stash™, tested wings from an A-6 and an F-14, nothing worked well. I eventually procured – in a forlorn move – a vintage Revell 1:113 B-47 kit. Horrible thing, but its outer wings were useful, even though they required massive modifications. Their roots were cut away to reduce span and their angle was set at about 20°; the slender tips were also cut off, resulting in an almost trapezoid shape with a slightly extended wing chord at the trailing edge of the roots. Lots of PSR was required to improve the surface and to fill some gaps from the OOB engine pod attachment points of the B-47. Ugh.
At that point I had also already found a good fin: from an Academy/Minicraft 1:144 B-1B bomber! This not only offered a very Fifties-esque round and swept shape, it also had suitable attachment points for the stabilizers for a cruciform tail, which appeared necessary due to the engines’ wing position. As a side benefit, I could use the B-47’s wing tips as stabilizers, even though they had to be PSRed a lot, too.
To attach the new wings to the F3D fuselage I made cutouts at shoulder height, but the engine pods were first mounted and PSRed under the wings. More putty and sanding mess, but it was worthwhile.
In the meantime I worked on the landing gear and used parts from the ugly VEB Plasticart Tu-20/95 to scratch a tandem layout with twin wheels and a significant nose-up stance (due to the rear wheels’ position beyond the aircraft’s centre of gravity). Once this was settled and the wings in place I could work on the outrigger wheels. These were procured from a Matchbox 1:72 Sea Harrier and mounted in scratched fairings under the engine pods, so that they could semi-retract. With the ground clearance defined by the main wheels a suitable position and length for the outriggers could be found, and in the end the J31 has a proper stance with all four legs on the ground.
Painting and markings:
I like to apply simple liveries to weird builds, and for the J31 I settled upon a NMF finish – which was typical for the contemporary J29 Tunnan fighters, too. Only the reconnaissance versions as well as the fighters of as single operational unit were ever camouflaged (in dark green and dark blue). The only other realistic cammo option would have been the standard Swedish uniform dark green over blue grey. But bare metal appeared IMHO much better suited.
As a non-standard measure the model received an overall thin coat of grey primer, primarily to identify dents and notches on its many PSRed surface areas – a good move, because a lot of small flaws could be identified and treated before a final overall coat with “White Aluminium” from a rattle can (Duplicolor, RAL 9006) was applied and details like the radome, antennae (both in black) and the landing gear and its wells (in a light bronze tone, seen on Saab 29s and 32s) were painted in detail. I think the silver underlines the J31’s clean lines well?
The model received a light black ink washing, less for true weathering but to emphasize engraved details and for a “cloudier” look of the NMF surfaces. This was further enhanced through a careful treatment with grinded graphite (which adds a truly metallic shine to the paint), and since a lot of surface details were lost through PSR I did some manual panel-shading with different silver tones and re-created panel lines all over the hull with a soft pencil, mostly free-handedly. Quite simple, but it improves the overall impression a lot.
Decals were puzzled together. The Swedish roundels came from a generic TL-Modellbau sheet, the “T” on the tail was scratched from generic white and blue stripes from the same manufacturer. The blue band around the nose was made with the same material, plus a white “T” – inspired by tactical markings from some J29s from the Fifties. Some stencils were collected from the scrap box, and black walkway borders added to the wings’ upper surfaces and the spine behind the cockpit. As a side benefit these hide some lingering inconsistencies on the wing surfaces well.
Finally, the model was sealed with semi-gloss acrylic varnish (Italeri) for a shiny finish, except for the radomes, which became matt.
It might not look spectacular or exciting, but I am quite proud of this “second” J31, because it not only was a major kitbashing project, it also conveys the Fifties “look and feel” I wanted to catch, like its contemporaries S.O. 4050 Vautour, Yak-25, or even the stillborn Baade Ba-152 airliner. From that point it turned out very well, and going for a simple NMF livery was IMHO also a good move – the J31 has a certain “space age” look? At least, this is what you can get when you combine major parts from F3D, B-47. B1, Il-28, Su-25, Tu-95 and a Gloster Meteor… 😉
Always good to capture some species new to me when in different climes.
Airfields can be good for nature, as there is not a great deal of disturbance, especially on the periphery. This female was on the perimeter road, so had to be vigilant.
Locusts and Grasshoppers are closely related, but the latter do not have the capacity to create swarms and destroy so many food crops. But even locusts only do this in certain conditions.
Gioia del Colle, Apulia, Italy
6th October 2023
20231006 2I8A 9140
One stormy Sunday in November 2005, a new girl came to church as the congregation stood to sing. She was a tiny thing with short blonde hair, freckled face and a tomboyishness about her. Exactly the energy that always drew me in, strong arms and bright eyes. But it’d been years since anyone my age passed through my life, and I didn’t have the social skills to make an introduction happen. I looked, then looked away. After the service, she sat by me almost immediately, offering small talk and nervous eye contact. Her name wasn't Celia, but that's what I'll call her. I was eighteen, she was a year younger, and all she wanted was to hang out with me sometime. Against the awkward voices in my head, I said: “Sure, come up and we’ll do something,” immediately doubting the words as they left my mouth. I went home and forgot all about it.
Dad called me to the door an hour later, where a tomboy-girl stood with bicycle in tow and a soccer ball under her arm. I was shocked and speechless that someone would leave their life to be a part of mine. It hadn’t happened before, not for even the most tenuous or passing friendship. This was the first that someone came looking for me, eager to insinuate themselves into my existence. Celia was unbelievable, a shocking presence within reach, after years convinced that I wasn’t of interest. I got my bike and we left the soccer ball behind.
We rolled west down Clarence Road in the dying autumn, under overcast skies with the temperature falling. The trees were nearly bare, and North Mountain glowed stark grey and black-green in bursts of pines and oaks in the nude. Everything was so stark that we seemed more alive in contrast. I wasn’t myself, I felt cheerful and open, joking about nothing, cycling in wide curves of lefts and rights in the road. Celia laughed at whatever I said, an excited attraction of new friendship, fully foreign. I’d only seen it in movies or observed it in the lives of others, that honest and easy affection. After biking hard for a few kilometers, my right sneaker suddenly split wide at the seams — old rubber failing, and my sock making a surprise appearance out the end. It was colder than my toes could take, so we headed home. I spent my evening haunted with the exotic emotions of enjoying company not my own.
Later that week, I went to a Remembrance Day service at the Bridgetown Legion. I wore brand new shoes that I didn’t like one bit, pending a good beating and a run through the mud. It was another dark day, teasing rain, and I felt in place with the clouds coming around. I hadn’t been back there since leaving Army Cadets, and felt wary of spotting familiar faces. Celia came from the crowd when she saw me, hands in pockets and back against the chilling wind. She was a small mouth under a blowing blonde mop, coat buttoned to her cheeks and chin. I talked like a stranger to language, making my guesses about the shapes of words and what they meant. I forgot what she said soon after I heard it, finding it hard to listen with the focus directly on me. I’d been a lifelong follower of the one-way conversation, sitting silently or playing eavesdropper, and it seemed unnaturally hard to formulate answers.
I walked her home on the grey sidewalks of Bridgetown, down Granville Street, beneath the blank staring windows to the west side of town. The un-mowed lawns waved uneven stalks in stiff winds, weeds and blades of grass at their ultimate height until next spring’s new growth. We passed the run-down apartments of the Blue Lagoon, sky-blue paint job perpetually peeling, and the austere beauty and fading flowers of Harrington House, where I’d been for a cousin’s wedding the summer before. I felt a decade distant from my childhood memories, like I’d been permanently divided from history, an only child eternally, always on my own. I’d walked those blocks a thousand times, but never with a friend, and it felt newer and painfully older than ever.
Celia’s house was white and ordinary, a shed to the side and a long yard rolling down to the Annapolis River. We sat on a bench overlooking the water, and she gave me some shattered pieces of her life, spread out like entrails to read. The two adults inside were foster parents, but her younger sister and brother were blood relatives. They’d been kept together at Celia’s strict insistence; her siblings were all she had. She told me a lot, and I offered little back, because my life seemed less worth telling.
We walked to the back porch and talked until nightfall, ignoring cold and the loss of light, knowing that we would've rushed off to warmth if either of us were alone. Celia’s foster father came suddenly shouting about her helping with dinner, inexplicably angry. He seemed annoyed at my presence, offering no hello or goodbye. Cary Grant was not his name, a blank man who looked past rather than at you, disquiet and dark. He wasn't around much, busy with his job as a pastor down Brier Island way. There was a coldness about him that shook me more than anyone I’d met, so I said a quick “Seeya” to Celia, and took the dark walk home.
Outside of church services, she didn’t cross my path through the turning season, or on into the new year. 2006 slipped back to the safe silence of solitude, and a felt little temptation to break it with company. Winter days were choked with my job running coax cable, tearing out obsolete tangles of RG-59 to replace with RG-6, ripped and wrapped around my neck like a noose, flickering static behind my eyes. I’d return home with waning interest from too much anonymous contact.
A rumor spread through town like the snaking river, some whispered talk about the Grant family caught in an eddy and passed around in whispered tones. The RCMP showed up, and Cary was arrested for what polite euphemisms reduced to “acting improperly” toward his foster daughters. It soon came clear that this was small-town talk for longterm sexual abuse. For five years straight, he’d manipulated Celia and her kid sister from a position of power, played them off each other with the threat of breaking up a family. Every midnight occasion when he came calling at their bedrooms, Cary dropped the warning that they’d never see each other again if they told a soul.
Celia's sister let it slip to a high school boyfriend, who couldn't keep the secret and told the cops. When they came calling at the Grant residence, they didn’t have to dig deep for a confession. Cary spilled his guts without much stress — suddenly the guiltiest man in town. After sentencing, they gave him a few short months in lockup, a loss of reputation and career, followed by a disappearing act that ran him out of province. It stung to hear the talk of forcible closeness, a man who made his life about pushing past human borders. As a young man who kept others at arm’s reach and further, nothing seemed shattering like an advance you couldn’t refuse.
July arrived, coming up on my first full year working the road with the cable company. It’d been a shapeless expanse, like dreaming without waking, uncounted days crowded with the overwhelming of time. Celia was always hanging on the periphery, willing to make friends, but I couldn’t find the context. Then she got hired for as a counselor at Camp Peniel, down Yarmouth way, and her first thought was to have me drive her down on Sunday afternoons. I hadn’t seen her in months, only passing sightings and brief hellos. But I’d just gotten my license, and was happy agreeing to anything on the open road.
We took the wide-open 101 all through blistering July and August, sitting with someone we hardly knew, saying next to nothing. It was a foreign feeling, being a preferred person. I’d never been anyone's first choice, the third or fourth wheel in a group at best. This one-on-one interaction was a sweet sort of poison, feeling better and more horrible than anything I’d experienced. It was almost intrusive being placed above all others, strangely intimate and incredibly close. Celia didn’t talk much, but I got the feeling she said all she wanted. Those were days of buzzing thoughts, hammering humming in my mind like the tires on the asphalt outside. I wanted to pour out my heart, but it felt like I might drown her in the process.
Those Sunday drives seemed like friendship, the closest resemblance to something I'd doubted like stories of alien abduction. I wanted to believe, but the small-town connections I’d seen seemed shaped in a form of mutual fear, with other bodies only there to prevent feeling faraway from love. Maybe there was a desperate limit to closeness, we just choke it down and feign comfort in company.
After weeks of stuttering silence, I thought I’d try on a shared emotion for size. I said a little more while the miles were passing, gave in to attraction, told Celia about my writing. I passed her printed copies of my early poems, whatever I’d been scribbling lately. She said how much she liked them, and that gave me a reason to make more, just to share them with her. Celia read them to her young campers through the week, and they made an impact. She brought back stories of tears shed by the teenage girls, feelings brought up by nothing but my words on paper. It was a great gift she gave me — passing what I created to a world I couldn’t reach. This was a kind of kindness she had, an eagerness to make everything better. I drifted closer to the concept of Celia, a soft heart when my own seemed so hard on me. She was a rope dangling down to the bottom of a lonely pit, reeling me in when no one bothered, seeing something in me when I was blinded to myself.
When summer’s final Sunday came along, I was craving a sense of closure. I sat parked on the edge of dusty Camp Peniel, where the noisy kids ran in circles, waiting to wave goodbye from the driver’s seat. I penned a note on a scrap of paper, signing with “I think I love you.” Celia got the note as I left, folded with instructions to open later. I couldn’t take the expression of emotion in person. A few days down the line, an response came for me in the mail, the first letter I’d ever received. It was an eager and vibrant affirmation of affection. I felt relief and fear in equal measure, coming down hard with apprehension, and I tried my best to push it under.
Mom’s fiftieth birthday came up at the end of that week, with a big party planned at my brother's house in Bridgetown. He’d bought a duplex for his family near the railroad bridge, just in sight of the winding river. We all gathered in his backyard as a big surprise, for a woman who’d always hated of surprises. I guess the party was more for us than her.
Celia was in the crowd when I arrived, and I’d almost forgotten the consequence of what I’d written. The small-town romance buzzed in my mind, flickered like a damaged filament in the dark. We separated from the sound and fury, walked down the railbed to the old rusty train bridge, and didn’t say much. We were small and alone on the sticky tar of splintered ties, Annapolis River running through the cracks beneath our feet. This is what love looked like, and I knew right then that it wouldn't last.
June 19, 2026
Granville Centre, Nova Scotia
Year 19, Day 6795 of my daily journal.
Bluesky | Etsy | Facebook | Instagram
Substack | Threads | Tumblr | YouTube
You can also support my work and
sign up for monthly handwritten
postcards over on my Patreon
Love movies? Find me on Letterboxd