Wouldn't call this "a video" so much as how one might talk in a quiet conversation with a friend. Therefore, a vlog (video blog). Sparked by a discussion of 'change' in my dance class, reminiscences on my years of journaling leading me to feel that we only become more of who we are...
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
(1:45sec) "White," Butoh-inspired dance-in-progress
This blog is a place where I keep my work, along with the progress of pieces. Here's a little Butoh-inspired dance piece in the process of...
Last night I stayed up till 3am composing piano notes in GarageBand to go with it, but had trouble synchronizing, also the notes were too busy in the middle. My first go with GarageBand, and I'm not a musician, so allowing my clumsiness to guide me.
Then I'd also like to overlay images since I found something that struck me on National Geographic this morning, but don't seem to be able to do it in iMovie. Should I go for broke and invest in FinalCut Express? Hopefully I can copy my old Photoshop Elements onto this computer and might be able to change transparencies to overlay that way.
In the Japanese aesthetic, art is always embodied in images of nature. This is true of Haiku as well as Butoh. I may or may not add the photo, but I'd like to have the technical capability to try it and see if it works.
Anyway, the uncut video. I have no idea what sort of poem will arise; perhaps it'll just be a single image. Who knows. Creating it as I go.
My 3rd attempt at a VideoDancePoem.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
(4:16) On Butoh-based Dance: A Saturday morning amble...
Discussing Butoh-based dance having just completed a 4 day workshop with Denise Fujiwara in Toronto, Canada.
Ok, so. My first iMac video on Butoh-based dance with a poem in my white flannel nightgown this morning.
Even before coffee. I leave as is. Though I did add the poem later this evening and you might have to increase the volume since, though I re-recorded a number of times much closer to the computer's built-in microphone than the original clip, I wasn't able to arrive at the same volume levels.
In the emptiness of the dancer everything comes to be. I hope I imparted this in my little experimental video. Sharing a recent experience which I am in the process of understanding.
Strange and surreal as it appears, the intensity of the dancers, intimacy, exposure, vulnerability are the core of Butoh.
_____
YouTube URL here
_____
Butoh Dancers
do not express but expose embodied emotion
in the Noh tradition of restraint
line of red belts on the kimonos
the dancers move towards us
as slowly as the moon bleeds through the sky
they are intermittently earth, water, fire, air
gone are the wild rhythms of their bodies
they are empty silk shells on the stage
who reveal their intimate selves
what is most human
our contradictory states
our warring, our longing, our loving
without the effort of thought
we who do not watch
or even witness
a performance
rather we complete
their process
of us
© 2008, Brenda Clews
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Four Hard Drives in as many weeks and counting...
Today my 3 month old Dell Inspiron laptop arrived back from a Dell Depot. Installed in it is a fourth hard drive, the fourth since the first one failed about mid-August, followed by the failure of the second one 3 days after it was installed, followed by the failure of the 3rd hard drive one hour into the four-hour Vista installation process. I see they have replaced the hard drive and the motherboard this time. I wonder if the laptop will actually work smoothly for the rest of its natural life?
I purchased my iMac nearly 6 years ago and it has run like a dream - never crashed, never had a virus. The most stable computer I have ever owned.
I had the laptop upgraded and configured for my daughter and it was always my intention to give it to her when I was able to afford the MacBook I really wanted.
My short foray into the PC world, however, is enough for me.
This woman is an Apple woman. An Apple woman this woman is.
I'm going for the 24" iMac with a tax credit from some years back & trusting that I will have a job soon. I lost quite a bit of work when the first Dell hard drive failed and that's painful. My old iMac hasn't developed any ticks but I can't, for instance, print a PDF file from it anymore, and many of my bills are electronic now. Most of the keys on the keyboard have to be pressed multiple times when writing; the mouse died some time ago & my daughter and I share an old PC mouse. Replacing the OS on such an old computer and purchasing a new keyboard and mouse is hardly worth the money. I am afraid such an old machine will suddenly crash and I'll lose years of work and my daughter will lose her entire iTunes library. We'll grieve for years. I know I should buy a portable hard drive as backup but being out of work, money is tight. Yet there is enough for the purchase of a new computer, just. Through a simple wire we can transfer everything on the old iMac to the new iMac. Plus we get to keep the darling, dear old machine, it's one of the ones with a white half moon base, a pregnant feminine shape to me, for browsing. I wish I'd kept it under a dust cover all these years, I had no idea it was such a survivor. Who knows, it may run beautifully until it becomes a classy antique.
I purchased my iMac nearly 6 years ago and it has run like a dream - never crashed, never had a virus. The most stable computer I have ever owned.
I had the laptop upgraded and configured for my daughter and it was always my intention to give it to her when I was able to afford the MacBook I really wanted.
My short foray into the PC world, however, is enough for me.
This woman is an Apple woman. An Apple woman this woman is.
I'm going for the 24" iMac with a tax credit from some years back & trusting that I will have a job soon. I lost quite a bit of work when the first Dell hard drive failed and that's painful. My old iMac hasn't developed any ticks but I can't, for instance, print a PDF file from it anymore, and many of my bills are electronic now. Most of the keys on the keyboard have to be pressed multiple times when writing; the mouse died some time ago & my daughter and I share an old PC mouse. Replacing the OS on such an old computer and purchasing a new keyboard and mouse is hardly worth the money. I am afraid such an old machine will suddenly crash and I'll lose years of work and my daughter will lose her entire iTunes library. We'll grieve for years. I know I should buy a portable hard drive as backup but being out of work, money is tight. Yet there is enough for the purchase of a new computer, just. Through a simple wire we can transfer everything on the old iMac to the new iMac. Plus we get to keep the darling, dear old machine, it's one of the ones with a white half moon base, a pregnant feminine shape to me, for browsing. I wish I'd kept it under a dust cover all these years, I had no idea it was such a survivor. Who knows, it may run beautifully until it becomes a classy antique.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Red Balloon
Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon)
Albert Lamorisse, France, 1956 34 min
A red balloon with a life of its own follows a little boy around the streets of Paris. Winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, despite almost no dialog spoken in the film.
Le Voyage Du Balloon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon)
Hou Hsiao-hsien, France, 2008 113 min
A more thorough synopsis of the film here.
May be spoilers, not sure. I sought to write something that would enhance your viewing if you saw these films. I explore the red balloon as poetic image. Not a film review; rather the way my thoughts of the movie hovered and swam in the air like the red balloon.
______
The Red Balloon, the 1956 nearly silent film by Albert Lamorisse is stark poetry. The balloon and the child. Both buoyant and fragile, moving into an expanding world and trusting. The film is the motion of the child through the streets of an older Paris; like the balloon, we rarely see him in interiors, and when we do it is looking out of windows to the light where the balloon hovers with him. Of course jealousy and envy arise and the boys who want the power of the red balloon that the chosen boy has, and ultimately the slow deflation of the balloon by catapult. When all the balloons in Paris rise and congregate like a flock with the grieving boy who has lost his red balloon, he flies over the city held by them, a Chagall painting.
Flight of the Red Balloon, the 2008 film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, in part a tribute, begins with a balloon that echoes the balloon from the original film. A poem within a poem. The balloon hovers around the boy in the new film, though no-one but the audience sees this.
The balloon has been called a symbol of the imagination yet for me it cannot be this.
It's a relationship. As if you rubbed the balloon on your sweater, it would stick to you. The balloon is loyal like a puppy. It follows, hovers, allows itself to be seen only by who should see it.
The balloon is like a vision, fragile, buoyant and red. Or an apple, the beginning of the alphabet and the wisdom the fall from the Garden of Eden initiates.
It is a piece of man-made rubber inflated with helium but loses that property.
The red sphere dances in the sky, being a balloon that becomes a stave in a musical score, an image in a poem, a rich round colour in a painter's palette. It is the spinning globe of red that is the life force.
The red balloon is the magic of what floats.
If we follow what floats we will understand the symbol of the red balloon in the film.
The red balloon is a sun in the sky.
It's happy.
It's locked out. The red balloon is untethered, free to fly in the wind, to fly up into space.
The red balloon is the boy's heart which it invisibly ties itself to. The red balloon comes to comfort the boy in his loneliness, his bravery in living the independent life expected of him. The boy travels from home to school and back again in Paris, alone, the red balloon following.
There is a poignancy, a tenderness to the comfort the large red balloon and the boy offer each other, the white string of the balloon like an umbilical chord to hope.
Whoever holds the red balloon in the film, or the wires attached to it is made invisible as the balloon hovers near the boy, only the pure relationship remains.
In Flight of the Red Balloon, the film-student nanny of the boy is filming a film of the red balloon but never sees the one following her care outside the window, as if she is a grown Wendy who cannot see Peter Pan's Neverland of eternal childhood dancing on the windowsill.
The red balloon rises and falls on the walls outside the boy's room like breath. Sometimes the red balloon slides glancing over a graffiti representation of a red balloon as life and art interweave, as they do everywhere in the film.
The matriarch of the film, of the house, which was her mother's before her, and the mother of the child is a puppeteer, or rather the powerful voice of the woman in the puppet show. Everywhere in the film we see puppets, snippets of a show of mythic proportions and great passion (based on the Yuan Dynasty story of Zhang Yu and his beloved, Qiong Lian.) Archetypal forces are at play under the weave of characters and narrative of the film, in the domestic dramas and interweaving of cultures, French and Taiwanese (the film by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien), the struggles of the artists represented in the film in all their variety, from the successful puppeteers (the mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), who financially supports the household), to the film student of film, Song Fang (played by herself), who stays with the boy, Simon (Simon Iteaneau), after school, to the writer and his girlfriend who live on the second floor without paying rent, to Suzanne's boyfriend who is absent in Montreal writing a novel, to the teacher at the end teaching the children how to look at the painting of the child with the red balloon from an aerial perspective, from the balloon's perspective.
While Hou Hsiao-hsien provided the general scenarios of the film and the background story to the actors, they created the dialogue and the movement. The domestic scenes feel real and contrast with the poetry interweaving the film like the balloon floating about the windows and walls outside, held by desire yet subject to the rhythms of air, a moving notation.
The balloon always behind dusty old windows, in mirrors, at the edge of the pictorial frame, never graspable. So subtle as to be missed by all but the boy and the film director who guides the audience's vision to its close red roundness.
In the slightly nostalgic and poignant feeling of the film, the red balloon is held by the warmth of our hearts to us.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Painting Nook
Thursday, September 11, 2008
In the middle of August in the Summer of 2008
Perhaps there were different ways of understanding, parallel paths of interpretation and it was impossible to pick which was more real.
First one, and then the other seemed likely.But, no, it was more like a kaleidoscope of turbulent thoughts and chaotic feelings.
Perhaps they were lassos you were flinging from each hand, sometimes they swung wildly divergently, sometimes they entangled.The problem was there was no strategy, or even a map of where we were.
Or probably you didn't swing anything and the parallel ways of understanding were the metaphor I was most comfortable with.Or when I lay at the beach on the hot day imagining Ferris wheels of kaleidoscopes where everything impinged on everything else.
I couldn't decide, on the long walk grocery shopping that day which path more accurately represented your feelings, or mine, or what happened.
It was an embarrassing situation from which you fled. Discovery of the truth was the last thing you wanted.
Nothing made sense.But what was the truth?
What is truth?Parallel paths; I can't decide which.
Rather, multiple lines like tangled tackle.One interpretation, the cavalier one, you'd prefer; the other a deeper more vulnerable one you'd prefer hidden.
I can't live in your heart to know definitively. I imagine you yourself don't fully know either. We're hanging somewhere between spiritual truth and illusion. The illusion you'd rather cast hides what?
Probably it was the more hidden truth and it held a power over you that disturbed you greatly because to follow that path would change your perception of freedom irrevocably.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Me as an Audience Extra
The last year has been one of the most difficult years of my life. While I cannot share much of what has happened, the good news is that I am still going. Sometimes I'm not sure how.
At the end of May my last contract position ended and since then I have been officially unemployed, a disempowering experience to say the least.
Anyhow, for a new experience last Friday I was an 'audience extra' at Market Call Tonight on BNN. Here's a clip of me asking a question, something I make myself do whenever I attend a seminar. Okay, I don't know a lot about the stock market, but I realized that I know more than I thought I did.
By all means watch the whole show, Ross Healy's viewpoints are interesting. If you want to see yours truly, a little nervous (could have done with some of those beta blockers, laughs) go to 7:25 on this clip (after the ads) for about 2 minutes to hear his full answer.
At the end of May my last contract position ended and since then I have been officially unemployed, a disempowering experience to say the least.
Anyhow, for a new experience last Friday I was an 'audience extra' at Market Call Tonight on BNN. Here's a clip of me asking a question, something I make myself do whenever I attend a seminar. Okay, I don't know a lot about the stock market, but I realized that I know more than I thought I did.
By all means watch the whole show, Ross Healy's viewpoints are interesting. If you want to see yours truly, a little nervous (could have done with some of those beta blockers, laughs) go to 7:25 on this clip (after the ads) for about 2 minutes to hear his full answer.
Bridging Transformations
In the time of transformation, what bridges the gap between what is disappearing and what is coming to be?
What do we leave behind to cross?
Who are we to meet?
As we transform, what are we bridging in ourselves?
I found these questions scrawled in my notebook. Surely that day in late August I had something specific in mind. Perhaps I had just seen the video clips for the movie, Man on Wire, of Philippe Petit's dream to walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, and who did it in 1974. Twenty-seven years before their destruction, his delicate dance of balance across the strung edge of death bridged his dream to its realization.
Or perhaps I was considering the Oracle of the Hunab Ku, number 36: Bridge.
What do we leave behind to cross?
Who are we to meet?
As we transform, what are we bridging in ourselves?
I found these questions scrawled in my notebook. Surely that day in late August I had something specific in mind. Perhaps I had just seen the video clips for the movie, Man on Wire, of Philippe Petit's dream to walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center, and who did it in 1974. Twenty-seven years before their destruction, his delicate dance of balance across the strung edge of death bridged his dream to its realization.
Or perhaps I was considering the Oracle of the Hunab Ku, number 36: Bridge.
What bridges the crossing for you?
What are you crossing from,
and where are you going?
Monday, September 01, 2008
Discus Thrower
Discus Thrower, ©Brenda Clews 2008, oil pastel on paper, 13" x 17", 33cm x 43cm (click on image for larger size)
Began by playing with some new oil pastels while watching a movie, abstract at first rubbing and painting the soluble colours but I'm a figurative artist and so overlaid them with a guy inspired by the famous Ancient Greek Discus Thrower, in turn obviously inspired by the Olympics that I watched obsessively for two weeks. It is amazing how our experiences come through in our art. As I outlined him, first putting in and then removing an arm to give him a paradoxical angle whereby he can appear to be facing the viewer or with his back to us, depending on the light -squint & you'll see him from behind, look and you'll see the barest representation of a face to incline you to think he is facing us- I thought, to me he represents a 'force of nature.'
In my recent paintings I have chosen to work slowly with an eye to detail; this, by contrast, was an explosion.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Clustering the Night Sky
A star system that spins around its black holes. Twinkling nexus of neurons. Why do I breathe or lie here wondering why I am. Or you.
No, I don't wish to explain mystery. I like the strangeness of life, knowing we are real even as we part from our bodily images in our imagination of being.
I follow the lines of your body with my fingers of light. Lines that limn memories of you, you haven't lain with me for a long time.
In the masses of stars how did we find and then lose each other?
Do I carry a simulation of you, you are so real beside me? Mirrors of the past reflecting in the present. Neurons traveling the gaps in time.
Or are you here, thrown into my arms by the electricity of what is conscious, our connection beyond time and space.
In the strangeness, clarity.
Night after night I roll into your warmth imagined beside me.
No, I don't wish to explain mystery. I like the strangeness of life, knowing we are real even as we part from our bodily images in our imagination of being.
I follow the lines of your body with my fingers of light. Lines that limn memories of you, you haven't lain with me for a long time.
In the masses of stars how did we find and then lose each other?
Do I carry a simulation of you, you are so real beside me? Mirrors of the past reflecting in the present. Neurons traveling the gaps in time.
Or are you here, thrown into my arms by the electricity of what is conscious, our connection beyond time and space.
In the strangeness, clarity.
Night after night I roll into your warmth imagined beside me.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Women In Summer
If anyone knows the code to reverse the order of a Flikr slideshow I'd appreciate it. It's currently running backwards, from finished painting through all the stages to the drawing, which is a bit awkward. Women In Summer, I'm happy to say, is finished.
(Clicking any of the images will stop the slideshow and provide more of the info I included for the picture.)
Also, I've grouped this series on one page by the tag, WomenInSummer, at Flickr, here.
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Dancer Who Turns
Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or counter-clockwise?
If clockwise, then you are NOW - at this very moment–
using more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.
Please consider what neuro scientists have discovered
through careful research:
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking
_________
Copied from a comment by Ken Grisnak, Aug 16, 2008, at a blog post, Losing Your Religion, Part I, by Ann M. (image reader).
If clockwise, then you are NOW - at this very moment–
using more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most would see the dancer turning counter-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.
Please consider what neuro scientists have discovered
through careful research:
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking
_________
Copied from a comment by Ken Grisnak, Aug 16, 2008, at a blog post, Losing Your Religion, Part I, by Ann M. (image reader).
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Race of the Medals of Fortune
(This is rather long, & loose, what I wrote while watching the race live on my computer through CBC streaming without commentators - I could hear the rain and the distant cheering of small groups of people as the runners streamed past, the breath of the camera crew and the breath of the runners, their feet pattering the pavement kilometer after kilometer - I posted this piece because it's current though would rather have sat with it a bit longer to tighten the phrasing and bring out the race as metaphor.)
the women, running
they look like they're in pain
in pain, yet with runner's high
it won't let them stop
desire and the power of their bodies
she leaves the packs of women
everyone runs in packs, occasional loners
falling behind to the oncoming pack or streaming ahead to the next one
does she feel her winged feet touch the pavement?
can she hear the onlookers straggled in the rain along the avenues cheering?
does she see the multitude of cameras following beside, in front, whirring overhead?
does she know where she is? or has she forgotten?
perhaps what lights her blue eyes, framed by Botticelli curls caught back
is her lover who she is running to
her husband her trainer, their child, her country, us
who wait in the Olympic flame
she is running for her life
the others, thin-bodied svelte athletes, muscle-flat stomachs, smooth pelvis’
shaped legs, not heavily muscled but sinewy
and the ubiquitous knees, joints rising and falling, rising and falling
elbows back and forth
breath in and out
steady beat of feet on the tarmac
little two piece bathing suits, pasted over their chests their number, and country
and the ever-white sneakers of the marathon runner
running through central Beijing
from Tiananmen Square past the Temple of Heaven
the Forbidden City and the National Theatre
passing the trees of the boulevard
the concrete enclosed river
the office towers
the closed factories
along the nearly empty wet streets
past obliquely collected crowds waving and cheering them on
the women running
rasping breath
thudding feet
they become landscape streaming
they are angels running past us
sweaty athletes close to collapse
on the flagstones through the grounds of Qinhua University
near the Summer Palace, on and on
camera lenses flecked with water
where do you centre your gravity? in your knees, rising and falling
in your belly with the forward momentum
where the energy is?
how to pace yourself so you don't burn out before the end?
when do you open your stride
and go
she holds nothing back
she endures
in the lead
she is the leader
there she is, #2716
passing the stands for the runners, each country waiting with mineral salts in water
blue two-piece track suit
with yellow side bars
skimpy
fair hair,
eyes blue as the skies of the Romanian farm she grew up on
she is so far ahead
there is only one car following her, one camera
to watch her
it is silent around her
how far are they from the Bird's Nest, the stadium where a hundred thousand wait?
where it will roar when they enter
in packs
except for the lone winner
who is compelled to run
through the pain of her limbs
who is elated
running over
the clouds of Olympia
she is the breath of her feet
she is gold
_____________
Constantina Tomescu-Dita of Romania at age 38 on August 16, 2008 won the Women’s 40 Km Marathon at the Olympics in Beijing, China with a time of 2:26:44. She is the oldest Olympic marathon winner and stands 5'2" (1.6m) at 106 bare pounds (48 kg).
Constantina Tomescu crossing the finish line of Women's Marathon. (Photo Credit:Guo Dayue/Xinhua) Photo from Beijing
the women, running
they look like they're in pain
in pain, yet with runner's high
it won't let them stop
desire and the power of their bodies
she leaves the packs of women
everyone runs in packs, occasional loners
falling behind to the oncoming pack or streaming ahead to the next one
does she feel her winged feet touch the pavement?
can she hear the onlookers straggled in the rain along the avenues cheering?
does she see the multitude of cameras following beside, in front, whirring overhead?
does she know where she is? or has she forgotten?
perhaps what lights her blue eyes, framed by Botticelli curls caught back
is her lover who she is running to
her husband her trainer, their child, her country, us
who wait in the Olympic flame
she is running for her life
the others, thin-bodied svelte athletes, muscle-flat stomachs, smooth pelvis’
shaped legs, not heavily muscled but sinewy
and the ubiquitous knees, joints rising and falling, rising and falling
elbows back and forth
breath in and out
steady beat of feet on the tarmac
little two piece bathing suits, pasted over their chests their number, and country
and the ever-white sneakers of the marathon runner
running through central Beijing
from Tiananmen Square past the Temple of Heaven
the Forbidden City and the National Theatre
passing the trees of the boulevard
the concrete enclosed river
the office towers
the closed factories
along the nearly empty wet streets
past obliquely collected crowds waving and cheering them on
the women running
rasping breath
thudding feet
they become landscape streaming
they are angels running past us
sweaty athletes close to collapse
on the flagstones through the grounds of Qinhua University
near the Summer Palace, on and on
camera lenses flecked with water
where do you centre your gravity? in your knees, rising and falling
in your belly with the forward momentum
where the energy is?
how to pace yourself so you don't burn out before the end?
when do you open your stride
and go
she holds nothing back
she endures
in the lead
she is the leader
there she is, #2716
passing the stands for the runners, each country waiting with mineral salts in water
blue two-piece track suit
with yellow side bars
skimpy
fair hair,
eyes blue as the skies of the Romanian farm she grew up on
she is so far ahead
there is only one car following her, one camera
to watch her
it is silent around her
how far are they from the Bird's Nest, the stadium where a hundred thousand wait?
where it will roar when they enter
in packs
except for the lone winner
who is compelled to run
through the pain of her limbs
who is elated
running over
the clouds of Olympia
she is the breath of her feet
she is gold
_____________
Constantina Tomescu-Dita of Romania at age 38 on August 16, 2008 won the Women’s 40 Km Marathon at the Olympics in Beijing, China with a time of 2:26:44. She is the oldest Olympic marathon winner and stands 5'2" (1.6m) at 106 bare pounds (48 kg).
Constantina Tomescu crossing the finish line of Women's Marathon. (Photo Credit:Guo Dayue/Xinhua) Photo from Beijing
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Sailor's Delight
the sky is yellow with rain
it hasn't stopped raining all Summer
the wet sky is
stained with rain
I rewrite and wash
my life
the pitter patter of mantra, or tears
sheets of rain
then I saw fashion colours for this Fall
are amythyst and burnt orange
like the fresh clean billows blowing in the sky
suddenly at sunset
it hasn't stopped raining all Summer
the wet sky is
stained with rain
I rewrite and wash
my life
the pitter patter of mantra, or tears
sheets of rain
then I saw fashion colours for this Fall
are amythyst and burnt orange
like the fresh clean billows blowing in the sky
suddenly at sunset
Friday, August 15, 2008
finding the moon
round light that is the moon
gliding, a psychic eye in the sky
before lightning drowns it
with falling water
water of the moon floats over me
water of the moon is a dry seabed
on the spin of rock in the sky
that swings round
and around us
pulling the
waters
as I am pulled to you
envisioning what always was
but can never be
and then becomes
when the shroud of purple cloud
drifts clearing our hearts
luminescent crystal ball
floating
moon is round
spiritual truth and illusion
one vision
tonight we find
tonight
we are found
gliding, a psychic eye in the sky
before lightning drowns it
with falling water
water of the moon floats over me
water of the moon is a dry seabed
on the spin of rock in the sky
that swings round
and around us
pulling the
waters
as I am pulled to you
envisioning what always was
but can never be
and then becomes
when the shroud of purple cloud
drifts clearing our hearts
luminescent crystal ball
floating
moon is round
spiritual truth and illusion
one vision
tonight we find
tonight
we are found
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Liquid Metal
I
falling through space without landing, or flying
into an eclipse, deliberate blotting out
the darkening of the sky
denials of our feelings
for each
other
II
writing kept us from recognizing
the fissures
III
how we hurt each other
IV
fiery strands of interrelated passions
memories, motives, what happened
what didn't, the suspicions
times of deep connections
pulsing at varying speeds
in varying directions
hooking up here
& there exploding
randomly
V
pulsing
like the heart
VI
the moon glides
releasing the sun
VII
we chip away anger
a brittle ceramic mold
on the gold
sculpture
of love
forged in our fire of desperation
falling through space without landing, or flying
into an eclipse, deliberate blotting out
the darkening of the sky
denials of our feelings
for each
other
II
writing kept us from recognizing
the fissures
III
how we hurt each other
IV
fiery strands of interrelated passions
memories, motives, what happened
what didn't, the suspicions
times of deep connections
pulsing at varying speeds
in varying directions
hooking up here
& there exploding
randomly
V
pulsing
like the heart
VI
the moon glides
releasing the sun
VII
we chip away anger
a brittle ceramic mold
on the gold
sculpture
of love
forged in our fire of desperation
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Birds Wings
Images of the world. Under a chestnut tree with your dog reading Ondaatje, a superb writer, watching for the police lest they catch you unleashed, a musician on a bench who put his book down and lifted his guitar from its case on the ground and began strumming though you are too far to hear, on the pale-striped green and blue fleece blanket with the nylon underside from Vancouver where it's generally wetter though we've had record rains in Toronto this year, sipping a mug of fresh French-press espresso coffee with cream, rocking a little in a camping chair, your iPod nano beside you unused, your hair clipped back, a black camisole and comfortable thin cotton khaki shorts, and such green as this city never sees by mid-Summer, usually the grass has brown patches, unaccompanied by your invited kids who couldn't conceive of anything more boring than sitting on a blanket in the park up the road on a hot sunny day, and you're content amidst these images of your world, the breeze that flutters like birds' wings.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Fragments of Healing
where I am, the edge of oblivion
blank, empty stare
you carry it in the palm of your hand
delicate music-maker, this filler of hours
without art, I couldn't imagine living
blank, empty stare,
its simmering anger boiling at the edges
that I see on your face
I know the edge
come back to those who love you,
love
blank, empty stare
you carry it in the palm of your hand
delicate music-maker, this filler of hours
without art, I couldn't imagine living
blank, empty stare,
its simmering anger boiling at the edges
that I see on your face
I know the edge
come back to those who love you,
love
Friday, July 25, 2008
Almost Finished Painting
(28.5"x20.5"; 72.5cmx52cm; oil & watercolour on Waterford paper, click here for larger size & press F11 for full screen)
The women on the right appeared ghostly from a distance.
The greens of Nature and the poppies and marigolds much stronger.
She wondered if that was a statement.
The ocean has turned into green.
She had to put the water back in for depth.
Otherwise she'd be flooded.
Where was he anyhow?
Why were the women always waiting.
They were naked and waiting.
Even she who was born from a seabrush
of sea foam.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Paiting Still in Process, nearing end though...
awake in night, sleep soon, hope, embroiled by my painting, get overalls on, go at it again
complexity of colours & figures driving me nuts. ready to throw it out. obsession. unscrew tubes of oil paint, try this, that. mess of reality.
where painting has progressed to, or regressed to.
(click here for larger size, you might need to press F11 if you'd like to see its whole cacophony)
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Mirror of Venus
I am the mirror that I watch my
self in.
Behind the mirror is where I see.
Only ask for the 'freedom to revolt- psychic,
analytic, artistic- a permanent state of questioning,
of transformations, an endless probing of appearances,'
......found on the dustjacket
......of a book by Kristeva,
who wrote about revolt, and love.
Everyone should love wholly once in their life, as
the daughter of fortune knows.
The tenor of love demands it.
Love, illicit, a revolt against the order
of the rest of it.
The amatory moment is poetry, open-ended,
without a story to guide it, what's behind the mirror
where I watch your face.
Venus, Goddess of Love, married to Hephaestus, master craftsman.
Of course love is wedded to art. How else
could it be?
The block was a red clay-baked brick which took two hours to smash. It revealed
itself, heavy, smoldering with beaten passion, betrayals and intrigues, over my heart. Cracks of light appeared that became white-red lava that disintegrated slowly the faster I danced.
When I melted into the mirror, love flowed freely.
Venus, Goddess of Love, but she knew her Ares, Mars, God of Fire and War.
Venus undid her bodice and melted
into his arms.
Illicit. Love.
Sometimes I prefer the quietness
of my own thoughts.
self in.
Behind the mirror is where I see.
Only ask for the 'freedom to revolt- psychic,
analytic, artistic- a permanent state of questioning,
of transformations, an endless probing of appearances,'
......found on the dustjacket
......of a book by Kristeva,
who wrote about revolt, and love.
Everyone should love wholly once in their life, as
the daughter of fortune knows.
The tenor of love demands it.
Love, illicit, a revolt against the order
of the rest of it.
The amatory moment is poetry, open-ended,
without a story to guide it, what's behind the mirror
where I watch your face.
Venus, Goddess of Love, married to Hephaestus, master craftsman.
Of course love is wedded to art. How else
could it be?
The block was a red clay-baked brick which took two hours to smash. It revealed
itself, heavy, smoldering with beaten passion, betrayals and intrigues, over my heart. Cracks of light appeared that became white-red lava that disintegrated slowly the faster I danced.
When I melted into the mirror, love flowed freely.
Venus, Goddess of Love, but she knew her Ares, Mars, God of Fire and War.
Venus undid her bodice and melted
into his arms.
Illicit. Love.
Sometimes I prefer the quietness
of my own thoughts.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Remembered
Is my art confident? Intensely meditated? Is how deeply I love what will be remembered about me?
Strange questions Lightbrown brings to his biography of Botticelli, who was only remembered by Vasari's Lives of the Artists in what was otherwise five centuries of obscurity.
How odd that it was his paganism which appealed to the fin de siècle who brought his work from the shadows of history.
The barest outline of a life.
Botticelli is his art.
Strange questions Lightbrown brings to his biography of Botticelli, who was only remembered by Vasari's Lives of the Artists in what was otherwise five centuries of obscurity.
How odd that it was his paganism which appealed to the fin de siècle who brought his work from the shadows of history.
The barest outline of a life.
Botticelli is his art.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
A Love Affair hits #2 on the Charts
A Love Affair #2 in SoundClick's Poetry Charts?! You guys!!! Thanks. 16 min of too-rich poetry, no music, & a Summer weekend? Blow me away...
(Go here to read the poems, which I pasted into a comment.)
(Yes, I am a little out of place at SoundClick's Poetry section, but I've been posting there for a few years, before they even had a Talk/Poetry section, and it's where I keep my poetry recordings: Aural Pleasure.)
(Go here to read the poems, which I pasted into a comment.)
(Yes, I am a little out of place at SoundClick's Poetry section, but I've been posting there for a few years, before they even had a Talk/Poetry section, and it's where I keep my poetry recordings: Aural Pleasure.)
Painting In Process July 08
Clipped 2 clamp lamps each with 100Watt daylight spectrum bulbs on either side and snapped it. Blue is a bit bright, slightly darker in the original. The lower right quadrant a little darker than in the painting, but running the Dodge tool in Photoshop over it even at 25% didn't bring it to its shade of colour. Every monitor's different anyhow. My old iMac & new Dell laptop each present colours differently. Overall, and I worked on this awhile, between the 2 computers, the coloration's not bad.
Anyway, how's that drawing I posted going? Eh. Tinkering, dabbing, letting it grow in its own fashion. Slow, but I'm enjoying slow. My paintings used to be done in 20 minutes and that felt fine then only now I want to linger longer, enjoy the process continuously. A dab, a little bit of paint, wait a day, see what's next. This piece, however, who knows, it seems quite complex to me as I work on it, and I don't know in which direction it'll develop.
I just spread the blue of her back into the other blue to syncopate the rhythm across the page better because alone it overwhelmed, was too strong. I started using watercolour pencils because they're more forgiving, and I can test the colours first.
Do I like it? I'm not sure. It's growing on me. It seems diagrammatic. A blueprint. Though of what, I cannot quite say. Groupings, images of women.
72.5cm x 52cm/28.5" x 20.5", oil and watercolour on paper (click image for larger size) or go directly here (you might need to press F11 to see it all).
Saturday, July 12, 2008
A Love Affair Charts
I'm tickled no end that something 16 minutes long and all poetry, an almost too-rich offering since there's some fairly complex stuff there too, and no music has made it to #5 on the charts at SoundClick! Thanks to you...
(note: only first poem is explicitly sexual, none of the others are)
(note: only first poem is explicitly sexual, none of the others are)
A Love Affair (15:53min)
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