Image

RUBIES IN CRYSTAL

Does language hover between my nerve endings and the world, or is language my skin itself?
Sheath of feeling. Words groping to touch air.

The past is always growing...

The past is always growing in relation to the present. We add everything we are to the moment we are in, and that keeps expanding the more we live. Personally I love the complexity that my memories add to everything I think of and do. A pebble or a cloud is entirely different now to when I was four years old, and I prefer now. But then, I enjoy aging, and revel in the richness of the inner experiences which continue to enrich the world I dwell in and which so beautifully surround me as I continue my journey through it. Every day is a gift - a gift that keeps growing as my memories of living this living gift compound.


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FRIDAY VIDPOFILM: 'You' by Elise Marianne


direct link: 'You' by Elise Marianne

Poem/vocals/music/video by Elise © Elise Marianne 2012
http://elisepoetry.webs.com/

What I most like about Elise Marianne's videopoem, You, is it maintains an inherent mystery that has an antique, vintage, old world feel. Her work seems to emerge from the distant past into our time. In You the black silhouette plane which contains the crow is like a window we look through, a window of black lace, the bird from some imagined world figuring in ours. It is as if Edgar Allen Poe's crow sits, in silhouette, watching. "...shards of glass about my fingers," the poet says, and it is like we are breaking windows, reaching backward and forward through time.

The poem in the videopoem is on unrequited love, again we are in a distant world of Courtly love, of the Metaphysical poets, of Emily Dickinson behind her lace curtain dreaming of a richly endowed love. "Your eyes a stilled moon-pond /Where I shall drown if I enter." The crow becomes a nightingale, a bird singing of love. But, the deep blacks, sepia and reds of the palette the poet has chosen to convey her vision work on us. "Mouth to barb wire / your mouth around that fenced forest," and we are back again in the mystery of loss, separation, graves, the past that never ends. "Scars of names etched on every oak that bore the name." Distantly, echoing, old Celtic mysteries, Druidic lore, these wind in and out of Lise's video poem. "Pain is longing; pain is love: a bitter twist that makes us human. But are you human?" These ghostly questions resound, her voice echoing after itself. There is warmth to this crypt-like vision, again I am reminded of the great popularity vampire lore currently enjoys, and there is a sense of foreboding, yet an agelessness that is without fear, here too. "What do you expect from me here on the edge for gifts for your ungiving hands?" And, yes, we all know: "This voice is tired of being unheard." It is a dark poem. "Black crows are yours. Dead of night. Shards of glass about my fingers." "This voice is tired of being unheard, tired of waiting. I am done with your silence. Done with the coldness of your winters."

Elise's voice, her wonderful British accent, is clear as a bell, with smoky edges to it. Her visuals are simply gorgeous. She is a poet who makes videopoems who I have been following for some time. Thus far, she has mostly worked with slideshows and I am happy to see her begin to incorporate found footage from various Internet archives into her work.

You is one of her most successful pieces to date. Do check out her website.

From Elise's website:
Elise, is a UK poet, and the founder and editor of International poetry magazine Decanto. Her work has been included in various magazines and anthologies both in the UK and Internationally.

She has written many collections of poetry, including 'For All Eternity', 'The Last Lament', 'Paradise', 'Opium Valentines' and 'Sacred Realm'. She is currently working on a new collection.

Her collections have been widely reviewed. She has also been featured and interviewed in various magazines and ezines, both in the UK and abroad, including;

The Tower Journal USA
Sonnetto Poesia Canada
Gloom Cupboard USA
Book Seekers agency UK ......

Her relay interview with US poet Mary Ann Sullivan, about the poet 'Hilda Doolittle' was featured in 'Jacket2' 2009.

Elise's poetry is often described as Metaphysical/Romanticism, with strong visual imagery. The concept of bringing together words, music and images brought about the idea of video poetry, a field which seems to suit the strong visual quality of her work. Her video poetry also includes her own musical compositions.

Her poetry video collaboration 'Conceptus' with American poet Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, has recently been accepted by the Southbank Centre London.

she writes;

'I like to totally immerse myself in creating video poems. I think it is the ideal way to collaborate multi media, of poem, image and music; the next best thing to a stage production, which has always been a dream of mine. I love the expression of words and how the spoken voice can convey the feeling or emotion of the poem... and of course the music, which I so enjoy creating. It is very satisfying to be able to bring all aspects together collectively'.



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Almost There!

I did some very simple things to my 22 minute triptych of nature poems, Tangled Garden, and now have to wait for 9 hours of rendering! Then I'll save to a video format for uploading, which will likely take another 9 hours, then upload to YouTube, and wait for their processing to complete, so, tweets, peeps, and friends, maybe this project that's taken the greater part of a year will be live by Thursday!

Finishing it is on my 2012 list, and yay, almost there! Only 3 more pre-planned projects to go! Colour of Near Death, Wear White Paint for the Moon, and Double Lotus, the last two are performance pieces, which are hard for me to justify doing, given my age, but ageism is not my problem (it's yours if you discriminate against older women), onward, fearless, fearless!


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Subtitling Tangled Garden


Moved my triptych of nature poems, Tangled Garden, forward by 2 seconds and had to manually adjust 282 subtitles! Sigh - all in the name of art. (And even then, am finding a few small errors in the timing of the subtitles as I go through the track.)

The pic is from a low resolution .m4v (iPhone quality) that I am using to check the subtitles.



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Titling 'Tangled Garden'

As I finally draw near to completion with this 22 minute video project, I have to do the titles.

I took the original video May 9, 2011, and watched it over and over on the viewfinder of my video camera, wondering what I would do with it. It is very rhizomatous. In June I went to the park with my daughter twice to video some creative movement, yoga dance, whatever you want to call it, for this long videopoem. Out of that footage I did make two solstice videos last year, commemorating the sun's closeness ('Green Goddess' dance) and distance (Shadow Cave), and those videos have done very well (relatively speaking) I am happy to say. Tangled Garden might be live by the end of the week - how exciting that prospect is! Months and months of work finally coming to completion.

Ok. It's an 'art video' - not much happens, but..... that's alright. It has its own magic.

Anyway, it is a triptych of 3 long poems, which I did spend 3 days subtitling, so that should work out nicely.

So here are the titles - any suggestions are appreciated!

Tangled Garden 

a film by Brenda Clews

a triptych of nature poems
by Brenda Clews

-A Floral Opera (2011)
-In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979)
-Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006)

with the singer Catherine Corelli 
from her album, Seraphic Tears (2010).


_____
at the end:

TANGLED GARDEN

written, spoken, performed, videoed and edited
by ©Brenda Clews 2012

brendaclews.com

with special thanks to
Catherine Corelli

'Seraphic Tears':
http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/79547




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Woman in Red and Blue (final painting)

Woman in Red and Blue, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, mixed media.


Posting again because I fiddled a bit with and cropped this portrait. The scanner, while enabling a high resolution/good colour image, misses texture. One day I'll get a decent camera to take these paintings - this one is scored with lines from toothpicks, dental tools, knitting needles, and different media - pens, inks, paints, rubbings and scratchings... I didn't like the initial sketch (self portrait drawn looking into a mirror) and was too impatient to work on it so I thought I'd see how the figure could emerge through washes of black paint, and then all the other media I used, inks, acrylics, oils, from fountain pen inks, dip pens, ball point pens and brushes and cloths. Often I spray fixatives between layers too, so there's a few of those. A figure does emerge, and there's a welter of emotion in that worked surface. I have a 30" x 40" Windsor and Newton canvas still unopened for a self portrait, and so am doing studies, not just for facial features (haven't hit home quite yet) but for painting techniques.


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Hans Silvester: Tribus del olmo

From Storyculture: Hans Silvester describes his mission, "what’s most important for me is saving, in some way, as much as possible of this truly living art, which is mobile, changing, subject to infinite variation, and whose constituent elements are simple and form a link between man and nature. It seems to me that our modern painting found the purpose of these elements, this simplicity, and used it as its foundation."

Learn more about Hans Silvester's time with the L'omo people at the Marlborough Gallery website.

HERE IS A SLIDE SHOW OF MORE THAN FIFTY OF SILVESTER'S IMAGES
Tribus del olmo
The Painted People of the Surma and Mursi Tribes in Southern Ethiopia - Photos by Hans Silvester.

These people, their rituals, what to us is face painting but to them a calling and embodiment of the spirits, are caught on camera in beautiful portrait shots. They are hesitant, you can see that, before the clicking black machine that the photographer holds. Yet they allow us to steal their images away to show in galleries and books, to post on the NET and spread around the world in ways they will never see or understand. Watching is a complex process of awe, wonderment, tenderness, voyeurism, and a wish to imitate. Yes, paint my face in white and ochre, pigments from ground rocks, shards, plants, and put garlands of flowers and vegetation around  my head and I'll dance shamanically calling and embodying whatever Modern spirits who are in the vicinity and happen to be attracted.

It would be a cacophony.

If it wasn't for copyright restrictions, I would put many of these images in my forthcoming 22 minute videopoem, Tangled Garden.


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Woman in Red and Blue


From my Moleskine Project today:

Woman in Red and Blue, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, mixed media.


You might guess, I am working on studies for a self portrait painting. Still haven't achieved a good likeness (according to my beloved children), 'but,' they say, they 'like them anyhow.'

I layered this with different types of inks, pens, paints, scratchings, and so on. You might be able to see the detail if it opens in full screen and gives you an option to view at original size.

Let's hope so.

:)


While the darker image is from a scanner, this is closer to what the painting looks like in bright natural daylight (it's an earlier version, too).

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Concerto n°9 by Pierre-Marie CŒDES

  Royalty Free Music - Stock Music Library | Jamendo PRO
direct link to Pierre-Marie CŒDES' Concerto n°9 on Jamendo


direct link to Pierre-Marie CŒDES' Concerto n°9 on SoundCloud

Pierre-Marie CŒDES' Concerto n°9 opens with a trumpet call. A swan is glides over the still water of the river. It is dawn. The sun rises with strings and drums. Such tension in the music, coiled, ready to open, and when the piano begins, it does. We are flowing in a dance of water birds. The water is a thick glass floor and when a plummet is thrown, it dives down and down. There is no end to the depth of this music.

We are brought back to the fingers, nimble playing, the breath, even clear notes. The swans lift out of the water, drops of water falling from their wings, angels rising into the brightening sky.

Flutes, reeds flowing to the music. Those on the banks witnessing the ballet of birds in the water, still, awe.

The Allegreto is restrained and draws its power from its restraint.

There is such joy in the melody. The piano sings, lightly across the keys, deeply in the bass notes.

Trills, lightly, lightly, the swans have become ballet dancers with wings. They are sweeping around and around.

Newness arises with the sunrise, the day opens with Pierre-Marie's Concerto N°9. He is ever gentle with us, inspiring us to awake and swim with the day, to sing and dance with the joy of living deep in our hearts.

By Andante, the river flows through plains and vast open spaces. We are in a Surreal land where fairytales turn into operas, where passion fills the landscape. There is magic as the river flows. The dancers have deepened their dance of life to include lonelinesses, moments of quiet communion with what is divine, and all the while distant trumpets remind us of the strength of our spirits. The piano, as ever, sings its notes, carrying the central voice of the Concerto.

In our metaphor of river music, the piano carries us through rapids, drops, over rocks, winds through forests, allowing nature in all its beauty to be seen.

Sometimes we are flying over the river, watching our lives progress, watching the widening of our experience as we move slowly towards the ineffable.

Lovers dance quietly in the peaceful but steady dream that this symphonic concerto opens.

Sometimes there is drama, yes, moments, but the overall flow of joy rushes on.

A catchy jazzy rhythm, with rich Classical undertones.

By the end of Andante, the breadth of Pierre-Marie Coedes vision becomes evident.

Dancers like swans fill our imagination.

Allegro begins with almost a jazz beat, distant flamenco, under a sweet, encompassing blend of instruments. The day is steadily revolving with the sun in trills, moments of flight, laughter, pain, togetherness, the echo of all creation communing.

Our ballet dancers are almost doing a slow tango, their wings open behind them as they swirl, bend, bow.

We are nearing the ocean, a regal entry into oneness. All the levels are echoing, singing, trills, notes, repetitions, a choral of complex patterns and pastel overlays, the harsh lines only rise from the depths, pulling the movement together so that it ends with a flourish of delicate piano notes, everything is shimmering, the pulse of life is here, its stunning gift.


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Iridescent Blue Face



From my Molsekine Project today:


Iridescent Blue Face, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, multimedia.

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