The Pharaoh taught William
How to manipulate
Vibrational fields.
& William Blake taught The Pharaoh
How to bake with plums,
& How to shake free from ever-unchanging
Sacred taboos.
The skin of the plum
A portal,
As deep and dark as royal magic.
(I do not own the copyright to the original images/ William Blake artwork/ the art of ancient Egypt, nor do I claim such. I have created a new digital work for purposes of parody or commentary under fair use provisions.)
I remember when she said,
I’m sorry to interrupt your relationship
With Bob Dylan.
The tourist marvels at the intricate figures and stories on carved stone columns in Rome,
Imagining a stonemason/carver scooped up by the Roman Legions and brought as a slave with his family alongside for his ‘new’ life,
He pictures the artisan/slave at work chiselling when a small stone chip flies up hitting his eye.
He lives nearby and walks home to his hut, where his wife daubs at his eye with a cloth, removing the object.
The tourist turns to go, and after walking a few seconds,
Sees a couple involved in some first aid type of situation.
The man is wearing a camera around his neck,
And the woman is wiping at his eye with a handkerchief.
The tourist tells his traveling companion about this coincidence and she says ‘Maybe they’re not here.’
I’m remembering a trip to Italy in 2001 like it just happened.
I wasn’t originally involved in what turned out to be an Italian-Canadian art education initiative: a visual artist and a musician visiting schools in the north (near Bologna) and the south (Pozzuoli – on the coast south of Naples).
It was soon after 9-1-1 and I think somebody got cold feet.
In spite of being stressed about the idea of flying I took the advice given, such as, Are you crazy? Pass up a paid trip to Italy?
It was of course amazing.
The synchronicity of this event has puzzled me ever since.
Archival ink drawing in my Moleskin sketchbook & details of Roman sculpture (Wikipedia)
I used excerpts from my mother’s journal(s) in some of the poetry. The Super 8 footage is from Kashmir & Europe in the 1960s courtesy T. Nanavati. I remember watching the family black and white television the night of the Kennedy assassination with my mother. The haunting never left me. The Beatles had not yet arrived. The war in Vietnam, ironically enough, was just about to kick in high gear. My father spent the weekend deer hunting. Years later, reading Robert Bly’s Iron John, this hit me like a sledgehammer. Although I view the event through a political prism I choose to deal with it in the context of mythic time.
Director: Steven McCabe
Director of Photography: Eric Gerard
Editor: Cliff Caines
Chanting: Sandra Phillips
Electronic/ambient music: DreamSTATE
Narration: Lynn Harrigan & Tanya Nanavati
Performers: Preethi Gopinath/Tanya Nanavati/Nicole Pillar/Paula Skimin
Poetry: Steven McCabe
Sound & online: Konrad Skręta
I saw Vincent walking down my street.
He said, ‘I’m cold.’
I said, ‘You’re not alone.’
He said, ‘Finally.’
Phone camera: Toronto street
NASA space image
Vincent Van Gogh: ‘Self-Portrait with Straw Hat’
Paris: Summer, 1887
Oil on Canvas
The Detroit Institue of Arts
Every
Child
Has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who ever does
Anything weird,
But the God who only knows four words
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come dance with Me.”
Come
Dance.
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
One summer a few years ago (maybe more than a few – the time seems to fly) I created wearable paintings (acrylic paint on light canvas) with young dancers. I marvelled at how they adapted to the not-so-pliable fabric enclosing their movements. Like watching a pack of playing or Tarot Cards in motion. Swirling angles and flashes of colour. Only found a few photographs – hence the repetition in design.
The left hand and the right hand begin working,
Working to create double vision,
Perceptualizing the miracle, painting the town red.
Shrouded within a shimmering portal, same as before,
& Beneath the reflection a mirrored dream of innocence.
In the innocence of mirrored images a mechanism round as a marble
Rises and falls. Shattering above twin, holy worlds. Same as before.
Within this terrible possibility perhaps lies the intrigue,
An intrigue beyond failure,
Beyond the post-modern landscape any failure is a reassurance.
The reassurance of a terrible possibility.
Mystery centres wrestle with the impending implosion,
Endeavoring round the clock using the latest technology,
Such as sound in the centre of trees,
Processing data, round as a marble,
Rising like a feather in the breeze,
Until night with the force of an atomic blast
Arrives, inspiring the melancholy of the absurd, forever.
The images above were taken from the internet. I do not own the copyright and have recomposed them for purposes of non-commercial parody or commentary under fair use provisions. The personalities are Ho Chi Minh, Einstein’s brain, young John Lennon, actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, author Simon de Beauvoir, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 16th Century painting Tower of Babel. Film stills are from The Keystone Cops. The mirror is Egyptian, from the 18th Century, held by the Brooklyn Museum. The computer scientist ‘unknown.’
As I understand the accepted wisdom Jesus was a peacemaker. Reflecting upon Remembrance Day one cannot help but think of how children (and civilians) are affected by war. I have incorporated the biblical quotes/visual references into this digital essay as a way of contemplating the historical workings of religion towards war.
‘Jesus however said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them; for it is to those who are childlike that the Kingdom of the Heavens belongs.’ – Weymouth New Testament, Matthew 19:14
‘Blessed are the Peacemakers…’ – Matthew 5:9
Images of Christ from the Ravenna Mosaics – a public domain image from Wikipedia Commons.
Credit: Photos of children from the online collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art released for non-commercial adaption. I have used images from the great photographers Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Johan Hayemeyer. If I have misunderstood the terms of conditions attached to these images I will remove the digital collages from online publication.
Poema 20
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, “The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
Pablo Neruda
Many years ago I did a printmaking project in an underprivileged school.
One of the students made a print of (what I thought was) a Central or South American religious deity.
I was intrigued with the clay pots or were those drums?
Then I realized I had been looking at it all wrong. Wrong as in ‘upside down.’
How surprising that a cute, cartoon dog (or mouse), when reversed, depicted such an altogether different creature.
Nothing about the ‘accidental’ image reflected the student’s cultural environment.
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