Where My Books Go
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.
***A touch of schmaltz since 2054.
Just putting pairs together to identify color relationships, and maybe pursue an intuition or mood through what’s in-frame.
Some work better than others. Thanks for looking.
—
Thanks for looking.
Musee des Beaux Arts
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Thanks to reader, Robin Saika:
‘Here is an interesting piece on it: https://www.winchestercollege.org/stories/About_Suffering_They_Were_Never_Wrong
The author reminds us that Auden also refers to Brueghel’s Census in Bethlehem, as well as to Icarus.‘
Images 1 and 3 below, especially, read as illustrations to me, while image 2 acts as more of a bridge. As readers know, I tend towards quiet, observational photographs. There is a progression present moving outdoors-in, to a more intimate space.
Click through for more.
—
—
—
Edward Hopper practiced deep color complentarity in his paintings, balancing cool and warm. I first noticed his use of red here, and it got me thinking:
‘Red is powerful. Hopper’s using it with purpose.‘
This got me thinking a little further: ‘How much red is too much?‘
One ‘painterly’ problem: Red attracts the eye quickly, and William Eggleston went boldly red where other man had, perhaps, gone before.
Henri Matisse went full red one time, but there’s much more: Expert lines, curves, and composition (no focal point) make me feel at home. In fact, I think this domestically-minded Frenchman’s put most of his life’s purpose into his painting.
—
What’s the most aggressive, yet soothing, use of red I’ve seen consistently throughout my life?
Probably a Coke can, billboard, or truck. Check out this Arthur Meyerson photo with a Coke truck in context.
Another color problem: Color draws the eye quickly. Color is powerful. It snatches your eye and mind. The original black-and-white photographers thought color photography would distract, vulgarize, and commercialize; away from subject and composition, especially given the camera technology at the time.
It turns out the old guys weren’t entirely wrong, as many advertisers and fashion photographers barf color all over the place. Some expertly upchuck. Others, alas, puke like Brits on holiday in Ibiza.
Kids with crayons and iPads, shock and awe pop-artist and portraitists, movie directors, and even ideologues making their propaganda, use color freely. We’re all being gradually exposed to the newer synthetic AI stuff coming down the pike. We are living, I believe, amidst an information revolution (storage, access, process and attention). I mean, unless you’re color blind, you see the world in color.
Remember that one sunset and her makeup and the city behind her all blended together?
On that note, Dear Reader, this has been one of the best approaches I’ve found so far along my later, more limited, photographic journey in life:
‘Beware of color theories. Theories in color photography are dangerous. The plain fact that there are so many of them proves my point. A color philosophy comes much closer to the truth. Beware of scientific color tests. They are as quickly outdated as a timetable. Their truth is short lived. Most theories are the result of an attempt to bring one’s practical experiences into a formula. There is no formula. There are only confirmations to formulas which one has already discovered oneself. I myself love to read theories without ever using them when working.‘
Hopefully, I’ve jarred something loose inside your head.
You do the rest.
For the time being, the detective story ‘The Case Of The Five Ties’ will be discontinued. Writing crime fiction isn’t at my core, it seems.
As large organizations must ‘strategically realign and re-position‘ themselves due to ‘changing market conditions’, I, too, must ‘implement departmental changes‘ within Navincorp. Wiley, Harry and Oliveira are now free to find meaningful work in different stories, with different character arcs. Many plots are doing quite well right now. Handsomely, in fact.
To those saying my brisk and sudden beeline towards the tall grasses, where a man may find quiet repose, lacks certain qualities of leadership. Cowards, all of you.
Thanks for the email suggestions. A few of you should CLEARLY be writing your own stories. Keep at it.
Chapter One. Chapter Two. Chapter Three. Chapter Four. Chapter Five. Chapter Six.
The warm grudge and knock of turnstiles
pressing into bone;
my own shadow cast
on honey-colored stone.
Beneath the fifth emperor,
signaling to air,
the shock of each cool alley
running from the square.
This is for the maybe .075% of the people out there…
—
—
We watch 1st avenue
as it passes,
the way some men
hold motorcycles, and others, wineglasses.
—
