If I said you had a nice body, would you hold it against me?

Awaken, Immortal Sun!

The Shining...

Norval Morrisseau, "The Great Mother"

Norval Morrisseau, "Flock of Loons"

Tears in Rain...

Ghosts in the Machines...

...Will AI ever learn to love and thereby acquire "sentience"?

...or will humanity lose its' capacity to love and descend into the realms of Automata?

Silence and I

Henry Kendall, "Ogyges"

Stand out swift-footed leaders of the horns 

And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff

With shocks of clamour, — let the chasm take

The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt

Should die across the dim Aonian hills,

Nor break through thunder and the surf-white cave

That hems about the old-eyed Ogyges

And bars the sea-wind, rain-wind, and the sea!

Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges

(A hairless shadow in a lion’s skin)

In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears,

And wild beasts vexed to death; “for,” sayeth he,

“Here lying broken, do I count the days

For every trouble; being like the tree —

The many-wintered father of the trunks

On yonder ridges: wherefore it is well

To feel the dead blood kindling in my veins

At sound of boar or battle; yea to find

A sudden stir, like life, about my feet,

And tingling pulses through this frame of mine

What time the cold clear dayspring, like a bird

Afar off, settles on the frost-bound peaks,

And all the deep blue gorges, darkening down,

Are filled with men and dogs and furious dust!”

So in the time whereof thou weetest well —

The melancholy morning of the World —

He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee,

And shakes his sides — a cavern-hutted King!

But when the ouzel in the gaps at eve

Doth pipe her dreary ditty to the surge

All tumbling in the soft green level light,

He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock,

And dreameth in his cold old savage way

Of gliding barges on the wine-dark waves,

And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep,

But chiefly, while the restless twofold bat

Goes flapping round the rainy eaves above,

Where one broad opening letteth in the moon,

He starteth, thinking of that grey-haired man,

His sire: then oftentimes the white-armed child

Of thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comes

And droops above him with her short sweet sighs

For Love distraught — for dear Love’s faded sake

That weeps and sings and weeps itself to death

Because of casual eyes, and lips of frost,

And careless mutterings, and most weary years.

Bethink you, doth the wan Egyptian count

This passion, wasting like an unfed flame,

Of any worth now; seeing that his thighs

Are shrunken to a span and that the blood,

Which used to spin tumultuous down his sides

Of life in leaping moments of desire,

Is drying like a thin and sluggish stream

In withered channels — think you, doth he pause

For golden Thebe and her red young mouth?

Ah, golden Thebe — Thebe, weeping there,

Like some sweet wood-nymph wailing for a rock,

If Octis with the Apollonian face —

That fair-haired prophet of the sun and stars —

Could take a mist and dip it in the West

To clothe thy limbs of shine about with shine

And all the wonder of the amethyst,

He’d do it — kneeling like a slave for thee!

If he could find a dream to comfort thee,

He’d bring it: thinking little of his lore,

But marvelling greatly at those eyes of thine.

Yea, if the Shepherd waiting for thy steps,

Pent down amongst the dank black-weeded rims,

Could shed his life like rain about thy feet,

He’d count it sweetness past all sweets of love

To die by thee — his life’s end in thy sight.

Oh, but he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges!

And therefore should we blow the horn for him:

He, sitting mumbling in his surf-white cave

With helpless feet and alienated eyes,

Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawn

Which send him wandering swiftly through the days

When like a springing cataract he leapt

From crag to crag, the strongest in the chase

To spear the lion, leopard, or the boar!

Oh, but he loves the hunt; and, while the shouts

Of mighty winds are in this mountained World,

Behold the white bleak woodman, Winter, halts

And bends to him across a beard of snow

For wonder; seeing Summer in his looks

Because of dogs and calls from throats of hair

All in the savage hills of Hyria!

And, through the yellow evenings of the year,

What time September shows her mooned front

And poppies burnt to blackness droop for drouth,

The dear Demeter, splashed from heel to thigh

With spinning vine-blood, often stoops to him

To crush the grape against his wrinkled lips

Which sets him dreaming of the thickening wolves

In darkness, and the sound of moaning seas.

So with the blustering tempest doth he find

A stormy fellowship: for when the North

Comes reeling downwards with a breath like spears,

Where Dryope the lonely sits all night

And holds her sorrow crushed betwixt her palms,

He thinketh mostly of that time of times

When Zeus the Thunderer — broadly-blazing King —

Like some wild comet beautiful but fierce,

Leapt out of cloud and fire and smote the tops

Of black Ogygia with his red right hand,

At which great fragments tumbled to the Deeps —

The mighty fragments of a mountain-land —

And all the World became an awful Sea!

But, being tired, the hairless Ogyges

Best loveth night and dim forgetfulness!

“For,” sayeth he, “to look for sleep is good

When every sleep is as a sleep of death

To men who live, yet know not why they live,

Nor how they live! I have no thought to tell

The people when this time of mine began;

But forest after forest grows and falls,

And rock by rock is wasted with the rime,

While I sit on and wait the end of all;

Here taking every footstep for a sign;

An ancient shadow whiter than the foam!”

 Jan Brueghel the Elder, "Odysseus and Calypso in the caves of Ogygia" (1568–1625)

 

Cease, now cease 

Oh, how for ever unhappy
Ungrateful Dorilla wishes me
Oh, ever more merciless
She brings me to tears
Merciless, she brings me to tears

For me, there is no relief
For me, there is no hope
And the cruel torment and my sorrow
Only death can console

Gradiva Studies...

 

                        Salvador Dali, "Remorse, or Sphinx Embedded in Sand" (1931)

Salvador Dali,  "Scatalogical Object Functioning Symbolically. The Surrealist Shoe" (1931)

Rainer Maria Rilke, "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes" (1922)

This was the eerie mine of souls.

Like silent silver-ore

they veined its darkness. Between roots

the blood that flows off into humans welled up,

looking dense as porphyry in the dark.

Otherwise, there was no red.

There were cliffs

and unreal forests. Bridges spanning emptiness

and that huge gray blind pool

hanging above its distant floor

like a stormy sky over a landscape.

And between still gentle fields

a pale strip of road unwound.

They came along this road.

In front the slender man in the blue cloak,

mute, impatient, looking straight ahead.

Without chewing, his footsteps ate the road

in big bites; and both his hands hung

heavy and clenched by the pour of his garment

and forgot all about the light lyre,

become like a part of his left hand,

rose tendrils strung in the limbs of an olive.

His mind like two minds.

While his gaze ran ahead, like a dog,

turned, and always came back from the distance

to wait at the next bend–

his hearing stayed close, like a scent.

At times it seemed to reach all the way back

to the movements of the two others

who ought to be following the whole way up.

And sometimes it seemed there was nothing behind him

but the echo of his own steps, the small wind

made by his cloak. And yet

he told himself: they were coming, once;

said it out loud, heard it die away . . .

They were coming. Only they were two

who moved with terrible stillness. Had he been allowed

to turn around just once (wouldn't that look back

mean the disintegration of this whole work,

still to be accomplished) of course he would have seen them,

two dim figures walking silently behind:

the god of journeys and secret tidings,

shining eyes inside the traveler's hood,

the slender wand held out in front of him,

and wings beating in his ankles;

and his left hand held out to: her.

This woman who was loved so much, that from one lyre

more mourning came than from women in mourning;

that a whole world was made from mourning, where

everything was present once again: forest and valley

and road and village, field, river and animal;

and that around this mourning-world, just as

around the other earth, a sun

and a silent star-filled sky wheeled,

a mourning-sky with displaced constellations–:

this woman who was loved so much . . .

But she walked alone, holding the god's hand,

her footsteps hindered by her long graveclothes,

faltering, gentle, and without impatience.

She was inside herself, like a great hope,

and never thought of the man who walked ahead

or the road that climbed back toward life.

She was inside herself. And her being dead

filled her like tremendous depth.

As a fruit is filled with its sweetness and darkness

she was filled with her big death, still so new

that it hadn't been fathomed.

She found herself in a resurrected

virginity; her sex closed

like a young flower at nightfall.

And her hands were so weaned from marriage

that she suffered from the light

god's endlessly still guiding touch

as from too great an intimacy.

She was no longer the blond woman

who sometimes echoed in the poet's songs,

no longer the fragrance, the island of their wide bed,

and no longer the man's to possess.

She was already loosened like long hair

and surrendered like the rain

and issued like massive provisions.

She was already root.

And when all at once the god stopped

her, and with pain in his voice

spoke the words: he has turned around–,

she couldn't grasp this and quietly said: who?

But far off, in front of the bright door

stood someone whose face

had grown unrecognizable. He just stood and watched,

how on this strip of road through the field

the god of secret tidings, with a heartbroken expression,

silently turned to follow the form

already starting back along the same road,

footsteps hindered by long graveclothes,

faltering, gentle, and without impatience.

Margaret Atwood, "Orpheus 1" (1976-1986)

You walked in front of me,

pulling me back out

to the green light that had once

grown fangs and killed me.

I was obedient, but

numb, like an arm

gone to sleep; the return

to time was not my choice.

By then I was used to silence.

Though something stretched between us

like a whisper, like a rope:

my former name,

drawn tight.

You had your old leash

with you, love you might call it,

and your flesh voice.

Before your eyes you held steady

the image of what you wanted

me to become: living again.

It was this hope of yours that kept me following.

I was your hallucination, listening

and floral, and you were singing me:

already new skin was forming on me

within the luminous misty shroud

of my other body; already

there was dirt on my hands and I was thirsty.

I could see only the outline

of your head and shoulders,

black against the cave mouth,

and so could not see your face

at all, when you turned

and called to me because you had

already lost me. The last

I saw of you was a dark oval.

Though I knew how this failure

would hurt you, I had to

fold like a gray moth and let go.

You could not believe I was more than your echo.

Margaret Atwood, "Orpheus 2"

 Orpheus (2)

Whether he will go on singing

or not, knowing what he knows

of the horror of this world:

He was not wandering among meadows

all this time. He was down there

among the mouthless ones, among

those with no fingers, those

whose names are forbidden,

those washed up eaten into

among the gray stones

of the shore where nobody goes

through fear. Those with silence.

He has been trying to sing

love into existence again

and he has failed.

Yet he will continue

to sing, in the stadium

crowded with the already dead

who raise their eyeless faces

to listen to him; while the red flowers

grow up and splatter open

against the walls.

They have cut off both his hands

and soon they will tear

his head from his body in one burst

of furious refusal.

He foresees this. Yet he will go on

singing, and in praise.

To sing is either praise

or defiance. Praise is defiance.

Eurydice Looks Back...

Margaret Atwood,"Eurydice"

He is here, come down to look for you.

It is the song that calls you back,

a song of joy and suffering

equally: a promise:

that things will be different up there

than they were last time.

You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,

emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace

of the deepest sea, which is easier

than the noise and flesh of the surface.

You are used to these blanched dim corridors,

you are used to the king

who passes you without speaking.

The other one is different

and you almost remember him.

He says he is singing to you

because he loves you,

not as you are now,

so chilled and minimal: moving and still

both, like a white curtain blowing

in the draft from a half-opened window

beside a chair on which nobody sits.

He wants you to be what he calls real.

He wants you to stop light.

He wants to feel himself thickening

like a treetrunk or a haunch

and see blood on his eyelids

when he closes them, and the sun beating.

This love of his is not something

he can do if you aren’t there,

but what you knew suddenly as you left your body

cooling and whitening on the lawn

was that you love him anywhere,

even in this land of no memory,

even in this domain of hunger.

You hold love in your hand, a red seed

you had forgotten you were holding.

He has come almost too far.

He cannot believe without seeing,

and it’s dark here.

Go back, you whisper,

but he wants to be fed again

by you. O handful of gauze, little

bandage, handful of cold

air, it is not through him

you will get your freedom.

End of Story

People I know, places I go

Make me feel tongue tied

I can see how, people look down

They're on the inside

Here's where the story ends

People I see, weary of me

Showing my good side

I can see how, people look down

I'm on the outside

Here's, where the story ends

Ooh here's, where the story ends

It's that little souvenir, of a terrible year

Which makes my eyes feel sore

Oh I never should have said, the books that you read

Were all I loved you for

It's that little souvenir, of a terrible year

Which makes me wonder why

And it's the memories of the shed, that make me turn red

Surprise, surprise, surprise

Crazy I know, places I go

Make me feel so tired

I can see how people look down

I'm on the outside

Here's, where the story ends

Ooh here's, where the story ends

It's that little souvenir, of a terrible year

Which makes my eyes feel sore

And who ever would've thought, the books that you brought

Were all I loved you for

Oh the devil in me said, go down to the shed

I know where I belong

But the only thing I ever really wanted to say

Was wrong, was wrong, was wrong

It's that little souvenir, of a colorful year

Which makes me smile inside

So I cynically, cynically say, the world is that way

Surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise

Here's, where the story ends

Ooh here's, where the story ends

Regrets Shouldn't Last Forever...

624

Forever—is composed of Nows—

'Tis not a different time—

Except for Infiniteness—

And Latitude of Home—

From this—experienced Here—

Remove the Dates—to These—

Let Months dissolve in further Months—

And Years—exhale in Years—

Without Debate—or Pause—

Or Celebrated Days—

No different Our Years would be

From Anno Domini's—

Emily Dickinson

Fanfarlo - Shiny Things

Let's not worry about images, let's not worry about mind control

Let's stop talking about prisoners

All against an invisible wall, let's not feel anything at all

And keep it inside your chest all night

Let's not worry about going extinct

We'll be preserved on a shelf somewhere

Give us mirrors for company

Lock all the windows and doors when you leave

It's as if nothing happened, as if it was enough

Think we're all going blindly thinking of shiny things

Wasted a lot to get there, burned all the bridges off

The last of the pterodactyls has headed out for the sea

Give us a new opportunity

Tell us we've nothing to fear from ourselves

Now that we're painted so colorfully

We'll be replaced by someone somewhere soon

It's as if nothing happened, as if it was enough

Think we're all going blindly thinking of shiny things

Wasted a lot to get there, burned all the bridges off

The last of the pterodactyls has headed out for the sea

It's as if nothing happened, as if it was enough

Think we're all going blindly thinking of shiny things

Wasted a lot to get there, burned all the bridges off

The last of the pterodactyls has headed out for the sea

Picasso Eyes...

Miserere

Miserable, wretched

Miserable, miserable me

But I toast to life

But what a mystery, it is the life

What a mystery

I'm a sinner of the eighty thousand years

A liar

But where I am and what I do

How do I live?

I live in the soul of the world

Lost in deep living (hey)

Miserable, miserable me

But I toast to life

I am the saint who betrayed you

When you were alone

And I live elsewhere and look at the world

From the sky

And I see the sea and the forests

And I see that

I live in the soul of the world

Lost in deep living

Miserable, miserable me

But I toast to life

If there's a dark enough night

To hide, to hide

If there is a light, a hope

Magnificent sun that shines inside me

Give me the joy of living

That there's still no

Miserable, wretched

That joy of living

That maybe there isn't yet

Blue [Blu]

No petrol in the car

No pennies in the jar

How did we get this far?

Baby

 

No moon in the sky

No roof to keep us dry

Looks like rain tonight

I got a sinking feeling

 

Coming over me

I got a sinking feeling

I tried to paint a picture

A picture through the clouds for you

 

Green, your smiling eyes

Red, cause I made you cry

Grey, these rainy skies

Tomorrow will be blue

Stay love

Stay tonight

These rainy skies

Tomorrow will be blue

 

No caffeine in the coffee

No sugar in my tea

Just watching the TV

With the sound down

No radio on

No tune to the song

 

And the words are wrong

Your fingers tapping

To the rhythm of the rain

Your fingers...

 

I tried to paint a picture

A picture through the clouds for you

 

I got a sinking feeling

Coming over me

I got a sinking feeling

I tried to paint a picture

A picture through the clouds for you

 

Oh child

Don't say goodbye

These rainy skies

Tomorrow will be blue

 

Stay love

Stay tonight

These rainy skies

Tomorrow will be blue

One for My Willow Boy...

More Killers...

Zu Asche, Zu Staub

Zu Asche, Zu Staub

To Ash, to Dust

Return we must

But not just yet

Miracles are ours to get

[Verse 1]

The tide of time

It seals our fate

To ash, to dust

To ash?

Let’s make time wait!

[Chorus]

To Ash, to Dust

Return we must

But not just yet

Miracles? Not just yet

Miracles are ours to get

[Verse 2]

Is this a dream we’re in?

Always tossed and torn by the wind

Who could know for sure?

[Verse 3]

The clock upon your wall

Alarm begins to call

So put your hand in mine

And hold it for all time

[Verse 4]

It's time for you to choose

With everything to lose

Do you love bliss or agony?

[Bridge]

Our time is fading fast

The future soon will pass

Open your eyes

At last we’ll see

Each other

Immortality

[Drum Solo]

[Verse 2]

Is this a dream we’re in?

Always tossed and torn by the wind

Who could know for sure?

[Verse 3]

The clock upon your wall

Alarm begins to call

So put your hand in mine

And hold it for all time

[Verse 4]

It's time for you to choose

With everything to lose

Do you love bliss or agony?

[Bridge]

Our time is fading fast

The future soon will pass

Open your eyes

At last we’ll see

Each other

Immortality

 

Aguas de Marco

Samba de Verao

English version

The Worst Thing to Ever Happen to Photography

Take 5

...of Pure Dasein

Camus

Moonwalking

The Autodidact

Things Worth Fighting For

World's Oldest Photographs

Happy?

Therapy?

When Songwriters Become Philosophers...

...Societies Waste all their Collective Energies Solving their Musically Imagined Problems

The New Branch Covidians...

Club Memberships...

...signing up for a Lifetime Membership!

Psyche-Analysis: Listening for the "half-said"... the Inter-dit

Hidden Desires...

If Panentheism’s core thesis, that God is in the world, is to animate a spiritual approach to life, then we have to account for the way in which God is in the destructive or thanative dimensions of life. From the perspective of evolutionary ecology the universe is imbued with creative and destructive energies. The creative drive can be termed eros as creation occurs through the expansion of relational unities, holons. The destructive drive is termed thanatos and is the drive to sever connection. An argument is developed from the perspective of evolutionary ecology to show how thanatos serves eros, serves the evolutionary unfolding of higher orders of communion. I suggest there are healthy and pathological expressions of the thanative drive. God within the thanative invites us to embrace the transformative potentials of suffering by integrating thanatos-in-eros. God as eros invites us to develop expanded modes of connection, inter-subjectivity and communion.

-Caresse Cranwell

Hypno-Fads

What's YOUR Distraction?

Going Hyper'

Chtela bych byt robotem

What's happened to you..... ...You're sitting like a pillar and aren't talking at all Sometimes I get the feeling that you dont excite me, that you don't know much about me At first sight I thought that you might be the right boy But over time you turned out to be schoolboyish You can't hear my laugh or my cries And instead of me, you have a computer The screen so cold, like an orchid So put me into a programme some day you can create a robot out of me, however you want, Give me the ashes which he was suppose to do but never found time Connect me to the terminal and everything will be fine Well' be together, I'll be your machine and you'll be my Frankenstein You can't hear my laugh or my cries And instead of me you have a computer The screen, cold as an orchid So put me into your programme (Chorus) I would like to be, your robot I would like to be your robot I would like to be your robot I would like to be your robot (x 2) Maybe you would like me.. like me ...like me...like me... I like the idea of leaning on you All your wishes for one touch fulfill that moment He spends the whole day in the kitchen working hard He works and his little robot hands do not even break a sweat You cant hear my laugh or my cries And instead of me you have a computer Screen as cold as an orchid So put me into your programme (Chorus)

A Crazed Girl

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

- William Butler Yeats

Happy St. Tammany's Day!

Apocalypse, Baby!

Blaxploitation?

Be my woman gal I'll
Be your Man (x3)
Everydays Sunday dollar in your hand
In your hand lordy, in your hand
Everydays Sunday dollar in your hand

Stick to the promise girl that
You made me (x3)
Won't got married til' uh
I go free
I go free lordy, I go free
Won't got married til' uh
I go free

Whoa Rosie, hold on gal (x2)

*When She walks she reel and
Rocks behind (x2)
Aint that enough to worry,
convicts mind (x2)

Whoa Rosie, hold on gal (x2)

Versus...

Throwing Caution to the Wind...

Che Voui?

All for You?

Better Days

Request for Sunshine...?

Shadow Boxing

Longer Strides....

A Feminist -Based Social Critique of Male Identity?

The Life of Art/Film

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived."