Walk with me, before I take off for Thanksgiving, driving South to see the kiddos.
The trees were in full glory, emanating golden light, or sometimes green-tinged yellow brilliance.
A few reds thrown in, here or there, claiming attention.
I had no clue that there is a huge difference between the yellowing of fall leaves, and those turning red. Scientists apparently understand the biological process of the former, and have only speculations about the latter, (or so I learned here.)
When trees start to retrieve nitrogen they need for photosynthesis in fall, they break down the green chlorophyll in their leaves. This exposes the yellow pigments that were there all along. Case solved.
For red (or orange) looking leaves, trees have to produce a brand-new chemical, just before the leaves fall from the tree. Why take on that energy cost?
Scientists are divided about the likely options. Many of them believe that it has to do with protection against the sun, a kind of sunscreen that helps shelter the trees against surplus light when chlorophyll activity is declining.
Susanne Renner at Washington University in St. Louis explains: “There are a lot of high-tech, biochemical, physiological experimental papers showing that one function [of red pigment] is photoprotection.” Arguments in favor come also from correlational observations: Northern Europe, with much less solar irradiation in fall, has fewer trees turning red than we have in the States.
Alternatively, red pigments might be protecting the tree’s ability to recover nitrogen from the leaves. Tree species that co-exist with nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which give them abundant nitrogen, generally do not turn red.
Other scientists are not convinced and suggest a very different cause: insects. It turns out that aphids can tell the difference between red and yellow, and much prefer to lay eggs on the latter. Trees, then, could protect themselves against these pests if they evolved to turn red. As a bonus, there is the chance that the red-color pigments have anti-fungal properties that would serve trees well.
Not knowing the right answer, or the list of them, doesn’t faze me one bit. I am just so incredibly happy to look at the beauty, to understand that it has a purpose in addition to making my heart sing – once again grateful for fall.
Soon there will be no leaves left.
In Blackwater woods
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars
of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders
of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is
nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned
in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side
is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world
you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it
against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
I borrowed that title from writer Celeste Ng who posted it in response to the inane opinion piece by Ross Douthat in the NYT, wondering if women ruined the work place (I will not even link to it – they later shifted the titled to liberal feminism instead of “women.”)
Low energy on my end this week, so you get to look at some portraits I took of strong women, and a collection of publications (I found ready-made) that blamed women for ruining – well, everything.
It would all be laughable, if the bigotry wasn’t so scary.
\
Portrait of a Woman
She must be a variety. Change so that nothing will change. It’s easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot. Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray, dark merry, full of pointless tears. She sleeps with him as if she’s first in line or the only one on earth. She’ll bear him four children, no children, one. Naive, but gives the best advice. Weak, but takes on anything. A screw loose and tough as nails. Curls up with Jasper or Ladies’Home Journal. Can’t figure out this bolt and builds a bridge. Young, young as ever, still looking young. Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing, her own money for some trip far away, a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka. Where’s she running, isn’t she exhausted. Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn’t matter. She must love him, or she’s just plain stubborn. For better, for worse, for heaven’s sake.
A short piece for music today, introduced as: “Being a woman writing music in the early 20th century was an act of feminism in itself. In the 1920s, a critic at one performances remarked with surprise that Ruth Crawford Seeger could “sling dissonances like a man”—because, you know, what could a woman possibly know about discord?”
Green King tides on the Pacific coast this weekend. Blue waves in other parts of the country a few days later.
(Photographs from the outing – note how the light shifts in the span of just 48 hours and how the trees are shaped by their environment.)
Got me thinking about William Makepeace Thackeray’s insights about the power (or lack thereof) of men to stop the tides and his savage novel, Vanity Fair, converted into a brilliant movie (2004) by the mother of New York City’s newly elected mayor. Convergence!
Thackeray was an interesting character – born in India, sent to England at age 5 after being orphaned, educated in brutal school settings, gambling away much of his inheritance. A smart, extremely perceptive satirist, allergic to hypocrisy and liberal to the core – he fought for suffrage, legislature term restrictions and an end to classism. Some of his social critique of Victorian society is almost too on the nose for our own times.
His poem below is often misinterpreted to claim the King thought he was almighty and tried to stope the waves, when it really says the opposite. His immoral life full of raids, killing and looting, he gets cold feet towards the end of it. Caught with remorse and fear of consequences (thoughts of will I get into heaven, one might wonder,) he, I speculate, tries to appease the judging power with submission. The sycophantic parasites surrounding him being too dense to even catch his drift. Plus ça change….
King Canute
KING CANUTE was weary hearted; he had reigned for years a score, Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbing more; And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild sea-shore.
‘Twixt the Chancellor and Bishop walked the King with steps sedate, Chamberlains and grooms came after, silversticks and goldsticks great, Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages,—all the officers of state.
Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause, If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers dropped their jaws; If to laugh the king was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws.
But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old and young: Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favorite gleemen sung, Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue.
“Something ails my gracious master,” cried the Keeper of the Seal. “Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys served to dinner, or the veal?” “Psha!” exclaimed the angry monarch, “Keeper, ’tis not that I feel.
“‘Tis the HEART, and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest impair: Can a king be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care? Oh, I’m sick, and tired, and weary.”—Some one cried, “The King’s arm- chair!”
Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my Lord the Keeper nodded, Straight the King’s great chair was brought him, by two footmen able- bodied; Languidly he sank into it: it was comfortably wadded.
“Leading on my fierce companions,” cried he, “over storm and brine, I have fought and I have conquered! Where was glory like to mine?” Loudly all the courtiers echoed: “Where is glory like to thine?”
“What avail me all my kingdoms? Weary am I now and old; Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold; Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould!
“Oh, remorse, the writhing serpent! at my bosom tears and bites; Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights; Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed at nights.
“Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires; Mothers weeping, virgins screaming vainly for their slaughtered sires.—” “Such a tender conscience,” cries the Bishop, “every one admires.”
“But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gracious lord, to search, They’re forgotten and forgiven by our Holy Mother Church; Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch.
“Look! the land is crowned with minsters, which your Grace’s bounty raised; Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are daily praised: YOU, my lord, to think of dying? on my conscience I’m amazed!”
“Nay, I feel,” replied King Canute, “that my end is drawing near.” “Don’t say so,” exclaimed the courtiers (striving each to squeeze a tear). “Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year.”
“Live these fifty years!” the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit. “Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King Canute! Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do’t.
“Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahaleel, Methusela, Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn’t the King as well as they?” “Fervently,” exclaimed the Keeper, “fervently I trust he may.”
“HE to die?” resumed the Bishop. He a mortal like to US? Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus: Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus.
“With his wondrous skill in healing ne’er a doctor can compete, Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet; Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet.
“Did not once the Jewish captain stay the sun upon the hill, And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon stand still? So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will.”
“Might I stay the sun above us, good sir Bishop?” Canute cried; “Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride? If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.
“Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?” Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, “Land and sea, my lord, are thine.” Canute turned towards the ocean—”Back!” he said, “thou foaming brine.
“From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat; Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master’s seat: Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!”
But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore; Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the king and courtiers bore.
And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay, But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey: And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day. King Canute is dead and gone: Parasites exist alway.
Before we expect miracles to follow Tuesday’s election outcomes, here are some reflections on what is ahead of us – not meant as downers, but as a reminder that work lies before us.
Election lawyer Marc Elias predicts Republicans’ reactions and further assault on voting rights.
Hadas Thier at Hammer & Hope writes thoughtfully about the challenges to Mamdani’s delivery of much that he promised voters.
Both reads highly recommended.
He will have help, though, from a lot of accomplished women on his transition team:
Former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, nonprofit president Grace Bonilla and city budget expert Melanie Hartzog will be his transition co-chairs. Progressive political strategist Elana Leopold, a de Blasio alum and senior Mamdani campaign adviser, will serve as the transition’s executive director.
Together, they have backgrounds in social services, finance, city budgeting and housing development. Their roles on the transition team — meant to smooth the mayor-elect’s path from election in early November to inauguration in January — often serve as a de facto audition for appointments to City Hall. (Ref.)
Music today promises unity in diversity, jazz from Sweden, not too far from King Canute’s home in Denmark, to celebrate what the electorate managed to pull off.
In the vast abyss before time, self is not, and soul commingles with mist, and rock, and light. In time, soul brings the misty self to be. Then slow time hardens self to stone while ever lightening the soul, till soul can loose its hold of self and both are free and can return to vastness and dissolve in light, the long light after time.
I seem to be coming back to clouds. Not a surprise, surely, for a photographer. I wrote about them, among others, in the context of poetry of exile, or metaphorically linking them to the insights modern genetics can bring us.
What approach shall we take today? Start with Aristophanes’ Cloud Cuckoo Land (nephelokokkȳgía (νεφελοκοκκυγία), a satire of a bird-built city in the clouds meant to ridicule Athenians for living in a fantasy world rather than facing reality? Now used as an insult for naive, slightly deranged people bent on conspiracies that the impossible might happen?
Or start with Anthony Doerr’s novel of the same name, which links multiple narrators across 600 years in a time-traveling puzzle celebrating the power of stories? A puzzle that provides the hope – or fantasy? – that some permanence of tales told echoes the permanence of our world, despite predictions to the contrary? (I am not a fan of his, I think I reviewed All the Light that we can see here earlier in not too friendly a way. But Cloud Cuckoo Land is beloved by many readers who cling to the bit of optimism it provides.)
Shall it be Shelley, the poet famous for his poem, among others, that personified a cloud as a sentient narrator? The Cloud is a long poem (thus linked, not posted here in full,) beautiful, wistful, complex and, as it turns out, not entirely true.
The fourth line in the last stanza of the poem is both true and false – it turns out certain kinds of clouds ARE changing (at least where they are operating), and not for the better, leaving dead zones behind. Functionally dead clouds, then, in a challenge to Shelley. (And yes, as you might have anticipated, we are ending up with science, after all these longwinded throat clearings.)
Here is a summary of findings as reported in a long read from the NYT last month.
Basically, different clouds have different roles in the regulation of our climate systems. Some have a cooling effect of land or water, some warm the earth’s surfaces.
Low clouds – puffy cumulus, stratocumulus and flat stratus layers – help with cooling by reflecting light back upwards from their white surfaces and casting shade onto the world below due their density. They absorb heat from the earth and also radiate it back into space in equal measure, because the water droplets they consist of are warm, thus not trapping warmth overall.
High clouds – cirrus and cirrocumulus – on the other hand, are warming our world, counterintuitively so, given that they are much colder, filled with ice crystals. The sun permeates them, because they are less dense. And they act like a blanket to earth, not sending the warmth back into space.
Until serious global warming began, the clouds protected us on net, with the lower ones outweighing the damage done by the higher ones. But now we have a feedback loop where global warming is making the low clouds steadily disappear where they are needed, while the high ones further heat up the planet. Climate change has shifted wind patterns and expanded the tropics, the storm systems with cumulus clouds are drifting towards the poles, and so leaving large stretches open to sunlight. With heat thus increasing, it feeds into drift patterns that expand vulnerable land areas even further.
Succinctly put: the delicate energy balance of sunlight coming in, some of it being reflected, and some of it being absorbed, no longer holds. When low cloud cover diminishes, the scales tip. More solar energy gets trapped in oceans and land surfaces, leading to higher temperatures, more intense heatwaves, and increasingly unpredictable weather. (Ref.)
What can be done, specifically regarding cloud covers? We could certainly try and reduce contrails, (short for condensation trails), which are formed when hot exhaust from an airplane’s engines meets the cold upper atmosphere, causing water vapor to condense into visible ice crystals.
“When the air at cruising altitude is cool enough and moist enough, these contrails spread into high, thin layers that contribute to atmospheric warming. It’s entirely possible for airlines to avoid flying at altitudes where the air is conducive to forming contrails. A 2020 study found that adjusting the cruising altitude of just 2 percent of flights could reduce contrail warming by nearly 60 percent, without using much more fuel.”
(Not to be mistaken for the conspiracy theorists’ assumption of “chemtrails,” the idea that these trails are composed of harmful chemicals intentionally sprayed into the atmosphere for nefarious purposes, spreading Covid or other viruses, poisoning our environment with other chemical or biological agents. Cloud Cuckoo Land….)
Contrails can clearly be harmful in terms of producing blanket clouds aggravating global warming. Flying less, overall, might be suggested as a solution, rather than simply wishing for flying at lower altitudes! But we keep our head in the clouds….
Images from a series – Fragility – currently in the works, that contextualizes environmental harm and protection.
One of my favorite short poems as a child was by a poet with the pen name Joachim Ringelnatz (a.k.a. Hans Bötticher.) A contemporary of George Grosz and Otto Dix, his work was declared degenerate by the Nazis. He died in 1934, so was spared to see the horrors unfolding further, but his writings and cabaret performances were prescient and subversive. Many of his poems rhymed and so are difficult to translate – in fact I have found nothing but really bad translations.
The poem in question described two ants who decided to travel to Australia, starting in Hamburg and realizing that their legs hurt in Altona, then an adjacent town, now an integrated neighborhood of the larger city in Northern Germany. Aching legs made the ants “wisely decide that they should forgo the rest of the trip.”
He concludes: one often desires and rarely succeeds, perfectly happy to let go in those cases.
Die Ameisen
In Hamburg lebten zwei Ameisen, die wollten nach Australien reisen.
Bei Altona auf der Chaussee
da taten ihnen die Beine weh,
und da verzichteten sie weise dann auf den letzten Rest der Reise.
So will man oft und kann doch nicht und leistet dann recht gern Verzicht.
There once were two ants in Westphalia Who wanted to go to Australia. But cursing their feet In a Belgian street They gave up the trip as a failya.
Man. Hamburg is not in the state of Westphalia, and rhyming must be found elsewhere. They didn’t curse their feet, and were nowhere near Belgium, – the hole point was about walking a distance of a mile or less – and actually welcomed the end of the trip. The translator ignored the last two “moral of the tale” – lines altogether. — Failya.
The last lines ignored here as well. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that they are not exactly the approved moral in a protestant work-ethic country that urges us to strive regardless, forever.
—
Detour: another German poet with work much comparable to the linguistic mischief of Ringelnatz’ hast just been translated into English in a superb volume of collected poems. Max Knight translated Christian Morgenstern‘s The Gallow Songs with wit and the skill of a preservationist, wherever he could.
If you don’t want to splurge on the book, here is a treat for free: Ogden Nash reads an earlier translation of the poems on the Internet Archives.
—
Back to the Ringelnatz ants: a commissioned, supersized sculpture of those two travelers was created by sculptor Peter Schröder and unveiled in Altona at the (Elb)chaussee in 2014. Made from bronze, and attached to an 150-year old copperplate rescued fron the roof of a church, on which part of the poem was engraved (they again left out the “moral”,) the sculptor soon attracted thieves, out to glean metal. A replacement version was erected in April 2022 and stolen in September 2022. In 2023 they anchored the latest replacement into a wall of the guest house of the foundation who had it commissioned in the first place.
“So will man doch und kann oft nicht…..” you can’t always have what you want!
—
In any case, why am I reporting on German nonsense verse? Well, ants, of course.
Not only is a poem remembered, the cold weather is driving them into bathrooms and kitchens to the dismay of the human inhabitants. More importantly, I learned a new fact about ants that blew my mind.
It turns out that Iberian Harvester queen ants of the species Messor ibericus produce offspring that is either their own species, or a totally different one.
Two brothers of different species, produced by the same mother: Messor ibericus (left) and Messor structor (right). Jonathan Romiguier
“Scientists recently discovered that Iberian harvester ant queens (Messor ibericus) mate with males of another species, the builder harvester ant (Messor structor). When they do, the M. ibericus queens store the M. structor male’s sperm, then use it to fertilize some of the eggs they lay. Researchers think the M. ibericus queens remove their own genetic material from the eggs’ nuclei, so that when those eggs hatch, they effectively turn out to be M. structor male clones.
The queens produce males of both M. ibericus and M. structor, and all the worker ants in M. ibericus colonies are female hybrids of the two species.” (Ref.)
That defies a fundmental principle of biology, or the way we have been defining what a species is. It is also particularly strange in evolutionary terms, since the two species diverged more than five million years ago. It is, as someone said, as if a woman gave birth to both, a human child and an Orang-Utan baby.
The scientists had their work cut out for them. Trying to find males and analyzing their DNA was not easy. They dug up multiple nests in France with ten of thousands of ants and found only 132 males, which turned out to be indeed M. ibericus AND M. structor. (Maybe ants are far advanced relative to our own society – where we hear non-stop argumentation about women replacing men these days – just read “How Women destroyed the West” from yesterday’s NYT…. oh well, I did try to stay away from politics. My bad.)
According to the article in Nature, the researchers had to come up with a new term to describe the behavior exhibited by M. ibericus queens: “xenoparity,” which essentially means “foreign birth.” All useful citizens of the great ant nation, one presumes, since there must be some adaptive value to this.
M.structors make for good builders, and their own colonies are in a very specific, remote locale. So traveling with their sperm for further use across Southern Europe might help spread their DNA and allows M. Ibericus queens to choose their own timing and locale to produce builders.
Anyhow – you now have totally disconnected and non-essential new bits of knowledge to fill up your brain. 1o minutes of distraction from our world, though, producing wonder. Hopefully appreciated.
Alternatively, we can go right back to an “undercurrent of anxiety, themes of decay, consumption, or overwhelming infestation” – all of which were implied by art reviews assessing Dali’s painting below. Hm, I just see some shiny ants happily feasting.
M.Structor or M. Ibericus?
Salvador Dali The Ants (1936-37)
Music today by one of Hamburg’s famous sons: Brahms‘ string quartet No. 1 in C minor.
Photographs of leaves today in honor of leaf cutter ants.
There is some interesting work done with and about them by artist Catherine Chalmers who filmed and photographed them at work, ending up with “collages.” Here is a fun clip documenting her approach with wild ants in Central America.
A two-and-a-half year-old of my acquaintance is by all reports besotted with pumpkins and other Halloween decorations. I have been sending her photographs of pumpkins and some considerations for how to explore different colors, since painting is another current cherished activity.
Today’s images, then, are the results of my trying to keep up with the creativity of my favorite toddler. They are also related to the poetry of Richard Brautigan, the master of observing everyday occurrences and putting them into innocent, childlike, anti-poetic words that can be grasped by everyone, exert an incredibly strong visual pull, and are deceptive in their simplicity.
—
The Pumpkin Tide
I saw thousands of pumpkins last night come floating in on the tide, bumping up against the rocks and rolling up on the beaches; it must be Halloween in the sea.
It is the time of year, where walks around the neighborhood are dominated by Halloween decorations. Plain, messy old pumpkins have been replaced by plastic ones, inflatable figures waste electricity, and attempts at humor compete with gruesome skeletons and jumping monster spiders.
How do you explain to a child what this is all about? Do you explain the pagan origins of Halloween, coming from the Celtic world of ancient Britain and Ireland? A celebration of the beginning winter period, a day where the souls of those who had died were believed to return, and those who had died in the preceding year were on their journey to the afterworld? With bonfires lit to frighten away evil spirits, and disguises and masks worn to not be recognized by the ghosts among us?
Or do you center the 7th century Christian attempts to supplant pagan rites with the introduction of Allhallotide, a three-day Christian triduum dedicated to remembering the dead that begins with Halloween (October 31- the evening before All Saints’ Day became a holy, or hallowed, eve, from which the word “Halloween” evolved,) and is followed by All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2)? (Ref.)
Protestant Reformation, by the way, put an end to this for non-Catholics. Majority Catholic countries, like most of Mexico and South America, still celebrate, often happily and vividly, the Day of the Dead.
Or do you stress the notion of a now secular holiday, devoted to fun costumes and endless candy, if your parents let you….? So how to explain the ubiquitous skeletons?
***
These are the same questions I ask myself when thinking about fairy tales, or kids exposed to adults teaching them to take the bible as a literal document to be believed. Does it make a difference in how children learn about these things if and when the adults themselves believe in the tales they tell or not?
I suppose the function of fairy tales (or biblical lore) as instructions for how to understand the world, behave in the world and perhaps change a world that is unjust and menacing, is enhanced by a belief that the threats are for real. If you trust that you’ll end up eaten by the witch if you abscond to the woods, or fry in hell if you covet your neighbor’s possessions, you might be indeed more inclined to follow the rules.
Note, though, that it is not always about punitive actions. Fairy tales in particular often stress the positive outcomes of courage and risk taking, the questioning of hierarchical oppression, the power of empathy and reciprocal aid. And in modern versions, the Disneyfication of the old stories, if you will, evil powers and their reach have certainly been tamped down, compared to what the originals contained, stressing agency instead of assured victimhood.
The German fairy tales I heard as a child were assuredly different than the ones I read to my American children, more brutal and more inclined to stress the consequences of misbehavior. And fear was a palpable experience, in the absence of Halloween decorations, for a non-Catholic child in my catholic village during All Souls’ Day in the beginning of November. I have written about it before, but the flickering of remembrance candle lights on the graves of the local cemetery, breaking through the darkness of the flat, misty landscape of beet fields and meadows, gave me bone-deep shivers as a child. It was not about ghosts. It was about death. Death in the context of a too recent war, with evil at its roots.
Now, ignoring ghosts, specters, witches and all the other symbolic stand-ins, we are focused on the existence of evil again, in the context of war and in the vicinity of cease-fire agreements, in unadulterated crimes against humanity, as just one example picked for its sadistic timing. Could come up with uncountable more, all over the world, all sides.
How do you preserve the innocence of a young child, model courage and foster their fearlessness, provide them with a moral compass with a true north of all humanity in our current world? How do you celebrate the memory of the dead when we are all implicated in bringing about their demise, be it by action, indirect financing, or simple silence and averting our eyes?
Any answers out there?
I was thinking hard about what music to include today. There is the heavy, if beautiful piece by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dona Nobis Pacem, Give us Peace. It is a war protest, and includes the Catholic Agnus Dei, three poems by Walt Whitman, a speech by Quaker politician John Bright, and excerpts from the Biblical book of Jeremiah.
But in the interest of lifting us all (and preserving a young child’s chance to listen to some really cool music!) I think I’ll recommend this. Maurice Ravel wrote this to commemorate friends and acquaintances who died in WW I, and was accused of doing it too light-hearted. His response: “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.”
It is us, the living, who need this musical consolation. Music, painting pumpkins, watching kids blossom – creativity and connectedness help us to get through hard times in one piece. They are the tools to guard ourselves against the pain, the hopelessness, the fear at our doorsteps – feelings that surface way too often these days, at least for me.
About time we introduce some new members to that idiosyncratically chosen group, don’t you think?
The first person should have been known to me, but wasn’t. I only learned about them when a dear friend sent me a bundle of postcards from a current blockbuster exhibition in Hamburg, Germany. She knew how much I wished to see Rendevous of Dreams at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, celebrating a century of Surrealism and juxtaposing some of the works with those of German Romanticists who were influenced by some of the same inspirations as the more modern movement.
“The supernatural and irrational, dreams and chance, a feeling of community and encounters with a changing natural world were vital sources of inspiration for German Romanticism and shaped international Surrealism differently a century later.” (Ref.)
Toyen The Dream (1937)
If you live in northern Germany, go see paintings by Max Ernst, Meret Oppenheim, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, Valentine Hugo, Toyen, André Masson, Paul Klee and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810,) while I longingly stare at the postcards.
So: here is Toyen, a name that means “it is he” in Czech, but could also be a play on the French citoyen,) chosen by a painter originally named Marie Čermínová (1902 -1980) who refused to use any feminine endings in her own language (which contains linguistic gender differentiation). They were a firebrand, left home as a young teenager and followed progressive political movements while attending UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design) in Prague. They worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský until Štyrský’s death, collaborated with the future Nobel prize-winning poet Jaroslav Seifert, and poet František Halas. Living for some years in Paris, they and Styrsky founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism.
Toyen Among the Long Shadows (1943)
Their output was prolific, in paintings, drawings and book illustrations even during the years when they went underground during the Nazi Occupation in Prague, sheltering Jewish poet Jindřich Heisler. The two moved to Paris permanently after the war and joined the Paris Surrealists. Even when fascism struck and attacked a person and their work, they did not give an inch, much less capitulated. I am so grateful for models that indicate you can – and must – follow your passion, even under the most dire of circumstances.
The work is ravishing. If you live in Great Britain, you had a chance to see some of it at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London. Dreaming in the Margins was up until October 4th (this blog got delayed, alas, by reports on more pressing current events…) You can still look at the website, though.
Toyen THE LAW OF SILENCE (1953)
Toyen’s sexuality is unknown, since they avoided revealing any details about their personal life, creating a mysterious persona, but their public styling cut across gender boundaries. This fluidity was one of the factors that led to an artistic focus on themes of gender, politics, and eroticism, but they also created highly political art that addressed women’s experiences, misogyny and the destructive effects of war and authoritarian regimes. Here is a longer biographical sketch of the artist which labels Toyen as transgender.
Toyen Eclipse (1968)
***
I really can’t figure out how that artist escaped me, given my preoccupation with Surrealism this year with all those centennial celebrations (and prior to that just my affinity to some of the female artists of that movement before they were introduced to mainstream audiences.)
I am less perturbed by the fact that I had never encountered Frank Menchaca, the second person for today’s addition to the interesting people department, a composer who turns out also to be a visual artist, a poet and writer, with a foot in the sustainable energy business and education. Talk about a renaissance man. His visual art work can be perused on his website (link in name) that offers some 14 galleries. I came across his music first; just like Toyen cross-referenced poetry in her illustrations and other works, Menchaca links some of his compositions to poetry, in direct and indirect ways. As you know, I am a sucker for cross overs. And I feel certainly encouraged by people who do not restrict themselves to one creative or intellectual area only, even if standards of excellence might differ across media. I allow myself too often to beg off of some project just because I am not good (enough) at it, and it is so easy to retreat to the familiar.
What brought me to Menchaka is a piece titled Crows listening to Wallace Stevens. It can be found on an album The Demon rubs his Palm which I have listened to so often now that I can whistle in the demon’s company. By all descriptions, the music relates to multiple contemporary composers like John Luther Adams, for example. I wouldn’t know. I do know Steven’s 13 Ways of looking at a Blackbird, though, given that I spent an entire spring 15 years ago creating drawings and montages for the stanzas of this poem that I found wonderfully challenging to interpret. Early days for me regarding the craft, but I still like the ideas.
Here is my exhibition statement from 2011:
Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, first published in 1913, has been hailed as an imagistic masterpiece. Stevens himself called it “a collection not of epigrams or ideas, but of sensations.” A first reading of the 13 stanzas, each mentioning the blackbird, offers indeed a multitude of sensory modes and perceptions. On closer inspection, though, the poem hints, as so much of Stevens’ work, at the relation between the perceivers and the world they perceive, extending our focus beyond perception to thoughts and feelings as well. Yet the text is challenging, frequently switching perspectives between who does the looking and who beholds whom in knowledge of the world. For good measure, Stevens adds the occasional barb, sufficiently opaque to leave the reader even more unsettled. Who would know that “the bards of euphony” refers to his critics (Stanza X) or that the men of Haddam, a hamlet in Connecticut, embarked on a futile search for gold (Stanza VII).
My challenge was to provide sufficiently representational images to echo the content of the stanzas, but to stay abstract enough to mirror the reticence of the poem’s language. I tried to convey my sense of the poem as a whole, taking as my guide the notion that our perception inevitably goes “beyond the information given,” such that the phenomenal world can never be objectively represented but consists rather of a chain of apperceptions guided by interpretation. To accomplish this goal, I, among other things, replaced the poem’s blackbird with glass marbles that were montaged into my drawings and photographsfrom my daily environment.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.
VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.
X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.
XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
Again, here is the full album, best listened to without interruptions, and on multiple occasions, when the connections become ever more visible, or should I say audible, rooted in a poem performed at the end.
I am so tired of waiting, Aren’t you, For the world to become good And beautiful and kind? Let us take a knife And cut the world in two – And see what worms are eating At the rind.
