Ονειροπόλος του Κώστα Καρυωτάκη

Δεν ήξερε αν ήταν μικρόβιο ή αόρατος κακοποιός, ή ακόμη τίποτε άλλο. Επίστευε όμως ότι ο Χρόνος υπήρχε στο διάστημα. Είχε αρκετές αποδείξεις.

Κάποτε, σ' ένα μακρινό ταξίδι του, το βαπόρι πέρασε από το λιμάνι μιας επαρχιακής πόλεως όπου είχε ζήσει μικρός. Εβγήκε έξω, θέλοντας να θυμηθεί την παιδική του ζωή. Ήταν Κυριακή. Στην πλατεία η μπάντα έπαιζε κάποια ιταλική όπερα. Ο κόσμος έκανε βόλτες ή καθόταν στο καφενείο. Τα παιδιά, όσα δεν έτρεχαν, παρακολουθούσαν τις κινήσεις του αρχιμουσικού. Μια μακαριότης επλανάτο πάνω σ' όλα.

Είδε το πατρικό του σπίτι. Τον κήπο. Την ταράτσα, που ανέβαινε για να απλώσει τους αετούς, ή για να κηρύξει πετροπόλεμο, δένοντας βιαστικά βιαστικά χάρτινες σημαιούλες.
Τίποτε δεν άλλαξε. Οι καρέκλες του ζαχαροπλαστείου σε τρεις σειρές, όπως και τότε. Ακόμα και η πλάκα που πατούσε ήταν ίδια. Όλα ήταν τα ίδια. Μόνο που είχαν μικρύνει. Είχαν απελπιστικά μικρύνει. Είχαν χάσει το ένα τρίτο του όγκου τους. Αλλά αυτό έγινε συμμετρικά, κ' έτσι οι άνθρωποι που κάθονταν ακίνητοι και σιωπηλοί, σαν απόντες, γύρω στα μαρμάρινα τραπέζια, και τα κορίτσια, πιο πέρα, με τις φωτεινές γραμμές της σιλουέτας τους, υψωμένες παράλληλα προς το νερό του αναβρυτηρίου, και οι δυο γέροι, σ' ένα μπαλκόνι, με τις θαμπές, αμφίβολες γραμμές, των χαρακτηριστικών τους, και οι μουσικοί, και ο αρχιμουσικός ακόμα, που ενόμιζε ότι κρατούσε με τη μπαγκέτα του το Χρόνο, δεν είχαν τίποτε αντιληφθεί. Ο Χρόνος όμως εδούλευε ελεύθερα ανάμεσα τους, τρώγοντας κάθε στιγμή κάτι από τη φτωχή τους ύπαρξη.

Έμεινε εκεί αρκετή ώρα, αφηρημένος, σα να περίμενε τους μικρούς του φίλους. Για να συνέλθει χρειάστηκε ένα στριγγό σφύριγμα. Το καράβι έφευγε,

ΙΙ

Ύστερα θυμόταν έναν χορό μεταμφιεσμένων. Υποχρεωτικό ένδυμα ορισμένης εποχής. Κυρίες, με μεταξωτά ροζ ή ουρανιά κρινολίνα, με πουδραρισμένα μαλλιά, με πράσινες και χρυσές περούκες, έπεφταν ημίγυμνες, γεμάτες εμπιστοσύνη, στα χέρια των δουκών - χρηματομεσιτών και μαρκησίων - καπνεμπόρων. Εσφίγγονταν τόσο, που τα μέτωπά τους ακουμπούσαν κάποτε στα χείλη των καβαλιέρων και η στεφάνη του κρινολίνου ανασηκωνόταν.
Παραμερίζοντας όλοι, εσχημάτιζαν ένα κύκλο στο κέντρο της αιθούσης, και τέσσερα ζεύγη, τα πιο εξαϋλωμένα, άρχισαν να χορεύουν μενουέτο. Η παραίσθησις ήταν πλήρης. Το κομμάτι θα περιείχε βέβαια δυο τριες μαγικές νότες, που επαναλαμβάνονταν σε κάθε φράση, και οι νότες αυτές δημιουργούσαν την ατμόσφαιρα της περασμένης εποχής, συνεχή, κρυστάλλινη. Τα μικρά, γρήγορα βήματα, οι κομψές υποκλίσεις, τα νοσταλγικά βλέμματα, τα γεμάτα συγκρατημένο ερωτισμό χαμόγελα, περίεργες εστάμπες που είχαν διατηρηθεί άθικτες στην προθήκη ενός μουσείου.

Έπειτα έγινε το πιο απροσδόκητο. Οι χορευτές έχασαν το λογαριασμό τους. Ενώ έπρεπε να υπολογίσουν ακριβώς πόσα χρόνια είχαν υποχωρήσει προς το παρελθόν, για να μπορέσουν να ξαναγυρίσουν και να βρούν την προσωπικότητά τους, έβλεπε κανείς πως είχαν γελαστεί. Ανεπανόρθωτα γελαστεί. Εκατό ολόκληρα χρόνια επροχώρησαν, χωρίς βέβαια να το υποπτευθούνε. Παρακολουθούσε τώρα τις κινήσεις τους. Οι τέσσερις γυναίκες σκελετοί, θανάσιμα κομψοί, επήγαιναν προς τους αντρικούς, κ' έπειτα επέστρεφαν με μελαγχολική χάρη, σα ν' αναγνώριζαν το λάθος τους. Οι καβαλιέροι σταματούσαν, και το κρανίο τους εβάραινε τη γη, ενώ ψηλά, με ηλεκτρικά γράμματα που άναβαν κι έσβηναν, ήταν γραμμένο: ΑΠΟΚΡΕΩ 2027.

ΙΙΙ

Αλλοτε συνέβαινε κάτι περίεργο.Ακούγοντας μια φράση ή παρακολουθώντας ένα ασήμαντο γεγονός, είχε την εντύπωση ότι το πράγμα αυτό έγινε ή ελέχθηκε προηγουμένως, άγνωστο σε ποιο μέρος και πότε ακριβώς, και ότι τώρα επαναλαμβάνεται κατά τον ίδιο τρόπο. Του φαινόταν πολύ παράξενο. Μπορεί την πρώτη φορά να ήταν όνειρο. Ολοφάνερο όμως ότι τώρα ή τότε κάποιος ήθελε να παίξει μαζί του.

Συνήθως αυτό γινόταν με την ομιλία πάνω στα κοινότερα θέματα. Ζητούσε λ.χ. να πληροφορηθεί για ένα δρόμο που δεν ήξερε. Ο άνθρωπος τον οποίον είχε ρωτήσει τον κοίταζε για μια στιγμή χωρίς ν' απαντήσει, κ' έπειτα έβγαζε το καπέλο του κ' εσκούπιζε το μέτωπότου. Τον ρωτούσε πάλι, αλλά συγχρόνως σαν αστραπή περνούσε από το νου του η σκέψις ότι αυτή η μικρή ιστορία είχε ξαναγίνει. Η πληροφορία που ζήτησε, η σιωπή του άλλου, η δεύτερη ερώτησή του, όλα, όλα απαράλλαχτα. Έπειτα, συνεχίζοντας τη σκέψη του, έλεγε μέσα του: «Να ιδείς που τώρα θ' ακούσω: "Δεν ξέρω, αλλά νομίζω μετά τις γραμμές του τραμ που θα συναντήσετε"». «Δεν ξέρω, αλλά μετά τις γραμμές που θα συναντήσετε», απαντούσε ο άγνωστος σαν ηχώ της σκέψεώς του, κ' έφευγε βιαστικά, σκυμμένος, πνίγοντας ένα γέλιο.

IV

Εμελέτησε. Επούλησε κάποιο σπίτι που είχε, και αγόρασε χημικά όργανα. Κλεισμένος ολημέρα σ' ένα υπόγειο, έκανε σειρές πειραμάτων, αρχίζοντας από τα πιο απλά και τολμώντας τα αδύνατα. Ανέλυε τις ουσίες, ήλεγχε τους τύπους που παραδέχτηκε η επιστήμη. Προσπαθούσε να βρει ένα λάθος στα δεδομένα της, κι από το λάθος αυτό να βγάλει το νέο στοιχείο. Μέσα στο υδρογόνο ή το οξυγόνο, μπορούσε να υπάρχει, σε μικρή βέβαια αναλογία, ο Χρόνος. Δεν αποθαρρυνόταν. Γεμάτος χαρά επανελάμβανε το πείραμα που απέτυχε.

Παρακολουθούσε τη ζωή από την εφημερίδα. Χαμογελούσε πονηρά στη σκέψη ότι κανένας δεν τον παρακολουθεί τον ίδιο. Όλοι, σκυμμένοι στις δουλίτσες τους, συλλογιζόταν μόνο πώς να τα βολέψουν. Όταν όμως θα τελειοποιούσε την εφεύρεσή του και θα περιόριζε το Χρόνο μέσα σ' ένα γυαλί του εργαστηρίου του, να ιδούμε τους μεγαλόσχημους κυρίους που γέμισαν τον κόσμο με σαπουνόφουσκες. Να ιδούμε τι θα γίνουν οι τόκοι και τα επιτόκια τού απέναντι τοκογλύφου. Να ιδούμε με ποια ημερομηνία θα βγάζουν τις εφημερίδες τους.

V

Τώρα η ιστορία αυτή έχει τελειώσει. Στο απομονωτήριο του ασύλου που βρίσκεται, η νύχτα και η μέρα τού είναι το ίδιο αδιάφορες. Αν μπαίνει από το φεγγίτη λίγο φως, το κοιτάζει για μια στιγμή κ' έπειτα το επιστρέφει με όλη του την καρδιά. Βλέπει το φωτεινό εκείνο τετραγωνάκι, δειγματολόγιο σε σχήμα βιβλίου, ν' αλλάζει χρώματα, σα να το φυλλομετρά το αόρατο χέρι του Θεού. Ροζ, μπλε, πράσινο, μωβ... Αυτός όμως προτιμά το βελούδινο μαύρο που προεκτείνεται στο δωμάτιο όταν νυχτώσει.Έτσι περνούνε οι ώρες, έτσι περνούνε οι μέρες κάθε ευτυχισμένου ονειροπόλου. Μένει ολομόναχος, ακίνητος μέσα στους τέσσερες τοίχους, σαν παλιά λιθογραφία στην κορνίζα της. Έχει το συναίσθημα ότι επραγματοποίησε το μεγάλο σκοπό της ζωής του. Τίποτε δεν αλλάζει από όσα τον περιστοιχίζουν. Και ο Χρόνος δεν υπάρχει.

Tim Buckley and the Siren song

Let me tell you how it all happened…Jason and the Argonauts after having succesfully carried out their quest to find the fabled Golden Fleece of Colchis, boarded once again “Argo”, their boat, and headed home. But their journey back home would be filled with further challenges and adventures. One of these challenges was to pass the boat through a narrow strait between three rocky islands where the Sirens lived. The Sirens were strange winged-women creatures who sang beautiful songs that enticed sailors to come to them. This would result in the crashing of their ship into the islands and the sailors would be heard no more.

Chiron had told Jason that without the aid of Orpheus, the Argonauts would never be able to pass the Sirens — the same Sirens encountered by Odysseus in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. So Jason looked far and wide for Orpheus. Unfortunately, Orpheus had already descended in the dark lands of the Underworld to search for Euridice and could not be found. Jason was exasperated. He even thought of trying earplugs. But one day he came upon a lonesome busking musician called Tim Buckley who was playing his guitar and sung on the cobblestone streets of a small town. He was startled by the beauty of Buckley’s voice. Immediately he recruited him on the spot and off they sailed towards the Sirens' islands.

When Tim Buckley heard the Sirens’ voices, he drew his 12 string guitar and played his “Song to the Siren” which he had composed for the occassion. The beauty of the haunting melody and the poetry of the lyrics managed to drown out the Sirens' bewitching songs…

Song to the Siren

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang
Sail to me
Sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am
Here I am
Waiting to hold you

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you hare when I was fox?
Now my foolish boat is leaning
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:
O my heart, o my heart shies from the sorrow

I am puzzled as the oyster
I am troubled at the tide:
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Should I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing, swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you:
Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you

Jason and the Argonauts passed safely through the Sirens' islands and eventually returned home. The Sirens abandoned their music careers and lived on royalties for the rest of their lives. Tim Buckley turned to stone at the age of 28.

Eugène Carrière - The Monochrome Master

"Le theatre de Belleville", 1895

Eugène Carrière's (1849 - 1906) paintings emerge out of the mist, out of the shadows and the subtle transfromation of light into darkness. The sublime smudge of truth is in every brush stroke and it's the result of a life dedicated to artistic development.


"Le contemplateur", 1901

Even his portraits, for he was an amazing portraitist, emerge as if seen through water or at a certain hour at dusk when surface and volume merge in a sublime blur. Carrière strived to make the model "confess". And in Verlaine's portrait the painter travels through the shadowplay in the obscure corners of Verlaine's soul. The torment, the fatigue, the obstinancy, the remains of childhood, the contradiction, the passion, the excess, the deception... it's all there. In this gaze, in the suggestive vagueness of the features.

The painting was completed based on only one sitting as the following extract recalls:

"The poet was sick, and was in the hospital on the far side of the city. Everything had been prepared, and Carrière was expecting him. But crossing the city was no easy task, despite hiring several cars, because of the poet's excitement at this one day leave of absence. - Verlaine did not pose for a single moment. During this only session which lasted several hours , he incessantly paced the studio, speaking loudly, with that effervescent verve he had [...] - Carrière didn't stop working for a second. Verlaine left, I think, without having noticed him. But Carrière knew the poet intimately; he had read his work, meditated on it , guessed many things; he knew what gifts the divine poet possesed, what an immense intelligence and infinite sensibilty were concealed beneath his childish laughter, and what his persona was in a society that imagines it can do without beauty. Carière did not reproach him for breaking down at times under the sorrow imposed by the crushing role he played. The painter saw the poet's inner truth and knew how to express it." (Charles Morice " Eugène Carrière, L'homme et sa pensée..., Paris 1906)

Verlaine on seeing the portrait must have liked it for he composed the following sonnet:

Running through my gutter wit
And the harsh flow of dreadful jibes
While your brush travels
On the canvas turned to velvet by your art

Imperceptibly on the trail
-one might say- of nasty schoolboys,
There rises a forehead full of lumps,
The lump of crime is not alone,

And small eyes sharp with malice
Shining under the rough arch
Of brows whose line is botched,

Shining, it seems, as wet
With tears, sincere in fact, of a fellow
Who was once, an imperfect Socrates.

(Extracted from the book of Valérie Bajou "Eugène Carrière"- sonnet translated by Michael Gibson)

If the monochrome simplification of Carrière was enough to convince the imperfect Socrates who are we to argue?

Don Paterson, a poet from Scotland

The Swing

The swing was picked up for the boys,

for the here-and-here-to-stay

and only she knew why it was

I dug so solemnly

I spread the feet two yards apart

and hammered down the pegs

filled up the holes and stamped the dirt

around its skinny legs

I hung the rope up in the air

and fixed the yellow seat

then stood back that I might admire

my handiwork complete

and saw within its frail trapeze

the child that would not come

of what we knew had two more days

before we sent it home

I know that there is nothing here

no venue and no host

but the honest fulcrum of the hour

that engineers our ghost

the bright sweep of its radar-arc

is all the human dream

handing us from dark to dark

like a rope over a stream

But for all the coldness of my creed

and for all those I denied

for all the others she had freed

like arrows from her side

for all the child was barely here

and for all that we were over

I could not square the ghosts we are

with those that we deliver

I gave the empty seat a push

and nothing made a sound

and swung between two skies to brush

her feet upon the ground

This poem was taken from Don Paterson's new poem collection entitled "Rain".

See the sounds

A manuscript musical score of Ludwig van Beethoven was discovered in some obscure second hand shop. The composition was dated from the last years of Beethoven's life when he was stone deaf. The notes, scribbled furiously with ink on the yellowish paper, would grow in size when the music reached a crescendo and become small in the slow, softer passages.

Joseph Conrad's Youth

On the 21 September 1881, Joseph Conrad set sail for Newcastle as second mate on a bark named “Palestine” to pick up a cargo of coal bound for Bangkok. From the outset, things went wrong. A gale hampered progress (they were stranded for sixteen days on the river Tyne), then the “Palestine” had to wait a month for a berth and was accidentaly rammed by a steam vessel. At the turn of the year, Palestine sailed from the Tyne. The ship then sprang a leak in the English Channel and was stuck in Falmouth, Cornwall, for a further nine months. The bark was deserted by a sizable portion of her crew. “Palestine” eventually set sail with a largely new crew from Falmouth on 17 September 1882 (after a whole year’s delay) and reached the Sunda Strait in March 1883. Finally, off Java Head, the coal in the cargo ignited and fire engulfed the ship. The crew, including Conrad, reached ashore safely in open boats. Joseph Conrad was a young man when he first sailed with the “Palestine” and this was to be his first contact with the exotic and mysterious East.



As a novelist later on, he revisited these events in his famous story/novella “Youth”. There, the ship is re-named Judaea but the deceivingly simple, precise and perfectly cinematic descriptions provide the canvas for the depiction of something larger. Conrad uses these details and metaphors and the whole sea palette to evoke the human condition and the human struggle in all its rugged glory. Take for example this passage which describes the aftermath of a storm on the deck of Judaea:



"…Then we retreated aft and looked about us. The deck was a tangle of planks on edge, of planks on end, of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The masts rose from that chaos like big trees above a matted undergrowth. The interstices of that mass of wreckage were full of something whitish, sluggish, stirring - of something that was like a greasy fog. The smoke of the invisible fire was coming up again, was trailing, like a poisonous thick mist in some valley choked with dead wood. Already lazy wisps were beginning to curl upwards amongst the mass of splinters. Here and there a piece of timber, stuck upright, resembled a post. Half of a fife-rail had been shot through the foresail, and the sky made a patch of glorious blue in the ignobly soiled canvas. A portion of several boards holding together had fallen across the rail, and one end protruded overboard, like a gangway leading upon nothing, like a gangway leading over the deep sea, leading to death - as if inviting us to walk the plank at once and be done with our ridiculous troubles. And still the air, the sky - a ghost, something invisible was hailing the ship…"

When the cargo of the ship eventually goes up in flames and the crew including Conrad are obliged to abandon the bark in small boats, they nevertheless stay to watch the end of the Judaea. For Marlow the narrator and in extensis Conrad the young second mate, this total disaster is just a part of the adventure of life. For Marlow is thinking how for the first time he will become the first in command responsible for the three or four men that are rowing in front of him in the small boat. Nevertheless, in the novella, Marlow is old and looking back as he is telling the tale to his sea friends and therefore he can reflect on the vanity and beauty of that moment in time when one feels so strong, so open to all challenges, so young:



"…We should see the last of her. Oh the glamour of youth! Oh the fire of it, more dazzling than the flames of the burning ship, throwing a magic light on the wide earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently to be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea - and like the flames of the burning ship surrounded by an impenetrable night…"

And Joseph Conrad would later on leave the bright flames of his Palestine, Judaea "Youth" burning and plunge into the impenetrable night. Plunge into the “Heart of Darkness”.

Listen to :
"Incinerate" by Sonic Youth

Arthur Rimbaud (2)

Arthur Rimbaud was now living in Harar, the legendary Abyssinian walled city, since November 1880. The poet had died together with the last verse of "Une Saison en Enfer" in 1873 or 4. Who was that poet? And who was the child before the poet? "Once, if I remembered well, my life was a banquet where all hearts opened, all wines flowed..."

It was surely somebody else. For Arthur Rimbaud had completed his transformation into "The Other". And as "The Other", he lived through his own Heart of Darkness in Africa and he so readily assumed the role of Kurz. But it was only when he returned to Charleville, back to mother dearest, a cripple and having fought the law and lost, that he became a man who in the words of Charles Baudelaire " a senti l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise ses épaules et le penche vers la terre..."

Actually, Rimbaud's sister, Isabelle, was wrong when she insisted that his last words, on his death bed at the hospital in Marseilles, were a confession. He actually whispered to her in perfect english: " The horror! The horror!" and became immortal.

Listen to :

"Invocation (of things to come)" by Minimal Compact

Arthur Rimbaud (1)

" ... In [Arthur Rimbaud's] Illuminations there is a symbolical poem called "Royauté", and it describes how a man, one day, cried to all those who he met, as he walked through the town, that he was King and that the woman by his side was his Queen. To all who would listen he recounted the story of his trials and their end, and of the revelations which he had received. For one whole day the man and the woman were in fact King and Queen because they believed this to be true..."

Taken from Enid Starkie's biography of Arthur Rimbaud.

There he goes... It's 3am in the night. He is walking unsteadily on the cobblestone streets of Paris, a ghostly figure in the fog. The stench from the Seine seems to permeate everything. Rimbaud in the absinthe aftermath of a Verlaine encounter, suddenly stumbles and falls. And there lying on the wet and dirty side street, he closes his eyes and has a vision pure and beautiful and his lips move and the words flow effortlessly from his mouth...:

"...

Royauté

Un beau matin, chez un peuple fort doux, un homme et une femme superbes criaient sur la place publique : "Mes amis, je veux qu'elle soit reine !" "Je veux être reine !" Elle riait et tremblait. Il parlait aux amis de révélation, d'épreuve terminée. Ils se pâmaient l'un contre l'autre.

En effet ils furent rois toute une matinée où les tentures carminées se relevèrent sur les maisons, et tout l'après-midi, où ils s'avancèrent du côté des jardins de palmes."

He stops but the voice carries on in echo, coming back to him, bouncing off the wall and deflecting on the pavement. It transfoms, it mutates, it moves backwards and forwards, it transcends the present and leaps into the future and the words come back to him as in a song and in a different language...

"I
I will be king
And you
You will be queen
Though nothing will
Drive them away
We can beat them
Just for one day
We can be Heroes
Just for one day..."

"Heroes" by David Bowie

Listen to :
"Heroes-Helden" by David Bowie

A short animation film called "Father and Daughter"

" Father and Daughter is a film about longing, the kind of longing which quietly, yet totally, affects our lives." - Michael Dudok de Wit

Running Time: 8 minutes 30 seconds

Year of Release: 2000

Michael Mitsakis and the most beautiful thing in the world

Michael Mitsakis was born in 1868 and became a noted journalist in Athens contributing to many magazines and newspapers of the time. What characterizes the writing of Mitsakis is his style. He adopted a phrasing which followed the meanderings of his thought at the expense sometimes of a plot or a story. His long parenthetical and highly descriptive constructions could leave the reader perplexed and his use of language that combined “demotic” and “Kathareuousa” set him apart. Unfortunately in 1894 he suffered a mental breakdown and in two years he was completely incapacitated for the rest of his life. He died in 1916. He left behind many beautiful and interesting texts and among them I consider one called “Αυτόχειρ” as his real masterpiece. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to convey in translation the lyrical flow of Mitsakis’s prose in this small novella.

Looking through the texts of Greek literature collected by Nikos Sarantakos (http://www.sarantakos.com/), I came across the following short piece by Mitsakis which is characterized by its simplicity, humor and wit. I decided to give it a try and translate it…

The most beautiful thing in the world by Michael Mitsakis

Let the sea splash and let it froth under the keel of the ship! The delirious ship bounces from wave to wave. The captain careful in the preparations for the voyage, commands the silent and willing sailors. The youngest of them takes a wine jar full of old good wine, lifts it up and places it on the bench. And one by one, each traveler on board drinks a glass after answering, with a verse swept by the wind, the question asked by the voices of the other passengers all around him.

“By God, tell us, what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“Where does the ship come from and where is it going?”

Who cares? The wine from the jar is strong.

“By God, tell us, what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”

- The most beautiful thing in the world is my love, says a student almost 20 years old. Love is the only happiness.

- Happiness is in war, pops up a soldier. The most beautiful thing in the world is a rider dashing forward with sword in hand.

- As long as I have a safe full and well protected… says the miser.

And the farmer replies: - Is there anything more beautiful than a field, gilded form side to side with wheat?

But the poet stands up: - With laurel beauty is crowned. What can be more beautiful than laurel? By Apollo! How can happiness be found elsewhere than in thought?

But the musician at the same time: - What do you need thought? Have you ever felt what the nightingale has to say? Just listen to it and that’s enough.

And the painter stubbornly: - Beauty cannot be found in sounds and words. Beauty is an image.

And the philosopher, angrily: - What are you talking about, he tells them. Beauty is the Truth.

- It is success! Cries a politician gesticulating, who was on his way to his country to install a ballot box.

- You are right! Says the adventurer. Beauty is this gorgeous woman with her breasts hanging out, holding the cards of the lucky gambler.

- Oh! Whispers quietly a merchant, how awful it is to play. Accounting, yes, that is the thing!

And even a priest, making the sign of the cross: - Oh my brothers, what better than faith, what more beautiful than prayer?

But suddenly: - Damn, groans the captain, and the amateur singers hold their tongues in fright. Damn! Shut up, may the devil take you… Tighten up the sail!....

For the sea had become wild, and then for the sailor, Beauty laughs on his ship’s stern when the ship proudly enters the port after the storm.

And then, at the same time, a shiver of happy sharks was following the water course engraved by the ship on the waves and they were talking and saying between themselves:

The most beautiful thing in the world is a ship ready to sink to the bottom, full of travelers…

Listen to :

"Your beauty is a knife I turn on my throat" by Eagle Seagull

The world of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and the gekiga comic style

Yoshihiro Tatsumi penned the word "gekiga" around 1957 to describe the comics that he created which did not fall under the all encompassing word of manga. To start with, Manga was created initially for children whereas Tatsumi's comics dealt with serious dramatic themes and were for adults. Tatsumi moved away from the fantasy element of the manga and can be considered one of the first artists to create graphic novels as we know them today. He even adopted the difficult format of the short story as a way to tell gritty, hidden and dramatic everyday tales of the dark face of a real Japan which came out of the second world war deeply wounded in all levels of its society.




When you read one of Tatsumi's literary short stories you are immersed in the private world of the underground. A dark world of late night bars, of pimps and prostitutes, of hidden aspirations and passions, of people working in the sewers of Tokyo or having a 9h.00 to 22h.00 blue collar job, of poor everyday people that you might bump into in the street. People with their secret fantasies, their hopes and dreams and the situations that they find themselves in. But this is not only the underground of Japan in the 60s and 70s. It is an underground that we can all relate to. Our personal underground. A private place that we want to keep hidden and when we see it out in the open we are uncomfortable with what we see. Originally these works were circulated as underground art but eventually found their way to more mainstream publication in the 1970s. Now thanks to the serious work of Canadian editing house "Drawn & Quarterly", these important works are being published for the first time in English. In 2005 "The Push-man and other stories", in 2006 "Abandon the old in Tokyo" and in 2008 "Good-Bye" were published by D&Q.


To accompany the reading why don't you listen and buy some interesting experimental music freshly created by Kobe based Hirohito Ihara alias "Radicalfashion" from his album "Odori" available from HeftyRecords. This specific piece of music starts rather mechanically but be patient and you will be rewarded.


Listen to :

"Shousetsu" by Radicalfashion

War in Peace from Alexander "Skip" Spence

Julian Cope in his Head Heritage site has posted a review of Alexander Spence's "Oar" album. He actually gives a small description of how he perceives each song from the record. This is what he has to say for "War in Peace", my favorite song from this strange and beautiful testament of the 60s:

" The weightless “War In Peace” is an emanation from eternity’s echo chamber. Spence’s electric lead guitar bursts in midway -- chipped, fragmentary and falling like glittering silt as echoed whispering and whistling crisscross the patch of snapped tight hit-hats and bass lines like posts demarcating an unswerving boundary into the distance. By the time the electric guitar solo arrives, the infamously shattered “Sunshine Of Your Love” riff is already stumbling down a ravine in slow motion hitting branches, bouncing off rocks and causing landslides while atomic particles just collect and disperse in its wake until finally breaking down into a cosmic freefall beyond their once dimensional limitations."

Can you beat that? I think I''ll give it a try... 

A whispering stream of acid consciousness carrying the seeds of ghostly reminiscences of a future embedded in the past transforms itself into a lyrical wail that is pulled by the gravity swirl of a mind drain of dormant fuzz strumming of electric guitar and laborious bass guided by hissing drums that pours itself into a river train of drone. The drone stumbles along slowly mutating into an electric avalanche of blind confinement that reaches the edge of the precipice and dissolves into a broken puzzle of a pure exhilaration assembled guitar solo...  

Take that Julian...

Listen to :

"War in Peace" by Alexander "Skip" Spence

Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"

Sherwood Anderson's book "Winesburg Ohio" is 153 pages long. First published in 1919, it is considered to be the first "modern" American novel. Throughout the years this little book has been the main reason why people decided to choose a writing career. Let's just say that Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe and Steinbeck, to name but a few, are all heavily indebted to "Winesburg, Ohio". And yet this book is not widely known. Maybe the critics of 1941, the year of Anderson's death, are to blame who declared that his work lacked the "mark of high distinction that is needed to set off his undoubted originality." What were these people thinking of when they wrote this utter nonsence...

"Winesburg, Ohio" is a collection of short stories woven into a powerful portrayal of life in a small American town at the beginning of the 20th century. A masterful psychological portrait gallery of the inhabitants of this microcosm of community life that serves as the canvas for a study of humanity itself. The isolation, the hopes, the passions and dreams of these lives are a part of us and their fundamental questions on society, the transition of child to adult, the meaning of choosing a certain way of life that is changing and the questioning of life itself, are as valid today as they were at the time. Captivating this rare essence of humanity is what this book is all about. One can say that it is one of the first american existentialist novels. Here is an extract from the book:

" ... There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just passed, have come the people pouring in from the town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and children and all the people from the hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes..."

Listen to:

"Dying Crapshooters Blues" by Blind Willie McTell

The World Is On Fire

"... Let's take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there - they're all on fire. They' re burning up. Decay you see is always going on. It don't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire too. The world is on fire..."

Extract taken from the book "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919), by Sherwood Anderson.

Listen to:

"Kingdom of Rust" by Doves

When Django Reinhardt turned electric

When Django Reinhardt turned electric in 1947, a new era had begun. The war was over, be bop had taken over from swing and Django had just returned from the USA having played with Duke Ellington and other jazz greats.

After the break-up of the famous "Quintet of the Hot Club of France" with its time of dazzling glory of 1935-39, Django found the time to explore this new electric evolution in the playing of the guitar.

He certainly took a certain risk laying aside his treasured acoustic guitar for the heavier cabled one. But his greatness as an artist can be witnessed in the fact that he did not just play electric as he would acoustic but adapted his playing style to electric amplification. Streched notes and lightning swifts in tempo and volume as well as an exploration of the pause and the contrasts of soft and low on the one hand and the growl and harshness of the loud electric sound on the other. 

But by the time of the 1953 electric sessions, Django was largely forgotten or more or less ignored as a musician. When he had a booking or two, three weeks at the Ringside, the future Blue note, he didn’t draw much of a crowd. Some fellow musicians had even the audacity to say that Django was past it, if not finished. It was Eddie Barclay who convinced him to return to Paris to record. In a bust of pride, Django accepted and plugged in the electric guitar with some top notch friend musicians accompanying him. He turned into an unparalleled soloist playing definitive versions of “Nuages”, “Manoir de mes rêves” and “Brazil” among many others.

Nevertheless, from the sleeve notes of the “Peche à la Mouche” album, Pierre Michelot writes of the reception of this album: “Django intended to give his own answer to everyone who thought he was over the hill. He was bringing everyone up to date, but nobody could be bothered to look at the calender.”

When Django turned electric and was ignored by the audience, somebody should have had the guts to say one word to the music loving crowds and fans: Judas! 

Listen to:

"Brazil" by Django Reinhardt

All my time is lying on the factory floor…

Bill Fay was an English singer, pianist and song writer who made a single "Some Good Advice"/"Screams in the Ears" and two albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” for the Deram label between 1967 and 1971. Unfortunately these albums were never properly promoted and distributed and they didn’t sell. He was consequently dropped by the label. Following the likes of Nick Drake and so many artists who for some strange reason never make it in the music industry, Bill Fay faded out of sight. But the music on these two records is well worth seeking out.

On the first album “Bill Fay”, the songs have been embellished with orchestral arrangements giving them a rather lush and haunted feel. The lyrics are quite unusual and poetic and are not conceived with the intention of producing a commercial hit. As for Bill Fay’s voice, it is beautiful throughout the record sometimes sounding like a strange crooner of the common people.

On the second album, “Time of the Last Persecution”, Bill Fay opted for a more stripped down, organic but, at the same time, experimental approach recruiting guitarist Ray Russell. Russell went on to be a major session player, but at the time of this album he was better known as a noted musician on the jazz improvisation scene. His playing on Bill Fay’s album covers almost all the palette of guitar techniques and phrases ranging from 70’s traditional scale licks to complete atonal interventions or even noise. The contrast of having this avant-garde element opposed to the affirmative singing of Bill Fay makes this record very special indeed.

According to Julian Cope’s Headheritage site, Bill Fay eventually relinquished his career in music for a normal 9 to 5 job. From then on, it seems “all his time was lying on the factory floor…”

Record companies should be prosecuted for musical crimes against humanity.

Λίγο πριν φτάσει ο Καρυωτάκης στην Πρέβεζα

από το αρχείο Γ. Θ. Καρυωτάκη, στο βιβλίο Χρονογραφία Καρυωτάκη

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd

From the film" Brazil" by Terry Gilliam, 1985

The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W. H. Auden

Fortune-telling by Zbigniew Herbert

All the lines descend into the valley of the palm
into a hollow where bubbles a small spring of fate
Here is the life line Look it races like an arrow
the horizon of five fingers brightened by its stream
which surges forth overthrowing obstacles
and nothing is more beautiful more powerful
than this striving forward

How helpless compared to it is the line of fidelity
Like a cry in the night a river in the desert
Conceived in the sand and perishing in the sand
Maybe deeper under the skin it continues further
parts the tissue of muscles and enters the arteries
so that we might meet at night our dead
down inside where memory and blood
flow in mineshafts wells chambers
full of dark names

This hill was not here--after all I remember
there was a nest of tenderness as round as if
a hot tear of lead had fallen on my hand
After all I remember hair the shadow of a cheek
frail fingers and the weight of a sleeping head

Who destroyed the nest who heaped up
the mound of indifference which was not here
Why do you press your palm to your eyes
We tell fortunes Who are we to know

Taken from the book "Zbigniew Herbert - The collected poems 1956-1998", Harper Collins. Translated by Alissa Valles

When graffiti comes alive

I first discovered that graffiti was a living thing through the 99 Rooms project. Graffiti moved, breathed and reacted to human intervention in the rooms of abandoned factories with their dusty floors, crumbling walls and rusty machinery.



Then Blu, an Italian artist took this concept a step further and created a kind of living graffiti animation with his short video film called Muto. The graffiti on the walls awake and tell myriad stories among the indifferent passers by who fail to notice anything exceptional. For them, it’s just a static image on the wall which fails to steer the stagnant waters of their everyday routine. If only they could decipher the secret algorhythms of wall painted animation. If only they could see the whole picture. Muto is constant change, constant mutation and could be signaling the beginning of a new age in street art.

See the 99 Rooms

http://www.99rooms.com/

Visit Blu’s site and see Muto

http://www.blublu.org/

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

Derek Walcott's "Love After Love"

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott wrote his first poem in 1944 when he was 14. In 1992, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was born in Saint Lucia.

Butoh (舞踏, butō) and the art of Kazuo Ohno (大野一雄)

Butoh is shocking, provocative, physical, spiritual, erotic

Butoh is grotesque, violent, cosmic, nihilistic, cathartic, mysterious

Butoh is preparation and metamorphosis

Butoh is performing art

Butoh is contemporary avant-garde dance

Butoh is playful imagery

Butoh is taboo topics

Butoh is extreme

Butoh is absurd environments

Butoh is white-body makeup

Butoh is slow hyper-controlled motion

Butoh is with or without an audience

Butoh is no set style

Butoh is purely conceptual

Butoh is no movement at all

Butoh is controversial and universal

Butoh is all this and nothing of this at the same time

Bu is step and toh is dance

Kazuo Ohno is still alive. In fact he is 103 years old.

Kazuo Ohno sees with the soles of his feet.

Kazuo Ohno penetrates layer after layer of himself

Kazuo Ohno says : “an authentic expression only emerges when body and soul reach crisis point”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ dance projects the body’s voice”

Kazuo Ohno says : " by tightly chocking the vocal chords with the back, the body’s voice becomes audible”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ don’t look with the eyes”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ listen to the music with your heart and soul”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ I was neither a man nor a woman before birth”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ Perhaps the stage itself is a womb”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ No matter how fiercely the wind roars remain calm"

Kazuo Ohno says : “ Your every movement, regardless of how small, carries huge consequences"

Kazuo Ohno is in a wheel-chair

Kazuo Ohno still dances with his fingers

Kazuo Ohno will live forever.

Anthony and the Johnsons

It took some time for the world to come to terms with Anthony and the Johnsons. Record companies frowned at the voice of this strange androgynous singer straight out of the New York punk drag scene. But Lou Reed insisted. And now, a few years after winning the Mercury prize, Anthony Hegarty is all the rage…You can imagine the record companies that missed out the first time around, now desperately trying to find a way to down play the whole thing. " - A label, a label…We have to find a label for the music of this Anthony person... Then sooner or later everybody will quickly get bored with it. What shall we call it? How about Chamber Pop? Yeah, that's it. Chamber Pop."

Once you manage to confine something that is new and strange and beautiful, you deconstruct it, you explain it, you understand it, you consume it and you have no further use for it. And you move on to consume something else.

But the voice and interpretation of Anthony deserves better. His voice vibrates and a stream of emotions is unleashed. Somehow he brings to mind another beautiful and strange creature that graced the pop world some time ago called Klaus Nomi. Quite a few similarities there and quite a few differences as well.



Anyway, the new album of Anthony and the Johnsons, already by its cover proclaims its otherworldliness and beauty. I will come back to the work of Kazuo Ohno who is the subject of the album's cover photograph and the japanese art of Butoh in my next blog entry. Until then don't miss the album "The crying light" by Anthony and the Johnsons.