The Lovers’ Chronicle 19 May – crowns – art by Claude Vignon & Walter Popp – photography by Kati Horna & John Vachon

Dear Zazie, Today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Visit us on Twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Z, be cool, be safe, be smart.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

have to go with a song about stars
i was thinkin’ crown of stars
when i came up with this theme
”Ok, much easier to find a stars song”
first one i thought of was “Stars on the Water”
by Rodney Crowell, though not a love song
”It reminds me of when we were at Beverly Beach”
and we saw stars on the water
and moonbeams shinin’ on the Atlantic 
“A crown of meant to be over our heads”

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

it came as a vision when i saw the words; i often stood starin’ up at the big High Plains night sky, full of stars, and just as often a wish to share the view, turned to the next best thing, imaginin’ bein’ with someone, how she would look with the stars circlin’ her head; on every road trip i would pull over at least once to take it in and dream, these scenes would work their way into my verse, it is what i could do, and it will hold until i can git there with you

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

yes, this is where
dusk delays long hours
and the never still air
stirs our hair as we wait

we have been here
suspended in our time
in this moment attune
with our rhythm and rhyme

and we find in the night,
in the streams, we find
the will, the way to cover
our newfound dreams

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

wherefore did i so much tempt

just tryin’ to catch
the feelin’s as they fly,
and use them to explain

belief, purpose,
comes when sought

cast into verse,
that you, in the comin’,
may know my devotion

in the mornin’
when the lovers
in dreams
open their eyes,
do you wake too

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

awake in bed partin’ thick curtains
of dreams and am startled by
the rapid return to reality

three o’clock, but you knew that,
under the suspension of belief
gropin’ for somethin’ to hold on to

the way the memories keep comin’
visions ebbin’ and flowin’ amidst
moonlight slantin’ across the floor

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

when do you git to the point
where enough is enough

never

and this,
many believe
you git to choose
who you want

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Nothin’ more intense
nor more intimate
than to be inside
your mind. So c’mon
baby, let me in

***

if i had the strength
i would change my mind
and find my way back, but
oh, you know the rest
So c’mon baby
Let me go easy

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

May you think clearly;
may you live, love, and find
the right words and rhythm
to write well.

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Lyrics inspired by a Tennessee Williams poem called “Clover”.  And a love song of the day and more quotes.  Dedicated to you.

Crowns

Yes, this is the land where
Dusk delays long hours late
And the never still air
Stirs our hair as we wait

We have been here since noon
Suspended in our time
In this moment attune
With our rhythm and rhyme

And we find in the night,
In the darkness of streams,
We find the stars are white
Crowns that cover our dreams

© copyright 2012 Mac Tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Claude Vignon (Tours, France 19 May 1593 – 10 May 1670 Paris); painter, printmaker and illustrator who worked in a wide range of genres. During a period of study in Italy, he became exposed to many new artistic currents, in particular through the works of Caravaggio and his followers, Guercino, Guido Reni and Annibale Caracci. A prolific artist, his work has remained enigmatic, contradictory and hard to define within a single term or style. His mature works are vibrantly coloured, splendidly lit and often extremely expressive.

Back in France in 1623, he married in 1624 Charlotte de Leu, the daughter of the engraver Thomas de Leu. After the death of Charlotte he married Geneviève Ballard in 1644. He is said to have fathered 35 children, 24 of whom are documented. Some of his children became painters in their father’s workshop: amongst them his sons Claude the Younger (1633–1703) and Philippe (1638–1701) and his daughter Charlotte(1639–?).

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Kati Horna (Katalin Deutsch; Szilasbalhás, Magyar Királyság (Mezőszilas, Austria-Hungary); May 19, 1912 – October 19, 2000 Ciudad de México, Mexico); photojournalist, surrealist photographer and teacher. She lived in France, Germany, Spain, and later was naturalized Mexican. Most of her work was considered lost during the Spanish Civil War. She was one of the influential women photographers of her time. Through her photographs she was able to change the way that people viewed war. One way that Horna was able to do this was through the utilization of a strategy called “gendered witnessing”. Gendered witnessing consisted of putting a feminist view on the notion that war was a predominantly masculine thing. She was able to focus on the behind-of-the-scenes, which led her to portraying the impact that war had on women and children. One of her most striking images is the Tête de poupée (doll’s head), see below. Horna worked for various magazines including Mujeres and S.NOB, in which she published a series of fétiches, but even her more commercial commissions often contained surreal touches.

At the age of twenty, Horna became an apprentice in the workshop of photographer József Pecsi, a prestigious school in Budapest, she learned basic photographic techniques. She also met Robert Capa (then by the name Endre Friedmann) there, and the two photographers remained friends until Capa’s death in 1954. When Capa moved to Paris, she followed him in 1933, where she turned her attention to the life she saw around her in the streets and cafés of the French capital.
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, she moved to Barcelona and was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government and the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo to document the war as well as record everyday life of communities on the front lines. She became editor of Umbral magazine where she met her later husband José Horna, a craftsman and sculptor. They escaped to Paris in 1939 after being pushed out by the Spanish Fascist authorities.

During the Nazi occupation of France, Kati and José were married and later sought refuge in Mexico, where she met other artists, who were also fleeing from war-torn Europe: Remedios Varo, Benjamín Péret, Emeric Chiki Weisz, Edward James, Tina Modotti and Leonora Carrington. Horna and this group of artists in exile became a tight knit circle of friends. The friendship between Horna, Varo and Carrington would later be showcased in the 2010 exhibition Surreal Friends.

Gallery

John Vachon

And today is the birthday of John Vachon (John Felix Vachon; Saint Paul, Minnesota May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975 New York City); photographer. He worked as a filing clerk for the Farm Security Administration before Roy Stryker recruited him to join a small group of photographers, including Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn, who were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America.

He received a bachelor’s degree in 1934 from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, then named the College of St. Thomas. In about 1938 he married Millicent Leeper who was known as Penny. She died by suicide in 1960. Vachon married Françoise Fourestier in 1961. Vachon served in the United States Army in 1945.

“In Omaha I realized that I had developed my own style with the camera. I knew that I would photograph only what pleased me or astonished my eye, and only in the way I saw it.”

Gallery

Bismarck, North dakota

Ranson, South Dakota

The song of the day is Lips of an Angel by Jack Ingram

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag

Then catch the moments as they fly, 
And use them as ye ought, man: 
Believe me, happiness is shy, 
And comes not ay when sought, man.
Robert Burns

I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.  
W.B. Yeats

In the morning when you open your eyes, do the lovers in your dreams wake up too.  Ray Wylie Hubbard

But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?  Shakespeare