The Lovers’ Chronicle 6 October – imagine – Jacopo Peri’s opera Euridice – birth of Jenny Lind – photographs by Francis Meadow Sutcliffe

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Who did you imagine today?  Did you see the one?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

inspired by somethin’ Karen wrote me;
imagine hope gittin’ closer
“Not John’s song”
no, great song, though
perhaps a bit overplayed
“Just a little”
the line fell on deaf ears six years ago
i had long before given hope up for dead
“And we have no need for it now”
right, we make our own hope
“Imagine”
all that awaits

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

should flow smoothly, the music playin’ in honor of EVH, still no one asked, or rather, one did, but they did not want to listen, think they asked out of ignorance or reflex, which is fine, i do not mind, then the clouds parted allowin’ a pocket of blue sky to peek through, imagine me and you in the best of both worlds

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a new source
no longer limited
to imagination

an intriguin’ mix
can be had of now
and the future

dreams of to come
takin’ the place
of dreams of could be

the verse and us
go the way we want
the places been
and to be

as fall settles on our view
we welcome the change,
holdin’ on to what next

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

for Gay

yesterday,
after breakfast
was intense

wanted to stay that way
to fall asleep entangled
with you, fully sated

no longer imaginin’,
actually livin’
what has only been
written about here

another other
way to be
pullin’ us in

so welcome
to this vision
comin’ alive
glad we are here

shall we saddle up
and enjoy the ride

***

for Eddie

love the Roth era and the Hagar era. still listen to Van Halen III. listenin’ to VH right now. i remember when i was in college and bought the first album and hearin’ ‘’Eruption’’ for the first time. thank you guitar gods and the Van Halen family for what we were allowed to have

i think the best songs were the later Roth era; “Me Wise Magic”, “Can’t Get this Stuff No More”, the entire A Different Kind of Truth album. i listened to it over and over on a six hour round trip from Denver to Nebraska, thinkin’; the best is yet to come

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

whole lotta that goin’ on
these days mostly about
which words flow best
together

not feelin’ affairs of the flesh
been there, not worth the effort
and takes away from writin’

an activity should be valued
on its ability to inspire verse
nothin’ else

now imagine this page blank
because we were wastin’
time chasin’ what
cannot be

unforgivable

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

as in every pretty face
mere reflections of you

always stop to notice
in every shape and form
the images that seize

content to follow
this imagination
wherever it may lead

try to imagine
another other
way to be
but temptation
no longer pulls
as it did

so welcome
to this vision
glad you are here
saddle up
and enjoy the ride

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

thanks Karen

“Time may get longer
or shorter—such is time.
Always inconsistent,
but imagine
hope getting closer.”

imagine,
oh i imagine…
your eyes, your smile
and your hands
i so enjoyed
sketchin’ your hands
hands that quelled
my waywardness

imagine…
the passion sown
the crescendos reaped

imagine you say

it is all i do

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

For here, as nowhere else,
brought together at the end
of the journey
Seein’ the greetin’s and farewells
The entire picture of destiny

Movin’ through the moments
makin’ amends for wasted time
but the voices remain elusive
an eternal murmur below the immense sky

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Old cowboy songs
Lonely women
Open highways
Whiskey bottles
Writin’ these words
The only friends
That I have left

Gotta have that twang
Hurtin’ songs, drankin’
Lonely rendezvous
Words written in pain
Just tryin’ to hang
on to fadin’ dreams

If I let myself,
I could easily
fall into somethin’
damn near like the
“L” word, with you, but
no worries, I will
not let that happen

“Mi Corazon”
Whispered again
Urgin’, pleadin’,
in the throes of
somethin’ never
felt before. Or
ever again

Shadows cast on
an adobe
wall. A feelin
of permanence
Surely felt, but
slipped away
Nothin left now
but a whisper
“Mi Corazon”

Back in the saddle
Yep. Somewhere between
Autry and Aerosmith

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Capable of such tenderness
And yet often so damn intense
It is as if the lost moments
And dismissed emotions converge
Demandin’ to be heard at once

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Saw Her Today

He saw her today
But she was not near
Yet, he saw her

He saw her everywhere

Every pretty face
A reflection of her
Every beautiful woman
A mere reflection of her

He always stopped to notice
Beauty in all it’s shapes and forms
Whether a beautiful woman,
A painting, an aria,
A rose, a sonnet
Or the stars at night;
He stopped to wonder
At the beauty before him

Admirin’ whatever form
Beauty took to seize and grip
His attention, he would smile,

For his mind would grasp the beauty
And his thoughts would turn to her
The various images
Of her that he cherished
Would dance through his mind

Then his thoughts would turn to the hope
That he held in his heart
That kept him goin’
That he would see her again

© copyright 2012 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Saw Her Today” by The Stairs

Euridice painting by Pólya Tibor

On this day in 1600 – Jacopo Peri’s Euridice receives its première performance in Florence, signifying the beginning of the Baroque period.  Euridice (also Erudice or Eurydice) is an opera by Jacopo Peri, with additional music by Giulio Caccini. It is the earliest surviving opera, Peri’s earlier Dafne being lost.  (Caccini wrote his own “Euridice” even as he supplied music to Peri’s opera, published this version before Peri’s was performed, in 1600, and got it staged two years later.)  The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini is based on books X and XI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which recount the story of the legendary musician Orpheus and his wife Euridice.  The opera was first performed at the Palazzo Pitti with Peri himself singing the role of Orfeo.  Peri’s Euridice tells the story of the musician Orpheus and Euridice from Greek Mythology.  According to myth, Orpheus was a great musician who journeyed to the underworld to plead with the gods to revive his wife Euridice after she had been fatally injured.

Today is the birthday of Jenny Lind (Johanna Maria Lind; Stockholm, 6 October 1820 – 2 November 1887 Wynd’s Point, Herefordshire, England); opera singer, often called the “Swedish Nightingale”. One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she performed in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and undertook a popular concert tour of the United States beginning in 1850. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music from 1840.

Lind became famous after her performance in Der Freischütz in Sweden in 1838. Within a few years, she had suffered vocal damage, but the singing teacher Manuel García saved her voice. She was in great demand in opera roles throughout Sweden and northern Europe during the 1840s, and was closely associated with Felix Mendelssohn. After two acclaimed seasons in London, she announced her retirement from opera at the age of 29.

In 1850, Lind went to America at the invitation of the showman P. T. Barnum. She gave 93 large-scale concerts for him and then continued to tour under her own management. She earned more than $350,000 from these concerts, donating the proceeds to charities, principally the endowment of free schools in Sweden. With her new husband, Otto Goldschmidt, she returned to Europe in 1852, where she had three children and gave occasional concerts over the next two decades, settling in England in 1855. From 1882, for some years, she was a professor of singing at the Royal College of Music in London.

And today is the birthday of Frank Sutcliffe (Francis Meadow Sutcliffe; 6 October 1853 Headingley, Leeds, England – 31 May 1941 Sleights, North Yorkshire, England); pioneering photographic artist whose work presented an enduring record of life in the seaside town of Whitby, England, and surrounding areas, in the late Victorian era and early 20th century. His documentation of the Victorian and Edwardian periods in Whitby, led him to be labelled as the “pictorial Boswell of Whitby.

He married Eliza Weatherill Duck, the daughter of a local bootmaker, on 1 January 1875 and had a son and three daughters at his home in Sleights. He was buried in Aislaby churchyard.

Gallery

Mac tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all