The Lovers’ Chronicle 29 April – the way – art by David Cox & Raja Ravi Varma – birth of Maya Deren & Rod McKuen

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  What comes straight from your heart?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

not from the Frampton song
but that would work
“I want you to show me”
right, none other
spent a lot of time searchin’
the verse was the key, as if,
i was driven to sit down
every day and write
and i wrote all of this
to heal, to find, to be
to get ready for you
to show me the way

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

we could make this simple and keep the word count down by just writin’, it has been found; did someone ask how, oh good, that can be told in either three words, the hard way, or in a few more; no manual for this, though it has to be the primary purpose of bein’ on this journey which none of us were asked to join, each must find their own; hit or miss, trial and error, if at first one does not succeed, would have just rinsed and repeated that shit had i not started writin’, had you not come along to show me

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

to write a response,
always different,
always the same
with you

open your arms
come

with this, now
worth all the cost

i will be here
whenever
whatever

this is all we have
to offer an orison,
for the long overdue

so… we will go,
wherever we go
this is all we have

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

“I read your letters and I start
to reply but I don’t, because
they leave me wanting to say
so much and I can’t find
the right words. I’m not
as clever as you with words.”

i wrote a one sentence letter…

worry not whether
your words are clever
as long as they feel right

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

open the letter and look
at the picture enclosed
still smell the perfume

read the letter; then again
look at the picture and smile

miss everything
about the time we had

take it out once a year
to write a response,
always different,
always the same

without you

open your arms
come

adieu without you
would be too hard

i will be here
whenever
whatever

this is all we have
to offer an orison,
for the long overdue

so… we will go,
wherever we go
this is all we have

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

write another

may as well
les bons mots
must be found

rather the process
of puttin’ blue on white
must be followed

no response will be comin’
from this one, as the others
used to wonder what happened
but now, just file it in the drawer
of never to be, never to use

© copyright 2018.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Not accustomed to writin’ these things
To givin’ myself away like this
But I cannot pretend with you
Nor be clever and stand-offish

How i pretend with others
I have it down to a fine art
But you are breakin’ down
my walls and i do not know
what to do with that

Please do forgive me for writin’
so many miserable poems
It is all i can do to keep
up with the words

***

I know your truth
I see it, i
can feel it. It
is safe with me
I know you do
not believe that
That is ok;
I will show you

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

This comes to you straight……

From The Heart

She opened his latest letter
And looked at the picture enclosed
She read the letter; then again
She looked at the picture and smiled
One of her big beautiful smiles
She instantly missed everything
About him and the time they had
So she sat down and wrote him back
And told him this, and also that
She reads his letters but often
Does not reply because they leave
Her wantin’ to say so much but
Then she cannot find the right words
Because she thinks she could never
Be as clever as him with words
He read this letter that she wrote
And promptly sat down and composed
A one sentence letter to her:
You need never worry whether
Your words are clever or not so;
As long as they come from your heart

© Copyright 2013 Cowboy Coleridge/Mac Tag. All rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “Straight from the Heart” by Bryan Adams.  We do not own the rights to this song.  All rights reserved by the rightful owner.  No copyright infringement intended.

Today is the birthday of David Cox (Birmingham, England; April 1783 – 7 June 1859 Birmingham, England); landscape painter, one of the most important members of the Birmingham School of landscape artists and an early precursor of Impressionism.

Cox (1830) by William Radclyffe

In my opinion, one of the greatest English landscape painters, and a major figure of the Golden age of English watercolour.  He also painted over 300 works in oil towards the end of his career.

Gallery

A windy day

Today is the birthday of Raja Ravi Varma (29 April 1848 – 2 October 1906); painter and artist.  In my opinion,  one of the greatest painters in the history of Indian art. His works are one of the best examples of the fusion of European academic art with a purely Indian sensibility and iconography.

He was known as the first modern Indian artist.  Specially, he was notable for making affordable lithographs of his paintings available to the public, which greatly enhanced his reach and influence as a painter and public figure. His lithographs increased the involvement of common people with fine arts and defined artistic tastes among common people. Furthermore, his religious depictions of Hindu deities and works from Indian epic poetry and Puranas have received profound acclaim. He was part of the royal family of erstwhile Parappanad, Malappuram district.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of Maya Deren (born Elenora Derenkowskaia, Kiev, April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961 New York City); filmmaker, choreographer, dancer, film theorist, poet, lecturer, writer, and photographer.  In my opinion, Deren was one of the most important American experimental filmmakers and entrepreneurial promoters of the avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s.

At age eighteen in June 1935, she married Gregory Bardacke, a socialist activist whom she met through the Social Problems Club. After his graduation in 1935, she moved to New York City. She finished school at New York University with a Bachelor’s degree in literature in June 1936, and returned to Syracuse that fall. She and Bardacke became active in various socialist causes in New York City; and it was during this time that they separated and eventually divorced three years later.

1940, Deren moved to Los Angeles to focus on her poetry and freelance photography. In 1941, Deren wrote to Katherine Dunham—an African American dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist of Caribbean culture and dance—suggesting a children’s book on dance and applying for a managerial job for her and her dance troupe; she later became Dunham’s assistant and publicist. Deren travelled with the troupe for a year, learning greater appreciation for dance, as well as interest and appreciation for Haitian culture. Dunham’s fieldwork influenced Deren’s studies of Haitian culture and Vodou mythology. At the end of touring a new musical Cabin in the Sky, the Dunham dance company stopped in Los Angeles for several months to work in Hollywood. It was there that Deren met Alexandr Hackenschmied (who later changed his name to Alexander Hammid), a celebrated Czech-born photographer and cameraman who would become Deren’s second husband in 1942. Hackenschmied had fled from Czechoslovakia in 1938 after the Sudetenland crisis.

By hammidBy hammid

In 1943, she moved to a bungalow on Kings Road in Hollywood and adopted the name Maya, a pet name Hammid coined. Maya is the name of the mother of the historical Buddha as well as the dharmic concept of the illusory nature of reality. In Greek myth, Maia is the mother of Hermes and a goddess of mountains and fields.

In 1944, back in New York City, her social circle included Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, John Cage, and Anaïs Nin. In 1944, Deren filmed The Witch’s Cradle in Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery with Duchamp featured in the film.

In the December 1946 issue of Esquire magazine, a caption for her photograph teased that she “experiments with motion pictures of the subconscious, but here is finite evidence that the lady herself is infinitely photogenic.” Her third husband, Teiji Itō, said: “Maya was always a Russian. In Haiti she was a Russian. She was always dressed up, talking, speaking many languages and being a Russian.”

Deren died at the age of 44 from a brain hemorrhage, which has been attributed to a combination of malnutrition and drug use. Her condition may have also been weakened by her long-term dependence on amphetamines and sleeping pills prescribed by Max Jacobson, a doctor and member of the arts scene known as “Miracle Max” and “Dr. Feelgood”, notorious for his liberal prescription of drugs, who later became famous as one of President John F. Kennedy’s physicians.

Her ashes were scattered in Japan at Mount Fuji.

Gallery

And today is the birthday of Rod McKuen (Rodney Marvin McKuen; Oakland, April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015 Beverly Hills); singer-songwriter, musician and poet.  He produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks and classical music.  He earned two Academy Award nominations and one Pulitzer nomination for his music compositions.  McKuen’s translations and adaptations of the songs of Jacques Brel were instrumental in bringing the Belgian songwriter to prominence in the English-speaking world.  His poetry deals with themes of love, the natural world and spirituality.

Music to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968)

Musical suite at YouTube“Jean” · McKuen performance · cover version by Oliver

• Jean, Jean, roses are red
  All the leaves have gone green
  And the clouds are so low
  You can touch them, and so
  Come out to the meadow, Jean.
• Jean, Jean, you’re young and alive
  Come out of your half-dreamed dream
  And run, if you will, to the top of the hill
  Open your arms, bonnie Jean.

• Till the sheep in the valley come home my way
  Till the stars fall around me and find me alone
  When the sun comes a-singin’ I’ll still be waitin 
• ‘For Jean, Jean, roses are red
  And all of the leaves have gone green
  While the hills are ablaze with the moon’s yellow haze
  Come into my arms, bonnie Jean.

• Adieu, Francoise, my trusted wife;
  Without you I’d have had a lonely life.
  You cheated lots of times but then,
  I forgave you in the end
  Though your lover was my friend.
• Adieu, Francoise, it’s hard to die
  When all the birds are singing in the sky.
  Now that spring is in the air
  With your lovers ev’rywhere,
  Just be careful; I’ll be there.
  • Seasons in the Sun” (1961), as translated from the Jacques Brel song “Le Moribond”· McKuen performance
• We have only love,
  to offer as a prayer,
  for all the wrongs in the world.
  So… like singing troubadours we’ll go,
  singing love wherever we go.
• We have only love,
  to help us find our way,
  as we go out into the world.
  So… like laughing children we’ll go
  singing love wherever we go.
  • “Only Love” by Jacques Brel as translated on the album After Midnight (1988)

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag