The Lovers’ Chronicle 18 June – benediction – art by Joseph-Marie Vien & John Bellany – birth of George Essex Evans, Raymond Radiguet & Sammy Cahn

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

for the sake of a song, lets focus on help
’’That throws the door open
with a couple of obvious ones
from the Beatles’’
great songs but i had to go
with the genius of Kristofferson;
‘’Come and lay down by my side
´Till the early mornin’ night
All I’m takin’ is your time
Help me make it through the night’’
’’Have you noticed we only feature fabulous songs’’
could be our M.O., now lets git busy
helpin’ each other through the night

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

not the religious kind so this not intended as an invocation for divine help, blessin’ or guidance, not the askin’ kind either, fine with doin’ without if it cannot be done on my own; now, there is intent here every day, to seek any assistance from you my Muse, that is different, this is what i want to do and to keep the words flowin’ i will bow, kneel and pray any which way you want,
each poem is a gift not taken for granted and i reverently offer them to you

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

this is where it began
fillin’ in old wounds
assessin’ what is left
your inner voice
thrashed out, free

on a fine mornin’
wind in our hair
years in the rear view
spent denyin’, doin’
whatever it took
to survive to git
to this moment
of reinvention
emergin’ in this

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

i thought i knew well
but i had no idea

it is undeniable
pointless to protest
my many missteps
apparently needed
every one

to finally let go
all the way
to get to the point
of knowin’

and now that i do,
to be near you
i will wait

till you are walkin’
beside me

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

well you know
there will not be
any askin’ for help

guidance, maybe
always open to you
and your inspiration
guidin’ the cadences

not shy about
encounterin’
the unknown

s’pect it will lead
to decent verse
and new friendships
but please dear goddess,
not to anything else

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

this is where you begin
fillin’ in old wounds
assessin’

what is left of you
your inner voice
thrashed out, free

on a fine mornin’
wind in your hair
years in the rear view

spent denyin’, doin’
whatever it took
to survive to git

to this moment
of reinvention
emergin’ in this

High Plains benediction

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the luxury of excuse
to not know better
forever in front
(did behind matter)

after a hot day at Lake June
a moonlight kiss on a boat
i gave the night a Polaroid
then it vanished

over the years since,
dang near wore it out,
touchin’ it, tryin’
to git the moment back

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Sometimes I wonder
If we could have gone on
Us, tryin’ forever

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Real faith. Not the
throw away kind
And the way you
look standin’ there:
Captures my breath

Are you a poet
because you want to
be, or are you a
poet because you
think, dream, and make love
in rhyme and rhythm

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Joseph-Marie Vien ( Montpellier 18 June 1716 – 27 March 1809 Paris); painter. He was the last holder of the post of Premier peintre du Roi, serving from 1789 to 1791.

Joseph Marie Vien, portrait by Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1784).

He was married to the artist Marie-Thérèse Reboul (1728–1805). Vien died at the age of 92, and was entombed in a crypt of the Panthéon.

Gallery

Today is the birthday of George Essex Evans (London 18 June 1863 – 10 November 1909 Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia); poet, journalist, farmer, teacher, and public servant.

Evans married Blanche Hopkins. The wedding was described as a very secret affair. A letter from Evans to Dr. Black, whom he sought to perform the service, asks for a quiet ceremony with little fuss in Drayton. They were married on 6 November 1899.

They built their home, “Glenbar” on the Tollbar Road on the eastern slope of the Toowoomba range.

Verse

Dark purple, chased with sudden gloom and glory,
Like waves in wild unrest.
Low-wooded billows and steep summits hoary,
Ridge, slope and mountain crest,
Cease at her feet with faces turned to greet her,
Enthroned, apart, serene,
Above her vassal hills whose voices greet her
The Mountain Queen.

Poets sing their wild Iambics--
Love and war and gods--
Let us sing of humble women
Fighting fearful odds,
Not where steel and bullets rattle
And the squadrons race,
But the grim unending battle
With the commonplace.

Today is the birthday of Raymond Radiguet (Saint-Maur, Val-de-Marne, France 18 June 1903 – 12 December 1923 Paris); novelist and poet whose two novels, Le Diable au corps and Le Bal du comte d’Orgel, were noted for their explicit themes, and unique style and tone.  He associated himself with the Modernist set, befriending Picasso, Max Jacob, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris and especially Jean Cocteau, who became his mentor.  Radiguet had several well-documented relationships with women.  An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as “Monsieur Bébé” – Mister Baby) with decadence for his tryst with a model: “Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes.” (“Baby is depraved. He likes women.”) Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer “who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil.”

Radiguet died at age 20 of typhoid fever, which he contracted after a trip he took with Cocteau.  Cocteau, in an interview with The Paris Review stated that Radiguet had told him three days prior to his death that,

“Écoutez, me dit-il le 9 décembre, écoutez une chose terrible. Dans trois jours je vais être fusillé par les soldats de Dieu.” Comme j’étouffais de larmes, que j’inventais des renseignements contradictoires : “Vos renseignements, continua-t-il, sont moins bons que les miens. L’ordre est donné. J’ai entendu l’ordre.”
Plus tard, il dit encore : “Il y a une couleur qui se promène et des gens cachés dans cette couleur.”
Je lui demandai s’il fallait les chasser. Il répondit : “Vous ne pouvez pas les chasser, puisque vous ne voyez pas la couleur.”
Ensuite, il sombra.
Il remuait la bouche, il nous nommait, il posait ses regards avec surprise sur sa mère, sur son père, sur ses mains.
Raymond Radiguet commence. »

In her 1932 memoir, Laughing Torso, British artist Nina Hamnett describes Radiguet’s funeral: “The church was crowded with people. In the pew in front of us was the negro band from the Boeuf sur le Toit. Picasso was there, Brâncuși and so many celebrated people that I cannot remember their names. Radiguet’s death was a terrible shock to everyone. Coco Chanel, the celebrated dressmaker, arranged the funeral. It was most wonderfully done. Cocteau was too ill to come.” … “Cocteau was terribly upset and could not see anyone for weeks afterwards. I wrote to him in February and asked him if I could come and see him. He wrote me a charming letter:
25 fevrier 1924
CHERE NINA
Je suis toujours malade et sans courage.
Telephonez un matin”.
De coeur,
JEAN COCTEAU

Quotes

Le malheur ne s’admet point. Seul, le bonheur semble dû.

Nous croyons être les premiers à ressentir certains troubles, ne sachant pas que l’amour est comme la poésie, et que tous les amants, même les plus médiocres, s’imaginent qu’ils innovent.
Le Diable au corps (1923)

today is the birthday of Sammy Cahn (Samuel Cohen; New York City; June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993 Los Angeles); lyricist, songwriter and musician.  Perhaps best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs.  He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer’s tenure at Capitol Records, and also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. Cahn played the piano and violin. He won the Academy Award four times for his songs;

• 1954 – “Three Coins in the Fountain” (music by Jule Styne) introduced by Sinatra in the film Three Coins in the Fountain.
• 1957 – “All the Way” (music by Jimmy Van Heusen) introduced by Sinatra in the film The Joker Is Wild.
• 1959 – “High Hopes” (music by Van Heusen) introduced by Sinatra and Eddie Hodges in the film A Hole in the Head.
• 1963 – “Call Me Irresponsible” (music by Van Heusen) introduced by Jackie Gleason in the film Papa’s Delicate Condition.

Among his most enduring songs is “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”, cowritten with Styne in 1945.

He was married twice: first in 1945 to vocalist and former Goldwyn girl Gloria Delson, with whom he had two children. They divorced after 18 years of marriage. In 1970, Cahn married Virginia (Tita) Curtis, a former fashion coordinator for the clothes designer Donald Brooks.

Cahn died at the age of 79 from heart failure. His remains were interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

lyrics

• It seems to me I’ve heard that song before.
  It’s from an old familiar score.
  I know it well, that melody.
  • I’ve Heard that Song Before (1942)
• Till you’re walking beside me, I’ll walk alone.
  • I’ll walk alone (1944)
• I fall in love too terribly hard
  For love to ever last.
  • I Fall in Love Too Easily (1944)
• Three coins in a fountain
  Each one seeking happiness
  Thrown by three hopeful lovers
  Which one will the fountain bless?
  • Three Coins in a Fountain (1954)
• When somebody loves you
  It’s no good unless he loves you – all the way
  Happy to be near you
  When you need someone to cheer you – all the way.
  • All the Way (1957)
• Just what makes that little old ant
  Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant?
  Anyone knows an ant, can’t
  Move a rubber tree plant.
  But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
  He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes.
  • High Hopes (1959)
• Call me irresponsible
  Yes, I’m unreliable
  But it’s undeniably true
  That I’m irresponsibly mad for you.
  • Call me Irresponsible (1963)

And today is the birthday of John Bellany (Port Seto, Scotland 18 June 1942 – 28 August 2013 Saffron Walden, Essex, England); painter. After his studies at Edinburgh College of Art, Bellany achieved a major travelling scholarship and travelled around Europe discovering how the traditions of the great northern European masters could be connected to his own Scottish experience. After this he would marry Helen Percy and move to attend the Royal College of Art in London.

After he separated from his wife in 1974, his art appears to take on a darker tone. The symbolism increases and it seems as though each picture can have a whole narrative of symbols within it, increasingly the pictures become wilder, tending more to expressionism. He suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Port Seton for recuperation.

Between 1973 and 1978 Bellany had been head of faculty of painting at Croydon College of Art and had met Juliet Lister who he later married. He lectured at Goldsmiths’ College from 1978 to 1984. In 1984, following an impromptu holiday in France with his first wife and family he was diagnosed with liver disease, a consequence of his alcoholism. He abstained for the rest of his life but the damage had been done.

In 1985 his father died and his second wife Juliet died by suicide. In 1986, he remarried his first wife Helen. The liver disease was becoming unmanageable. In 1988 Bellany was operated on for a then relatively new liver transplant procedure; this also inspired works. Carried out at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge by Roy Calne, Bellany not only survived but started to paint within hours of the operation, first producing a portrait of the nurse caring for him.

He is buried on the south side of the main entrance path in Dean Cemetery on the west side of Edinburgh.

Gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag