The Lovers’ Chronicle 2 August – when you smile – birth of Ernest Dowson & James Baldwin – art by John Sloan, Arthur Dove & Albert Bloch – Jane & Wild Bill

Dear Zazie,  

Hey Zazie, I found your note, Bet you didn’t know, and no I did not, and it has taken my breath, which I no longer thought possible. It will take a few days to process. I shared your note with Mac Tag and he is turning it into verse.

Here is Mac Tag‘s Lovers’ Chronicle to his muse.  What makes you smile? Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

perhaps the most obvious choice yet
the theme came first and not from the song,
written by Larry Shay, Mark Fisher and Joe Goodwin
and performed by almost everyone
but lets go with Billie Holiday;
’’When you’re smiling, when you’re smiling’’
’’Not sure about the whole world
but we make each other smile’’
that is right, the origin of this
is how i consider woman
to be the highest form of beauty
and it starts with her eyes and her smile
yours my dear are particularly lovely
‘’Thank you my love’’
my pleasure 
meanwhile,
lets think of somethin’ else
we can do with each other

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

have always said, go ahead check all my past statements, the ultimate vision of beauty is woman and nothin’ is prettier than a woman’s smile, have never understood artists who did not or rarely painted a woman, the grandest landscapes cannot compare to the vision of woman, of you

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i need words
i need inspiration
cannot wait
to see your eyes
your smile

somehow,
this has been foreseen
dream carries desire,
a kiss, shiverin’ bodies,
voices and the soft sighin’

becomes a link to maybe
that will not stop
that will not allow fear
to have a look

when you smile

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

when i saw the theme
had somethin'
to do with a smile,
i knew i had to write you;
yours was one of the brightest
to light up my darkness;
i have asked myself before,
if it serves any purpose
to revisit reveries of the past;
yes, it does, here without,
it is good to think of you
smilin' at someone

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

‘’Aging is mostly just your body getting softer and your heart getting harder.’’

Karen: Getting harder with a huge soft spot in the middle. Like lava inside a rocky planet.

me: both, harder and harder

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

“I pass by this cafe often,
always at a busy time, and stop.
As I peer through the window,
close enough to see my breath,
I see you sitting there. Always
looking so intent, so deep in thought.
I watch your hand as it flows across the page
and I see the grin come across your face.
I wonder if it’s me or another beauty
that has your heart. I play it over and over
in my head. Me walking in and standing there
before you. Would it be the start or an ending?”

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i need words
i need inspiration
look at me
let me see your eyes
your smile
that always works

everything has not been said
dream carries desire,
your kiss, your memory
an oath…
your shiverin’ body,
your voice and the soft sighin’

repeat these words,
words which attach
that become a link to hope
that will not stop
that will not allow fear
to have a look

when you smile

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Kissed
Kissed hard
A kiss charged
With urgency
But who was she
I only caught
A glimpse before
She vanished
Come back
Can you hear me…

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Tried. Really i did
Just could not feel it
Same refrain: Darkness
bears it away and
the shadows converge

…

Closed, hallowed, full of insubstantial fire
Morsel of truth to hope given over
This poem, ruled by its flambeaux, pleases so

A place all cold, stone, and dark wood, shudders
So much, surrounded, so many shadows:
The tombs, asleep, on the faithful prairie

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Ernest Dowson

Today is the birthday of Ernest Dowson (Ernest Christopher Dowson; Lee, London; 2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 Catford); poet, novelist, and short-story writer, often associated with the Decadent movement.

In 1889, aged 23, Dowson fell in love with the eleven-year-old Adelaide “Missie” Foltinowicz, daughter of a Polish restaurant owner; in 1893 he unsuccessfully proposed to her.  To Dowson’s despair, Adelaide was eventually to marry a tailor.

• They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
  Out of a misty dream
  Our path emerges for a while, then closes
  Within a dream.
  • “Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam” (1896). This title from Horace: “The short span of life forbids us to entertain long hopes.”
• I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
  • Letter to Arthur Moore (February 1899).
• O pray the earth enfold
  Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.
  • A Last Word (1899).

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

– Ernest Dowson, from Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae, third stanza (1894)

In a letter to bookseller and publisher Leonard Smithers, Oscar Wilde wrote of the death of Dowson: “Poor wounded wonderful fellow that he was, a tragic reproduction of all tragic poetry, like a symbol, or a scene. I hope bay leaves will be laid on his tomb, and rue and myrtle too, for he knew what love is.”

Today is the birthday of John Sloan (John French Sloan; Lock Haven, Pennsylvania; August 2, 1871 – September 7, 1951 Hanover, New Hampshire); painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. He is best known for his urban genre scenes and ability to capture the essence of neighborhood life in New York City, often observed through his Chelsea studio window. Sloan has been called the premier artist of the Ashcan School, and also a realist painter who embraced the principles of Socialism, though he himself disassociated his art from his politics.

In 1898, the socially awkward Sloan was introduced to Anna Maria (Dolly) Wall (born July 28, 1876), and the two fell in love. In entering into a relationship with her, Sloan accepted the challenges posed by her alcoholism and her sexual history, which included prostitution; although Dolly worked in a department store by day, Sloan had, in fact, met her in a brothel. They were married on August 5, 1901, providing Sloan with an affectionate partner who believed in him absolutely, but whose lapses and mental instability led to frequent crises. A particularly close friend in their New York years, who helped the couple to weather many of these crises, was the artist John Butler Yeats, father of poet William Butler Yeats.

In 1943, Dolly died of coronary heart disease. The next year, Sloan married Helen Farr, a former student forty years his junior with whom he had been romantically involved for a time in the 1930s. Sloan died of cancer eight years after Dolly. The following January the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a well-received retrospective of his career. 

Gallery

And now, a love story from the Wild West.  Well, maybe an unrequited love story. 

It was on this day in 1876 that Wild Bill Hickok was shot in the back of the head at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, South Dakota and died at the age of 39. And it was on yesterday’s (1 August) day in 1901 that Calamity Jane died.  So who was in love with who? 

Well as with most tales of the west, what follows is speculation.  In 1876, Calamity Jane settled in the area of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills.  She became friendly with Hickok and Charlie Utter, having travelled with him to Deadwood in Utter’s wagon train.  Jane greatly admired Hickok, allegedly to the point of infatuation and possiblely obsessed with his personality and his life.  After Hickok was killed during a poker game, Jane claimed to have been married to Hickok and that Hickok was the father of her child (Jean), who she said was born on 25 September 1873.  No records are known to exist which prove the birth of a child, and the romantic slant to the relationship might have been fabrication. During the period that the alleged child was born, she was working as a scout for the army. At the time of his death, Hickok was newly married to Agnes Lake Thatcher.  His untimely death makes it a sad tale whatever one chooses to believe.  Of course, I believe it was an unrequited love; Jane for Hickok.

There can only be one song to follow this story.  I particularly like the closin’ stanza:

Heavenly wine and roses
Seem to whisper to me when you smile
Heavenly wine and roses
Seem to whisper to me when you smile

Exactly how I felt when you smiled at me.

The song of the day is the Cowboy Junkies version of the Lou Reed song – “Sweet Jane”

Today is the birthday of Arthur Dove (Arthur Garfield Dove; Canandaigua, New York; August 2, 1880 – November 23, 1946 Huntington, New York); artist.  An early American modernist, he is often considered the first American abstract painter.  Dove used a wide range of media, sometimes in unconventional combinations, to produce his abstractions and his abstract landscapes.

Dove spent a seven-year period on a houseboat called Mona with Helen Torr, known as “Reds” for the fiery color of her hair.  Torr was also a painter. Although the psychological consequences benefited Dove’s art, his life with Torr was difficult.  Dove’s wife, Florence never cared about Dove’s passion for art, and was more socially inclined.  After 25 years of marriage, Dove left Florence.  Florence would not grant him a divorce.  When he departed, he left behind everything except his copies of Camera Work and Stieglitz’s letters.  When Dove’s wife Florence died unexpectedly, he paid $250.00 for the funeral expenses and sent flowers, but did not go to the funeral in Geneva.  Dove and Torr were not able to wed right away as Torr had not divorced her first husband.  Dove and Torr did eventually marry on April 1932 in the New York City Hall with a brief service and using a ten-cent store ring.

Gallery 

Today is the birthday of Albert Bloch (St. Louis, Missouri; August 2, 1882 – March 23, 1961 Lawrence, Kansas); Modernist artist and the only American artist associated with Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), a group of early 20th-century European modernists.

After the end of World War I, Bloch returned to the United States, teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year, and then accepting a Departmental Head position at the University of Kansas until his retirement in 1947. Bloch had two sons, Bernard and Walter, with his first wife, Hortense.

Gallery

And today is the birthday James Baldwin (James Arthur Baldwin né Jones; Harlem; August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France); writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. In my opinion his 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain is one of the top 100 English-language novels. His 1955 essay collection Notes of a Native Son helped establish his reputation as a voice for human equality. Baldwin was an influential public figure and orator, especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.

Baldwin’s fiction posed fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures. Themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class intertwine to create narratives that influenced both the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement in mid-twentieth century America. His characters typically face internal and external obstacles in their search for self- and social acceptance.

Baldwin’s work continues to influence artists and writers. His unfinished manuscript Remember This House was expanded and adapted as the 2016 documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. His 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk was adapted into a 2018 film of the same name, which earned widespread praise.

Baldwin lived in France for most of his later life, using it as a base of operations for extensive international travel. Baldwin settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France in 1970, in an old Provençal house beneath the ramparts of the famous village. His house was always open to his friends, who frequently visited him while on trips to the French Riviera.

quotes

Giovanni’s Room (1956)

• But people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
  • Pt. 1, Ch. 1
• I shall never be able to have any more of these boyish, zestful affairs — which are, really, when one thinks about it, a kind of higher, or, anyway, more pretentious masturbation. People are too various to be treated so lightly.
  • Pt. 1, Ch. 1
• You think,’ he persisted, ‘that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.’
  ‘Why are they — shameful?’ I asked him.
  ‘Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.’ Pt. 1, Ch. 3
• 
  ‘Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, ‘love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty — they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty, you can give each other something which will make both of you better — forever — if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe. He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. ‘You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, ‘and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever — like me.’ Pt. 1, Ch. 3
• 
  You can give each other something which will make both of you better — forever — if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.
  ‘Somebody,’ said Jacques, ‘your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour — and in the oddest places! — for the lack of it.’Pt. 1, Ch. 3
• 
  Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say. Pt. 2, Ch. 5

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. – Oscar Wilde

Wavering between the profit and the loss
in this brief transit where the dreams cross
the dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.

– T.S. Eliot

Progress is impossible without change, & those who can’t change their mind can’t change anything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. – Mark Twain

The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. – Thucydides

I know the voices dying with a dying fall. – T.S. Eliot

I am no prophet . and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker. – T.S. Eliot

If they substituted the word ‘Lust’ for ‘Love’ in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth. – Sylvia Plath

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one  –  or both. Usually both. – Susan Sontag

And the moon is wilder every minute. – W.B. Yeats