The Lovers’ Chronicle 18 December – transition – art by Paul Klee – photos by André de Dienes

Dear Zazie,  Here is the Lovers’ Chronicle for today from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse.  Whose words are important to you?  Are their words enough?  Rhett

 The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

this day kinda has two themes
one song friendly, one not
so goin’ song friendly with
“More than Words” by Extreme
“‘Cause I’d already know”
“Ok good choice we would
have been stuck on transition”
yes, but it has been easy to write
about how much has changed
since i started this and easy
to write about the change
in how the words matter
“They’re the accompaniment”
to us, singin’ our song

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

swingin’ back and forth on this one as well, when finally settled in best destiny nothin’ else was needed, all the time that could be was spent here seekin’ the rhythm, findin’ the right ones, gittin’ ’em in the right order, but, life can come down to how well one pivots, if you can vary your dance steps as the music changes, as when you came along

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the past year, the most significant
from maybe, to bein’ half of a whole
we have spoken of the journey
from darkness to solitude
the trail of broken words
how they were found
and lost
then found again
how they came to be
all that mattered
to now,
the discovery
i needed more
that they are here
as accompaniment
that we are all that matters

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

as time passes i welcome, you
solo sonatas make me smile
but i welcome this duet

reflectin’ on the future of choice to make
you know what i want with the simplest
means, sketches in black and white

the conviction grows stronger,
this, the attraction becomin’
what was meant to be

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

minds becomin’ settled
into what was all along
meant to be

did we know then
what it was
and now what could be

feelin’ yet more heavily
an inextinguishable bond,
a mutual attraction
and the deepest
understandin’

could the years
of sacrifice
have been prelude
to what comes next

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

transitions
in a small hotel

i was comin’
and she was goin’

one night
when i could not sleep
i walked down to the lobby
and there she was

i made tea
and she joined me

we talked
all the way
to first light
about the places
we had been
about music,
and art,
and poetry

we saw each other
every night after that
we created a place
where we could be

and we danced

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

thanks bret

the hush, hoverin’
remindin’ me
of the vanished

“But don’t you miss
companionship?”
no not really

callin’ this, a needed
transitional phase
an interstitial place
of heightened Presence

learnin’ to cherish the in-between-ness
of what-has-been-shall-not-continue
and what-is-to-be-is-yet-to-be-seen

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

the valley, golden hues and purple shades
the speakin’ west wind and cold silent night
and watchin’ eyes with their wonderful light
so wrought upon me that i should never
have left them at all

sunset and twilight give way to night
the wind whistles melancholy notes
the campfire burns down to red embers
a subtle difference apparent
in all of this or else
the shadowy change
is in us

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Will not miss this
but for pretty eyes
Strange comfort
Still breathin’
Kneelin’ to ask
Snow fallin’
Cradled thoughts
that matter

Left to my own devices
I would spend all my time
alone, creatin’ somethin’;
complex financial models,
poetry, stories, paintin’s

Misunderstood
Livin’ as much
with the dead
as with
what could be
Closer, but not
close enough
to the core
of what matters

That memory
Deep inside
me, forever
Many northern
moonrises
Remind me
and remind me
Again and again

I write about love
or the lack thereof
Nothin’ else matters

Those are the terms
upon which
you must accept me

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

Ever dance with
Madness in the
Pale moonlight? My
All to often
Dance partner by
Destiny or
Choice not sure which
Must I return
Repeatedly

I admit the need,
Entangled in your limbs,
I have never admitted
My pretendin’ and posturin’,
Nothin’ but bluffin’

© copyright 2014 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

More Than Just Words

Waitin’
And anticipatin’
Her touch
Her soft caress

Wishin’
She was lyin’ near me
Right now
Right here with me

Dreamin’
About bein’ with her
About
Us together

Hopin’
Our time with each other
Will last
And have no end

Wantin’ for her all that she wants
From love
From this wide world

Needin’
All that life can give me
I need
More than just words

© copyright 2012 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

The Song of the Day is “More Than Words“ by Extreme. © 2004 A&M Records

Paul Klee

Today is the birthday of Paul Klee (Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940 Muralto, Switzerland); artist.  His style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.  Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and explored color theory.  His lectures Writings on Form and Design Theory (Schriften zur Form und Gestaltungslehre), published in English as the Paul Klee Notebooks, are held to be as important for modern art as Leonardo da Vinci’s A Treatise on Painting for the Renaissance.  He and his colleague, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, both taught at the Bauhaus school of art, design and architecture.  His works reflect his dry humor and his sometimes childlike perspective, his personal moods and beliefs, and his musicality.

Klee began studying art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.  He excelled at drawing but seemed to lack any natural color sense.  He later recalled, “During the third winter I even realized that I probably would never learn to paint.”  During these times of youthful adventure, Klee spent much time in pubs and had affairs with lower class women and artists’ models.

 Klee married Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf in 1906.  They lived in a suburb of Munich, and while she gave piano lessons and occasional performances, he kept house and tended to his art work.  His attempt to be a magazine illustrator failed.  Klee’s art work progressed slowly for the next five years, partly from having to divide his time with domestic matters, and partly as he tried to find a new approach to his art.  In 1910, he had his first solo exhibition in Bern, which then traveled to three Swiss cities.

Klee suffered from a wasting disease, scleroderma, toward the end of his life, enduring pain that seems to be reflected in his last works of art. One of his last paintings, Death and Fire, features a skull in the center with the German word for death, “Tod”, appearing in the face (see below).  He died in Muralto, Locarno, Switzerland, on 29 June 1940 without having obtained Swiss citizenship, despite his birth in that country.  His art work was considered too revolutionary, even degenerate, by the Swiss authorities, but his request was accepted, six days after his death.  The words on his tombstone, Klee’s credo: “I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is as much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough.”  He was buried at Schosshaldenfriedhof, Bern, Switzerland.

Gallery

And today is the birthday of André de Dienes (Andor György Ikafalvi-Dienes; Kézdivásárhely, Kingdom of Hungary, (now Târgu Secuiesc, Romania) December 18, 1913 – April 11, 1985 Hollywood); photographer, noted for his work with Marilyn Monroe and his nude photography.

He left home at 15 after the suicide of his mother. Dienes travelled across Europe mostly on foot, until his arrival in Tunisia. In Tunisia he purchased his first camera, a 35mm Retina. Returning to Europe he arrived in Paris in 1933 to study art, and bought a Rolleiflex shortly after.

Dienes began work as a professional photographer for the Communist newspaper L’Humanité, and was employed by the Associated Press until 1936, when the Parisian couturier Captain Molyneux noted his work and urged him to become a fashion photographer. In 1938 the editor of Esquire, Arnold Gingrich offered him work in New York City, and helped fund Dienes’ passage to the United States. Once in the United States Dienes worked for Vogue and Life magazines as well as Esquire.

When not working as a fashion photographer Dienes travelled the USA photographing Native American culture, including the Apache, Hopi, and Navajo reservations and their inhabitants. Dissatisfied with his life as a fashion photographer in New York, Dienes moved to California in 1944, where he began to specialise in nudes and landscapes.

In 1945 Dienes met the nineteen-year-old Marilyn Monroe, then called Norma Jeane Baker, who was a model on the books of Emmeline Snively’s Blue Book Model Agency.

Snively told Dienes of Norma Jeane, and suggested her for his project of photographing artistic nudes. In his memoirs Dienes described the first time he met Monroe saying “…it was as if a miracle had happened to me. Norma Jeane seemed to be like an angel. I could hardly believe it for a few moments. An earthly, sexy-looking angel! Sent expressly for me!”.

His series of pin-up shots of her at Long Island’s Tobay Beach, in Oyster Bay, New York became notable.

Norma Jeane had recently separated from her husband, James Dougherty and told Dienes of her wish to become an actress. Dienes suggested that they go on a road trip to photograph her in the natural landscapes, for which Dienes paid her a flat fee of $200. Dienes had earlier been present at the first meeting of Monroe and her mother in six years, and had a brief affair with Monroe during the trip. He presumptuously announced to her mother that he and Monroe were to be married. His photographs of Monroe from this trip sold widely and he made far more money from the images, and did not offer Monroe a percentage of the sales, or pay her on the profits.

Dienes next met her on Labor Day in 1946, with her new name of Marilyn Monroe, they next worked together in 1952, where he shot her at the Bel Air Hotel and 1953, where she telephoned him at 2am, and took him to a darkened street where he used his car headlights to illuminate her, taking pictures her wide-eyed and unmade up. Dienes last saw her alive in June 1961. Of their last meeting he said that “…her success was a sham, her hopes thwarted…the next day she left a bouquet outside my door: a selection of her latest photos. Smiling, radiant – utterly misleading; I little guessed that this was our last goodbye”.

As well as Marilyn Monroe, Dienes also photographed such notable actors as Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Ingrid Bergman, Ronald Reagan, Jane Russell, Anita Ekberg and Fred Astaire.

De Dienes married twice, and died of cancer.

gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag

The Light of Lights

Looks always on the motive, not the deed,

The Shadow of Shadows on the deed alone

– W. B. Yeats