Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

dream tattoo…
imperceptibly he has transitioned from reading in bed to watching the scene unfold, still in bed, the sound of the characters yelling, rouses the sleeping wonderful redhead
My love can you please turn the tv off
my dear, you know we do not have a tv in our bedroom 
Then where is that yelling coming from
-She raises up to see that their bed is now in a balcony overlooking a stage where a play is unfolding-
Where did you dream us to now
i was readin’ The Rose Tattoo, yes again, today is Anna Magnani’s birthday, and the next thing i knew i was watchin’ the play
Where are we
i believe she only starred in one stage production, so that would make this the Pike Theatre in Dublin in 1957
Ok, fabulous
the production will be shut down by the police soon and the director Alan Simpson will be arrested for producing "a lewd entertainment" for miming dropping a condom onto the floor
Really, wow, well I guess that would be a big deal for some in Ireland in the fifties
well, if we are here, might as well be here and enjoy the show
Of course my darling
reckon i can git a Guinness

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

as happens sometimes,
i do not remember
where this one came from
“Not from the movie”
no, great movie though,
i can trace it back to 2017
probably about the regret
of not findin’ the one
“Another common theme”
and another laid to rest
“So we can focus on”
bein’ there, or here,
for each other

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboycoleridge all rights reserved

depends where, some would go back to, some not, and is this a place or a way, that makes a difference, certainly not pinin’ over past missed chances, that has been laid to rest, now focused on the present, the rear view only serves as reference now, no doubt a slow learner, took goin’ back several times before the futility finally penetrated, but you tire of hearin’ about that, so lets change, this one needs to be turned from there to here with you

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

find in each other,
dreams comin’ true

see it clearly
eyes and thoughts
reach for it

you to cling to
to pour myself into
fillin’ a need
only found in you

do you need that

all i ever wanted

seein’ through
your darkness
when it comes

and ache for you

bein’ here for you

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

been there done that
you had to go there
it was right there,
practically beggin’ 
wore that out, so any goin’ back
oh no, that ain’t happenin’
agree, wasted time
and we have not much of that left
the verse is flowin’ just fine without
no room for stinkin’ distractions
still, if…
oh jeez

© copyright 2020.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

where else
shuts it all out

let it filter through
this offered verse
as penance
for the past

let it be
laid at whatever
alter needs be

the candles burn
the melody, plaintive
comes to find a lonelier
and impenitent purpose

acceptance

ashes, ashes
we all fall

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

and we find in the night,
in the streams of darkness,
the stars are crowns
that cover our dreams

hill in hill within sight,
south from dawn to sunset,
search all points of the immense
and say… answers await

see it clearly
the night comin’
eyes and thoughts
reach for it

another to cling to
someone
to pour yourself into
do you need that

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

do you ever wish
you could climb
back in that bed
on that night

all i ever wanted

never about right
or wrong
never about sorry
always about bein’ there

sometimes, so frustratin’
to not find the right words

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Tired
Slept two hours
Want to say to you
That which will matter
To say… What I will not
Allow myself to say

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

She loved someone
else! How the hell
did that happen!

***

A tug of war
rages inside
me between the
man who believes
and the man who
has given up.

***

I want now, that
which I once had,
that I can now
no longer have.

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Young and dumb and never alone. Mature and wise and all alone.

© copyright 2012 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

A Need For Her

‘Do you believe a man
could fall for a woman,
from a single encounter? ‘
Could he daily feel a need
for her and only find nourishment
in the very sight of her? I think so.
But would she see through
the darkness of his plight
and ache for him?

Today is the birthday of Piet Mondrian (Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan; Amersfoort, Netherlands; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944 Manhattan); painter.  Mondrian was a contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg.  He evolved a non-representational form which he termed neoplasticism.  This consisted of white ground, upon which he painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.  Mondrian’s arrival in Paris from the Netherlands in 1911 marked the beginning of a period of profound change.  He encountered experiments in Cubism and with the intent of integrating himself within the Parisian avant-garde removed an ‘a’ from the Dutch spelling of his name (Mondriaan).

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Today is the birthday of Boris Kustodiev (Boris Mikhaylovich Kustodiev; Astrakhan, Russian Empire 7 March [O.S. 23 February] 1878 – 28 May 1927 Leningrad); painter and stage designer.

In 1903, he married Julia Proshinskaya (1880–1942).

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Anna Magnani

today is the birthday of Anna Magnani (Rome; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973, Rome); stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo (directed by Daniel Mann from a screenplay by Tennessee Williams based on his play of the same name).

She worked her way through Rome’s Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. She was referred to as “La Lupa,” the “perennial toast of Rome” and a “living she-wolf symbol” of the cinema. Time magazine described her personality as “fiery”, and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was “volcanic”. In the realm of Italian cinema she was “passionate, fearless, and exciting,” an actress that film historian Barry Monush calls “the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema.” Director Roberto Rossellini called her “the greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse”. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (my personal favorite of her movies) specifically for her to star in.

After meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini she received her first screen role in La cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman of Sorrento) (1934) and later achieved international fame in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), considered the first significant movie to launch the Italian neorealism movement in cinema. As an actress she became recognized for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of “earthy lower-class women” in such films as L’Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962). As early as 1950 Life magazine had already stated that Magnani was “one of the most impressive actresses since Garbo”.

She married Alessandrini, in 1935, two years after he discovered her on stage. After they married, she retired from full-time acting to “devote herself exclusively to her husband”, although she continued to play smaller film parts. They separated in 1942.

Magnani had a love affair with the actor Massimo Serato after her separation from Alessandrini.

In 1945 she fell in love with Rossellini while working on Roma, Città Aperta aka Rome, Open City (1945). “I thought at last I had found the ideal man… [He] had lost a son of his own and I felt we understood each other. Above all, we had the same artistic conceptions.” Rossellini became violent, volatile and possessive, and they argued constantly about films or out of jealousy. “In fits of rage they threw crockery at each other.” As artists, however, they complemented each other well while working on neorealist films. The two finally split apart when Rossellini fell in love with and married, Ingrid Bergman.

Magnani died at the age of 65 from pancreatic cancer. Crowds gathered for the funeral. She was provisionally laid to rest in the family mausoleum of Rossellini; but then subsequently interred in the Cimitero Comunale of San Felice Circeo in southern Lazio.

Today is the birthday of Ida Wyman (Ida Dora Wyman; Malden, Massachusetts; March 7, 1926 – July 13, 2019 Fitchburg, Wisconsin); photographer perhaps best known for her documentary photography of New York street life.

Wyman was a member of New York City’s Photo League. During the 1940s and ’50s, she shot over one hundred assignments for Life magazine. Working from the west coast, she was often assigned to photograph movie stars on set, such as James Cagney in White Heat.

By 1962 Wyman had given up professional photography, taking a job at Haskins Laboratories in New York. Manhattan. She returned to photography in 1968, as a pathology photographer in the department of medicine at Columbia University. It was not until her 70s and 80s that she began to receive critical acclaim for her work.

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And today is the birthday of Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon (Belgravia, London7 March 1930 – 13 January 2017 Kensington, London); photographer. Perhaps best known internationally for his portraits of prominent cultural and political figures, many of which were published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and other major outlets. More than 280 of his photographs are held in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery. Between 1968 and 1973, he directed several television documentaries and contributed to design and accessibility reforms. A committed advocate for disabled people, he helped shape policy and infrastructure across the United Kingdom. He married Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1960; he was created Earl of Snowdon the following year.

The marriage began to collapse early and publicly; various causes may have been behind the failure. On Margaret’s end, there was her penchant for late-night partying, while on Snowdon’s part there was his undisguised alleged sexual addiction (“‘If it moves, he’ll have it’, was the summing-up of one close friend”, writes biographer de Courcy). Anne de Courcy, in her 2008 authorised biography, writes “‘[T]o most of the girls who worked in the Pimlico Road studio, there seemed little doubt that Tony was gay’. To which Tony responds: ‘I didn’t fall in love with boys – but a few men have been in love with me.’” Snowdon’s entry in the Dictionary of National Biography identifies him as bisexual, a label which he never denied during his life. In his 2009 memoir, Redeeming Features, British interior designer Nicky Haslam claimed that he had an affair with Snowdon before the latter’s marriage to Princess Margaret and that Snowdon had also been the lover of Tom Parr, another leading interior designer. De Courcy reveals a series of affairs with women, including a 20-year relationship with his mistress, journalist Ann Hills, which lasted from 1976 until her suicide in 1996.

The couple remained married for eighteen years. “They were both pretty strong-willed and accustomed to having their own way, so there were bound to be collisions”, according to de Courcy. His work also consumed a great deal of time. “She expected her husband to be with her more, but one of Tony’s strongest motivations was work.” The marriage was accompanied by drugs, alcohol, and bizarre behaviour by both parties, such as his leaving lists of “Twenty Reasons Why I Hate You” for the princess to find between the pages of books she read. According to biographer Sarah Bradford, one note read: “You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you”. According to biographer de Courcy, “Most people, including the Royal Family, took his side.”

When high society palled for Snowdon, he would escape to a hideaway cottage with his lovers or on overseas photographic assignments. Among Snowdon’s lovers in the late 1960s was Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Reading. In spite of her own affairs, Margaret was said to be particularly upset when hearing about this woman. Margaret and Snowdon separated in 1976, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1978.

In 2004, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Snowdon had fathered an illegitimate daughter shortly before marrying Princess Margaret. Polly Fry, born on 28 May 1960 in the third week of Lord Snowdon’s marriage to Princess Margaret, was brought up as a daughter of Jeremy Fry, inventor and member of the Fry’s chocolate family, and his wife Camilla. Polly Fry asserted that a DNA test in 2004 proved Snowdon’s paternity. Jeremy Fry rejected her claim, and Snowdon denied having taken a DNA test. However, four years later, after Jeremy Fry had died, Snowdon admitted that this account was true.

After his divorce from Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon married Lucy Mary Lindsay-Hogg (née Davies), the former wife of Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet, in December 1978. In 1979, they had a daughter, Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones, who became a designer and board member of the Snowdon Trust.

The Snowdons separated and subsequently divorced in 2000, after the revelation that in 1998 Snowdon had fathered a son, Jasper William Oliver Cable-Alexander, by Melanie Cable-Alexander, an editor at Country Life magazine.

Lord Snowdon died at his home, aged 86. His funeral took place on 20 January at St Baglan’s Church in the remote village of Llanfaglan near Caernarfon. He was buried in the family plot in the churchyard.

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thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

mac tag