William Blake’s Masterpiece Illustrations of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

in Art, Literature, Poetry, Religion | September 9th, 2016

Job's Comforters

Ortho­dox thinkers have not often found the answers to suf­fer­ing in the Book of Job par­tic­u­lar­ly comforting—an ear­ly scribe like­ly going so far as inter­po­lat­ing the speech of one of Job’s more Pollyan­naish friends. The gnarly meta­phys­i­cal issues raised and nev­er quite resolved strike us so pow­er­ful­ly because of the kinds of things that hap­pen to Job—unimaginable things, excru­ci­at­ing­ly painful in every respect, and almost patent­ly impos­si­ble, mark­ing them as leg­end or lit­er­ary embell­ish­ment, at least.

Behemoth Leviathan

But his ordeal is at the same time believ­able, con­sist­ing of the pains we fear and suf­fer most—loss of health, wealth, and life. Job is the kind of sto­ry we can­not turn away from because of its hor­rif­ic car-wreck nature. That it sup­pos­ed­ly ends hap­pi­ly, with Job ful­ly restored, does not erase the suf­fer­ing of the first two acts. It is a huge sto­ry, cos­mic in its scope and stress, and one of the most obvi­ous­ly mytho­log­i­cal books in the Bible, with the appear­ance not only of God and Satan as chat­ty char­ac­ters but with cameos from the mon­sters Behe­moth and Leviathan.

Job's Despair

Such a sto­ry in its entire­ty would be very dif­fi­cult to rep­re­sent visu­al­ly with­out los­ing the per­son­al psy­cho­log­i­cal impact it has on us. Few, per­haps, could real­ize it as skill­ful­ly as William Blake, who illus­trat­ed scenes from Job many times through­out his life. Blake began in the 1790s with some very detailed engrav­ings, such as that at the top of the post from 1793. He then made a series of water­col­ors for his patrons Thomas Butts and John Linell between 1805 and 1827. These—such as the plate of “Behe­moth and Leviathan” fur­ther up—give us the myth­ic scale of Job’s nar­ra­tive and also, as in “Job’s Despair,” above, the human dimen­sion.

Blake_Job_Evil_Dreams_Detail_bb421_1_13-12_ps_300

Blake’s final illustrations—a series of 22 engraved prints pub­lished in 1826 (see a fac­sim­i­le here)—“are the cul­mi­na­tion of his long pic­to­r­i­al engage­ment with that bib­li­cal sub­ject,” writes the William Blake Archive. They are also the last set of engrav­ings he com­plet­ed before his death (his Divine Com­e­dy remained unfin­ished). These illus­tra­tions draw close­ly from his pre­vi­ous water­col­ors, but add many graph­ic design ele­ments, and more of Blake’s idio­syn­crat­ic inter­pre­ta­tion, as in the plate above, which shows us a “hor­rif­ic vision of a dev­il-god.” In the full page, below, we see Blake’s mar­gin­al gloss­es of Job’s text, includ­ing the line, right above the engrav­ing, “Satan him­self is trans­formed into an Angel of Light & his Min­is­ters into Min­is­ters of Right­eous­ness.”

Job's_Evil_Dreams

Oth­er pages, like that below of Job and his friends/accusers, take a more con­ser­v­a­tive approach to the text, but still present us with a stren­u­ous visu­al read­ing in which Job’s friends appear far from sym­pa­thet­ic to his ter­ri­ble plight. It’s a very dif­fer­ent image than the one at the top of the post. We know that Blake—who strug­gled in pover­ty and anonymi­ty all his life—identified with Job, and the sto­ry influ­enced his own pecu­liar­ly alle­gor­i­cal verse. Per­haps Blake’s most famous poem, “The Tyger,” alludes to Job, sub­sti­tut­ing the “Tyger” for the Behe­moth and Leviathan.

Job Rebuked

The Job paint­ings and engrav­ings stand out among Blake’s many lit­er­ary illus­tra­tions. They have been almost as influ­en­tial to painters and visu­al artists through the years as the Book of Job itself has been on poets and nov­el­ists. These final Job engrav­ings, writes the Blake Archive, “are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be Blake’s mas­ter­piece as an intaglio print­mak­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Blake’s Last Work: Illus­tra­tions for Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1827)

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

Allen Gins­berg Sings the Poet­ry of William Blake (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Russian Futurist Vladimir Mayakovsky Star in His Only Surviving Film, The Lady and the Hooligan (1918)

in Film, Poetry | September 7th, 2016

Tall and dash­ing, with the face of a box­er and glow­er­ing stare of a gang­ster, Russ­ian Futur­ist poet, painter, direc­tor, and actor Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) came by his intim­i­dat­ing look hon­est­ly. As a teenage activist, he car­ried an unli­censed gun, freed female polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, and “was dis­missed from gram­mar school,” short­ly after join­ing the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Labor Par­ty in 1908; “He spent much of the next two years in prison,” writes the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets, “due to his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties.” A com­mit­ted Bol­she­vik through­out his career, Mayakovsky cel­e­brat­ed the Rev­o­lu­tion with poems and plays and devot­ed his tal­ents to the Par­ty, becom­ing a rare exam­ple of an avant-garde artist who makes pop­ulist art.

In many ways, Mayakovsky’s career seems rep­re­sen­ta­tive, even exem­plary, of the Futur­ist move­ment. Uncrit­i­cal­ly adopt­ing Com­mu­nist doc­trine and embrac­ing whole­sale inno­va­tion, these artists fell vic­tim to the same forces, as Social­ist Real­ism increas­ing­ly became the offi­cial Sovi­et style and the rigid, bland arbiter of Par­ty taste.

In 1912, Mayakovsky signed a man­i­festo with oth­er Futur­ists “A Slap in the Face of Pub­lic Taste,” propos­ing, among oth­er things, to “throw Pushkin, Dos­to­evsky, Tol­stoy, etc., etc. over­board from the Ship of Moder­ni­ty.” Of oth­er pop­u­lar writ­ers of the time, includ­ing Max­im Gorky and Ivan Bunin, the Futur­ists declared, “From the heights of sky­crap­ers we gaze at their insignif­i­cance!…”

By 1918, Mayakovsky was a star. That year, he made three films, “for each of which he authored the sce­nario,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Edward James Brown, “and played the prin­ci­pal part.” Two of the films have dis­ap­peared, the third, The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan, you can watch above. “A sto­ry of hope­less love,” the film stars Mayakovsky as the tit­u­lar hooli­gan who falls for a new schoolmistress “sent into the slums to teach adult class­es.” The hooli­gan enrolls and changes his ways, but is then killed trag­i­cal­ly in a fight. Spoil­er alert: “Before dying he begs his moth­er to have the teacher come to him. She comes, she kiss­es him on the lips, and he dies.”

The silent film, based on an 1885 Ital­ian play called The Work­ers’ Young Schoolmistress, seems to have lit­tle to do with Sovi­et dog­ma, and yet it received tremen­dous acclaim, and became an instru­ment of pro­pa­gan­da, shown in mass screen­ings in Moscow and Leningrad on May Day of 1919. Film schol­ar Mari­na Burke sug­gests some of the rea­sons for its pop­u­lar­i­ty: “many of the scenes are shot out­doors, and the film is rich in nat­u­ral­is­tic details of cur­rent Sovi­et con­di­tions”— the real­ist depic­tion of work­ers’ lives res­onat­ed wide­ly with real-life work­ers. And yet, Mayakovsky’s film also dis­plays those char­ac­ter­is­tics that make him a dis­tinct­ly un-Sovi­et artist and would some­times put him at odds with the State’s over­bear­ing dog­ma­tism.

Mayakovsky plays the hooli­gan in a “dis­con­cert­ing­ly mod­ern, dis­af­fect­ed-young-man style” that reminds crit­ic Mal­colm Le Grice of “a kind of pre­cur­sor to Rebel With­out a Cause, with Mayakovsky as a slight­ly improb­a­ble James Dean.” The poet was too much an indi­vid­ual to play an ide­al­ized every­man. Each of the pro­tag­o­nists in his three film draw from life—three ver­sions of the artist who wrote crit­i­cal poems like “A Talk with a Tax Col­lec­tor” and satir­i­cal plays that made the State uneasy, even as he extolled its virtues at pub­lic events.

Mayakovsky would also not make strict­ly real­ist art, hav­ing dis­avowed its “filthy stig­mas” the year pre­vi­ous in his Futur­ist Man­i­festo. The nat­u­ral­ist scenes in The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan “are inter­spersed,” writes Burke, “with flights of fan­cy that are almost sur­re­al­ist in tone,” such as the school­teacher men­aced by danc­ing let­ters. Despite its con­ven­tion­al, sen­ti­men­tal plot and struc­ture, Mayakovsky’s only sur­viv­ing film presents us with a com­pli­cat­ed, ambiva­lent work, almost “a par­o­dy of roman­tic fic­tion films,” and—like all of his work—the swag­ger­ing expres­sion of a thor­ough­ly indi­vid­ual artist.

The Young Lady and the Hooli­gan will be added to our col­lec­tion of Silent Films, a sub­set of our meta list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Russ­ian Futur­ist Vladimir Mayakovsky Read His Strange & Vis­cer­al Poet­ry

Down­load 144 Beau­ti­ful Books of Russ­ian Futur­ism: Mayakovsky, Male­vich, Khleb­nikov & More (1910–30)

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Rome Comes to Life in Photochrom Color Photos Taken in 1890: The Colosseum, Trevi Fountain & More

in Photography, Poetry, Travel | August 26th, 2016

1890 Colosseum

For almost two hun­dred years, Eng­lish gen­tle­men could not con­sid­er their edu­ca­tion com­plete until they had tak­en the “Grand Tour” of Europe, usu­al­ly cul­mi­nat­ing in Naples, “raga­muf­fin cap­i­tal of the Ital­ian south,” writes Ian Thom­son at The Spec­ta­tor. Italy was usu­al­ly the pri­ma­ry focus, such that Samuel John­son remarked in 1776, per­haps with some irony, “a man who has not been to Italy is always con­scious of an infe­ri­or­i­ty.” The Roman­tic poets famous­ly wrote of their Euro­pean sojourns: Shel­ley, Byron, Wordsworth… each has his own “Grand Tour” sto­ry.

1890 Trevi Fountain

Shel­ley, who trav­eled with his wife Mary God­win and her step­sis­ter Claire Clair­mont, did not go to Italy, how­ev­er. And Byron sailed the Mediter­ranean on his Grand Tour, forced away from most of Europe by the Napoleon­ic wars. But in 1817, he jour­neyed to Rome, where he wrote the Fourth Can­to of Childe Harold’s Pil­grim­age:

Oh Rome! my coun­try! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone moth­er of dead empires! And con­trol
In their shut breasts their pet­ty mis­ery.

For the trav­el­ing artist and philoso­pher, “Italy,” Thom­son writes, “pre­sent­ed a civ­i­liza­tion in ruins,” and we can see in all Roman­tic writ­ing the tremen­dous influ­ence visions of Rome and Pom­peii had on gen­tle­men poets like Byron. The Grand Tour, and jour­neys like it, per­sist­ed until the 1840s, when rail­roads “spelled the end of soli­tary aris­to­crat­ic trav­el.” But even decades after­ward, we can see Rome (and Venice) the way Byron might have seen it—and almost, even, in full col­or. As we step into the vis­tas of these post­cards from 1890, we are far clos­er to Byron than we are to the Rome of our day, before Mussolini’s mon­u­ments, noto­ri­ous snarls of Roman traf­fic, and throngs of tourists.

1890 Trumphal Arch

“These post­cards of the ancient land­marks of Rome,” writes Mash­able, “were pro­duced… using the Pho­tochrom process, which adds pre­cise gra­da­tions of arti­fi­cial col­or to black and white pho­tos.” Invent­ed by Swiss print­er Orell Gess­ner Fus­sli, the process involved cre­at­ing lith­o­graph­ic stone from the negatives—“Up to 15 dif­fer­ent tint­ed stones could be involved in the pro­duc­tion of a sin­gle pic­ture, but the result was remark­ably life­like col­or at a time when true col­or pho­tog­ra­phy was still in its infan­cy.”

temple rome

The Library of Con­gress hosts forty two of these images in their online cat­a­log, all down­load­able as high qual­i­ty jpegs or tiffs, and many, like the stun­ning image of the Colos­se­um at the top (see the inte­ri­or here), fea­tur­ing a pre-Pho­tocrom black and white print as well.

1890 San Lorenzo

Aside from a rare street scene, with an urban milieu look­ing very much from the 1890s, the pho­tographs are void of crowds. In the fore­ground of the Tri­umphal Arch fur­ther up we see a soli­tary woman with a bas­ket of pro­duce on her head. In the image of San Loren­zo, above, a tiny fig­ure walks away from the cam­era.

forum rome 1890

In most of these images—with their dream­like coloration—we can imag­ine Rome the way it looked not only in 1890, but also how it might have looked to bored aris­to­crats in the 17th and 18th centuries—and to pas­sion­ate Roman­tic poets in the ear­ly 19th, a place of raw nat­ur­al grandeur and sub­lime man-made decay. See the Library of Con­gress online cat­a­log to view and down­load all forty-two of these post­cards. Also find a gallery at Mash­able.

1890 Great Cascade

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Six-Hour Playlist of Shel Silverstein’s Poems & Songs: Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic & More

in Audio Books, Comedy, K-12, Music, Poetry | August 12th, 2016

Shel_Silverstein_Signature.svg

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Ah, the dog days of sum­mer…

Is your fam­i­ly hot and cranky? Crammed togeth­er in a car for the long ride home? Has bore­dom set in, despite the thou­sands of Poké­mon still at large?

The per­fect anti­dote, dear read­ers, is this six-hour playlist of poet and musi­cian Shel Sil­ver­stein’s best loved work. If you need Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here.

Uncle Shel­by him­self kicks things off with an invi­ta­tion to all dream­ers, wish­ers, liars, hop­ers, pray-ers, mag­ic-bean-buy­ers, and pre­tenders.

That net seems suf­fi­cient­ly wide to encom­pass just about every­one, even (espe­cial­ly!) the sullen teen who wasn’t allowed to stay home by him or her­self.

Sil­ver­stein did not sub­scribe to the dry nar­ra­tive style that E.B.White used to such great effect on the audio­book of Charlotte’s Web.

Instead, he cracks him­self up, hiss­ing, yip­ping and howl­ing his way through Where the Side­walk Ends and A Light in the Attic. A vet­er­an of Off-Broad­way and the author of over a hun­dred one-act plays, Sil­ver­stein clear­ly rel­ished per­form­ing his own work.

(As evi­dence, we sub­mit “Warn­ing,” an instruc­tion­al poem con­cern­ing the sharp-toothed snail dwelling inside every human nose.)

His unhinged gus­to is dou­bly pleas­ing when one recalls the attempts to ban his work from libraries and ele­men­tary schools due to the pres­ence of demons, dev­ils, ghosts, and a manip­u­la­tive lit­tle girl who makes good on her threat to die if her par­ents won’t buy her a pony.

The back end of the playlist is a tes­ta­ment to the poet’s musi­cal abil­i­ties. Per­haps the best known song in his mas­sive cat­a­log is John­ny Cash’s hit “A Boy Named Sue,” above. In addi­tion to Cash and Silverstein’s own hoarse tenor, you’ll encounter the likes of Willie Nel­son, Bob­by Bare and long­time Sil­ver­stein col­lab­o­ra­tor Dr. Hook.

My only regret is the absence of my per­son­al favorite Sil­ver­stein poem …it seems unlike­ly that such a track exists, but I do love imag­in­ing the hav­oc it could wreak in the fam­i­ly car. Chil­dren, don’t for­get your eggs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Ani­ma­tions of Sto­ries and Poems by Shel Sil­ver­stein

Shel Sil­ver­stein Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of The Giv­ing Tree (1973)

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Maya Angelou Reads Her Poem, “The Human Family,” in New iPhone Ad Released for the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony

in Apple, Poetry, Sports, Technology | August 8th, 2016

It’s always demor­al­iz­ing when a favorite song—Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” or the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sug­ar” come to mind—is co-opt­ed to sell soda or Caribbean cruis­es.

Poet­ry, how­ev­er? I’m not ungrate­ful to have some smug­gled into my day by a com­mer­cial car­ri­er whose agen­da is some­how less sus­pect. Would that we lived in a world where the poet­ry of Ted Hugh­es or Emi­ly Dick­in­son might be seen as hav­ing the pow­er to sell view­ers on a par­tic­u­lar brand of piz­za or auto­mo­bile.

It almost seems we do, giv­en the response to “The Human Fam­i­ly,” a new Apple spot show­cas­ing the iPhone’s cam­era capa­bil­i­ties with a slideshow of por­traits sub­mit­ted by users the world round. The images—already captivating—are made more so by the unmis­take­able voice of the late Maya Angelou, whose poem, “The Human Fam­i­ly,” sup­plies both title and inspi­ra­tion.

It’s very stir­ring, as befits an ad debut­ing dur­ing the Olympics’ open­ing cer­e­mo­ny. (I weep that the Super Bowl failed to make the Dr. Angelou com­mer­cial par­o­dies of yore a real­i­ty.)

The one-minute spot shaves a bit off the poem, but per­haps it is okay to leave a bit behind as a reward for view­ers moved to look it up on their own.

The com­plete text is here. Below, find a non-Apple-spon­sored video that match­es the same nar­ra­tion to a slideshow fea­tur­ing the author at var­i­ous stages of life. The read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Adweek

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Music Video & Hear Tracks From Maya Angelou’s Posthu­mous Hip-Hop Album, Caged Bird Songs

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Allen Ginsberg Teaches You How to Meditate with a Rock Song Featuring Bob Dylan on Bass

in Music, Poetry, Politics, Religion | July 25th, 2016

dylan ginsberg meditation

Image via Elisa Dor­man, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What­ev­er oth­er cri­te­ria we use to lump them together—shared aims of psy­che­del­ic con­scious­ness-expand­ing through drugs and East­ern reli­gion, frank explo­rations of alter­na­tive sex­u­al­i­ties, anti-estab­lish­ment cred—the Beats were each in their own way true to the name in one very sim­ple way: they all col­lab­o­rat­ed with musi­cians, wrote song or poems as songs, and saw lit­er­a­ture as a pub­lic, per­for­ma­tive art form like music.

And though I sup­pose one could call some of their for­ays into record­ed music gim­micky at times, I can’t imag­ine Jack Kerouac’s career mak­ing a whole lot of sense with­out Bebop, or Bur­roughs’ with­out psy­che­del­ic rock and tape and noise exper­i­men­ta­tion, or Gins­berg’ with­out… well, Gins­berg got into a lit­tle bit of every­thing, didn’t he? Whether writ­ing calyp­sos about the CIA, per­form­ing and record­ing with The Clash, show­ing up on MTV with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney…. He nev­er worked with Kanye, but I imag­ine he prob­a­bly would have.

For each of these artists, the medi­um deliv­ered a mes­sage. Kerouac’s odes to jazz, lone­li­ness, and wan­der­lust; Bur­roughs’ dark, para­noid prophe­cies about gov­ern­ment con­trol; and Ginsberg’s anti-war jere­mi­ads and insis­tent pleas for peace, free­dom, tol­er­ance, and enlight­en­ment. Ever the trick­ster and teacher, Gins­berg often used humor to dis­arm his audi­ence, then went in for the kill, so to speak. We may find no more point­ed an exam­ple of this comedic ped­a­gogy than his 1981 song, “Do the Med­i­ta­tion Rock,” record­ed in 1982 as a sham­bling folk-rock jam below with gui­tarist Steven Tay­lor, and mem­bers of Bob Dylan’s tour­ing band—including Dylan him­self mak­ing a rare appear­ance on bass.

As the sto­ry goes, accord­ing to Hank Shteam­er at Rolling Stone, Gins­berg was in Los Ange­les and “eager to book some stu­dio time. Dylan oblig­ed, and agreed to foot the bill for the stu­dio costs on the con­di­tion that Gins­berg would pay the musi­cians. The two met at Dylan’s San­ta Mon­i­ca stu­dio and, as Tay­lor remem­bers it, jammed for 10 hours.” Many more record­ings from that ses­sion made it onto the recent­ly released The Last World on First Blues, which also includes con­tri­bu­tions from Jack Kerouac’s musi­cal part­ner David Amram, folk leg­end Hap­py Traum, and exper­i­men­tal cel­list, singer, and dis­co pro­duc­er Arthur Rus­sell.

See Gins­berg, Tay­lor, Rus­sell, and Ginsberg’s part­ner Peter Orlovsky (med­i­tat­ing), per­form the song above on a PBS spe­cial called “Good Morn­ing, Mr. Orwell,” cre­at­ed in 1984 by Kore­an video artist Naim June Paik. As Gins­berg explains it in the lin­er notes to his col­lec­tion Holy Soul, Jel­ly Roll, the song came togeth­er after his own med­i­ta­tion train­ing in the late sev­en­ties, when the poet got the okay from his Bud­dhist teacher Chogyam Trung­pa Rin­poche (founder of Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty) to “show basic med­i­ta­tion in his tra­di­tion­al class­rooms or groups at poet­ry readings”—his goal, he says, to “knock all the poets out with sug­ar-coat­ed dhar­ma.”

Christ­mas Eve, I stopped in the mid­dle of the block at a stoop and wrote the words down, note­book on my knee. I fig­ured that if any­one lis­tened to the words, they’d find com­plete instruc­tions for clas­si­cal sit­ting prac­tice, Samatha-Vipas­sana (“Qui­et­ing the mind and clear see­ing”). Some humor in the form, it does­n’t have to be tak­en over-seri­ous­ly, yet it’s pre­cise.

You may have noticed the famil­iar cadence of the cho­rus; it’s a take-off, he says, on “I Fought the Law,” record­ed in 1977 by his soon-to-be musi­cal part­ners, The Clash. In the live ver­sion below at New York’s Ukran­ian Nation­al Home, the song gets a more stripped-down, punk rock treat­ment with Tom Rogers on gui­tar. Like many a wan­der­ing bard, Gins­berg changes and adapts the lyrics slight­ly to the venue and occa­sion. See the Allen Gins­berg Project for sev­er­al pub­lished ver­sions of the lyrics and his changes in this ren­di­tion.

Apart from the basic med­i­ta­tion instruc­tions, which are easy to fol­low in writ­ing and song, Ginsberg’s “Do the Med­i­ta­tion Rock” had anoth­er mes­sage, spe­cif­ic to his under­stand­ing of the pow­er of med­i­ta­tion; it can change the world, in spite of “a holo­caust” or “Apoc­a­lypse in a long red car.” As Gins­berg speak/sings, “If you sit for an hour or a minute every day / you can tell the Super­pow­er, sit the same way / you can tell the Super­pow­er, watch and wait.” No mat­ter how bad things seem, he says, “it’s nev­er too late to stop and med­i­tate.” Hear anoth­er record­ed ver­sion of the song below from Holy Soul, Jel­ly Roll, record­ed live in Kansas City by William S. Bur­roughs in 1989.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Allen Gins­berg Record­ings Brought to the Dig­i­tal Age. Lis­ten to Eight Full Tracks for Free

Allen Gins­berg & The Clash Per­form the Punk Poem “Cap­i­tal Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Marie Osmond Performs the Dadaist Poem “Karawane” on the TV Show, Ripley’s Believe It or Not (1985)

in Life, Literature, Music, Poetry, Television | July 15th, 2016

Remem­ber Don­ny and Marie Osmond, the toothy, teenage Mor­mon sib­lings whose epony­mous tele­vi­sion vari­ety show was a whole­some 70’s mix of skits, songs, and ice skat­ing?

Their sur­pris­ing­ly endur­ing theme song reduced their pop­u­lar­i­ty to an eas­i­ly gras­pable bina­ry for­mu­la:

She was a lit­tle bit coun­try. He was a lit­tle bit rock and roll.

Turns out Marie was also more than a lit­tle bit Dada.

From 1985 to 1986, Marie served as actor Jack Palance’s cohost on Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a TV series explor­ing strange occur­rences, bizarre his­tor­i­cal facts, and oth­er such crowd-pleas­ing odd­i­ties… one of which was appar­ent­ly the afore­men­tioned Euro­pean avant-garde art move­ment, found­ed a hun­dred years ago this week.

If you don’t know as much about Dada as you’d like, Ms. Osmond’s brief primer is a sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy intro­duc­tion.

No cutesy boot­sy, easy ref­er­ences to melt­ing clocks here.

The high­light is her per­for­mance of Dada poet and man­i­festo author Hugo Bal­l’s non­sen­si­cal 1916 sound poem “Karawane.”

Lose the yel­low bathrobe and she could be a cap­tive war­rior princess on Game of Thrones, fierce­ly peti­tion­ing the Moth­er of Drag­ons on behalf of her peo­ple. (Invent some sub­ti­tles for extra Dada-inflect­ed fun!)

A sharp eyed young art stu­dent named Ethan Bates did catch one error in Marie’s les­son. The ’13’ cos­tume she pulls from a handy dress­ing room niche was not worn by Hugo Ball, but rather Dutch painter Theo Van Does­burg, one of the founders of the De Sti­jl move­ment.

Still you’ve got to hand it to Marie, who was slat­ed to per­form just a sin­gle line of the poem. When it came time to tape, she aban­doned the cue cards, blow­ing pro­duc­ers’ and crew’s minds by deliv­er­ing the poem in its unhinged entire­ty from mem­o­ry.

Now that’s rock and roll.

Below you’ll find footage of Ball him­self per­form­ing the work in 1916.

Marie’s ver­sion was even­tu­al­ly released by Rough Trade Records as a track on Lip­stick Traces, a com­pan­ion sound­track to Greil Mar­cus’ sem­i­nal book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Down­load All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Jour­nal That Pub­li­cized the Avant-Garde Move­ment a Cen­tu­ry Ago (1917–21)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

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Charles Bukowski’s Controversial Poem “Girl on the Escalator” Gets Literally Retold in a New Short Film

in Poetry | July 14th, 2016

Everyone’s favorite alco­holic poet and dirty old man Charles Bukows­ki was hard­ly what you’d call a roman­tic, though he had a soft­er side: a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and com­pas­sion for the lone­ly, poor, and suf­fer­ing. But we don’t love Bukows­ki because he pret­tied up the nasty busi­ness of being human. We love him—those of us who do (I won’t pre­sume to speak for his detractors)—because he was hon­est: about his own desires and dis­ap­point­ments, about the beau­ty and the sor­did ugli­ness of things. Most­ly the ugli­ness.

Often the ugli­ness in Bukowski’s work comes from Bukows­ki himself—or the voice he adopts of the leer­ing old man on the cor­ner who makes women cross the street: voyeuris­tic, sar­don­ic, imag­i­na­tive, self-aware, mis­er­able, embit­tered, con­temp­tu­ous…. We see this Bukows­ki encoun­ter­ing strange women—sometimes ogling, some­times sneering—in poems like “The Girl Out­side the Super­mar­ket,” “Girl in a Miniskirt Read­ing the Bible Out­side My Win­dow,” and “Girl on the Esca­la­tor,” all in their way offer­ing can­did­ly nar­cis­sis­tic insights into the male gaze and male ego.

In “Girl on the Esca­la­tor,” Bukowski’s speak­er both ogles and sneers, and drifts into an imag­i­na­tive fugue as he con­structs a fan­ta­sy life for the “girl” of the title, then decon­structs her in the gross­est, most vis­cer­al way. Fem­i­nist he ain’t, and the new short film above, cre­at­ed by Kay­han Lannes Ozmen, gives us a very lit­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of every one of the poem’s images, as a dead­pan nar­ra­tor reads Bukowski’s poem. One fan rec­om­mends that you read the poem your­self (find it here) before watch­ing the film, and see what you make of it first. I’d agree, but that is, of course, up to you.

via Now­ness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4 Hours of Charles Bukowski’s Riotous Read­ings and Rants

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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