Pied Beauty, Poem & Paintings

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art, artists, beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins, inspiration, music, Nature, Paintings, Pied Beauty, poetry

Wassily Kandinsky, Waterfall II

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

What is it about “dappled” things that so dazzles us?

I ran across this poem, a favorite of mine, not long ago, and was reminded once again of how much nature inspires and excites us. Painters as well as poets have been praising that pied beauty through their artwork down the ages.

A few of my favorite paintings praising dappled things follows.

Vincent Van Gogh

John Singer Sargeant

John Singer Sargeant

John Singer Sargeant

John Singer Sargeant

Gertrude Fiske

Anne Redpath

Rick Stevens, Immersed

Gustav Klimt

“September 15th”- Methany & Mays Moving Tribute to Bill Evans

Tags

Bill Evans, inspiration, jazz, Lyle Mays, music, Pat Methany, Piano

Mist by Maurice Sapiro

This “unspeakable beautiful” song was created as a tribute to Bill Evans, one of the greatest jazz pianist/composers ever, who died 38 years ago today. He played with Miles Davis and Chet Baker before creating his own trio. He greatly influenced the work of many jazz musicians who came after him and who are creating music today.

Bill had this quiet fire that I loved on piano. The way he approached it, the sound he got was like crystal notes or sparkling water cascading down from some clear waterfall. I had to change the way the band sounded again for Bill’s style by playing different tunes, softer ones at first.  -Miles Davis

Bill Evans is seen as the main reformer of the harmonic language of jazz piano.^[15][61] Evans’s harmonic language was influenced by impressionist composers such as Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. ^[62] His versions of jazz standards, as well as his own compositions, often featured thorough reharmonisations. Musical features included added tone chords, modal inflections, unconventional substitutions, and modulations.  –Wikipedia

Bach was another huge influence on his music and the way he played. Perhaps it’s these classical influences on his jazzwork and improvisions that move me so much. Below the tribute by Methany and Mays is Evans “Peace Piece”, a favorite of mine and so many others.

Hoping you have a lovely and mellow weekend.

 

The Poetics of Place: Redwood Speech,Watershed Prayers

Tags

deep ecology, Francis Weller, humanity, inspiration, Language, music, Nature, quotations, The poetics of place, writing

“I want to see our words jump off the ground, erupt from a sensual earth, musty, humid, gritty. I want to taste words like honey, sweet and dripping with eternity. I want to hear words coming from my mouth and your mouth that are so beautiful that we wince with joy at their departure and arrival. I want to touch words that carry weight and substance, words that have shape and body, curve and tissue. I want to feel what we say as though the words were holy utterances surfacing from a pool where the gods drink. . . . .

My language must be redwood speech, watershed prayers, oak savannah, coupled in an erotic way with fog, heat, wind, rain and hills, sweetgrass and jackrabbits, wild iris and ocean current. My land is my language and only then can my longing for eloquence by granted. Until then I will fumble and fume and ache for a style of speaking that tells you who I am.”   – Francis Weller

One of my first blog posts in 2012 featured a speech by Francis Weller that captures so eloquently how the earth, our natural habitat, speaks to us and inspires us to speak. How it shapes our language and the way we express ourselves, not only in literature but in art and music and dance.

You can read his whole speech at his website Wisdom Bridge – Modern Pathways to our Indigenous Soul. The excerpt above, my quote of the week, hopefully will whet your appetite to do so.

As you read his speech, you might want to listen again to how nature inspires and shapes music, here in Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, one of my favorite pieces.

Dancing Through Time and Space, Pinching Ourselves Awake

Tags

inspiration, Jimmy Buffet, life, music, personal, Philosophy, travel

As you read this, I’ll have flown across the Atlantic and landed in Madrid. I may be strolling through the Prado marveling at the artwork, climbing castle steps in Segovia, or sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe in Paris.

It all sounds like a fairy tale to me now, sitting here tapping out this post to the beat of Jimmy Buffet’s “Trip around the Sun.” Wondering at the wonders to come.

Our whole lives are like this, spinning through time and space on this tiny planet. Traveling through a transient present, glancing back at the slide show of our past, gazing forward into a hazy future full of airy phantoms zooming toward us.

Who knows how this all will unfold?

“We’ll have to keep pinching ourselves to believe we are really there,” says my cousin who I’ll be traveling with.

And so should we all, every day of our lives. To keep present in the moment, right here, right now, before it slips into the past. Before the future with all its airy uncertainty settles around us like a warm blanket and slowly unravels into mere memory.

This life is too loose, too swift, too fluid, to do anything but marvel at its passing, to be dazzled with dizziness as the earth spinning beneath our feet spins around the sun.

Sometimes I think I must keep dancing in place just to keep up.

If only we could live every moment of our lives as tourists, pinching ourselves awake.

I’ll leave you with the song I’ve been listening to.

Music Like Waves, Rising, Dispersing

Tags

inspiration, John Rutter, murmuration, music, poetry, Requiem, Robert Ojaki, self-similarity, starlings

Zdislaw Beksinski

I came across this poem on one of my favorite blogs O at the Edges.

I love the image of the wave losing itself in dispersal only to rise again, just as music does in the playing, even in the inner repetitions, remaking itself.

Just as memory does, rising from mysterious depths only to disappear again.

Like murmuring starlings, spilling patterns across the sky.

So much “self-similarity” weaving this world together.

I leave you with three gifts: the poem that inspired me, the music that inspired him, and the wonder of murmuring birds.

Requiem

By Robert Ojaki

That it begins.
And like a wave which appears
only to lose itself

in dispersal, rising whole again
yet incomplete in all but
form, it returns.

Music. The true magic.

Each day the sun passes over the river,
bringing warmth to it. Such

devotion inspires movement: a cello in the
darkness, the passage of sparrows. Sighs.

The currents are of our own
making. If we listen do we also

hear? These bodies. These silent voices.

* * *

“Requiem” was written in the 80s, in response to John Rutter’s Requiem. 

 

 

The Classical Grammys – Powerful Instrumental Performances

Tags

classical music, Entertainment, Grammys, inspiration, music, Piano

Did you watch the Grammys this year? Any favorites among the winners and nominees?

Here are some Grammy winners and nominees that didn’t get a lot of press, but well worth your attention if you enjoy classical music.

Best Classical Instrumental Solo

Winner – Transcendental” — Daniil Trifonov

 

Nominee –  “Levina: The Piano Concertos” — Maria Lettberg (Ariane Matiakh, conductor, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin)

Here Lettberg is playing Etude Op. 8 No. 12 by Scriabin (alternate version)

 

Nominee – ”Haydn: Cello Concertos” — Steven Isserlis {Florian Donderer, conductor, The Deutsch Kammerphilharmonie Bremen)

Here Isserlis is playing with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.

 

Wrapping Up 2017, Embracing New & Old Loves

Tags

art, Blogging, creative arts, creativity, Deborah J. Brasket, music, painting, passion, writing

Discovering New Loves – Painting

2017 was the year I revealed my newly discovered passion for painting, and dared to share my work on these pages. So I thought it fitting to end the year with an unfinished painting of a passionate embrace, inspired, no less, by the works of Emil Nolde, Edvard Munch, and Marc Chagal, as follows:

Nearly half my posts in 2017 were art related, whether of my own work, or the work of favorite artists, or just about the craft and love of painting. One favorite, my own and others, was a rhapsody on Naming a Painting, “Like Two Lovers in Conversation.”

Several posts paired art with music, starting with Friday Pairings – Butterflies & Vivaldi and including Almost Blue, Jazz & Art, which, along with Artists & Writers in Their Studios, were two art-related posts that made the Top-Ten chart in my blog sidebar, a list that traditionally does not move much.

Renewing Old Loves – Playing Music

But 2017 was also a year for reuniting with old loves, a passion of my youth, playing piano. I treated myself to a baby grand, something I never dreamed I would own, and began relearning to play. Old favorites like Beethoven’s For Eloise and Moonlight Sonata were flowing from my fingertips once again.

In pursuit of my music I discovered, amazingly, two master pianists that you would’ve thought I’d already known: Bill Evans (jazz) and Martha Argerich (classical). I wrote about them and shared their music in Playing Piano, a Full-Body Workout for the Brain and Perfect Pairings, Evans’s “Peace Piece” & Sapiro’s Skies.

In a way, 2017 was the year for making time and space in my life and my home for all my loves, old and new, which I also wrote about. But it wasn’t, isn’t, easy.

Returning to My First Love – Writing

As new loves (painting), and renewed ones (playing piano), took center stage in my life, there seemed little time for my first love, writing, apart from blogging. And so I made a concerted effort to increase my blogging output.

When I started blogging, I averaged one post every 7 to 10 days. But in 2015 and 2016, when my life changed in a dramatic way, my blogging fell off, and once or twice a month became the norm.

This year I made a concerted effort to pick up the pace. Inspired by my 5-year blogging anniversary in July, my posts nearly doubled over the next few months, with 8 posts in August, a new high.

After that flurry, I’m back to about once a week now, and this feels like a good, satisfying and sustainable, pace.

But as much as love blogging, and I DO think of it as “real” writing, I miss creative writing. The novels that have been pushed aside, that wait patiently for my return, still call to me, as I wrote about early this year in Which Would You Choose, My Art or My Novel? Clearly, art won that contest in 2017. But I promised myself that I would return to my novels in 2018. It’s a promise I mean to keep.

Part of that return will be wrapped up in my blog posts. I find writing about writing inspiring. It gets my creative juices flowing.  When I’m thinking out loud on paper about my characters, my themes, their dreams, what drives them, I discover that they are also my dreams, my themes, what drives me essentially, as a writer, an artist, a blogger. Even the music I love and love to play comes from the same place that feeds my soul and fires my passion to create.

In a way, it’s all about exploring our passions, the things that set our souls on fire, and sharing those loves with others. Because love is not love if it does not spill out over onto everything we touch, and touches all who come within its reach.

Wishing you all a happy and passionate embrace of the coming New Year.

“O Holy Night” in Art & Music

Tags

art, Christmas, inspiration, music

Attributed to Carel Fabritius

“Peace on Earth, good will toward men.”  Wishing you all a joyful and blessed Christmas.

 

Gerard van Homthorst

Federico Fiori

Walters – Adoration of the Shepherds

Rubens – Adoration of the Magi

Raphael Gebhurt

Giovanni Battista

Maathias Stom – The Holy Family

 

Rembrandt – The Holy Family

Rembrandt – drawing of the Holy Family

 

 

Swept Away by the Music of Pat Metheny

Tags

As falls Wichita so Falls Wichita Falls, Entertainment, inspiration, jazz, jazz fusion, music, Pat Metheny, personal

Thomas Moran (1837 – 1926) Mary’s Veil, Utah

I first fell in love with Pat Metheny’s music when listening his seminal album “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.” I couldn’t agree more Carter B. Horsley in The City Review:

“As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls,” [is] perhaps the most important jazz recording of the past 15 years or so and on a par, in terms of historical importance, with John Coltrane’s, “My Favorite Things,” and some of the great Miles Davis and Charlie Parker classics, which is to say it is a masterpiece.

The title track of the album is a mysterious 20-minute-and-42-second excursion into sound effects that seems to turn a playground into a stadium and has riveting interruptions of great authority followed by digital narration, literally, interspersed with glorious crescendos and great anthemic sweeps of emotion. What is most extraordinary is that the incredible music is performed by just four individuals, one of whom was Nana Vasconceles, a Brazilian percussionist.

I used to listen to this CD on my way home from Cal Poly University as a graduate student, my mind still reeling from all I was reading, weaving together the poetry of  Whitman, Wallace Stevens and Emily Dickinson with the transcendentalism of Emerson and deconstruction of Derrida, Lacan’s Mirror Stage and Bohm’s Implicate Order. Seeing how all these insights and ideas flow into and out of each other, creating a rich tapestry of potentiality. Each seemed to sing to the other, play and dance, tickle and tease. Somehow it was all related. At some deep level it all made sense.

Within that fertile mindframe as the sun melted into the sea and the ribbon of highway curled along the coast, I let myself be swept away by Metheny’s music. The title track starts off so softly you can barely hear it. Soon you make out distant voices, children’s laughter, like some dream you had of childhood long ago. This soft rambling mixture of ambient sounds and gentle waves eventually turns into something else, recreating itself into a rich exotic sound experience, what my granddaughter calls “China music” when I play it for her. This too breaks apart into something else as the music reinvents itself. Now we are zinging through interstellar space with weird pings and synthesized sounds carrying us along as the night darkens. Then the music mellows and rises, mellows and rises, moving slowly, steadily, over and over until it sweeps into a  an ecstatic crescendo. This too mutates into something else, low slow rumbles, voices chanting code, a strain of conversation too low to make out, then laughter, children calling to one another, as if we’ve taken a journey through time and space and back again. To where it all began.

I wish I could find a video recording of this track to share here, but all that seems available is a live performance, which is substantially different from the CD recording I fell in love with and, for me, does not capture the richness and nuance of the original.

But I will share here another Metheny favorite which showcases the beautiful permutations of his music and especially his masterful handling of the listeners expectations as his music rises and falls, rises and falls, gathering momentum until you feel you are in the hands of a very experienced lover who is taking you slowly to new heights of pleasure, then backing away and building again, over and over, until finally it comes: What you’ve been waiting for, expecting, at long last. It washes over you and carries you away and afterwards you feel sublimely satisfied. I always turn the sound up in those final moments as it nears the climax to intensify the experience.

To feel that extraordinary effect there must be no distance between you and the music. You must allow yourself be carried away, give yourself over completely to it. As you must immerse yourself in any great work of art to truly experience all it has to offer.

This one is called “The Truth Will Always Be.” Enjoy.

 

 

Almost Blue, Jazz & Art

Tags

art, blue, Chet Baker, jazz, music, Paintings

A perfect pairing for a Wednesday morning. Mellow jazz and my favorite color.

 

Window at Tanger, 1912 Henri Matisse

Talking with Myself, Elisa Benavent

Blue Nude, Picasso

 

Vincent Van Gogh ‘Starry Night over the Rhone’

By Nicoletta Tomas Caravia