Necromancy

When I was 13 I once found this fantastic and shabby book from the 19th century in the garbage. Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to have this book... Something about the shabby olive binding, crumbling paper, and gilded detailing made it seem like some hidden tome of mystic power that I found myself drawn to. Nevertheless, it was the book that opened my mind to the power of the written word. I opened up to this page, and it was one of those first experiences that burn into your mind forever. This piece will always hold a special place in my heart.

Alfred Noyes- "Necromancy"

(AFTER THE PROSE OF BAUDELAIRE)

This necromantic palace, dim and rich,
Dim as a dream, rich as a reverie,
I knew it all of old, surely I knew
This floating twilight tinged with rose and blue,
This moon-soft carven niche
Whence the calm marble, wan as memory,
Slopes to the wine-brimmed bath of cold dark fire
Perfumed with old regret and dead desire.

There the soul, slumbering in the purple waves
Of indolence, dreams of the phantom years,
Dreams of the wild sweet flower of red young lips
Meeting and murmuring in the dark eclipse
Of joy, where pain still craves
One tear of love to mingle with their tears,
One passionate welcome ere the wild farewell,
One flash of heaven across the fires of hell.

* * * *

Queen of my dreams, queen of my pitiless dreams,
Dim idol, moulded of the wild white rose,
Coiled like a panther in that silken gloom
Of scented cushions, where the rich hushed room
Breaks into soft warm gleams,
As from her slumbrous clouds Queen Venus glows,
Slowly thine arms up-lift to me, thine eyes
Meet mine, without communion or surmise.

Here, at thy feet, I watched, I watched all day
Night floating in thine eyes, then with my hands
Covered my face from that dumb cry of pain:
And when at last I dared to look again
My heart was far away,
Wrapt in the fragrant gloom of Eastern lands,
Under the flower-white stars of tropic skies
Where soft black floating flowers turned to ... thine eyes.

I breathe, I breathe the perfume of thine hair:
Bury in thy deep hair my fevered face,
Till as to men athirst in desert dreams
The savour and colour and sound of cool dark streams
Float round me everywhere,
And memories float from some forgotten place,
Fulfilling hopeless eyes with hopeless tears
And fleeting light of unforgotten years.

Dim clouds of music in the dim rich hours
Float to me thro' the twilight of thine hair,
And sails like blossoms float o'er purple seas,
And under dark green skies the soft warm breeze
Washes dark fruit, dark flowers,
Dark tropic maidens in some island lair
Couched on the warm sand nigh the creaming foam
To dream and sing their tawny lovers home.

Lost in the magic ocean of thine hair
I find the haven of the heart of song:
There tired ships rest against the pale red sky!
And yet again there comes a thin sad cry
And all the shining air
Fades, where the tall dark singing seamen throng
From many generations, many climes,
Fades, fades, as it has faded many times.

I hear the sweet cool whisper of the waves!
Drowned in the slumbrous billows of thine hair,
I dream as one that sinks thro' passionate hours
In a strange ship's wild fraughtage of dark flowers
Culled for pale poets' graves;
And opiate odours load the empurpled air
That flows and droops, a dark resplendent pall
Under the floating wreaths funereal.

Under the heavy midnight of thine hair
An altar flames with spices of the south
Burning my flesh and spirit in the flame;
Till, looking tow'rds the land from whence I came
I find no comfort there,
And all the darkness to my thirsty mouth
Is fire, but always and in every place
Blossoms the secret wonder of thy face.

* * * *

The walls, the very walls are woven of dreams,
All undefined by blasphemies of art!
Here, pure from finite hues the very night
Conceives the mystic harmonies of light,
Delicious glooms and gleams;
And sorrow falls in rose-leaves on the heart,
And pain that yearns upon the passing hour
Is but a perfume haunting a dead flower.

Hark, as a hammer on a coffin falls
A knock upon the door! The colours wane,
The dreams vanish! And leave that foul white scar,
Tattoo'd with dreadful marks, the old calendar
Blotching the blistered walls!
The winter whistles thro' a shivered pane,
And scatters on the bare boards at my feet
These poor soiled manuscripts, torn, incomplete...

The scent of opium floats about my breath;
But Time resumes his dark and hideous reign;
And, with him, hideous memories troop, I know.
Hark, how the battered clock ticks, to and fro,--
_Life, Death--Life, Death--Life, Death_--
O fool to cry! O slave to bow to pain,
Coward to live thus tortured with desire
By demon nerves in hells of sensual fire.

--End--

Icarus.

"Lament of an Icarus"

Charles Baudelaire

Those men who cuddle whores for love

Are sated by their darlings' charms,

But I have only tired arms

From having hugged the clouds above.

Thanks to the stars, the matchless ones

That flame within the depths of skies,

All I can see with burnt-out eyes

Are dark remembrances of suns.

In vain I've tried to find the heart

Of space, to venture deeper, higher;

Under who knows what eye of fire

My weary wings will break apart;

And burned by love of beauty, I

Will not achieve my poignant wish

To give my name to the abyss,

The tomb below, to which I fly.

Full-Circle.

"Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions."
Jiddu Krishnamurti

          
Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox of 2010.
To most, I would imagine it would mean little to nothing; but to me it means everything. It's another indicator that another season in my life has faded into obscurity and passed. Now, like the phoenix I must begin anew; collect my ever-present fears, and ride along with the sun in it's transition until another year has passed into obsolescence, then the inevitable of quietus and fading of from the mind.
        
These past five years have been the biggest, emotionally-straining roller coaster of my thus-known life. A string of deaths, turbulent romances, and a coming-to-terms with personal issues have inhabited the core of my world. Sure, everyone has problems. I am not the one to make a spectacle of my life story on the internet for all to see the intricate and gruesome details of the players and situations involved.
So why am I writing this?

It all began in the late spring of 2005.
It was one of those excruciatingly bright and hot mornings as far as I can remember. The doorbell rang downstairs, and I ran down to find my Uncle who had paid a surprise visit at the time, bestowing me with his treasured violin. He told me that he wanted me to learn it, since he now could not find time for it.

                                                                            (2005.)

Over the next few months he and I developed a closer friendship, and he became more of a brother than an uncle. He taught me how to rock climb, how to mountaineer, and we became climbing partners of sorts. We would often go to Stoney Point and boulder around; all the while discussing the most random of topics ranging from eastern philosophy, to how many fist-fights we've accumulated in our lives thus far.
In the late Autumn of 2005 he left to go to Alaska.
The Violin remained in it's case.
This is when the problems in both of our lives began to come to fruition; upon returning in spring of 2006, he had been diagnosed with terminal brain and bone cancer. The doctor told him he would not live three months.
I began to drive him to his appointments that June. The man I had so looked up to for teaching me to scale vertical walls of rock in a matter of seconds I had to help up the stairs to his apartment.
But still he persevered, determined as ever to fight on, and he lived. We were all grateful beyond belief that he had survived and triumphed over his ordeal.
The violin remained untouched, say, except for the occasional plucking out of boredom here and there.
          The next sequential wave of years swept many people away from my grasp; leaving so many things unsaid for myself. Whether it be a multitude of apologies, curses, thank-you's, or just moments lost.

It struck again last fall.
I took him to an appointment one day last winter, and he asked me in the waiting room, "So, when are you going to learn that Violin?"
Winter came to an end, and he didn't make it through.


Tomorrow, I am buying rosin.
I have contacted a teacher, and next week I begin my lessons.

                                                                          

On Existentialism.

I was reading Jean-Paul Sartre's treatise on the subject of existentialism, and I really enjoyed this segment:


"A man is involved in life, leaves his impression on it, and outside of that, there is nothing. To be sure, this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life hasn't been a success. But, on the other hand, it prompts people to understand that reality alone is what counts. That dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations. ["..."] What we mean then is that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings. When all is said and done, what we are accused of, at bottom, is not our pessimism, but an optimistic toughness."

Statement of intent

I realized earlier that I had not posted my artist statement of intent anywhere on this site. So, following the paintings post, here is a more brief version of my statement of intent.

---

I am interested in creating images as an entry point to view the projected manifestation of desire, the mortality of the flesh, and the topography of history and memory.
It is about the intersections of loss and desire; an inextricable balance of presence and memory. It is also about the psychology of what it means to bear witness, or even what it means to be forcibly turned askance from an event.
On a formal level, the content of my work is fixed and stable, yet filled with a degree of instability, confusion and nausea through the obscuration of the subject matter. It heavily relies on the idea of the perception of the image; the denial of the versimilitudinous nature of images. This implicates an imminent downfall, hypoxia, and quietus within the work itself, which is thus muted within it’s own anxiety, somewhere between truth and a void.

---

Various Paintings 2009-2010

Some Various works of mine from this past year (2009-2010).

Enjoy.

"Self Portrait" 2010. Gouache on panel.

Bundled and layered in the freezing studio, fall 2009.

.

Elm
-----
BY SYLVIA PLATH
-----


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.