Empty Nest Poem: The Landlady and the Arborist

Imposing entrance. Photo image USF

The Landlady and the Arborist

I came home from leaving

my younger fair daughter

on the Lone Mountain

atop San Francisco

to the tree outside

my window

thinned

The titled two

had conspired

while I was looking

away at a bridge and

its tangerine promise 

of Gates stretching into 

a future of Tigers and fate

My people and memories

are gathered into papery

swaddled illusions to

unwrap and set up

in another and still

yet another high

perch

This

new rise is smaller

and befitting my heart

that quivers in air and dust

beating at sheafs and scatters

of mottled music and incense

ashes that she left in small traces

All of these were expected upon my return in the last night sighs 

of a drought ridden summer

but not in the darkness did

I foresee an awakening

to patches of sky

staring into my

room

My green canopy

now dissipated had 

swayed to me daily

that night would come

back and slip through the

panes that open to listening

stars and a watchfully setting moon

Bolts of blue tell me all is changed

by the sun now casting its beams

along what was blinded shade

pronouncing a new limned 

after from time traipsed

over and made into

Past

Matters

that no longer

matter are taken up

by the four directions of

careless winds and teasing

rains that failed for months to

pour and to drench and to soothe

The rosy dogwood points curled

brown with no suckle for bees

so now I must spring 

for a room of one's

own above tilting

evergreen

trees

                             -- © 2015 by Gilded Lily Press

Golden Gate Bridge by Night from courtesy commons

ORIGINS: Labor and deLivery Part 2

When we hear names without knowing their original meanings, they often hit our present-day ears like an arbitrary collection of letters and sounds that were simply thought up and agreed to, for unknown reasons. But these names referred to immediate realities surrounding these early people. They could see the natural feature that connected them all to the place. They knew the ancestor who settled there. Even if they were only servants to these families, they were known as being a part of that clan, with identifying dress and symbols, showing everyone to whom they belonged.

Pretty maids preparing for a row
Queen Elizabeth II's Ladies-in-Waiting at her coronation
photo image: Cecil Beaton

But something interesting happened with surnames at a point in British history. The part of the country that you came from, or the original family that your ancestors were attached to, was no longer the only moniker available. Instead, you could establish yourself with a formal company of craftsmen, traders, and their workers. Your identity no longer needed to come down from the past, in a long unbroken line of those hatched upon the same rock or from whose first fathers you sprang forth; but, rather, what you do.

Workers of the world were uniting in very specific ways, according to a formally registered list of “companies”, signifying who you spent your days laboring alongside. The primary company you kept was not your ancestral or social connections— those to whom you had sworn your life as your liege family with heraldic crests of symbols— but rather people who shared your training and skills. This seems like a very radical change, to go from “I’m the Carpenter, Madam” to “I’m Carpenter, Madam.” In return he would be called Master or Mister Carpenter. Perhaps this shift in self-titling may have set the stage for those who desperately wanted their identity to be rooted not in the past of land ownership and lineage, which was conferred onto them, but to take up a future holding in a contemporary collective of activity and production.

It must have seemed liberating and revolutionary to these early companies, with uniforms based on the outfitting of your livelihood, and not the uniform of your household station. You could learn a trade and distinguish yourself on a course that leads to being a Master of your work, and not of people. There is a curious mix of capitalism and socialism building in all of this. Workers associate under a common goal, yet the goal is not a social movement. The goal is capital, and the pride of the new crests and uniforms lies in the ability to earn it.

Example of a livery crest of arms from bowyers.com: The Worshipful Company of Bowyers established in 1488. The bowyer is shown wearing the black and white livery of this company. He is holding a "flote", also shown in a trio on the shield, invented to plane and smooth the bow staves. The bowman, holds the bow, representing the one who puts the product to use. The pointed stakes in the ground signify an ancient defense of fortresses planted by archers against cavalry attacks. Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt are battles against the French, whose defeat was attributed to the early bowyers new and plenteous supply of longbows that had a superior range over shortbows. 

Here is a list of the various Liveries, as copied from Wikipedia (where else?):

Mercer-- merchant

Grocer-- spices (green grocer is vegetables)

Draper-- wool and cloth

Skinner-- fur trader

Taylor- tailors

Haberdasher-- clothiers

Vintner- wine

Barbers- surgeons and dentists

Cutlers- knife, sword, utensil makers

Chandler- wax candle makers

Armourer and Brasier-- armor and brass workers

Girdler- belt and girdle makers

Cordwainer- leather workers and shoemakers

Currier-- leather dresser and tanner

Founder-- metals casters and melters

Poulters-- poulterers

Cooper- barrel and cask makers

Tyler and Bricklayers-- Builder

Bowyer-- long-bow makers

Fletcher- arrow makers

Scrivener- court scribes and notaries public

Plaister- plasterers

Stationers- journalists and publishers

Broderers- embroiderers

Upholders- upholsterers

Turner- lathe operators

Glazier-- glass painters and glazers

Horner-- horn makers and plasticians

Farriers- horseshoe makers and horse veterinarians

Paviors- highway pavers

Loriners- equestrian bit, bridle and spur suppliers

Pattenmakers-- wooden shoe makers

Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers-- thread makers for military and society clothing

Carmen-- vehicle drivers

Hackney-- taxicab drivers

Waterman-- movers of goods and passengers on the river Thames

A scrivener at his desk, miniature in wood, 15th Century France

Here are more straightforward names, and some are commonly recognized as modern English:

Goldsmith

Salter

Dyer

Brewer

Leatherman

Pewterer

Baker

Butcher

Saddler

Carpenter

Painter

Plumber

Innholder

Cook

Blacksmith

Joiner and Ceiler- wood craftsmen

Weaver

Woolman

Fruiter

Basketmaker

Shipwright

Wheelwright

Glover

Gardener

Fanmaker

Farmer

Yet, now, when we look over the list, it can seem just as antiquated, and our history of nomenclature may be in need of liberation at some point, yet again. If someone’s last name is Weaver, I don’t assume that they have anything to do with weaving. They may dislike weaving intensely, and work on an oil rig, for all I know. If they did, then they would be a “wildcat”, and now we’ve circled back around to nature names, and gotten ourselves really confused.

So, in light of this confusion, I will share a verse from the Christian scriptures that I have found intriguing. It describes an experience of entering the Kingdom of Heaven and receiving  “a white stone, with a new name written upon it, known only to him who receives it.” (Rev 2:17). While part of me would love to know what sort of spiritual identity I would have in an alternate reality, part of me thinks that I would turn over this stone and see my mother’s smile when she called me at age five, “little monkey.” To which I drew a picture of her cooking at the stove with me behind her (very telling), and wrote above us in buddha-baby fashion, “A monkey is a monkey. A monkey can be a good monkey.” If the white stone says anything more lofty than that, I’m not sure I would believe it.

ORIGINS: Labor and deLivery

Family names are interesting because they can say everything about us, or nothing at all. When they say nothing, it’s usually because the meaning has been lost over time. While watching an English drama (Downton Abbey, quel surprise) that featured the importance of a servant’s livery, I realized that I had no idea what that term meant outside of a horse’s tack and bridle. So in looking up the word “livery” it led me to a new understanding of English surnames and where they originated.

“Livery” is derived from the Latin word “to deliver”. In the feudal system, the landowner was your master, and it was his responsibility to see to the welfare of the people who worked his land, defended it, and served in his household. The “delivery” according to the Oxford Dictionary was in the landlord’s “dispensing of food, provisions, and clothing” as well as an “allowance of provender” for his horse. As such, the people of a household wore a uniform to denote who their master was and what they did for him— to keep them apart, like teams. So when you see Shakespearean actors walking about in colorful leotards, there is an historical reason for it, and is not simply to provide more spectacle on stage. Your livery told everyone that your master saw to all of your needs including the clothes on your back, and what your role was in obedience to him, and that you were sworn to defend his honor when you went out into public. These are heavy responsibilities on both sides.

Tybalt, Romeo and Mercutio in garb separating them even in death
from Romeo & Juliet, Cape Town City Ballet, 1975

But before this time of formally delineated identities and allegiances, Old English family names often came from nature, in Gaelic, Welsh, or Celtic words that were not in the Romanized Brittanic lingua franca, and fell out of widespread use. The surnames identified a person as being part of a clan that came from a specific area. That area might have a prominent natural feature that became central to how others referred to this clan, such as a rocky outcropping or crag (Craig) or a clearing in a forest (ley) of ash trees (Ashley). If a group of people had generally sworn their allegiance to a local clan originated by a man with a red beard, then his appellation became theirs, regardless of their own hair color or gender. If they are a descendant from a leader named Donald (from the Gaelic, meaning “world ruler”), then they are a Mac or an O’ or a Donaldson.

Tartan from Clan MacBeth, meaning "son of life"

We’ll come back to these location, land formation, or ancestral origin names again. But since it is Labor Day, we will explore the names that refer to one’s work.

See Part 2

Better to Aspire to Happiness Than Pity

One of my favorite sites to hang out on the web is GoodReads. Recently, there was a particular book I’d been considering, and one of the reviewers there was clearly frustrated with its overly passive, depressed protagonist. 

In fairly crude terms, he responds to this character with, “Snap out of it, woman! If you feel like you’re being mistreated, then do something about it, and don’t just sit on your bitter old ass and suffer and complain and write 'The Boredom Manifesto'. Sheesh!” But in a stroke of insight further on, he wrote, “Even if we have to bend the rules in order to achieve it, I think happiness is a much better thing to aspire to than pity.”

I left a comment, asking if I could quote him, and perhaps even adapt this as a motto. He kindly assented. Of course, these sorts of statements usually make people nervous, as if the ones saying them are advocating all sorts of shady behavior at the expense of a rule-abiding citizenry. But intuitively, we all know what he’s saying.

Photo image found on Skeptic.com
Science bends light with the force of magnetism

When we exchange happiness for pity, what we have settled for is the hope that someone will offer tea and sympathy (or a beer or latté), and maybe go off and ease our disappointments for us, hopefully without our participation. The sympathizer is mostly engaged with their own charitable ego, as well. There is a transaction inherent in the commiseration. By contrast, empathy and friendship take a close look at a problem alongside us, and we value the time spent and the compassion. There is reciprocal movement in the exchange. 

Photo print image: Elderly Priest and Young Woman found on Art.com
Pity means well, but does ill.

Pity is a cheap fix for both parties—it costs neither person much at all. It’s little more than a social reflex: a request for a pass from responsibility or judgment of the pitiable, and a murmur of noble relief from the pity-filled that they are fittingly above calamity. There are some who may be moved to pity, but who also seem to regard long-suffering as a regrettable lapse of good manners.

Illustration: "The Rescue" by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope 1900
The Short-term Rescue Can Lead Down Long-term Stairways

If we want pity, we can usually always find it, but it is a waste of energy to search for that. It is as commonplace as cigarette butts laying on the sidewalk, but it still takes some trouble to gather it up. If we want happiness, the kind that arises from our inner passions and a sense of purpose, then we must look to what inspires us and stirs up those senses. Passion desires that we flex our own muscles and find our own ways. Pity dulls, and can leave us muted and dumb. But passion, however weary, resonates in a pulsing call to action within our own noiseless ear.

Illustration: "Fairy Tales at Four Years Sober" found on Rehabreviews.com
Pity can take you for a ride. But you never get to steer and you'll miss your turn.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself-- DH Lawrence

Exceptional Excerpts: the Moody Dostoyevsky Blues

Sometimes the hospital can make one feel a bit melancholy and detached from things that go on beyond the bed, the machines, the folding walls. There is plenty to find interesting, funny and hopeful. But sometimes melancholy and detachment can be indulged for a little while. Here is a passage that I find to be perhaps one of the most distilled expressions of those feelings. I get by with a little help from my Russian friend, Fyodor, from White Nights:

"For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And meanwhile your soul is all the time craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him! Do you realize, Nastenka, how far things have gone with me? Do you know that I’m forced now to celebrate the anniversary of my own sensations, the anniversary of that which was once so dear to me, but which never really existed? For I keep this anniversary in memory of those empty, foolish dreams! I keep it because even those foolish dreams are no longer there, because I have nothing left with which to replace them, for even dreams, Nastenka, have to be replaced by something!"

A Seattle summer night sky can be cloudless and glowing with the late sunset. I choose to replace this sanitized bedsheet with the white satin far above me, to wrap myself in, though I can't see it right now. That sky really exists, and will again, and I need not long for it as if it were only a dream.

"Nature's Great Seducer" with Sir David Attenborough

As I have been waiting, hoping, and praying for a recalcitrant stone to pass, I have been remiss with my posts. So in the meantime, for your regularly scheduled Ulterior Colors moment, I present you with an example of persistence and artistry in the form of the Bower Bird.

This is one of my favorite videos of how nature behaves and creates, with its own universal goals and yet its own unique preferences. I am in awe of what can be accomplished with only a beak and the instinct and will to bring a vision to completion.

Please enjoy!

or go to link

We All Have Founding Fathers

Under construction

Late for Your Life

Here is a song for the mid-year or for mid-life, where I, myself, happen to be at the moment. Of course, we can only guess that we are midway through a time if we don't know how long the time will last.

On that note, to celebrate the time we have right now, I present the lovely Mary Chapin Carpenter:

Late for Your Life 2003

You've been saying for the longest time that the time has come

You've been talking like you're of a mind to get some changing done

Maybe move out of the city, find some quiet little town

Where you can sit out on your back porch step

And watch the sun go down

No one knows where they belong

The search just goes on and on and on

For every choice that ends up wrong

Another one's right

A change of scene would sure be great

The thought is nice to contemplate

But the question begs why would you wait

And be late for your life

Now you might never find that perfect town

But the sun still sets on a rooftop where the city

Sounds like a Gershwin clarinet

And you might still be searching every face for one you can't forget

Love is out there in a stranger's clothes

You just haven't met him yet

No one knows where they belong

The search just goes on and on and on

For every day that ends up wrong

Another one's right

Call it chance or call it fate

Either one is cause to celebrate

Still the question begs why would you wait

And be late for your life

Call it chance baby, call it fate

Either one is cause to celebrate

And the question now is why would you wait

Don't be late for your life

Poem: The First Day of the Fall

The weather in Seattle has been warm and sunny, and I've been enjoying my time on a nearby island called Bainbridge. The wind is low, but with that stillness comes a restlessness. It feels time to bring out a poem written some years ago on a day like this one, on this same island; although, then, the fall and its delights were closing in. So now is the time to unfold and float that day up like a blanket settling onto the grass, and remember countless summers of dreaming and waking into voluminous air.

The First Day of the Fall

Soon the leaves

will release and reveal

the limbs beneath.

Pressed together on the

ground they will lie

until a gentle stirring

brings up their sweetness

into the nostrils,

the mouth,

if I walk close enough

to the ground.

Yet this day,
unabashed,

believes it summer still.

And still the trees
 that brace the walk 

thrust their limbs higher

into the shimmer,

beckoning clouds

to hover and pour

non interruptus.

So hot today that

crane flies beat

at the glass to get out.

Yet during the night

I chased them

along the ceiling.

They, mounted on air,

sweeping in circles,

confused by lights

and heat from lamps,

eluded me,

so badly they wanted

to stay in.

So hot today that

neither clothes

nor hands to touch

are welcome.

Only thoughts
are wanted

to come across me

in waves of mist,

only thoughts

may glide over

the iliac crest

the floating rib

the sternum

as I take myself

to enter a boat,

swinging my leg

over the protruding bow

to fall and lie 

pressed to the bottom

and rock in silence

as far out as it floats

until I can bear

my flesh again

-- 2011

© copyright 2015 by Gilded Lily Press

Feng Shui Fiction: How a Character Can Be One of Your Helpful People

Someone larger than life such as the very real and well-documented Frida Kahlo, can inspire us to find ways to express what we need to, to accomplish what needs to be done, and to celebrate progress when we make it. But sometimes inspiration can come from a complete unknown; a fictional character that will never see the light of day for longer than it takes their few pages to be turned.

For me, one of these helpful characters is Rita the Clutter Counselor from
Anne Tyler's twelfth novel, St. Maybe.

Anne Tyler is one of those authors who have their books made into movies that I really don't care for. The portrayal of what the characters do with their hands and feet as they move through their lives is never as interesting as what is going on inside their heads. She writes great lines of dialog, but when actors speak them, they seem to lose some of their original sense. But her novels are on solid ground, with numerous favorable reviews from the New York Times and a Pulitzer Prize.

Photo image: Anne Tyler has lived in Raleigh, NC since childhood and attended Duke University

The main character of St. Maybe is Ian Bledsoe, and we learn of his family's tragedy through him. Ian has become spiritually paralyzed by guilt, stemming from from one small action, and then makes his life choices in a state of non-decision, as a result. He isn't trying to decide among variables; he is simply staying inside his protective shell, trying to atone for what he fears was his fault.

Ian Beldsoe isn't a Walter Mitty, with frustrated ideals, or a sacrificial hero who knows exactly what he's choosing to do and why. He is more like a person stuck in neutralized shame, with a broken chooser. Because he can't figure out how to fix everyone around him, while thinking he should be able to, he idles his way through situations. Events go on around him, people make decisions that involve him and affect him, yet somehow he doesn't seem to be the one actually living his life.

So far, this sounds like a good cure for insomnia. Who wants to read about someone who is described by his impetuous adopted niece as "King Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways. Saint Maybe"? This isn't exactly the makings of a heroic tale. But Anne Tyler always has a way of allowing her characters to live out their private dreams and torments in whatever peculiar forms they take, shaped by a specific time and place not always under their control.

But enter Rita the Clutter Counselor, straight out of an ad in the Yellow Pages. The Bledsoe family hires Rita to help them sort through the possessions of late loved ones, and Rita quickly sees that this family is all at sea and are more like ships that haphazardly bump into each other all day and night. What she brings to them, and to me, is a sense of active urgency about life and its small importances. She is like a force of nature, even when her own gale leaves her stuck on the Bledsoe couch with a broken leg. Christmas is coming, and rather than allowing the others to just drift around the house aimlessly, she puts them to work. With a large board on her lap, she rolls out cookie dough, strings popcorn, and addresses Christmas cards, while directing the others with instructions for the oven or to fetch her supplies. While this sounds like a Hallmark movie, and it very well might be, Rita's must-do attitude reaches far beyond the simple domestic scene of a preserved celebration of Christmas.

What Rita's character taught me is that it is less important to do your work in a prescribed right style-- one that has a conventional setting, uniform and equipment-- than it is to get the finished work done right. Rita's career is to help people find a proper place for everything in their homes, but when a greater need than orderliness comes along, she is the first one to transcend those rules. It doesn't matter if baking is happening in the living room; what matters is that the baking is happening. I can't recall if her cookies came out to anyone's satisfaction, but in witnessing Rita's commitment to their own traditions-- even though she's an outsider-- the others are able to sort through the clutter and detritus of their own values. They need to decide for themselves what is important and worth putting energy into, and what is simply meeting the never-ending demand for comfort and consumption without a clear purpose.

Like Anne Tyler's work, Carly Simon's song Anticipation has been commercialized, but is a perfect song for Ian. He needs anticipation of the future, even if he isn't an all-knowing prophet.

Over time, Ian Bledsoe learns that there is no proper place for false guilt. He needs to stop working in self-denial to atone for what was not his fault, and to stop taking responsibility for everyone's elusive happiness. This unattainable charter he has set for himself has a deadening effect on his soul and his hopes for his own development as a person. He better understands how to play a role than how to live a life. The role he has chosen is one of a martyr, yet he hasn't taken up his cross so much as he has taken one along with him in his carpenter's tool belt.

Rita's approach to life challenges Ian's commitment to a form and function that holds no room for fulfillment. Her artistry is not the sort that hangs on walls in galleries, but is in the investigation and consideration of treasure among wreckage, so that each member of the family can be released from the whirlpool of disappointment and blame and get themselves back onto a high tide.

"It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things." -- Georgia O'Keeffe

Image: Oil painting "Black Cross with Stars and Blue", 1929

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Exceptional Excerpts: Salma Hayek Speaks about Frida, the Globes, and Teaches Me About the Love of My Life

The following interview with Salma Hayek, the force behind the film Frida, is one of the best I have heard on the topic of winning awards for your work. At the time of this interview, she had been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress, which went to Nicole Kidman for The Hours, instead. But still to come was the rest of the award season, including the Oscars. Additional nominations came from BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild, the American Film Institute, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and from other festivals, foundations and international circles. 

She was suddenly recognized all over the world for bringing the life story of Frida Kahlo to the screen, after years of various scripts, directors and detours. Before this, she had only been seen in occasional roles on Mexican and American television and in small films. She had not yet proven herself able to take on the leading portrayal of such a complex and iconic figure in Mexican history. Nor was she known to American or European audiences.

Photo image: Salma Hayek 2001. Bringing herself and Frida to the Silver Screen

She speaks about how all of this sudden attention and acclaim has affected her, while it was still going on, and while the outcome of these awards were unknown. Some of her thoughts are forming as she answers the questions. You can watch the entire interview that comes with the DVD's special features, but below I have selected the statements that have stayed with me over the years. They reflect what she learned from Frida Kahlo-- and then taught viewers like me-- about passion and focus, and how to stay committed to a love affair with your own purpose.

"I think this project has changed my life. And it might seem that it's changed my life once [Frida] came out. But it changed my life the minute I became involved in it. My life has changed, but the way my attitude changed is very specific thanks to the process that I lived in those eight years.

"All of these awards and this award season puts you in a situation where you've never been before, so you're exploring a different part of yourself. I learned my competitive genes are not as many as I thought (laughs). I was, "Oh, my God, this is great! I want to win this!" for… two weeks, maybe. Or maybe not even. The first feeling I had when I got nominated for the Golden Globe-- and it was a shock-- I felt lonely. I felt a sensation of loneliness, because the rest of my gang was not there with me. Because they didn't nominate a lot of people that I wish had also been nominated. So, instead of being overjoyed, immediately the first thing that came into my body was this loneliness.  

"I think-- I have learned to think--  we often dream and want things we don't [really] want. [We think we need certain] things to obtain, to manipulate, to get the things we really want. So, I used to think about these awards like, "I want to get the award-- I have to get this award-- so that I [will] have respect in this town and so that I [will] get better opportunities. All of a sudden, I feel like I do have respect in this town; not because somebody decided to give me an award, but because I decided to earn it with hard work. I already have what the award would give me. The difference is, did somebody choose to give it to me, or did I choose to give it to myself?

Photo image: Frida Kahlo circa 1935.  Choosing to give herself What She Wants.

"When Nicole (Kidman) won the Golden Globe… I was very happy because she said, 'I want to thank my agent for giving me this script (The Hours) and making me read it.'  And I got a huge smile on my face because I was the one with a script going around for seven years saying to everyone, "You've got to read this!" And so there was a sensation of accomplishment that goes beyond any award, because I made it happen.

Photo image: Salma Hayek at 2003 Golden Globe Awards

"[Now], I feel peaceful. I know this is a very exciting time in my life, but Frida has given me so many things, and I think she will continue to, because she's been an inspiration and I've learned so many things. But if I could put everything in one word, and I think this is probably the biggest, the most important thing in life that you can get is… a great sense of peace. I feel that. I wanted to do something so badly, and I learned how to channel my passion into one thing and stay focused on that one thing. And it took eight years. And if it had taken sixteen years, I would have stayed in that place. She taught me how to do that. I have a great sense of accomplishment, but because of all the things I learned in that seven years, it's not a sense of accomplishment that comes with an ego. It's a sense of accomplishment that comes with peace.

Still photo from Frida, Scene: Writing letter to Diego Rivera from Paris

"And so, I take it easy, now. I see life from a different perspective that is more simple, but more satisfying. So I think the biggest thing she brought into my life was this peacefulness. I still get passionate about things, but my passion is not so scattered, and it's not needy. It's a lot more powerful because it comes with this groundedness and peacefulness that its about the process and not about the results, and that's a great sensation."

For some classical peaceful sensations

listen to Dustin Jones, playing his original composition, "Neskowin"

Frida Unites Us for Cinqo de Mayo

Ten years to the screen, a labor of love for Salma Hayek

Each May, I have a tradition of watching the film Frida with Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, directed by Julie Taymor (of Broadway's Lion King fame), written by Edward Norton. Frida Kahlo's rebellious spirit and then revolutionary spirit, relationship with Trotsky among others, made her infamous or inspiring, depending on your viewpoint. Regardless of what was happening to her, or what she was getting into, she loved a good party.

What many people love about her work is its dedication to her own personal experience of life, when everyone else was painting huge murals of great social unrest and governmental change. Many of her paintings are very tiny, like her own frame. She pushed her pain-wracked body into the larger world of philosophical circles, travel and celebrity, but she also inserted her personality into that larger world, with a purposefully rustic naturalism. 

She stares at us from the cover of Vogue with her unibrow un-retouched, while starlets were shaving theirs to look like Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich. She isn't draped in metallic satins and fur, but wears the primary colored dyes of her homeland, with ruffles and embroidery. She wasn't unaware, just determinedly unsophisticated. I imagine it probably took just as much thought and effort to be that way as it was for a Hollywood glamour girl.

"A Woman of Power" Vogue Paris issue 1938

Like a true Neitzchean, and with a strange twist on her Marxism, the force of her will is what landed her on the currency of her country. Perhaps her fame and the commercial aspect of her image was part of the choice of the Mexican government to use it in its capitalist economy. But the strongest current about her, apart from politics and the trappings of the art world, was her humanity. That is what stamped itself, without boots on the ground, all over the map.

Ironically, her portrait is less idealized than her true image

To see an interview with Salma Hayek, go to the next post.

Keep Breathing My Mother In

"Breathing" from Never Forever

Long before Lady Gaga showed up to award shows in egg coffins, Kate Bush was spinning inside a plastic womb complete with a gigantic umbilical cord. This song, "Breathing" is about the earth as mother, and how we are poisoning its air. In her music video from 1980, she makes it clear that radioactivity is our biggest threat. Now, it seems that we are instead harming everything by degrees, through the use of toxic chemicals to solve our problems.

Although her performance art has always been a large part of her career, I actually prefer this stripped down live rendition, below, where we can focus on the eerie and ethereal quality of her voice, which is more than enough to deliver the message behind her words. She intimately shares her feelings about Earth, calling her "my beloved." It seems even more important to hear this now, when we are coming more perilously close to turning "Beloved Mother" into our planet's epitaph.

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At other times, we can also rejoice that we are part of the earth and its beauty as well. I don't know how it was possible to turn a song about a couple in the midst of childbirth into a popular hit, without it being sentimental or twangy. But she did it, creating and performing with the raw energy of fear, uncertainty, and also sadness, as the old life of youth gives way to the new parental one of tenderness and gratitude. It sends chills through me every time.

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Music and Lyrics by Kate Bush from The Sensual World

Pray God you can cope.

I stand outside this woman's work,

This woman's world.

Ooh, it's hard on the man,

Now his part is over.

Now starts the craft of the father.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.

I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking

Of all the things I should've said,

That I never said.

All the things we should've done,

That we never did.

All the things I should've given,

But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go,

Make it go away.

Give me these moments back.

Give them back to me.

Give me that little kiss.

Give me your hand.

(I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.

I know you have a little life in you yet.

I know you have a lot of strength left.)

I should be crying, but I just can't let it show.

I should be hoping, but I can't stop thinking

Of all the things we should've said,

That were never said.

All the things we should've done,

That we never did.

All the things that you needed from me.

All the things that you wanted for me.

All the things that I should've given,

But I didn't.

Oh, darling, make it go away.

Just make it go away now.

Kate Bush was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Music in 2013. She received the award by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.

Dedicated to Steffanie, who first introduced me to this wonderful artist in her prime.