[…] Open Link Night this is not my linked poem. That poem, Velleity (Lucid Dreaming) can be found here: http://chromapoesy.com/2012/04/21/velleity-lucid-dreaming/. Thank you. Wikipedia […]
[…] Open Link Night this is not my linked poem. That poem, Velleity (Lucid Dreaming) can be found here: http://chromapoesy.com/2012/04/21/velleity-lucid-dreaming/. Thank you. Wikipedia […]
Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog. from Ferdydurke
I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.
Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it… Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being – subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say ‘I’ I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor.
All the things that really matter to us are impossible…Writing poetry is impossible. I don’t know how to write a poem. A poem – there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don’t know. There is so much that comes out of what we don’t know and what we don’t have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. – from Doing the Impossible
Chromapoetica
It seems the real work happens when we sleep. We are unaware of all these things that take place. So important for our mental and emotional wellbeing is sleep. I notice in myself how my mood is dependent on the amount of sleep I get. The music — the notes are fast and busy, very lively, almost chaotic, befitting how so many things need to get done before the body wakes up. 😀
Yes, I suffered for 15 years from chronic insomnia (thankfully it ended 8 years ago) and know well the detriment that comes from too little sleep. Thanks so much for coming by to watch :)!
Beautiful, Anna. Love the mix of paintings, words, and piano. Is that you playing?
No, I do play, not as well as I sing, but that’s a computer program called Finale. I use it to compose pieces (from symphonic to opera) and hope to one day be able to afford to pay musicians to play my work. Thank you so much for the feedback and visit.
Also, I wrote it this evening so I couldn’t learn it that quickly – :D!
So you compose piano pieces and the computer plays them? That’s so cool! Are you familiar with Noteflight? Sounds like a similar program. Check this out: http://vincegotera.blogspot.com/2011/10/riding-bicycles-in-italian-countryside.html … couldn’t get the guitar to sound right but the other parts are okay.
I really like your work, which you know. But adding spoken word pieces and more than one or two slideshows with your artwork is really starting to spoil us. Everything is so good, love the memory and the symbols. Awesome work. Thanks
Well, I promised myself that if I was going to do NaPoWriMo I had to satisfy myself first, meaning lots of experimentation, creativity, philosophy, science and art so I’d make it through. I normally write every day but not for an audience. Also, I don’t enjoy doing anything unless I’m going to be challenged :). It’s very good to hear that the quality hasn’t suffered from the volume required this month.
ah this is awesome anna…love how you combine music and art with your words…wow..you’re spoiling us…smiles..and i didn’t know that you’re also painting..very cool
Thanks Claudia, the images are all details of one painting called An Inevitable Process of Biology. Y’all are worth spoiling :).
this is gorgeous, it feels like a dream… you are a rennaissance woman, and everything you do is filled with beauty.
Thank you Kelly, I’m speechless and beaming!
so much that goes on while our eyes are closed…probably realized the most when we do not get enough of it honestly…really enjoyed the art and the music was very soothing…perhaps a nap now…smiles.
Haha, nice, I hope it’s restorative :).
I enjoyed this so much, Anna! Really gorgeous. An explosion of colour, words, and sound. No wonder it made my back tingle…lol!
You’ve undone me again ; )
-Eva
Ah Eva, and now you’ve made my day again :)!
So so nice- I always love the way you blend picture and poetry…and the vivid images here went perfectly with the subject. I completely related to the subject matter…sleep as the consolidator, the deconstructer of emotion, that place where all of our daily mess gets filtered and strained (at least this is what it said to me!) personally…I find this world scary…sometimes I don’t want things to get processed because I have no control over it, and sometimes thoughts scare me, but I guess in the end….it’s all healthy- just like we need sleep to restore our muscles, so too we need sleep to repair our minds
Apparently we spend most of our dreaming rehearsing ways to confront our fears, understand the emotional context of our lives, and creating an elaborate virtual world so we can practice living into our future. Thanks again for your nightmare prompt at dVerse, I think this poem wouldn’t exist without it. I appreciate your thoughtful feedback.
sorry to say this, but I’m too ADHD to stick with this…I’d rather have read it.
I loved the music though, from start to finish.
apollo and the two muses
Thanks for your honesty.
Love the artwork and the combination of music and short poetic thoughts. Some of the words were hard to read in the contrast with the artwork’s colors, but I liked how the added meaning to the very interesting designs you had.
Thank you, I’m experimenting with how much is too much text for these multimedia pieces and how to find music and art that deepens meaning, not detracts.
love this combination of music, art and poetry, much much enjoyed 🙂 i’m really interested in composing (am a self-taught pianist), thank you for mentioning the program you use.
Thank you very much, happy composing!
when are me, you and Douglas Hofstadter getting together next ? 😀
art for me is war…
for you its something completely different,
yet i’m sure it serves the same purpose;
i admire the difference,
the majesty and the elasticty
of the
act.
thanks anna 🙂
We no longer need to get together now that we understand that our consciousness, our ‘I’ is distributed among all our brains as part of the strange loop. It makes meeting up redundant :).
Seriously I try to go to war sometimes, I wrote Dystopia earlier in the month as a scathing philosophical rant using Kant and Isaiah Berlin with references to Pol Pot and a heap of fetid dead that one reader deemed a ‘polysyllabic goober’ so it hardly held the awe of a WMD. I guess my army is a bit too cute to terrorize the populace, like an platoon of brightly colored baby pandas – ha!
That you admire my art’s divergence, how its purpose has commonalities with yours feels like respect and for that I’m immensely appreciative.
grand piece of art… I’m not too much a fan of sleeping (only do it cus I have to. haha) but that piano… wooo… beautiful… I wanted to take a nap at my desk!
Thanks Anthony, resist the nap :).
You have such talent Anna. I loved watching this, the colours of the artwork were so vivid. I’ve had many lucid dreams so can really identify with this.
Excellent piece.
Thank you, wonderful you have lucid dreams. I really prefer having dreams where I can be the director and am empowered to act.
Gorgeous. Poetry spoken in the language of music. Exactly what I needed to melt in this ‘thank goodness work is over’ evening. Wonderful paintings as well. I am bookmarking this post for the next time I need to drift. Thank you so much.
Thank you Beth, so glad to hear it was needed and will be helpful again. Music to my ears :).
love how you combine music and art with your words. Great work, anna.
Thank you ayala, I always appreciate your encouragement :).
You are such an artist. Whenever you go on the road, let me know, so I can sneak in and witness your artestry in person. Not being able to sleep is not a treasure. I’m glad to read you can sleep now. As busy as ur mind must be though, it’s a wonder to me that you can sleep. You take thought places I have not visited yet. Very inspiring again! And thank you for your kind comment. It was the best line on my page, my poem included:) at least if they read your comment they will witness some talent on my page.
Thank you Henry, you wouldn’t have to sneak in, you’d get a backstage pass :). Part of why I love to share work is to take a journey with people to places they haven’t been to and it’s why I engage other artists like you to see the world anew through a fresh perspective. I appreciate your willingness to explore and am thrilled to know you find it inspiring. I think that’s one of the highest purposes of creativity, to encourage and inspire others to engage their own creative process. Also, you’re poem was by far the best thing on your page!!!
Fantastic piece. Hope to hear an audio voice-over! I think the reading of this poem would be delightful.
Thank you, nice to meet you. I have done a few spoken word pieces this month as part of NaPoWriMo. The useless movie maker doesn’t allow me to use two audio tracks so it’s unlikely these multimedia pieces will have voice over any time soon :).
I used Audacity to edit my recordings. Layered multiple sounds/pieces. Very good tool, and free. Recommend checking it out! I commiserate over the movie maker…At least it puts things together for us, simply 🙂
Thanks! I’ll look into the program. Also, my favorite Shure microphone is off being repaired (it didn’t fair well the last time I fell down the stairs :o) so I’m stuck with the awful headset mic :).
Oh, that’s unfortunate! I spoke to a gentleman and fellow blogger that said there are apps for smartphones that work very well for sound recording as well—-I have yet to try this. I’m working with two condenser mics I used for instrument mixing back in my musician days. They pick up EVERYTHING, however…so if you listen to my recordings, you’ll probably hear a car faintly passing by as I’m speaking lol. No avoiding it where I live.
Hi Anna, lovely thoughtful poem and I especially like the painting. It makes sense that you are using details of a single painting as there is a great deal of coherency , which works very well, especially given the short line. Music lovely too. Should try to learn. K.
Thank you, I appreciate you caught the logic behind using one painting. I will certainly work on learning the piece, along with the one I composed for Ice Floe as I so enjoyed creating them. Your feedback is always helpful.
Interesting compilation of the arts. Is it different parts of the same painting? If so, metaphorically, how perfect!
Ah. I’d do well to read the other comments first. I see now the answer to my question 🙂
🙂 well, it’s a lot of additional reading, I would know; so glad you appreciate the metaphor!
A great combination, you really outdid yourself this time. Hate the nights where I toss and turn and can’t sleep, just leaves me blah the rest of the day.
Thank you for the compliment Pat! I used to sometimes only get two hours right before a big trip which was the worst, jet lag on top of exhaustion. I hope you don’t toss and turn often.
Multimedia is the NOW – and within the now you create a piece full of renaissance – throughout the assemblage of words, textured abstractions, and cascading music I was transported to Florence with the color of sky, buildings, the Duomo and the spectacular sunsets scribed on every frame. Knowing your work is a revelation of art – its history and its present!
Thank you Gay, I dream of Italy, one day perhaps. You always brighten my day with your kind encouragement!
You would rejoice in Florence!
I wanted to go in college for a semester but I was completely self-supporting so I couldn’t save up enough to go, one of my major regrets in life. It’s on my must see list! One of my favorite movies/books is Room With A View; I was 12 when the movie came out and I so identified with Lucy Honeychurch (not her wealth and status obviously but her hunger for life tempered by the desire to be and be seen as good).
I loved it too. I watched it again after I went to Italy. Rome is beautiful and all the things they say, but I fell in love with Tuscany. Couldn’t leave without a few days in Paris & London. So much of me lives there too. How is it the majority of my days are spent in Texas? Well I love it too–in a completely different way.
It’s fantastic, Anna! Utilizing the multi-media at its best. Combining music and verse, slide shows etc! You are going places Ma’am.
Hank
Thank you Hank, happy you enjoyed it!
I’m amazed at how many dimensions of creative energy you pull together so many times. This really exhibits your full spectrum of creative energy. Impressive work again Anna.
Thank you, that’s a lovely thing to say!
Such an impressive mixture of music, art and poetry. I love how each works well individually with the theme of lucid dreams, but how well they work together!
I always appreciate your visits and encouragement Samuel.
Interesting compilation you have choreographed…well done.
Thank you C Rose.