-The Star Has Wept Rose-Colour-
The star has wept rose-colour in the heart of your ears,
The infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back
The sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
And Man bled black at your royal side.
-Arthur Rimbaud
On the contents of this entry of Turfing, September 3rd, 2009…
I am featuring Brendan Perry, and Arthur Rimbaud today on this little outing. Brendan Perry as you may or may not remember was 1/2 of Dead Can Dance, along with Liza Gerrard. Liza is usually the one that is recognized by most people, as her vocalizations (one couldn’t really call it singing as there were no lyrics usually on her part.) Brendan, on the hand was, and is a most fascinating singer. His choice of materials make it all the better IMPOV. Brendan is soon to release his first album in ten years, “Ark”. I am beyond excited! You’ll find his new song “Utopia” at the end of this entry. Enjoy!
What can be said about Arthur Rimbaud that hasn’t been said? I have been coming back to his works for some 35 years, and I swear that I have read everything, and maybe it is the passing of time, much of it seems new and oh so fresh. I used to read him in the flat in L.A. off of Westwood Blvd, above the dance studio (where Toni Basil rehearsed – no big deal, she was less than nice) and next to the daycare where all the wild parrots from West L.A. would congregate in the evening. Amazing light, golden, suffused, sitting on the top of the steps, reading Rimbaud, in the original French and the English translation(s) as well. Rimbaud’s poetry later helped propel me to Europe. His work was so immediate, and full. For awhile, it seemed I couldn’t go anywhere without friends bringing him up in conversations. Rimbaud was what first drew me to Patti Smith’s work funny enough. I was reading an interview and she started raving about him. Well, if anyone could rave about a French 19th century Bohemian poet in a Rock & Roll fluff piece, they were okay with me. In the end though, I thank my friend Michael Conners for turning me on to Rimbaud. Where ever, and who ever you are now Michael, thanks.
A few more words, and I will let you explore this entry….
Tomorrow, the 4th is a signifier for me. It marks another revolution around Sol for yours truly. I am happy to say after all the wackiness earlier in the year that the next will be more creative and outreaching. I feel it oh, I do. September the 4th is also my Father & Stepmother’s 45th wedding anniversary as well. I wish them all the best, and I thank them for all the love and caring they have shown over the years. They are pretty marvelous people.
This last note is about the two links immediately below… “Teeming With Gods”, and “The Story Told 39, Errrr… 43 Years Ago”. These are links to the adventure that led to my first LSD experience so many years ago. I have decided to honour this occasion every year that I remember to do so…. I am now taking on the task of writing up my second trip, and some other adventures. Hold me to it, please. 80)
The Story Told 39, Errrr… 43 Years Ago
(Young Gwyllm a month or so before heading to the Bay Area in summer 1966)
Have a wonderful weekend, and there will be a couple more post in the next few days.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Brendan Perry – Can You Feel It?
Patrick Kavanagh Quotes
The Story of Oisín
Rimbaud In The Fall…Poetry
Brendan Perry – Utopia
Rimbaud Quotes…
Artist: Daniel Gabriel Rossetti
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Brendan Perry – Can You Feel It?
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Patrick Kavanagh Quotes:
“A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.”
“Malice is only another name for mediocrity.”
“What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.”
It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities — life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.
To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields – these are as much as a man can fully experience.
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I prefer the poem, but at this point it is a wee long for an entry… Still this is the tale in a nutshell.
(Oisin & Niamh – Bojana Dimitrovski)
The Story of Oisín
By Skip Ellison © 2000
Cest: Question – Who was Oisín? Ni Ansa: Not Hard!
Oisín was the son of Finn mac Cumhaill, leader of the Fianna. Now Oisín had experienced many adventures in his life and so there are many stories told of him. I start my story today with the birth of Oisín.
Finn mac Cumhaill was out hunting one day. His hounds, a large pack that ALWAYS ran down their prey, ran down a doe that was strange in many ways. First of all, only two of the dogs, Bran and Sceolang, caught the doe, then the dogs refused to harm her! They just held her until Finn arrived. Second while they were chasing the doe, neither Finn nor his men could catch up with them. And when they finally caught the doe, they were on the ‘Hill of Allen.’ A very magical place. As Finn approach, as none of the rest of his men could, a strange and magical thing happened!
The doe spoke to him! She said, “I am Sadb, a woman of your tribe enchanted by the Druid Fer Doirich. Finn immediately gave her his protection and tells all his men, waiting at the bottom of the hill, to leave. As soon as they are gone, another wondrous thing happens! The doe turns back into a woman. Finn and Sadb spend the night together and as usually happen with these tales, the next morning she is a woman, not a doe. They have fallen in love during the night and soon marry. Soon, Sadb is with child and Finn goes back to traveling with the Fianna! As soon as that happens, Sadb turns back into a doe!
In a little while, nine moons or so, Sadb knew that she is about to give birth. While still in the form of a doe, she goes back to Finn and ANOTHER amazing thing happens! She gives birth to a human baby boy, which she leaves for Finn to find under a rowan tree. His name is Oisín, which means ‘Little deer’ in Irish. Finn finds him and knows that Oisín is his son and raises him until he is seven years old.
He then sent Oisín, out to foster parents. When Oisín is in his very early teens, he returns to the Fianna and asks to join them. He undergoes the challenges, running through a forest without disturbing the hair on his head, plucking a thorn out of his foot while running and running under a branch no taller that his knees while the rest of the Fianna are chasing him, as well as being buried in sand up to his waist and avoiding all the spears thrown at him by the rest of the band.
Soon Oisín was the leader of one of the bands of the Fianna. His fame grew as he led his band through the land. Answering the needs of the people by doing good deeds, his fame soon grew as his band lived off he land. He was content in what he did and couldn’t imagine any other way of life!
And then magic happened! As Oisín was sitting by the shore of the sea one day, a queen from the Fairyland, Niamh Chinn Óir, Niamh of the golden Hair, looked across the seas and saw Oisín sitting by the shore. She thought that he was the most beautiful and wondrous man that she had ever seen. She knew right then that she wanted him to be her lover.
She rode across the waves on her magical white horse and stopped before Oisín as he sat by the sea. She said to him “You are the most wondrous man I have ever seen. Come with me to my home across the sea and be my lover. My land is the most delightful land of all that there are under the sun; the trees are stooping down with fruit and with leaves and with blossom. Honey and wine are plentiful there; no wasting will come upon you with the wasting away of time; you will never see death or lessening. You will get feasts, playing and drinking; you will get sweet music on the strings; you will get silver and gold and many jewels. You will get everything I have said and many gifts beyond ken which I have no leave to tell.”
Oisín sat there in wonder for a minute and though about what she had told him. If he went with her, what would happen to his people? What would happen to the world that he knew? Could he give up ALL that had made he happy so far for HER? He told her “I need time to think. This is an answer that will change my whole life. I beg of you, for the sake of my heart, give me until the morning to decide.” And she did. She rode away over the waves to her land, only to return in the morning.
All night long, Oisín thought about his land and people. Who can know the thoughts running through his mind? He thought about traveling the countryside with the Fianna. He thought about the people we would NEVER see again. What a night it must have been for him! What was he willing to give up for Niamh? Did he sit by the seashore and think of all the things he would never see? Did he only look forward to the pleasures he would find in Tir na n’Og, the Land of the Young? Who can know the thoughts running through his mind?
In the morning, Niamh came back and asked him once again, “Will you travel with me to my land? Will you join with me as my lover?” Oisín answered, “I will. I have thought long through this night, about that which I must give up and about that which I will gain, but in truth, the answer came from within. Seeing you I knew that we would have to be together! There was no other answer! Take me with you to your land and let me be with you forever, my love!”
They mounted upon Niamh’s horse and rode off over the waves. It seemed like only a short time they rode, but to mortals on this world, it was a very long time. When they came to Tir na n’Og, it was everything that Niamh had promised. Oisín would fight every day, feast every night and each night, he and Niamh would become one! And they next day it would happen all over again! Perfect bliss did he know! He bore two sons and a daughter to Niamh.
As we know, time passes differently in the land of Faerie than it does in the land of men. After 300 mortal years, but only a few months in Faerie, Oisín found that he missed traveling with the Fianna. He missed his old friends. He found that more than anything else in the world; he wanted to be with them.
One day, he told Niamh, “I miss my companions in the Fianna. Can I go back to see them for just a few days?” She said, “Time passes differently here than it does in Eire. What has seemed like months to you has been centuries there. All your friends have been gone for a long time. Please stay with me and don’t go back!”
And Oisín replied “But it will only be for a day! I need to see for myself that what you say is true.” Niamh relented, what else could she do? But she said ” you can only go on one condition, no matter WHAT happens, you MUST stay on the horse’s back at all times. If you don’t, you will NEVER come back to me! Will you agree to this?” And Oisín agreed.
He mounted on the magical white horse and rode off across the waves. He lands on the shore of Eire near the Hill of Allen. The hill has changed though. It is now abandoned and overgrown. The wide forests that he knew were gone! All that he saw was open pasture land. At first, he though he was in the wrong place, then seeing familiar landmarks, he knew!
He rode until he came to Glenasmole, in modern Co. Wicklow. There he saw a group of men, almost the size of boys to him, trying to rise up a stone. To them, the stone was larger than they could lift together. To him, it was a small stone he could raise with one hand! As he rode up to them, he called out, “Do you know where I can find Finn and the Fianna?” Laughingly they responded, “Finn? He’s just a legend that our grandfathers used to tell us about. There’s no truth to that legend!”
Hurt, he still knew that as a Fianna, he must help them. He called out to them “Do you want a hand!” And again laughingly they responded “Aye, if you think you can help.”
He reached down with one large hand and grabbed the stone and slowly it started to move. It was almost fully raised when the unthinkable happened! The girth on the saddle broke and he fell to the ground! All the years that he had been in fairyland caught up to him in the wink of an eye! His skin wrinkled, his hair turned grey, and all his teeth fell out. The horse immediately ran out towards the sea and disappeared.
The men looked at him in wonder and asked what had happened. He cried out, “All is lost! What have I done! Why would I give up all that I had for one last look at my homeland?” He sat there and wept as the men tried to figure out what had happened.
The story of the man, who had appeared on a magical horse and then miraculously turned old, spread through the land. It finally reached the ears of St. Patrick who knew that he had to talk to this man and try to convert him to Christ.
Within a day, St. Patrick reached him and talked to him. He asked the man to tell him his story. As Oisín told Patrick about Finn and the Fianna, Patrick had his monks write down everything Oisín told him. And a good thing too, for this is where most of the modern knowledge of Finn and the Fianna comes from!
After Oisín had told Patrick the story, Patrick told him that he needed to be baptized in Christ to be saved. Oisín thought for a few moments and then asked Patrick, “What had happened to Finn and the Fianna? Had they been baptized in Christ?” Patrick replied, “No, they were pagan sinners who had died uprepented and had gone to Hell!”
To that, Oisín replied, “Well, if heaven isn’t good enough for Finn and the Fianna, then there is no way that it’s good enough for me!” And with that, he died and joined Finn and the rest of the Fianna in Tir na n’Og, the Land of the Young!
And so ends my tale today of Oisín, the son of Finn mac Cumhaill.
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Rimbaud In The Fall…Poetry
– Sensation –
On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,
Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:
In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.
I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.
I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:
But endless love will mount in my soul;
And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,
Through the countryside – as happy as if I were with a woman.
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– My Bohemian Life –
I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh dear me! what marvelous loves I dreamed of!
My only pair of breeches had a big hole in them.
Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
My stars in the sky rustled softly.
And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart!
—
–
-The Drunken Boat-
As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.
I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.
Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings
The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!
Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carring away both rudder and anchor.
And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;
Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!
I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!
I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!
I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!
I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!
I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas’ horizon, to glaucous herds!
I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!
Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!
I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
– Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.
Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman…
Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!
But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;
Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,
Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;
I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues’ distance
The groans of Behemoth’s rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it’s aged old parapets!
I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
– Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? –
But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!
If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.
I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.
—
– Faun’s Head –
Among the foliage, green casket flecked with gold,
In the uncertain foliage that blossoms
With gorgeous flowers where sleeps the kiss,
Vivid and bursting through the sumptuous tapestry,
A startled faun shows his two eyes
And bites the crimson flowers with his white teeth.
Stained and ensanguined like mellow wine
His mouth bursts out in laughter beneath the branches.
And when he has fled – like a squirrel –
His laughter still vibrates on every leaf
And you can see, startled by a bullfinch
The Golden Kiss of the Wood, gathering itself together again.
—
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From Brendan’s new album, due soon from what I understand: “Ark”, his first in 10 years. I can’t state how excited I am that he has made this move. I always felt that he was the deeper side of DCD, and I would assure you, this is the case. I am usually not a fan of mashups between well known films and music, but this seemingly works…
Brendan Perry – Utopia
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Arthur RImbaud Quotes:
The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.
one single true word: it is, COME BACK. I want to be with you, I love you. If you listen to this you will prove your courage and sincerity. Otherwise, I am sorry for you. But I love you. I kiss you and we’ll see each other again…
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!
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