at Black Sun's request (backed by Swiss), i give you the Romanian version as well. just in case you wondered about that strange language...
oh, and i have recorded it live with Gentle (who really is Gentle, i had to fight to get that cold voice out of her :-).
but i like the me/Swiss version much better, it's much more dramatic - i guess because of the greater contrast due to the female/male split.
oh, and i have recorded it live with Gentle (who really is Gentle, i had to fight to get that cold voice out of her :-).
but i like the me/Swiss version much better, it's much more dramatic - i guess because of the greater contrast due to the female/male split.
poem 2 romanian
tr. Roxana
spoken by: Roxana & Gentle
and a sepia bonus of pictures:
un seul mot, c'est magnifique!!!
ReplyDeleteLove it! :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you,roxana, and do thank gentle gentle as well.
I don't know what a 'true' Welsh 'accent' is or even what a Welsh accent is, but here is a voice from the dark ones, a voice that is the Welsh style of soul.
Interesante versuri. Fotografiile imi plac in special 1 si 7. Succes!
ReplyDeletePaste Fericit! Happy Easter!
so now every romanian women are gorgeous in shape, profound in esthetics and matured in voice.. :p
ReplyDeletesounds like Italian mixed with Latin.. I've never seen this kind of lovely project.. mine used be with work breakdown structure, people management, risk mangement, issue management, time-tagged deliverables, couple of thousands pages of final report, knowledge transfer, and seeking next project opportunities for sure for more revenue.. pretty boring and tremendous stress through the whole project duration..
untold stories? rather unfolding ones ... (& the romanian voices are as tantalizingly mysterious as the sepia images)
ReplyDeleteRomanian sounds like a rather complex language!
ReplyDeleteThe 6th pic down is particularly beautiful.
are dreptate omami...magnific !
ReplyDeleteo putere sublima, o frumusete jumate primitiva, jumate rafinata...
greu de gasit cuvintele....speechless...
(iti urez Paste fericit !)
omami :-)
ReplyDeleteb loves it!!! :-)
ReplyDeletegentle gentle will be told this...
(and thanks)
Gabriel, Paste fericit si tie, scuza-ma ca nu am apucat sa raspund mai inainte, dar deh...
ReplyDeleteMultumesc :-)
how i love excessive generalizations, Peter :-P
ReplyDeletebut tell me, have you come to this conclusion about romanian women being "gorgeous in shape, profound in esthetics" only after looking at my pictures? because there is one very old art theory stating that all art is lie, so beware beware, not even my pictures can be trusted :-)
re mature in voice, i assume you mean Gentle here, since other readers write to me letters telling me that my voice is like that of a child pretending it is all grown-up :-)
i would say that romanian sounds like italian mixed with russian :-) (we have a quite important slave influence in the pronounciation).
(and Peter, thank god you are still alive after you had to go through such projects :-)
ffflaneur, tantalizing? i like this :-)
ReplyDeleteSorlil, it should sound like this, because it is really the most difficult latin language :-)
ReplyDeleteCornel, multumesc!!! si eu sper ca ai avut sarbatori fericite...
ReplyDeletela jumatate intre primitivism si rafinament, ce mi-as putea dori mai mult decat o astfel de apreciere? :-)
But in the telling of it make sure you quote me correctly.
ReplyDeleteRoxana.. secret of looking young might be my childish way of life style.. full of curiosity all the time, never be trapped in everyday routine seeking and/or endowing new meaning over the seemingly same day, same street or same people.. Technically speaking, preference for making journey ,it doesn't matter whether it is physical or logical, rather than staying in some place has been making my bio-cells confused and retarding the bio-clock of my body. Or since I've been air travelling a lot with high speed,I might have benefitted slightly with the slow running time dimension.. according to Einstein's theory of relativity.. :p
ReplyDeleteI trust your mind and soul which never age and free from everything..
And I appreciate the fragmented pieces of whispering or screaming I could hear conveyed over the set of acoustic waves, combination of letters, composion of scores or series of view-frames under the name of art. I am sure that those are free from being trusted.. since it's just revealing of the state of being. I love your state..roxana.. :p
There are psychologists who see a defining moment in the birth of the concept of self (self-image) in the moment when the child suddenly understands that the person in the mirror is me --- that the self is, somehow, two. Still other psychologists look into a more distant past and see this bifurcation as the source of the “great leap” about 30,000 years ago that created language and therefore everything else that is “human.” The human is born from this split, the otherness of the “je.” (And you, I think, keep on making yourself again from this division….)
ReplyDeleteConsciousness is always already con-scientia, knowledge of the other who is “with” and “within.” (Et peut-êtrre, dans le sous-terrain du langage, que ce soit un savoir du con, notre connaissance, notre naissance du con, qui est aussi divisé en deux?.(Selon qui, Irigaray?))
So complex, everything that is brought into play here --- how many divided selves are we seeing? The face in the photos, the face in the mirror, the gaze of the photographer, the gaze of the (multiple) audience? And time? These things are true, perhaps, of any photography, but this photography brings them to the foreground, this is its poetics….
Sorry to be so abstract, so theoretical, in my fumbling way. These pictures and your poem and the recordings, the whole, both “je est un autre” posts, are ravishingly beautiful --- but they also get at something that is so seriously basic, I think, to everything I’ve ever seen here, to every aspect of your art, that I have to pause and think about these things first, before I can come back and say more….
Ce frumoase sunt, a 3a mi-ar place sa o am pe perete!!
ReplyDeletePeter, than i should think that i look young too, because i share the same 'childish way of life' :-)
ReplyDeleteand i am grateful for the deep words you have found to describe my little project (yes, 'deep' as opposed to 'shallow' :-P).
"revealing of the state of being" - this is all i care about when i make pictures. this and beauty.
James, i am profoundly - but can you understand this? profoundly - touched - oh no, i need another word - by the trouble and time you took to comment like this on my pictures. as always, the first thing that comes to my mind is: omg, i don't deserve this...
ReplyDeleteyou know that i am not able to talk much about my pictures, or what i do here on this blog - i can't (and don't wnat to) analyze myself the way you do, and that is why i am even more gratfeul that you make this effort of doing that here. it enriches me so much...
(i hadn't thought about the lacanian mirror-I, because i have never been able to like him, i have always preferred to stick with Jung myself, yes)
(have you understood the romanian version? :-)
edith, ti-o trimit!!!!!!
ReplyDeletescrie-mi pe mail si da-mi adresa, daca vrei intr-adevar :-)
Lacan --- one of those writers I enjoy in part because I’m always in an adversarial relationship with him. What he says about mirrors feels right to me --- but much of the rest of him is silly or indecipherable. And I wanted him to say that vampires are what they are because they can’t see themselves in mirrors, that they can become wolves because that don’t have this human doubling inside of them, I wanted him to say what happens when twins stand together before a mirror…. Maybe he does, and I just haven’t seen it, or don’t remember….
ReplyDeleteI can get most of the Romanian version of the poem, and it is incredible this way. You and Gentle read beautifully together --- similar enough for the differences-within-likeness to be a “mirroring” --- something wild and primal about the reading, too, voices assembling themselves out of the darkness, together, finding each other….
:-)
ReplyDeletei love the astute way in which you bring the vampires in :-) but this makes me think of another example of what you imply here: Peter Schlemihl's legend of the shadow loss. with that loss (and the shadow is also the mark of our humanity, the split, as much as the mirror image), Schlemihl cannot belong to the human kind anymore.
James, it is incredible that you can really understand what we say in that poem... i'm so happy you love it :-)
of course, b :-)
ReplyDelete(sorry, i seem to have forgotten to 'accept' your comment :-)
So, I’m back again, already :-) But is it endlessly fascinating, isn’t it? I think you already know the sort of thing I’m likely to care about, so you aren’t surprised….
ReplyDeleteSo many shadows, so many dopplegänger in literature and art and films … I wonder, is there really anything else? This split and the doubling are really, deep down, the same thing, I think, or at least very similar … It is the big paradox, that this richness that makes possible everything we are is also a brokenness (Eve/Adam).
And I was going to say that we have strayed far from talking about your posts --- but no, we are still only on the surface of your posts.
The mirror is (also, but not so much in your pictures) a metaphor for schizophrenia. We look in the mirror and make adjustments to the image in order to change the way others see us. And we are terrified that the image in front of us (or the shadow we cast, you might like that better, you Jungian) is going to do something we never intended, to start off on its own --- such an old cliché in horror film (at least back to Dreyer’s Vampyr (Vampyr!)), but effective.
A poem from Rilke:
Femme devant sa glaceEntre elle et sa glace,
grâce à son cœur pensif,
il naît un peu d’espace
légèrement portatif
qui presque lui appartient.
Ce subtil va-et-vient
d’une inépuisable image
fait à son regard aérien
une cage.
C’est là, peut-être, qu’il chante
sa clarté la plus pure.
Seul. Pour prendre mesure
de la liberté provocante.
no, James, i am not surprised :-)
ReplyDeleteand i agree too that we are still talking, in some way, about my pictures. at least this one:
http://roxanaghita.blogspot.com/search?q=rossetti
could be seen as a metaphor for schizophrenia, at least i see it this way because i know it is made against the mirror (i don't know if it is clear for somebody else, though). when i was about 13 i think, i made another terrifying discovery about my eyes (yes, another one :-): looking straight into my eye in the mirror, i suddenly noticed that the iris contracted and expanded very quickly, becoming as small as a dot and then as big as the entire pupil. i was seized by an uncontrollable fear that at the next contraction the iris would disappear completely, and i would grow blind. or expand beyond the pupil limits with the same results. i freaked away and my poor grandmother (my parents were not at home) didn't know what to do - she went to a neighbour who was a nurse to ask him for help, because i was trembling all over and crying myself to death. i don't think my parents understood that which was after all a metaphysical fear, they seemed quite annoyed by the fact that the neighbour told them afterwards to take care of me otherwise i would become crazy at some point :-)
thank you for the poem...