to my only desire
this is a death looking at you
through the flesh of my song
this is a death looking at you
through the flesh of my song
beauty alone has stirred my soul
and your body, you ask, your body
and your body, you ask, your body
caution, my love,
caution toward this night
of my gaze
caution toward this night
of my gaze
who will surrender
the unicorn asks
unfolding her music
(Selfportrait as The Lady with the Silent Bell,
a fanciful re-reading of the Cluny tapestries)
stunning!!!!
ReplyDeletethat little bell gets around!
ReplyDeletewhy this look of death? why so sad, my friend?
ReplyDeletekhair...here's kenneth clark writing about the tapesries 9which i was fortunate enough to see last summer)
...[a] world in which serious things were done with a sense of play-where even war and theology could become a sort of game.
~
a joust, perhaps?
we all surrender to the beauty you evoke
ReplyDeleteMystical and lyrical. These photos truly beautiful, the words exquisite.
ReplyDeleteI've already died a hundred deaths. One more should only serve to shorten the breaths between us.
ReplyDeleteKiss.
Beautiful images and words, Roxana! Your style already...Portret, sau autoportret?
ReplyDeleteRoxana
ReplyDeleteAnother set of fantastic images (wonderful self-portraits ...)
The first is really powerful ... I like him well
/Gasps/
ReplyDeleteeu m-aş îndrăgosti de mine însămi fără rezerve dacă aş avea asemenea autoportrete. :)
ReplyDeleteJ'aime beaucoup ces photographies qui sont d'une beauté à couper le souffle ! ( je sais le dire aussi ! ! ! ) ...
ReplyDeleteCe regard et ce sourire sont à eux seuls des objets de désir ! A mon seul désir, je crois que je trouve cet auto-portrait magnifique ! La lumière qu'il y a dans ses teux et d'une beauté suréaliste ! Les contrastes illustrent bien tes propos...
En effet, les mots "provocateurs" qui sont associés à ces images correspondent tout à fait pourtant à l'idée et à l'image que je me fais de ce désir que je dirais, inavouable ! Entre la vie et la mort, le noir et le blanc, où se situer ?...
Ahhh ! Mon seul désir serait de n'avoir qu'à mon seul désir le regard de ton regard dans mes yeux ! ! !...
Bises Roxana !
Tes photos sont de toutes beautés, proches d'un art qui n'est pas sans me rappeler les portraits de Klimt et une poésie empruntée à la "Héroic Fantasy" ! ! ! Non, j'exagère un peu pour le dernier ! ! !
Tu es superbe et magnifique !
Encore s'te plait !...:)
Bises Belle Roxana !
A bientôt...:)
îți aduc tăcerea mea
ReplyDeletedar știi că
această tăcere
nu este neatenție --
puls ei este memoria
clopotului care
se trezește în mâna ta
și răsună ca inima
de argint unui inorog
now it's a strange coincidence but unicorn tapestries aren't unfamiliar to me. the bell tho, i must be missing something?
ReplyDeleteIn the depths of winter
ReplyDeleteA shutter opened
On a cold windowframe
At dusk
A woman stood there
Looking out at the night
Lit by white moonlight
Radiant beauty
Shining
In her dark eyes
Weaving messages
Mysterious
Ancient
Secret
Warm
Off in a distant village
A bell rang
The clear tone
Carried on the wind
Across centuries
Across boundaries
Across the universe
===========
And the bell in these lovely images reminded me immediately of a song in which a bell figures...
The Temple of the King...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj3mKYASycg&feature=related
Peace Roxana...
which one is you?
ReplyDeleteUn souvenir...une évocation...
ReplyDeleteWanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet"
Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).
Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?
Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-capped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!
Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').
Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.
My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?
L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita;
Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?
Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.
Officer, officer, there they go--
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.
Officer, officer, there they are--
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out and take cover.
Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust...
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Chapter 25
Bises Roxana...
Giving me the shivers, the hand reaching out with the bell is just perfect. Can't make up my mind which pic is the most effective sometimes I want to say the first then I change my mind and choose the third.
ReplyDeleteLove, the sixth sense.
ReplyDeleteil y a une métaphore ici!
ReplyDeletebonsoir Roxana...
ReplyDeleteun tres beau post ...tant par les photos que par son contenu symbolique...je ne connaissais pas l'histoire de ces tapisseries..
"A mon seul desir .. Selon certains auteurs, cette sixième tapisserie serait l'entendement, vertu qui, avec la vue et l'ouïe, définit les choses de l'esprit, alors que toucher, goût, odorat sont des sens de la matière.
Selon cette théorie, monde matériel et monde spirituel se sont unis dans cet animal fabuleux....la licorne...."
ton âme et ton visage sont de très beaux paysages...
ton regard a l'intensité et la profondeur du velours de la nuit....
prends soin de toi et sois en paix....
je t'embrasse...si tu le veux bien...
Thank you for visiting my blog.
ReplyDeleteIt is illusionary works.
De la Extremul Orient.
Salutări.
the subject has great eye contact with the reader, hauntingly so...
ReplyDeleteLine, thank you!!!
ReplyDeleteMichael, it hasn't left my hand, but if you mean that its silent music travels from heart to heart, then perhaps... i wish it could.
(though on second thought, i think you didn't mean that, it's a far too sentimental interpretation :-)
anon (let's call you anon though in this case you only too lazy to sign up :-P)
i will make a post to answer this question.
i am not sure i can agree with Clark here - there surely was no sense of play in burning those "witches" (do you think such pictures would have been enough for them to condemn the Lady with the silent bell? i am afraid so) - and the terror those people were made to feel in front of the divine punishment, hell and such was much more than we can imagine.
but i know you will idealize this time no matter what :-)
Manuela, you have no idea how touched i am by what you wrote...
ReplyDeletei am so glad you find them so, Lydia... thank you so much!
oh, S.
"Breathe me, love.
Breathe me."
Gabi, multumesc mult. autoportret :-)
ReplyDeleteAdelino, thank you so much, i wasn't sure which one i liked best, but i understand why you call the first one "powerful"...
merc :-) even the silent bell has its song, not only the sirens
(again, i am in awe in front of that drawing)
ah, ora 25! :-) o să vin la Bucureşti pe la începutul lui martie şi atunci o să ai nişte portrete, să sperăm că o să te entuziasmeze la fel de mult ca astea :-)
Jeff :-)
ReplyDeletetu me donnes tant de raisons a me rejouir, la comparaison avec Klimt par exemple - et puis ce que tu ecris ici:
"En effet, les mots "provocateurs" qui sont associés à ces images correspondent tout à fait pourtant à l'idée et à l'image que je me fais de ce désir que je dirais, inavouable ! Entre la vie et la mort, le noir et le blanc, où se situer ?..."
oui, exactement, tu as bien saisi cet entre-deux, cette zone floue entre la vie et la mort ou j'ai place mes images et ce que je voulais evoquer... je t'en suis reconnaissante...
et je vais continuer a experimenter, donc d'autres series ne sont pas exclues :-)
bises, Jeff...
swiss, you miss the "fanciful" in my post :-) i didn't happen to have an unicorn around my house so i had to invent something which could become rich with symbols - now the bell might be such an object, at the crossing of the material and spiritual world... (or so it made sense at that time :-)
James!!! soon you will be able to write an entire post in Romanian - i don't know how you do that.
ReplyDeleteit's really beautiful - i wish i could post the translation but i am not confident enough, you know my English :-) (i know, it seems silly after your writing in Romanian :-).
i especially love this part:
puls ei este memoria
clopotului care
se trezește în mâna ta
și răsună ca inima
de argint unui inorog.
(only one remark: it is " pulsUL ei").
i think it could have been written by a Romanian poet :-)
and you even used the poetic word for unicorn, the slave-borrowed one, "inorog" (so mysterious) - we also have the latin "unicorn", of course...
Seeing the sound,
ReplyDeletehearing the touch,
feeling the light,
thinking the taste...
Able to bring every sense
upside down - thank you.
roxana, hello. I think you're being unfair on poor old anon.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I don't think she is denying the wretchedness, cruelty, and backwardness of that era. But can that be an argument for denying what was of value in the same period-even if it only represented a very small part of the culture?
I mean, the Trenches, the Bomb, the Gulags and the Camps of the last century are hardly an argument against the brilliance of soul, blues, jazz..etc.
I agree with you, though, about all that harping on about fear and hell and punishment. But, again, to be fair, shouldn't we also talk about the flip side-the vision of peace, care, beatitude?
not about idealizing, but about giving due recognition. I think only a dogmatic approach leads us to ignore what is beautiful and valuable in other people's culture.
but, billoo, i totally agree with you here, only i can't relate your explanation to the Clark quote: "serious things were done with a sense of play-where even war and theology could become a sort of game" - i only said that i don't see this sense of play _in_ the serious things, not that it didn't exist, as a "flip-side", as you say (the darker the fear, the more exuberant the carnival explosions).
ReplyDeleteof course i don't know the context of his words and then my reading is forced to be limited.
Robert!
ReplyDeletethis is so exquisitely delightful - a re-writing of the senses parable, more than i could have done it myself in these pictures...
i am so grateful.
Owen, i love this song! i wonder on what legend it is based, once again you have returned me to forgotten fairy tale worlds:
ReplyDeleteThere in the middle of the circle he stands,
Searching, seeking.
With just one touch of his trembling hand,
The answer will be found.
but no answer to be found in my pictures, i am afraid, nor in the silent sound of that bell. and perhaps this is for the better, some things are meant never to be found or understood. and i think it's what you express in your poem as well, that "clear sound" across time and space won't annihilate the mystery of those messages, Ancient, Secret, Warm...
thank you, again and again...
hi again, b-Knight, defender of the poor helpless damsel in distress Anon, to whom i had been unjust :-P
ReplyDeletethe answer is, of course: all and none of them.
well, perhaps you're right. I wonder how much love was thought of a game in those days (with its own rituals and 'prizes')? But maybe love isn't a serious thing anyway.
ReplyDeleteWar, I don't know. but I doubt it was as serious as it became in the 20th century.
It would be interesting to read up on whether (or to what extent) thought itself intermingled with playful elements. Hmm..I really should read huizinga.
b-knight!
ha! you sound like Christopher Robbin knighting old Pooh! :-)
K’line haha, je n’aurais jamais pensé à ça... tant de souvenirs qui s’éveillent maintenant en moi, la première fois quand j’ai lu ce livre, mes émotions d’antan...
ReplyDeleteComment vas-tu ?
Je t’embrasse et pense à toi...
Sorlil, i cannot choose either :-) i am glad you like the hand and the bell, while i was taking the pictures i had many doubts it would work out as desired...
Prospero, dear one, yes.
ReplyDeleteAllan, il y a toujours des métaphores, ça ne dépend que de nous de les découvrir... je viens juste de voir tes nouvelles images,je passerai plus tard pour laisser un petit mot...
ReplyDeleteClo, quelle joie tu m’as faite avec ton petit mot si poétique... oui, l’histoire des tapisseries est très mystérieuse et elle fascine encore tant de gens. il y a beaucoup d’interprétations et moi, j’en ai fait une lecture très libre, peu « orthodoxe ». mais je suis contente que le message de la nuit et de la musique silencieuse ait résonné en toi et je te remercie pour la beauté de tes mots...
et moi-aussi je t’embrasse, en souriant – si tu le permets :-)
ruma, thank you for coming by, your work is exquisite and makes me miss Japan very much...
ReplyDeleteJohn, you are very kind, i am glad you liked them...
white shadows, deeper than the
ReplyDeletesnow
burning into the pages like
faces from another
world
no difference between
the realms
shadow/nonshadow
dissolving in a distant visage
“inorog” … the "poetic" word for unicorn … a very good example of why I have become infatuated with Romanian --- who could imagine a language that even possesses an unpoetic word for unicorn?!
ReplyDeletealso, I want to say out loud what the poem implies … that I love the text as well as the pictures, especially the ending … that I am otherwise stunned into speechlessness by these images … that she commands these illusions one calls the world back into their shadows, as her gaze opens into the timeless and real….
James, you make me smile :-) but yes, Romanian is extremely rich in all its vagueness - imagine that we have three words for "love" - not "passion", "tenderness" etc. - they exist too: just plain love - dragoste, amor, iubire...
ReplyDeletei love to imagine the speechlessness of the inorog (as an alter ego of the poet?)...
Since when is love "just plain" ?
ReplyDeleteI think not...
:-)
Sutton, your lines touch me immensely.
ReplyDeleteno difference between
the realms
shadow/nonshadow
what can i more desire with my images, then evoke this ambiguous state of being/non-being at the same time? this lies at the core of what i am when i photograph (and perhaps beyond that, perhaps that is only a reflection of something which is inherently
"me"?)
Owen, it's true, i get your point :-) but i was merely struggling to explain some Romanian words and couldn't find a better way to make the difference between "love" and "passion" or "tenderness" (ah, language, and its lack of precision)...
ReplyDeletetrès beau, très sensuelle aussi tu es !
ReplyDeletemerci, Karine, de tout coeur :-)
ReplyDeletelook cold.. :pp
ReplyDeletePeter :-P
ReplyDeleteBeautiful! The angles and lighting are really artful. The gentle yet powerful contours really bring out the mysterious beauty of that face.
ReplyDeleteBy the way I see that woman in a lot of your photos. A friend? If she's as stunningly gorgeous as she looks in the photos you take of her, I can see why you use her as a model so often.
A.Z. Foreman, thank you for visiting and your words, as i am a huge admirer of your blog and work, i can only say i am very happy and honoured that you stopped here for a while!
ReplyDeletethe answer to your question is however hidden in plain light, that is in the post itself, if you read it carefully :-)