on the under side of things

A curse is written

On the under side of things

Behind the smiling mirror

And behind the smiling moon

Follow follow.

T.S. Eliot

..

the mirror and beyond

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the characters whom you met. This singularity is like the dominant note of every moment of existence; in each moment of life, the life principle itself is unique.
The artist therefore tries to grasp that principle and make it incarnate, new each time; and each time he hopes, though in vain, to achieve an exhaustive image of the Truth of human existence. The quality of beauty is in the truth of life, newly assimilated and imparted by the artist, in fidelity to his personal vision.


Andrei Tarkovsky, from Sculpting in Time

There's another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion — these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door. . . The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real.


from a letter of a young girl to her mother, in which she writes about Tarkovsky's films, as quoted in Sculpting in Time




..

je est un autre (colours 1)

This is the first post of a longer project on which i have been working, entitled je est un autre ('i is another', a famous quote from Rimbaud). It deals with the double and the other, symbolizing the multiplicity of the self and its thousand refractions (not a surprise, i hear you say :-).








There is also a poem which i once wrote on the same topic. And thanks to the endless creativity interplay on this web, the poem evolved into a 'poem for two voices', a gift that the ever amazing swiss (am i quoting you here, Joanne ? :-) made me soon afterwards. He echoed each line of mine with his words (an answer, which leads to many other questions - forever open):

the untold stories

those stories

plunging their roots

growing out of you

into the bone of

blooming

my heart

uncontrollable

poisonous and hungry

that foliage

the unwritten sisters and

that becomes sibling

daughters of mine

child, your flesh

agitating their dark foliage

abundance

in me

unbearable

listen to me you

listen to me

to whose feet my untold

there are stories

stories

washing around you

my unwritten

unheard, un-noticed

bodies of despair command

their loss

me to kneel

forces you to your knees

they put a rope around

chokes the breath

my neck

in your throat

they take my

stuffs your mouth

mouth

with despair

they want revenge

what is it you want

they tear me

to fall

down

to go

in search of

what?

hear me out you

listen!

to whose feet I don’t

i am not

The strange dialogue which emerged therefrom compelled the readers to hear it spoken, as all poetry should basically be: living, breath-born word. Joanne-of-a-thousand-skills made a marvellous first audio version, to which you can listen here:


http://www.garageband.com/mp3player?|pe1|S8LTM0LdsaSgY1C1Ymk


Of course, being very curious myself and swiss - i dare say - not very far from this when it comes to playing with different materials, we couldn't refrain from wondering how we - the humble authors :-) - would enact it. If you are curious, you can listen to us here, but i must warn you: firstly, Joanne is a pro and we can't even dream of comparing ourselves with her and secondly, this is my first attempt at editing audio (even mixing our voices was a hell of a task for me). and we didn't even know that one needs 'stereo mikes' for something like this, as i was told later. So don't be too harsh on me/us :-)
(i have the courage to let you listen to this only because swiss liked it very very much)




poems for two voices, poem 2 (the unwritten stories)
Roxana & Swiss


Oh, and here is a slideshow for the ones who are really hungry for images (click on the small slideshow icon for full screen view):