Late Night Post #19 : Justice

Emblemata Nova by Andreas Friedrich. Engravings by Jaques de Zettre. Published by Lucas Jennis in Frankfurt, 1617

Arcade Fire - Culture War

     What if you could make right something that is unjust, what if you can, from the beginning, stop the injustice to take place. But... what is injustice? Having your rights trampled on, this is injustice, being cheated, this is unjust. The world as it is revolves around one main thing, the strong trample the rights and the lives of the weak. Considering we are all brothers and sisters this is the ultimate injustice. However not all consider themselves our brothers and so they walk on others like walking on weeds or better said, they themselves are weeds.

   This isn't a complicated issue, true things usually end up being simple, the difficulty lies in positioning yourself correctly in order to see the problem objectively. From the treatment of other nations to the mundane examples of violence among people we, humans, place ourselves on the lowest step of the ladder that leads to the heavens, the step closest to hell. But how can we climb upwards when everyone seem to go down, in waves after waves. Unsurprisingly, this has absolutely no influence.

Soundtrack of a revolution [Top 10]

     The word revolution today implies many different things for different people. While most are just numb to the idea of having a heart that shouts with a voice just as loud, there are people who for whatever reason seek change. Security agencies which gained an almost unprecedented degree of power in democratic societies know all about it. Why rebel and against what? Most countries on the map today are the product of rebellions and revolutions.

     The songs I am presenting now to you are not arranged in a strict value hierarchy, it would be a difficult job to do such a thing objectively. I instead took a series of factors into consideration like the attitude, the depth of the lyrics, the history of the band/artist regarding such themes, success to the public and overall artistic impression.

Francois Dufault [French composer 17th century]

Suite in A minor by Francois Dufault

Theodoor Rombouts
The Lute Player, c. 1620

The 17th century was a time of great development in France but also of conflicts and revolts. Cardinal Richelieu, minister of Louis XIII began a series of projects to strengthen France militarily and culturally, the methods he used were not always to most peaceful and pleasant. In December 1642 he died and after five months Louis XIII also died in Paris leaving the country in the hands of minister Cardinal Mazarin and king Louis XIV who continued in the trend set during the first half of the century.

Regarding Francois Dufault not much remained except for twelve lute compositions and a few individual works in manuscripts. His works are written with a lot of harmonic freedom. He was born in Bourges around 1604 and died in England probably in the early 1670's. Dufault was a contemporary of Sebastien Bourdon.An excellent article about this composer can be found here.

Drew Darcy and Emika

		Another Duo dedicated to the universal emotion of lust. The hardest to control and the easiest way to descent into the abyss if that is what you wish. The artistic merit of the paintings is overshadowed by the direct subject matter. The music, a soundtrack for the distressed. The whole, a union of feelings.

Emika

Respect the artist, buy the album

Emika was born on 8 January 1986 and her real name is Ame Jolly. She is an English singer of Czech origin who at present resides in Berlin. After an education in classical music she began to be interested in electronic music offering an input of high quality to the genre. The song is from her second album entitled Dva and released in 2013.

www.emika.co.uk

Drew Darcy

An artist from the United Kingdom, born in Birmingham, who combines his talent in visual arts with music. Of the two arts I found his paintings to be, at the moment, the most expressive. He has an excellent technical ability regarding the use of light and shadow and the rendering of drapery.

www.drewdarcy.co.uk/

Late Night Post #14

Blue Oyster Cult - Les Invisibles (Imaginos : 1988)

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream. / The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars / Did wander darkling in the eternal space, / Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth / Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;. This is how Lord Byron started one of his poems entitled "Darkness".

Countless changes that sometimes might make you feel like swinging blind in the cold emptiness of space, like a pendulum, eating time. The past year was a period of expansion and unforeseen developments. Now we will consolidate and nourish what we fought to achieve.

Austra and Francesca

		Today we will explore a vibrating electronic world envisioned by Austra together with the photo manipulation works of Francesca "Oedipa Drake".

Austra

Austra is a Canadian electronic music band consisting of Katie Stelmanis (vocals, keyboard), Maya Postepski and Dorian Wolf. The song is from their Olympia album released in June 18, 2013 and is entitled "Painful like". What attracted me to this song was its bombastic feel, somehow reminding me of Michael Jackson's "Bad". The vocals are clearly resembling Bjork, but to be fair this vocal style gained some amount of popularity. In case you don't understand the lyrics I've wrote them down for you at the end of the article, after the photo gallery. The song has its charm even without paying much attention to the words.

Respect the band, buy the album. Link: http://www.austramusic.com/

Francesca "Oedipa Drake"

Opulent and extravagant in ideas, combative in rendition and sometimes contemplative, this is how I see "Oedipa" or more exactly this is what I have chosen to see in her. An artist of the digital age, she has chosen a variety of subjects with which to express herself and so doing realized some very impressive works. What particularly caught my attention are "Traveling and Dreaming" and "Waiting at the Airport" so I have situated them at the beginning and the end of her gallery.

Link: DeviantArt page / Her blog

Late Night Post #12 - the Word

Fragment of "St Michael Vanquishing the Devil" by Bonifacio Veronese from c.1530

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" is one of the most beautiful and powerful things I have ever heard. What makes it so interesting is that this power comes from its simplicity which is an opposite mirror of its true complexity, which we can not rationally understand. What we can do is to develop our intuition, to learn to think with the heart, at least from time to time. I can guarantee that once you think with your heart you will forever want to come back to this feeling for it is closer to the truth than any amount of encyclopedic knowledge.

Filler : Cyril Rolando

We are dancing by Cyril Rolando
http://aquasixio.deviantart.com/

Top 10 Romanian Rock

This top 10 of Romanian rock songs was created by taking into account all of the following: artistic merit, popularity, longevity, impact, international potential, personal preferences.

Rock music in Romania has a long but uneven history. Due to the cultural masterplan of the Communist regime prior to 1989 much of what can be described as rock has been heavily censored and tempered. This reluctance to accept the Western cultural wave redirected the creative power of some musicians towards a style that tried to plant its roots in the cultural heritage of Romania. When this was not the case, the regime viewed with distrust the "artistic merits" of the bands in question.

Saturday Special : Notre Dame de Paris 1999

Notre Dame de Paris, French version from 1999

This French language musical debuted in Paris in 1998. Based on the novel published by Victor Hugo in 1831, Luc Plamondon created together with composer Riccardo Cocciante one of the most successful such shows in history. Its popularity grew and versions in other languages soon were produced. This 1999 version remains in my opinion the best because it is the only one which successfully transmits the emotional power of the story.

Late Night Post #11

A bird is singing on a tree branch, might be a sparrow, a messenger of good luck, creativity and joy. She looks at me, I see her beak, she sees my nose and flies away. A pigeon walking on my left stops to peck the ground, another pigeon comes, they meet, touch beak to beak and slowly walk away. The sky, neither cloudy nor clear, some rain drops nevertheless appear. One of these drops hit an ant, how would we be with rain drops the size of cars... I wonder.

There is a world in front of us which we can see with our senses yet few are quite that attentive. A bowl of dirt could be interesting, in fact I find it highly inspirational, many thoughts can have their origin in a simple bowl of dirt.

We tend to believe that good things must come in big boxes with red ribbons of silk. The ribbons are optional but the size is important, either in value or in mass but who can still find happiness in simple things. A bowl of dirt is a small world, a life just waiting to arrive. We should feel joy of having the chance to see the world's beauty, and little by little to renounce our feelings of vanity and greed, for we alone are our tormentors.

From time to time, look at the flowers, the birds and everything; but don't just look because there is God in everything and more so in all the beauties of the world. I guess what I'm trying to say is feel and know the price of real things.

Perpetual 

VNV Nation

Find it in you, raise your eyes
Look beyond the place you stand
Towards the furthest reaches
And to the smallest of things
The sound you're hearing
Is the symphony of what we are
Revelation will not come
With heart and mind closed and divided

No need of sun to light the way
Across the ages, we have reigned as we endured
Through the storm fronts we will ever surely pass
To stand as never ending light

Throw away the mantle
Awake from your uncertain hesitation
No way to describe or equate the feeling
No end to what is at your command
A million thoughts run through you
Concentric circles, ever greater
But you have always known
That this is not all that there is
To your questions there'll be answers

Let there be, let there always be
Never ending light 

Lermontov & Balakirev

Portrait of the poet done in 1837,
the year he went on exile
and when Balakirev was born.
by Pyotr Zabolotsky

Moscow, October. A cold wind was blowing thousands of yellow dried leaves, sometimes circling in high tornado like swirls but usually ending under the feet of the few that ventured on the streets that night. A few drops of rain began to fall when at the door of a white two story house a man was knocking, nervously shouting "open, it's me, Yuri". Mikhail Lermontov was born in this house on 15 October 1814 to captain Yuri Petrovich Lermontov, who prided himself with a Scottish descent, and Maria Mikhaylovna Lermontova. Their marriage was a total failure ending with Maria's death at the age of 21, as a result of finding about her husband's infidelity (and her tuberculosis). Mikhail grew up in the village of Tarkany being raised by his maternal grandmother in luxurious comfort and enjoying an excellent education. He became fluent in French and German and learned to play some musical instruments. Eventually, because of bad health, he was sent to the Caucasus, a place that greatly influenced him and where he will eventually return to.

Ode to life : William Oxer & Device

The Kiss from 2014		William Oxer is a refined British artist whose subject matter is centered around love and sensuality which he effortlessly portrays in a sincere way, his figurative art expresses unity and an emotional longing. "Who says" by Device is a rollercoaster of emotional ambiguities, a inner struggle for freedom, a fight between lust and love.

Gallery

2013 - The Dream

2013 - Seduction

Filler : Pink Turns Blue - Walking on both sides

Pink Turns Blue is a German rock/dark wave band which began its activity in 1985 and this song, "Walking on both sides", is from their debut album "If two worlds kiss" from 1987. The song, as it is, lends itself to restless hearts, the lyrics, if read and studied, hold surprises. To my knowledge the video is not official but made by the Youtube user Asinus Aureus. It nevertheless goes well with the song and in some regards even being complementary.


Lyrics:
I don't know I thing outside (?)
suffering endless through my life
I've seen too much I'm all alone
Who likes to sit around and wait
but to act that means to fail
All I ever thought was wrong
Damn the madness of my pride
the price I paid was much too high
My dreams became reality
Cause I'm walking on both sides
Much more real than my life
I am caged by thick ice
Makes me gloomy and morose
Why I dared to go so far
lost my strength and lost my heart
I've to stay somewhere between
Cause I'm walking on both sides
Can't escape reality
always traveling in my dreams
Nothing I could take for true
How should I know whether I love you
whether I love you
I'm walking on both sides

Late Night Post #10

Image from an artwork by Matteo Cattonar

How bright the flame is, twisting round my finger, shivering and trembling. How can I stop the fever for if I will descend the stairs to see the rivers of silver I will be blinded from the entrance.

The question is how to change one's life in order to incorporate one's ideals and give a sense of permanent happiness, let me rephrase, and actually give permanent happiness. Baudelaire comes to my mind with one of his poems, we should "Get drunk and stay that way. / On what? / On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. / But get drunk". Compromises are like weights for the soul, the more of them you make the fatter you feel, I know because I've made some myself. The world as it is doesn't come with a helping hand, most of the times it just kicks you back into place, but that's alright 'cause in the end only the strong survive. I am your helping hand fellow travelers through this world of the absurd.

Filler: Rainbow - "Catch the Rainbow" live in 1977

Nelina Trubach-Moshnikova and Erja Lyytinen

		The relation between the song and the paintings is not like the one between two shades of red, which would have made the duo more united and also dull. It's more like red and violet, the fiery and intense emotions of the music are like a hand offered to the viewer in order to help him enter a fine realm of imagination.

Nelina Trubach-Moshnikova

Nelina was born in Belarus in a family that originated from Poland. She took up art college in Minsk after which she moved to Yalta in the Crimea peninsula. Nelina's art is a voyage in color beyond the obvious reality. Her subject-matter, while not surreal, hides a certain element of mystery that is intriguing and alluring.

Filler - Ratt "Round and Round"

Ratt released this song in 1984 and rapidly became one of their most powerful hits. The music video is very interesting for a song that, in my opinion, doesn't ask for much when it comes to imagery. You basically have a rich family hosting a rock band in the attic of their house, the band starts playing and so annoys the rich and arrogant owners right when they were starting dinner. The one girl that's drawn by the music (also a member at the dinner table) eventually goes to the attic and along with the butler are the two that go through some sort of metamorphosis.

This is after all a filler, so feel free to browse the site.

Our world: Zinaida Serebriakova and Vladimir Kuzmin

This Duo is again dedicated to the wonderful art that emerged from the Russian space, let it bring us together, breaking the barriers some want to create.

Vladimir Kuzmin (Russian: Влади́мир Борисович Кузьмин) is a Russian rock artist born on May 31, 1955. After gaining a degree in a musical college he became lead guitarist in various VIA bands. In 1981 he became a member of Carnival releasing one album. From 1982 till the present he plays with Dynamic. Apparently in 2011 he was awarded by President Medvedev. The song's title is Семь морей and means Seven Seas.

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (Russian: Зинаи́да Евге́ньевна Серебряко́ва) was a Russian painter born on 12 December 1884. She grew up in Kharkov (which is now situated in Ukraine) into a refined family, descendants of the Benois family. Her grandfather (Nicholas Benois) was the chairman of the Society of Architects and a member of the Russian Academy of Science, her uncle (Alexandre Benois), a famous painter himself and founder of the Mir iskusstva art group and her father, Yevgeny Nikolayevich Lanceray, was a well known sculptor. These are just a few highlights.

After graduating the gymnasium she went to an art school founded by Princess M. K. Tenisheva. In 1901 she studied under Repin, followed by Osip Braz from 1903 to 1905. Like all aspiring artists she went for a year to Italy in 1902. After completing her education in Russia she continued to study in Paris. Life was pleasant and fruitful up till the Bolshevik revolution. In 1919 her husband died of typhus contracted in jail and so was faced without any income, with four children and her sick mother. Things however began to improve after long moments of hunger and poverty. Even in the most difficult of periods she was lucky, her grandfather's apartment in Petrograd (in which she moved in December 1920) was shared with artists from the Moscow Art Theater. This sharing of private apartments was forced upon their owners who never had a say on who will be assigned to them.

In 1924 she went to Paris after receiving a commission. It is not entirely clear if she wanted or not to return to the Soviet Union, what is known is that out of her four children she managed to bring to Paris only two in 1926 and 1928. She went on to explore Africa arriving in Morocco for a limited period. In 1947 she became a French citizen. Only after Khrushchev came to power she was allowed to come back to the Union.

Her work was exhibited in the Soviet Union in 1966 in cities like Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. She enjoyed a complete success with millions of albums sold. Zinaida died a year later in Paris and is buried at the Russian cemetery.

Gallery

1909 - Self portrait

Silent Passion: Robert Lubanski and Hamrasmus

Life can be as simple as this, light up the fire inside you and burn with love and peace. The theme for this Duo is "Silent Passion".
- Robert Lubanski's deviantart page
- "Silence" by Hamrasmus

Ti senti libero?