Midori Snyder's Blog, page 36

The Beautiful Retro Art of Kate Baylay

When looking at these beautiful fairy tale and myth illustrations, it's easy to immediately assume they are the work of early 20th century artists ��� a Kai Nielsen with a dash of Erte. But they are the very contemporary work of Kate Baylay. And what wonderful work it is ��� the lovely, delicate details (ala Nielsen with his softly dripping flowers and leaves) the long elegant forms of the figures dressed in exquistely draped costumes, like Erte's fashion prints. Just so evocative and beautiful. Among my favorite possessions are the illustrated fairy tale books of my childhood (especially my treasured Gustav Tenggrenn's Arabian Nights) so it is especially wonderful to have the chance to once again have a book of tales with such dreamy illustrations. Stop by Kate's website to see more of her stunning work ��� and do add her blog to your list of terrific places to visit for (as Terri Windling puts it) one's "daily does of beauty."  

Fairy Tales: Tales, Interviews, and Film

I am so excited by the newly released edition of Giambattista Basile's fairy tale collection, Tale of Tales, translated by scholar Nancy Canepa (whose other works on Italian fairy tales are brilliant:  Out of the Woods, Origins of the Literary Fairytale in Italy and France and From Court to Forest, Giambattista Basile "Lo Cunto di Cunti" and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale). And just recently, Canepa was interviewed on public radio about the new translation, and it's a terrific 40 minutes of unpacking Basile and Italian oral narratives. It also makes reading Basile much more accessible -- understanding how he moved the tales from their traditional context into an early literary presentation. 

And then of course...there is the movie Tale of Tales -- which promises to be gorgeous and gross -- and I will probably see it, but on a very small screen so as to minimize the overwhelming visual impact. In a way, I wish film makers would consider being more subtle rather than visually literal -- which doesn't allow much room for the viewer (as the listener to the tales once had) the chance to engage their own imagination when hearing the tales. 

 

Reading Art: The Maiden

After I posted on the painting fragment of the unknown girl by a Dutch painter (also unknown) I went searching for other portraits -- to see what in her might be considered the conventions of such portraits at that time,  -- and really, I found almost none that matched the uniqueness of this painting. There were many paintings of much younger girls dressed as adults (which was the fashion of the day) -- but their faces are round and sort of flat, with only a hint of personality which I suspected reflected the way the painter felt about them -- as objects along with the accompanying birds, ponies, flower, toys also in the composition. The only real exception I found is Rubens -- who was painting different portraits of his daughter throughout her life. Here there is love, and familiarity, the features distinct -- the eyes watching the painter (and father) with mild amusment. A true face, like my unknown girl, very much alive. 

 

Reading Art: The Torn Away Girl

I collect images that either amuse or inspire me. Sometimes they remind me of things I have written on or thought about--almost like proof of collective consciousness -- and other times, they appear before me to ask that I consider them. Such is this lovely and haunting image that crossed my path in an unrelated google search. How could I not stop and stare? She comes from a fragment of a much larger 17th century Dutch painting, a work that at some time in its past was torn apart, and on which her face still bears the golden scars of the knife. (She is currently in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.)

It is hard not to want to write her story, perhaps as a way of resolving the contradictions of her situation of beauty and violence. She is like one of those figures in a family portrait, the soon-to-be-wed daughter, standing on the edge of assembled aristocratic family members, the parents in the center, the very young in front with their small dogs. She seems at first fragile, her soft hair, uncoifed but lightly held in place with thin black ribbons around the heart-shaped face. But the strand of pearls at her neck, the heavy gold earring at her cheek suggest adult adornments, the signs of her wealth and potential as a bride. Her mouth is small, a hesitant smile above the narrow point of her chin. Yet, it is those eyes that stop the viewer. They stare back, watching you, watching the painter with interest as he watches her appear on the canvas. Wary, but curious. 

And over that, the thin lines of golden scars from the knife that cut her out from the painting. Vandals who attack art often do so as though the art itself was a person, someone who threatened or engraged them. They attack the face, the eyes, and the body with axes and knives, trying to destroy something in the expression of the art which both terrifies and infuriates them. On this young almost-woman's face they score her high forehead as if to deny her thought, those intelligent eyes as if to refuse the penetrating gaze, the soft edge of her mouth as if to reject her voice. But because none of the cuts completely obliterate her features, as if even the attacker in his fury was humbled by the strength of her portrait, she appears now doubly resilent. 

My Coffee Shop Office Get's a Face Lift

My local coffee shop where I do a lot of my work, recently did a photo shoot after a remodel. And my husband and I wound up in the promotional photo. Thank goodness I had remembered to comb my hair that morning. I'm blurry because I'm typing so fast. 

 

Jousting Snails, Pugilistic Sword Fighting, and Medieval, Mythic Norwegians

So many wonderful moments have come into my feed and internet wanderings. Here's a few of them that of late I've been enjoying.  Above is a curious and captivating of two nude jousters -- male and female(?) -- on snails. This is from the Baldus de Ubaldis. Lectura super Institutionibus. 1480-1481. The best part of this image is that it remains an utter mystery as to what sort of allagorical or rhetorical meaning they were trying to express by placing jousting snails in the marginalia. (Most of the images are of armored knights  and this is the only one I've ever seen of two nude firghters moving v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y toward each other. I did some internet checking and found this hilarious scholarly debate about the jousting snails. (It reads like something from a Monty Python sketch) And here too -- another attempt at a scholarly debate/discussion what the hell were those monks thinking! 

 

And then there is this...fighting of a different sort. A short Slovakian film with Bordertown overtones, Punk and Pugilistic...with freaking long swords. Awesomeness. 

PUGIL from lukasterenson

 

Finally, from Punk to Heroic Epic. A new Norweigian film coming out in 2016 about the national myth of the Birkebeiners, a group of courageous men who set out in 1026 on a perilous journey to bring the infant heir to the Norwegian throne to safety in Trondheim -- pitting the themselves against the elements of cold, ice, and snow, and a lot of unpleasant factions seeking to murder the would-be-king.  (I think I shall have to wear a coat and mittens in the theater as I shiver just watching the trailer.)

 

Jousting Snails. Pugilistic Sword Fighting, and Medieval, Mythic Norwegians

So many wonderful moments have come into my feed and internet wanderings. Here's a few of them that of late I've been enjoying.  Above is a curious and captivating of two nude jousters -- male and female(?) -- on snails. This is from the Baldus de Ubaldis. Lectura super Institutionibus. 1480-1481. The best part of this image is that it remains an utter mystery as to what sort of allagorical or rhetorical meaning they were trying to express by placing jousting snails in the marginalia. (Most of the images are of armored knights  and this is the only one I've ever seen of two nude firghters moving v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y toward each other. I did some internet checking and found this hilarious scholarly debate about the jousting snails. (It reads like something from a Monty Python sketch) And here too -- another attempt at a scholarly debate/discussion what the hell were those monks thinking! 

 

And then there is this...fighting of a different sort. A short Slovakian film with Bordertown overtones, Punk and Pugilistic...with freaking long swords. Awesomeness. 

PUGIL from lukasterenson

 

Finally, from Punk to Heroic Epic. A new Norweigian film coming out in 2016 about the national myth of the Birkebeiners, a group of courageous men who set out in 1026 on a perilous journey to bring the infant heir to the Norwegian throne to safety in Trondheim -- pitting the themselves against the elements of cold, ice, and snow, and a lot of unpleasant factions seeking to murder the would-be-king.  (I think I shall have to wear a coat and mittens in the theater as I shiver just watching the trailer.)

 

Unfinished Business. Terminus Back on the Desk

It always happens at New Years. As soon as the day has past, there is a furious desire to clean out the cache, the drawers, the fridge, repack the decorations, and wash one's face to meet the new year. But there are always threads left unstitched from the year before that need securing -- and this is one of them. Somewhere in the months of last year, I had a moment to myself and started this, "Terminus" a novella (I think) for a Bordetown collection I want to write called Bordertown Born and Bred -- as all my stories seem to be about kids who come from Bordertown, rather than journey to it. Not a story of crossing, or running away and to, but a kid whose genes go deep into the taproot of Btown's wildness and magic. This is to be a story of shifting identities, and a nod to Jose Arguedas' beautiful and mystical rites of passage novel, Deep Rivers. 

And this is all I have. I must have been interrupted...left my desk, hurried to do something, promised to come back...and then, and then, like Btown's own shifting streets, somehow this got lost. I like it a lot...and I am hoping to pick up the threads again and make it whole. In the meantime...here it is. 

 

"Terminus"

 

Asker stumbled out of the bar, his ears ringing with the buzz-saw sounds of Solvent���s mad guitar and Vec���s shrill laugh which made it clear to him they were both damn-straight drunk. He tried to find his feet but they lurched, confused by the ground rising and falling beneath him.

���Baby, wait, I���m sorry,��� Vec called after him. ���I didn���t mean it!���

He looked back, squinty as the street swirled, globe lights streaking across the spangles in her dress, making her shimmer. The light caught the smooth outline of her cheek, the pouty mouth, and the wash of black and blue hair trailing her throat. His heart ached, his body slumped, still wounded by her verbal jabs at him in the bar. Humiliation hurt. She was never going to change. But he wanted, needed to believe she was telling the truth. ���Th-th-that���s ������ he stuttered and she exploded in another round of laughter.

���That���s cool, he finished and turned away. He wanted to run, he wanted to get as far away from her as he could before he puked. He loped down the alley, his shoulder banging into the brick wall of line of shops and bars. He found the high street, awash with Saturday night partyers. He could hardly see through the flickering street light, the glow sticks, the girls lit up with fairy dust and neon colors. Asker shouldered through the crowds and they pushed back with a growl, a shove, and a curse. The last stopped Asker, for even drunk and angry, and feeling stupid, a curse was no joke in Bordertown. He waited, eyes closed feeling the drift of the crowd around him, their voices loud and happy, drowning out the memory of Vec, serving him up on platter as the barking dog in a bad joke. A joke. That���s what he was, a stuttering joke.

He felt the spaces around him widen, and opened his eyes, slowly. The road still swayed, but it was quieter now, and he could make his way again, this time placing his feet carefully one at a time in front of him. At the corner where three streets formed a small triangular park, Asker turned down the narrowest and the darkest of them. And as he moved from the light of the park into the shadows, his foot struck a stone, firmly planted half in and half out of the cobbled road. His leg buckled and his shin cracked against the rough, ridged rock, tearing through his jeans.

���Fuck!��� he cried as he staggered forward and sprawled out on the road. He rolled onto his back, grabbing at his injured leg as blood spilled from an open gash. Pain exploded up his leg and he turned on his side to vomit up beer and French fries. ���Fuck, fuck, he moaned.

���Hey Buddy, you ok?��� a halfie-girl appeared next to him, touching him on the shoulder with her fingertips, her child���s face swaddled in a too big-cap close to his. He felt the feather touch of her other hand in the pocket of his coat and he jerked away from her, swatting her away non too gently.

���Fuck off,��� he snarled, angry all over again that he never stuttered when he was mad. Only when he was nice. Only when he cared about someone. Idiot tongue. 

"Suit yerself, buddy. I ain���t yer enemy. It���s that stone there. Take it out on that���not me,��� and she hustled off, leaving him there in throbbing pain, stinking of puke.

Asker hoisted himself upright from the street, fueled by rage. He limped to the stone and bent down to examine it. Two feet of weathered black rock reached out of the ground, a few threads from his jeans snagged on the jagged edge. He wrapped his arms around it, and thinking of Vec and her laughter, he pulled at the stone. It wouldn���t budge, but that only made him angrier. He tried again, waggling it back and forth and felt the soil beneath it give a little. It moved under protest, but Asker, now fully committed to the task continued to pull at it as though it were a rotten tooth that needed extracting. He leaned back, his arms aching from the strain, but he had to keep going he thought. He had to hit back at all the hurt that he felt, all the times he had let pass when Vec did as she pleased and he let her, even if it meant amusing herself by publicly making him into a stammering fool.

Asker felt it shift again, a tremor in the earth. Just the booze he thought, as he grabbed another breath of air, clutched the stone deeper into his chest and pulled. Loosened from its mooring, the earth released the stone at last, and Asker fell back on the ground again as the stone lay heavily on his chest.

���Gotcha,��� Asker said. And with pain temporarily forgotten in the delirium of his success, he forced himself to his feet, still holding the stone like���like he once held Vec, he thought as hurt drilled him at the memory, only to be replace by a surge of energy as he stumbled forward with the stone to the riverwall that held the roiling waters of the Mad River in check. He hoisted the stone to the wall, rolled it across the ledge, and pushed into the river.

���So long, Vec,��� he called after it, and heard the splash answer him just before it vanished.

Then

 

Art: Russian Academy School, Karla Ortiz, Street Artist Axel Void

Prayers for France.

My heart is aching today for my father's country and for the families grieving this morning. 

A Moment With Sweeney Astray and The Stags

"Those unharnessed runners
from glen to glen!
Nobody tames
that royal blood,

each one aloof
on its rightful summit,
antlered, watchful.
Imagine them,

the stag of high Slieve Felim,
the stag of the steep Fews,
the stag of Duhallow, the stag of Orrey,
the fierce stag of Killarney..."

 

From Sweeney Astray a version from the Irish by Seamus Heaney

Art: Illustrated Manuscript: Gaston Phoebus, Le Livre de la chasse (Paris, ca. 1407)