stars and tree...

stars
float from the borders of the main.
-
above
the vast of heaven strung with brilliant stars.
-
how looks the night? there does not miss a star.
the million sorts of unaccounted motes
now quicken, sheathed in the yellow galaxy.
there is no parting or bare interstice
where the sting of compass of a skylark's wings
would not put out some tiny golden centre.
-
stars waving their indivisible rays.
sky fleeced with the milky way.
-
night's lantern
pointed with pierced lights, and breaks of rays
discover'd everywhere.
-
the sky minted into golden sequins.
stars like gold tufts.
- - golden bees.
- - golden rowels.
sky peak'd with tiny flames.
-
stars like tiny spoked wheels of fire.
lanterns of night, pierced in eyelets.
-
his gilded rowels
now stars of blood.
-
a star most spiritual, principal, preeminent
of all the golden press.
-
or ever the early stirrings of skylark
might cover the neighbor downs with a span of singing,
while phospher, risen upon the shallowing dark,
in the ruddied country of the day's up-bringing
stood capital, eminent, ... gonfalon-bearer
to all the starry press, -

gerard manly hopkins, star images: september to december 1864 (from poems for the millennium volume 3), image: cyanotype, 1870's

when the camera is facing a mirror and covered in paper...

i recently picked up this cyanotype of herbert s. smith. it is a self portrait, taken on july 4, 1890, created by pointing the camera into a mirror. smith owned the "smith wheel chair concern"(not sure what that was, but it would definitely make a great band name), which, at the time, was at 120 william st. in new york.

as you can see from the detail, the camera is covered in white paper. i'm not sure of the reason for this "modification" but it makes the visible parts of the camera look a bit like a small constellation. the photograph came out of a scrapbook, with a ton of notation on each shot, (which is how we know this is a self portrait and shot into a mirror), but he did not mention the white paper covering. (if anyone out there has an idea about this, i'd love to hear from you.)

while my photograph collection mainly dances around the idea of music and listening, i've found myself lately also buying certain photographs, like this one, that have nothing to do with music. as i look at this more recent obsession with images that seem to have nothing in common (other than their non-music-ness), i try, as always, to figure out how they might be connected, so that i can somehow begin to understand, as well as to articulate, at least to myself, what i might be looking for, and to have a sense of what i'm "building" through this secondary arm of the collection, as i'm convinced there is a thread, or two, or twenty...

as for smith's self portrait, the thing that makes it extraordinary for me, is that we are seeing the photographer/camera's view and the subject's view at the same time. smiths eyes seem to be keyed on the spot on the mirror that the lens would also be "seeing". in looking directly at smith's eyes and the camera's lens, you can really feel that "V" shaped line bouncing from eyes to mirror to lens; and of course, this image is as it would've been seen if there was a lens, or an eye, in that exact point in the mirror where smith's eyes and lens' gaze met...

when on this plane...

"the silence had for me the force of eternal life; for on the plane of eternity without beginning and without end there is no such thing as speech."

sedegh hedayat, the blind owl

when a voice is heard in the silvery blue of night...

"it seemed... that her voice sounded quite different in the silvery blue of the night...loud, clear and gentle, it had, as it were, arches and curves; he believed he could see the voice and almost catch hold of it. soon he had the sensation that it made an arch over his head and that he was standing directly beneath it."

text from joseph roth's weights and measures. image, a cyanotype printed on postcard paper. music related cyanotypes have been about as difficult to find as arches of voice to stand or sit beneath...

look at the flowers...

Look at the flowers, so faithful to what
is earthly,

to whom we lend fate from the very
border of fate.

and if they are sad about how they
must wither and die,

perhaps it is our vocation to be their
regret.

All things want to fly, only we are
weighed down by desire,

caught in ourselves and enthralled with
our heaviness.

oh what consuming, negative teachers
we are

for them, while eternal childhood fills
them with grace.

If someone were to fall into intimate
slumber, and slept

deeply with Things - : how easily he
would come

to a different day, out of the mutual
depth,

Or perhaps he would stay there; and
they would blossom and praise

their newest convert, who now is like
one of them,

all those silent companions in the wind
of the meadows.

words: r.m.rilke, sonnets to orpheus
image:cyanotype RPPC, 1910