John Levy
Watteau, Helicopters, Time, Fellini, Dreams
(1)
I discover I can order
a hand-painted copy
of Watteau's
L'amour au théâtre italien
for $342.99
on September 24th, 2017
almost by accident
by Googling
Watteau.
I don't, but admire the painting
as I continue
to consider what Ken Bolton writes
about another Watteau:
Watteau's happy people make us cry.
They do not see what surrounds them —
Time, & a lot of
big trees, fugitive sky.
There's more to his poem.
There's more to
almost everything
before our Time
endeth. I make
a joke out of that,
though
that "deth" that is two-thirds
of endeth
is awfully
close to death, just
needs
an a
dropped in. . .by a helicopter. Let's
use the chopper
from Fellini's La Dolce Vita
with the same sound
track
and clouds, but instead of Jesus
hanging from a chain
and the sexy women in small
bathing suits standing and waving
the same beauties
will wave and be excited by the lower
case
a. Then
shall we leave
before the a
lands
between the
e and t? PRESTO,
we're back to Watteau:
Love
in the Italian Theatre. A torch
held by a man
under the moon, and again
this isn't
the painting
Bolton
writes about in his
poem, that painting is
Pilgrimage to Cythera.
(2)
"Achievement"
is the name
in English
of a poem
in Greek
written by Yannis
Ritsos, who
was a very very very prolific
poet. Leslie and I
visited the house on the little
island, Monemvasia, in the
Peloponnesus, where
Ritsos lived (and we were there
when he was still
alive (though he was not
actually inside the house
when we were outside it)), a survivor
of the TB that killed
his mother and sister
when he was about 12. I had not
intended
to focus
here, too,
on death, but
so much
for intention, intentions (retaining
walls, above which
a blue sky); imagine
the sea
around Monemvasia. It was
frightening
to stand near a cliff edge above
the sea, although
normally I
have no fear of
heights.
(3)
This is the birth
section, where I mention
that in a dream I had
this morning
several white eggs
grew on a green bush
I happen to see as I leave
a building and I
pluck
one, effortlessly and
in a dreamy
thoughtless way
carried
it a moment
before I woke. I wasn't
thinking
in the dream
of eating the egg, am
not sure why I did
take it, except that I seemed
to want
to hold it.
I had seen, awake, before
going to sleep, a great photo of a
hand holding two eggs (a black-and-white
photo) by Sam Contis in the latest
ARTFORUM (September
2017). I don't
dream
in black-and-white. According
to an article in The New York Times by
Anhaad O'Connor on
December 1st, 2006, a study published in 2006
found that people over 55 who
grew up
without seeing much color
television
reported dreaming about 25%
of the time in black-and-white
while overall 12% of everyone everyone everyone dreamt
entirely in black-and-white. Fellini's
La Dolce Vita is
in
black-and-white. Do numbers and
years
make life feel more here
and death more
abstract—or is it
the other way
around? Back to
the helicopter in the
great
beginning of La Dolce Vita.
John Levy lives in Tucson, Arizona. His books include Oblivion, Tyrants, Crumbs (First Intensity, 2008), A Mind's Cargo Shifting: fictions (First Intensity, 2011), and the ebook In the Pit of the Empty (otata's bookshelf, 2017). He collaborated with the painter Donald Cole to produce float among what sails & spirals (Dovadola Press and ArtXchange Gallery, 2016), a reading of which is online on vimeo.
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Watteau, Helicopters, Time, Fellini, Dreams
(1)
I discover I can order
a hand-painted copy
of Watteau's
L'amour au théâtre italien
for $342.99
on September 24th, 2017
almost by accident
by Googling
Watteau.
I don't, but admire the painting
as I continue
to consider what Ken Bolton writes
about another Watteau:
Watteau's happy people make us cry.
They do not see what surrounds them —
Time, & a lot of
big trees, fugitive sky.
There's more to his poem.
There's more to
almost everything
before our Time
endeth. I make
a joke out of that,
though
that "deth" that is two-thirds
of endeth
is awfully
close to death, just
needs
an a
dropped in. . .by a helicopter. Let's
use the chopper
from Fellini's La Dolce Vita
with the same sound
track
and clouds, but instead of Jesus
hanging from a chain
and the sexy women in small
bathing suits standing and waving
the same beauties
will wave and be excited by the lower
case
a. Then
shall we leave
before the a
lands
between the
e and t? PRESTO,
we're back to Watteau:
Love
in the Italian Theatre. A torch
held by a man
under the moon, and again
this isn't
the painting
Bolton
writes about in his
poem, that painting is
Pilgrimage to Cythera.
(2)
"Achievement"
is the name
in English
of a poem
in Greek
written by Yannis
Ritsos, who
was a very very very prolific
poet. Leslie and I
visited the house on the little
island, Monemvasia, in the
Peloponnesus, where
Ritsos lived (and we were there
when he was still
alive (though he was not
actually inside the house
when we were outside it)), a survivor
of the TB that killed
his mother and sister
when he was about 12. I had not
intended
to focus
here, too,
on death, but
so much
for intention, intentions (retaining
walls, above which
a blue sky); imagine
the sea
around Monemvasia. It was
frightening
to stand near a cliff edge above
the sea, although
normally I
have no fear of
heights.
(3)
This is the birth
section, where I mention
that in a dream I had
this morning
several white eggs
grew on a green bush
I happen to see as I leave
a building and I
pluck
one, effortlessly and
in a dreamy
thoughtless way
carried
it a moment
before I woke. I wasn't
thinking
in the dream
of eating the egg, am
not sure why I did
take it, except that I seemed
to want
to hold it.
I had seen, awake, before
going to sleep, a great photo of a
hand holding two eggs (a black-and-white
photo) by Sam Contis in the latest
ARTFORUM (September
2017). I don't
dream
in black-and-white. According
to an article in The New York Times by
Anhaad O'Connor on
December 1st, 2006, a study published in 2006
found that people over 55 who
grew up
without seeing much color
television
reported dreaming about 25%
of the time in black-and-white
while overall 12% of everyone everyone everyone dreamt
entirely in black-and-white. Fellini's
La Dolce Vita is
in
black-and-white. Do numbers and
years
make life feel more here
and death more
abstract—or is it
the other way
around? Back to
the helicopter in the
great
beginning of La Dolce Vita.
John Levy lives in Tucson, Arizona. His books include Oblivion, Tyrants, Crumbs (First Intensity, 2008), A Mind's Cargo Shifting: fictions (First Intensity, 2011), and the ebook In the Pit of the Empty (otata's bookshelf, 2017). He collaborated with the painter Donald Cole to produce float among what sails & spirals (Dovadola Press and ArtXchange Gallery, 2016), a reading of which is online on vimeo.
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