"Golden Hair" poem by James Joyce (Madcap Laughs by Syd Barrett released January 3, 1970, 56 years ago today)

Happy Magic New Year

Paul Klee - In the Magic Mirror, 1934

Gumby's Close Encounter

A play on color, shadows, perspective and a defamiliarized sense of place

Max Beckmann - Winding path in the Black Forest, 1936

Arthurian Legend: Notes and Sources

Arthurian Legend

British Library Article
Project Gutenberg Complete Text of Thomas Mallory's Le Morte Darthur   

 

English Sources

 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (Historia regum Britanniae)  (12th century, 1135-39)

 

Wace of Jersey

Layamon

Tristan and Iseult  (12th century)

 

            Anglo-Norman, Inspired by Keltic Legend:

 

                        Deirdre and Naoise

 

                        Diarmuid Ua Duibhue

 

                        Grainne

 

The Pearl Poet, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century)

 

French Sources

 

Chrétien de Troyes Perceval (Grail story)  (12th century)

 

“a Group of Cistercian Monks”(?), Vulgate Cycle  (1210-1230)

 

Prose Lancelot

 

Robert de Boron, Merlin (13th century)

 

“Post-Vulgate Grail Romance” (combining Arthurian Romance with the Tristan Romance)

 

(Mallory’s chief sources were these French romances)

 

 

Welsh Sources

 

Gildas, De excidio et conquest Britanniae, Fall and Conquest of Britain  (mid-6th century)

 

Nennius, Historia Brittonum, History of the Britons (9th century)

 

Annales Cambriae, Cabbrian Annals (late 9th century)

 

The Mabinogion   (12th- 13thcenturies, first English version by Charlotte Guest, 1838-49);

 

Culhwch and Olwen (12th century)

 

 

“Modern” versions and related stories

 

Thomas Mallory, Le Morte Darthur   (late 15th century)

 

Thomas Love Peacock, The Misfortunes of Elphin  (1829)

 

Sources: The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales  (chiefly in Welsh), Cambro-Briton (periodical ca. 1819); The Mabinogion (first English version by Charlotte Guest, 1838-49); Taliesin (first English version by Nash, 1858).

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King       (1842, 1859, 1888)

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shallot”   (1832, 1842)

 

T. H. White, The Once and Future King     (1958)

 

Marion Zimmerman Bradley, The Mists of Avalon     (1982)

 

 

Themes:

 

Religion

Myth and Religion

History

Sociology

Psychology

Ethics

Anthropology (typologies)

Fantasy(?)

Nostalgia

King Arthur (Nigel Terry) and Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi) in Frank Boorman's Excalibur (1981)

One hour of soundscapes by Jean-Claude Heudin, inspired by Forbidden Planet

Matsu Basho: a poem about lightning, 17th century

A flash of lightning: 

Into the gloom 

Goes the heron's cry.

More evidence of an "imperative" to explore...

Christmas Meditation: Jonah 2

2 Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish's belly,

² And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

³ For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

⁴ Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

⁵ The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

⁶ I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O Lord my God.

⁷ When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

⁸ They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

⁹ But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

¹⁰ And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

 Jonah — Albert Pinkham Ryder

  

 

 

 

Jesus Appearing to Mary — Albert Pinkham Ryder

 

 

Alien Sunsets

 

We need to get out there and look around, evidently. 

"Syama Tara"

Descriptive Material (unknown source):

Syama Tara, Eastern Tibet, 18th century. This title is usually translated as "Green Tara," although Syama means "dark," and is often used to describe Vaishnava deities such as Krishna (which also means "dark") and Rama. (In these cases Syam manifests as Blue.) This form of Tara represents protective Compassion, and helps people to overcome obstacles, fear, and suffering. For this, she is known as Jetsun Drölma, "Venerable Liberator" (or savior").

But the deep story of Tara is her desire for liberation, which was inseparable from her womanhood. The vow of Tara: "I have developed bodhicitta as a woman. For all my lifetimes along the path I vow to be born as a woman, and in my final lifetime when I attain Buddhahood, then, too, I will be a woman." 

Pleasing signifiers collocated in a "balanced farrago" of complementry Blue, Blue-Green and Olive fields vaguely exciting mid-20th century nostalgia

 

 

For more on the subject of "nostalgia", please click HERE.

Space sounds for study and recreation

00:00 Intro

00:18 Saturn Radio Emission

00:31 Eerie Sound of Phobos

00:55 Radar Echoes From Titan's Surface

01:34 Helix Nebula's 'Scream'

01:49 Crab Pulsar

02:09 Supermassive Black Hole Feeding

02:31 Earth Whistler

02:53 Enceladus

03:04 Jupiter Ionosphere

03:28 Sound of Sirius A

Visual "nonsense" with clarifying captions

Return to Homeostasis

Cloud Tops

Inter-dimensional Portal with Periodic Phase Transitions

Optative Public Space (Data Center Locus Parameter Plaza)

Linked images: Writer's Block / Vitasta Raina dot com

 

Footnote to Aristotle on politics and reason: a possible derivation applicable to our aesthetic and ethical understanding

“The soul is divided into two parts, of which the one has reason itself, while the other does not have it in itself, but is capable of obeying reason.”        

                                                 Aristotle - Politics

My derivation: 

Application to aesthetics:  the creative action is divided into two parts, of which one is a capacity, practice and cultivation of reason; the other is a capacity for a sort of "indiscipline" or "wildness" that is capable (and despite itself) of obeying reason. This is artistic aspiration flourishing in the wilderness; or, indeed, the human conscience fully alive and taking good action in the community and in the universe.

Symmetry in asymmetry achieved through figurate repetition, with participatory human observers in other-world context

Joseph Mugnaini (1912 - 1992) - Italian-born American artist and illustrator -  'Fire Balloons' from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, 1974

Fun with English History

Catharsis, or something else entirely?

Alternative Highbrow post title: "Technology vs. the geopolitical Id in mid-20th century Japanese television, a childhood sanctuary"

Don your thinking cap: Beethoven String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4

 

(Or a tinfoil hat.)