Drifting To Oblivion, We Drown In Beauty
In the early years of Moon of Alabama I, at times, posted works of art created and sent in by commentators who had moved with me to this blog after Billmon had shut down his 'Whiskey Bar'.
Their were oil paintings by anna-missed, photographs by b_real, poems by rememberinggiap, ceramics by annie and pictures in oil, pastel or acrylic by beq.
Other commentators reflected on those works.
Such Bar-fly art still has its (unfortunately incomplete) category page. Here you can scroll through it. After I had taken a break in posting at this site the Bar-fly art theme never revived.
So I was pleasantly surprised when beq recently contacted me and sent me a new picture.
She wrote:
I have four large paintings that I made last year. Each is 42"x 94" [107 x 239 cm]. I lay down on the paper and had a friend trace my outline on the paper with spray paint. The rest is watercolor. [These are not what you're used to :-)]
drifting to oblivion, we drown in beauty
by beq
beq adds:
I've painted the four as if I'm in a stream moving right to left. [...] I just got an email that all four are going into a show in a week or two.The theme of the paintings has (loosely) to do with Elementals:
"The Elementals are spirits who reside on the astral plane, using their sorcery to control our sphere through their mystical powers. Their purpose is to protect all living creatures who reside in our realm, acting as our guardians from evil."
My artist statement is: "The path to oblivion is Elemental. Who? What? Why? or walk by."
I hope others might come forward with their creations. We need Art. "EARTH without ART is EH"
Posted by b on June 15, 2023 at 14:08 UTC | Permalink
"We need Art. 'EARTH without ART is EH'"
Wholeheartedly agree!
Posted by: Frequent reader | Jun 15 2023 14:15 utc | 2
we're creative beings... everyone expresses this in their own way.. i like the painting and it is cool how it came about..
Posted by: james | Jun 15 2023 14:25 utc | 3
Lovely. Glad to see this back. We need beauty in our lives to be human.
Posted by: Bugs | Jun 15 2023 14:28 utc | 4
swansquarter.com/Work/Wound-Dresser’s Dreaming/Percussion of Cut and Salve
Art contribution to now
Posted by: Swansquarter | Jun 15 2023 14:31 utc | 5
It must have been fun,for once,to post about beauty and not destruction.
Posted by: morongobill | Jun 15 2023 14:35 utc | 6
I found it worth clicking on the larger version. Much more immersive.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/16i/beq01.jpg
Posted by: Babel-17 | Jun 15 2023 14:36 utc | 7
As a Greek, I was deeply moved by this. Right now, we 're in mourning, since as many as 600 souls were lost in our sea - people from many countries, packed on a dereliced boat, trying to escape from a life of misery...
Posted by: Jimmy A | Jun 15 2023 14:40 utc | 8
Splendid. There may be dark, reactionary readings of that image also, but I wont mention them.
For b, fnord and others who are into art, I can recommend a Swedish, seemingly dormant blog featuring Russian art and a positive, loving attitude. Use a translation app, there are interesting texts also.
https://ryskkonst.wordpress.com/
Posted by: veto | Jun 15 2023 14:40 utc | 9
"The Elementals are spirits who reside on the astral plane, using their sorcery to control our sphere through their mystical powers. Their purpose is to protect all living creatures who reside in our realm, acting as our guardians from evil."
Your words have me wondering if you are a fan of Carlos Santana, especially the song I'll link to below.
Santana - Spirits Dancing In The Flesh 1993 Live Video HQ
Posted by: Babel-17 | Jun 15 2023 14:42 utc | 10
Many thanks to beq for the art and to b for sharing it with us. It is beautiful.
Posted by: Clever Dog | Jun 15 2023 14:45 utc | 11
What a nice change from death and destruction, however the image reminds me and perhaps alludes to or reminiscent of... https://www.kingstononline.co.uk/ophelia-john-everett-millais-painted-hogsmill-river-1851/
The passion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream IMO is alive in this painting. Is it the symbolic fish, can I assume they are carp, representing the determination of Russia calmly and in formation, slowly but surely, driving the drowning body of Ukraine towards the light of redemption through death? The "horror", fueled by the "West" is merely extending the agony of a slow but sure demise.
Posted by: Trinculo | Jun 15 2023 14:47 utc | 12
Veto no. 9
Fantastic. Thankyou. You might enjoy this:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/boris-kustodiev
His painting of Tsar Nicholas II is amazing.
Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jun 15 2023 15:13 utc | 13
Sinhalé
I once knew the world
Only through poets:
Uganda was p'Bitek
Senegal was Diop
Kenya was wa Thiong'o
China was Mao
Japan was Shigeharu
Indonesia was Pramoedya
Korea was Kim
Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh
India was Tagore
Pakistan was Faiz
Iran was Rumi
Turkey was Hikmet
Greece was Cavafy
Russia was Mayakovsky
France was Prévert
Germany was Brecht
England was Blake
USA was Langston H
Canada was Pauline T
Peru was Vallejo
Chile was Neruda
Cuba was Guillen
Jamaica was Miss Lou
Puerto Rico was Pietri
Martinique was Cesaire
El Salvador was Roque D
Nicaragua was Dario
Guyana was Carter
Brazil was Gil
And after all that
I knew not even
Half of half of a who
Of anon and no,
I don't know
Mahagamasekera
Yes I don't, so my
Dactyls feel no feet
So now I seek for iron
The milk of this ink
To mine the artillery
To erase this ABC
To learn my A Ah Aeh Aehh!
E Eeee! Ooh Oooh
O learn to hear, heed
My mother's, my father's
Ancient voice once more,
Through all the world
I once knew only
Through poetry...
Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta
Comment One: Most English-dabblers know little about the Sinhala poet Mahagamasekera (7 April 1929 – 14 January 1976), and so I found interesting this reference to him interesting...
Comment Two: 'Those days of innocence are largely over, but there are still poets hiding among the vendors, for value and price are still not the same....'
Posted by: Sinhalé | Jun 15 2023 15:16 utc | 14
Veto no. 9
Fantastic. Thankyou. You might enjoy this:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/boris-kustodiev
His painting if Tsar Nicholas II is amazing.
Posted by: ThusspakeZarathustra | Jun 15 2023 15:17 utc | 15
Thanks b and beq. Very Hitchcock-ish for an artist to integrate her own image into a picture. Love the fluidity of the grey flatheads. Ants walking on water adds an appropriately mystical touch.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jun 15 2023 15:18 utc | 16
VJ Prashad often posts wonderful art to accompany his posts on Consortium News, Scheer Post, etc. His organization’s website features much. https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-regionalism-new-international-order/
Posted by: Drizzletown | Jun 15 2023 15:25 utc | 17
https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica
Posted by: Don Firineach | Jun 15 2023 15:28 utc | 18
Thanks b!
I would love to see the other 3 pictures.
E art H, great🙂
Posted by: Aurora | Jun 15 2023 15:33 utc | 19
I've got some literary art that will make even the crustiest barfly weep about the cultural decline of the west. Es tan bueno en Espanol que en El original Frances. Lealo!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Jun 15 2023 15:57 utc | 21
Strange, I dreamt last night about finding a fish that looked very similar, same size, swimming in a few inches of water in the shower.
After I pulled the fish out, it now had a beautiful series of white dorsal fins, like sails, growing out of its back.
Life's like that I guess, full of coincidences and alignments if we care to notice.
Thanks beq and Bernhard!
Posted by: jonku | Jun 15 2023 16:18 utc | 22
A Poem of Lions
In September liberty is the mirage Suez
The sunstruck vibrate like beings in peachy Bermuda
And pod glazed, an invaluable disbursement of spawned
Objects in the worst scenes of melodrama
Every excitement accoutered, the mad made beachrunners.
Only the wide-shoed boys, the penis-cutters
Dance together in meeting halls to water music
Rubbing Asia between their fingers like magic
Insistent with ebony club rings, ebullient in helmets
Fists blameless they may seize and fuck the Korean women
Along the silver fences of the refugee impoundments.
Garrulous with assertion in sea-blue roadsters
Dishonorable with liquor and cash, they brawl together
On the beach over an American girl. They are flagrant lions
Gnarled and delirious among women, with brilliant manes that crash
The scene like thunder, unperplexed by freedom.
* * *
Posted by: Elmagnostic | Jun 15 2023 16:33 utc | 23
I remember Billmon. Bill Montgomery, if I recall correctly. Wonderful work.
Posted by: Tree Frog | Jun 15 2023 17:11 utc | 26
Now we need the artist to add "NATO" on the forehead, and b can auction it during fundraising drive.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jun 15 2023 17:24 utc | 27
Don Firineach | Jun 15 2023 16:43 utc | 24
Ha, one of my screen-savers.
And thanks for the Guernica pic too @18.
Sleep well :-)
Posted by: waynorinorway | Jun 15 2023 17:44 utc | 28
nice......reflection of times..... i hope this forum doesn't go into oblivion, nor yourself, but personally i hope you are able to accept that time will drift for everyone. it is good to take hold of the present and personally i hope you are able to find christ..and never give up
there was once a time when young if we were say to catch the our first fish, to paint one side of the fish with black ink and imprint its beauty onto the canvas. this painting is wonderful. thank you for sharing. its wonderful. thanks b
Posted by: jason | Jun 15 2023 17:56 utc | 30
Immediately overcome by beq, but then again @7 and @8. Linda
Posted by: lindaj | Jun 15 2023 17:57 utc | 31
Soon if not now our mainstream media art will be from the "AI cloud" like Orwell's 1984:
"The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.”
The new AI "versificator" will do the literature, music, graphic arts and make sure our hopes dreams and culture are never out of the neo-lib/con parameters.
Posted by: Joe Art | Jun 15 2023 17:57 utc | 32
Great post, b. You are on a roll of late. After taking only a few days off. I guess tank commanders are made of stern stuff!
Below a link for a short book of 108 haiku I collected during the pandemic time
called 'Pandemia Haiku.'
https://baronbrasdor.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/pandemia-haiku.pdf
Art is very important. It mimics creation which is a mind-intelligence generated dynamic not a physical particles on up construction. Imagination is the realm also inhabited by the gods who made us and whom we make. Creation is ongoing and we are participants not passive witnesses. Art is very important.
A few of them written one afternoon:
LIFE HAIKUThe constantly humming refrigerator
Knows no future
Birdsong is heart breaking
#14 06.11.21That white noise in the ears
Is it always there?
Even after we die?
#15 06/11/2021Rain on the roof
Thousands of drummers
Without hands or drums!
#17 06/11/2021I give a man little pieces of paper
He gives me land with trees and buildings...
Humans are strange!
#18 06/11/2021Deep silence
Entirely drowns out
Screeching jungle of city traffic
#19 06/11/2021Turbulent youth
Has paved the way
To November nobility.
#20 06/11/2021Phillip Glass
Artfully transforms
Nostalgia into Majesty
#21 06/11/2021Baroque is good
Mozart better
Bach is best!
#21 06/11/2021
Niggling with much apology.
That truly is a striking work. The fluid lines of the fish give the piece a sense of movement, a flow. Which is where the niggling part comes in. You've obviuosly obseved fish in a stream; you've caught their movements wonderfully well. But might I suggest that your eye recast the movement you seek to evoke of the stream flowing from right to left?
Fish would most often position themselve nose into the current - to save effort staying in place and to watch for food drifting toward them. Artistically it may be a biggie but to a fisherman's eye that stream would be flowing left to right.
Posted by: Kevin Quinn | Jun 15 2023 19:17 utc | 34
We are surrounded by miracles.
It is an exercise left to the reader to appreciate them.
I like the painting.
Posted by: jared | Jun 15 2023 19:39 utc | 35
I don't have any art to offer, but you're welcome to visit my substack where I explore the post-Soviet music scene. Music from Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and more. Latest posts are from Tatarstan, North Caucasus and Georgia.
OK, so it's a shameless promotion, but I really think you'll enjoy it. Very different from what you'll hear in the West. Fun, lively and lots of pretty girls!
Posted by: ebear | Jun 15 2023 19:53 utc | 36
I'm very happy to see the content in this category. All very intriguing art.
Posted by: Inkan1969 | Jun 15 2023 20:03 utc | 37
Good to remember what we're fighting for - thanks.
Posted by: Richard | Jun 15 2023 15:49 utc | 20
Thank you for this great summary in one sentence!
I still cannot understand how the same species is able to do such beautiful art and gruesome evil at the same time.
Let us all keep fighting to stay on the bright site. And be inspired by talented artists.
Posted by: Cemi | Jun 15 2023 21:01 utc | 38
Thanks B and Beq for this painting. Appropriately mysterious and existing on many different levels of reality, and thus subject to many interpretations! The vacant body space looks like a portal to other dimensions.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Jun 15 2023 21:36 utc | 40
My goodness! This touches so many emotions. Thank you.
Posted by: Simon | Jun 15 2023 21:48 utc | 41
Thanks for this beautifull vision.
No culture, no future. When art recedes, reaction advances, the only real cure for fascism is culture and education.
Posted by: Tak-Tik | Jun 15 2023 22:39 utc | 42
How wonderful! would have commented earlier but i'm on the road. it's also amazing live (it's huge, a big mural). i was the "friend" who traced beq's outline on with spray paint out on her deck. she laid down on the paper, it was a beautiful day. it's really a phenomenal watercolor. and congrats on her show coming up in october!
Posted by: annie | Jun 15 2023 23:36 utc | 43
Thank you! Maybe you could also sometimes post some crane pictures? And...sometimes...the worlds of art and of cranes intersect.
Posted by: Dr Wellington Yueh | Jun 15 2023 23:56 utc | 44
This one broke me out of my hiding place. b nails it and I am still only half way through,
Bravo.
Posted by: DjangoCat | Jun 16 2023 0:03 utc | 45
Other planes of there. Astral planes. Astro black myths. Elemental sources found in eternal darkness. Change our destiny, create a new world. This world is not my world, what needs to be need not be what need has to be. There are other worlds they have not told us of. In some far place we build worlds of abstract dreams. Find our place amongst the stars, get in tune with other worlds. (Sun Ra paraphrases)
Imagining a better world, preparing ourselves for a different kind of being. That's where we alter this pathetic destiny they call life.
Posted by: peon | Jun 16 2023 0:06 utc | 46
The sublime image by beq of the floating body nudged along by the passing fish brought to my mind the lyrics of Brecht's song written for Rosa Luxenberg, whose murdered body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal, Berlin, by the Freikorps on January 15, 1919, that he published as scene 15 in "Baal" (1923) under the title "The Drowned Girl."
Here is my English translation of stanzas 1, 2, & 4 of Brecht's song, which I have retitled as follows:
"The Extradition of Julian Assange through the British justice system at the behest of the US government, as (un)reported in the MSM, foreshadowed in a song written by Bertolt Brecht"
When she drowned and began the slow descent
From the canal into the broader stream,
The lustrous sky shone like mother of pearl
As if it meant to appease the girl.
The passing fish nudged her cold limbs,
Weeds and algae added to her weight,
Clinging to her as she floated on
Creatures and plants further slowed her down...
As her pallid corpse began to rot,
Little by little, God forgot her:
First her face, then her hands, and last her hair.
One more corpse in a corpse-clotted river.
Montreal, QC
Posted by: Alan Heffez | Jun 16 2023 0:15 utc | 47
nice work beq! good to see some old names around and for b to still be hosting such a deep well of inspiration & insights
Posted by: b real | Jun 16 2023 0:54 utc | 48
Thank you b. Thank you barflies. [annie!] Yes, it's good to see old names...and new.
Posted by: beq | Jun 16 2023 1:28 utc | 49
I wish I knew how to send my oldest daughter's photograph of her teenage daughter in careful slow motion across a lowtide beach in Oregon - it's black and white because of mists, reflections, clouds. She is on the right side of the frame, seen from behind walking towards the quiet, shimmering ocean, faintly reflected by wet sand. There are two triangular rock islands on the left, distant but near. And midway between are several lines of little pelicans, seemingly welcoming her approach. All is as if silvered by a silent sun.
At least I can put it as my screensaver on the computer. It's very like the paintings b has brought us, I think. I hope my description will suffice.
Thank you, b.
Posted by: juliania | Jun 16 2023 1:34 utc | 50
Deeply moving, beq. Thanks for sharing this with this disparate community here at the good old Moon of Alabama!
Posted by: Maxcrat | Jun 16 2023 1:49 utc | 51
fnort: "reactionary cultural opinion"?!? You might have been happy under Stalin's "socialist realism"...
No, I don't like this piece of art, sorry, artist. It makes me think of a cadaver of someone who drowned. No "beauty."
Posted by: ariadna | Jun 16 2023 3:06 utc | 52
Really appreciate seeing this art by beq and the poetry / art that was posted by others.
Thank you all so very much.
Posted by: Savannah | Jun 16 2023 4:50 utc | 53
Dear barflies,
this is a moving painting. And I'm full if joy to read about Elemental beings. Reality, in my view, can only be fully grasped by striving not only for what meets the unprepared eye, but as well for perception and cognition the Supersensible.
A wonderful description of her Encounters with a Leprechaun and then other little folk, as they say in Iceland, is to be found in Tanis Helliwell books, like A summer with the elves.
From Slovenia there are Marko Pogacnik's books on the subject.
From Norway there is Are Thoresen with a number of books.
From Germany Rudolf Steiner with his epochal work on Anthroposophy.
From the US, there is the playwrite Martha Keltz.
From Israel there is Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon.
However, this is not only about nature spirits. Our world consists in my view also of active higher hierarchical spiritual beings. History can only be fully understood taking them and their good and evil Inspiration to mankind into account.
On 1914-2014 and the roots of struggle for european future there is a Play by Richard Ramsbotham, Rewinding the war.
A British Historian with anthroposophical background is Terry Boardman, his site is threeman.org.
For those speaking german, there is e.g. Markus Osterrieder with Welt im Umbruch, on the origins of world war 1 and of course Steiner's indispensible lectures from 1917 which outline the spiritual core of the struggle of western imperialist occultists to dominate Europe and hinder Germany to fulfill it's spiritual mission, to neutralize it and rule over the slavic peoples which have a huge spiritual cultural task in the future.
So Much more to say on this subject...
Thank you,beq and thank you, Bernhard!
Posted by: Bagradian | Jun 16 2023 6:02 utc | 54
I collected these are artists in Primorski Krai almost 30 years ago:-
Евгений и Оксана Осиповы
Posted by: Kaiama | Jun 16 2023 6:40 utc | 55
According to Friedrich Schiller, it is not Things useful let alone lucrative but Beauty and Things beautiful like... Art! which are going to salvage the world.
One more Autor has recently moved me. It might be demanding to follow his Story, but is imho worth to give it aconsideration.
It is Arthur Guirdham, MD from Bath, UK, who gives us a rich account of group reincarnation in the UK relating to medieval southern french Catharism and other previous lifes.
IMHO, we are all connected to each other through times past and present, appreciation of which should help us overcome superficial enmities and struggles to make this world a better place. Help from "Above" will be given to us!
Posted by: Bagradian | Jun 16 2023 6:44 utc | 56
Good art should educate and edify human beings and oppose the misanthropy of imperialism.
This article makes the case well using the example of the American artist Norman Rockwell:
https://risingtidefoundation.net/2022/12/24/norman-rockwells-american-renaissance-revival-revisited/ (many paintings)
Posted by: Browser | Jun 16 2023 7:07 utc | 57
It's quite beautiful. Meanwhile, at the Stockholm National Museum:
Eco-activists vandalize Monet artwork
https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/578072-eco-activists-monet-painting/
https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.06/l/648afb4485f54036e3731c45.jpg
Two activists standing next to the painting 'The Artist's Garden at Giverny' (1900) by French artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) after having smeared paint on it at the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. © Handout / ATERSTALL VATMARKER / AFP
Posted by: JMF | Jun 16 2023 7:19 utc | 58
I am a fan of the comment....
Life is art or it is nothing.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 16 2023 11:12 utc | 59
Thanks for not letting get beauty drowned to b and for this fantastic painting to beq.
Yes, there *are* strong lines between the painful, ugly fighting at real battlefields and the ones, each of us has to stand against the evil on a daily base of banality. May the elemental ghosts help us, being "servants of beauty" ("dem Schönen, Guten, Wahren").
I´m sure that avoiding the "little evil" in everyday life and bewing aware of beauty adds a little bit more strenght to the fight against the big evil which is happening actually not only in Ukraine, Syria and so many other places around the world.
Posted by: Blue Angel | Jun 16 2023 11:24 utc | 60
I love it. We cannot have too much decent culture in an indecent, uncultured world.
Posted by: Chicago Bob | Jun 16 2023 12:32 utc | 61
Love Art. Post more like this :D
thanks for all your commentary and maintaining this wonderful site.
Posted by: DaveZ | Jun 16 2023 12:33 utc | 62
My contribution to this respit:
https://www.ithaca.org.au/about-ithaca/poem-from-cavafy
Posted by: JB | Jun 16 2023 12:35 utc | 63
It must be a sign of how deeply the media of our times has affected (infected?) me: When I looked at the picture I saw a soldier dead in a trench in Ukraine and the fishes were grenades dropped by a drone.
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jun 16 2023 12:57 utc | 64
ariadna @ 52 Please don't be sorry for me. You get it. [Hi Noirette, breal, Maxcrat!]
Posted by: beq | Jun 16 2023 21:08 utc | 65
Most excellent work and website; I love it. Would enjoy seeing some return to your early days/ways that you mention. Not many blog sites post art and poetry much anymore, mine included. We are at the open doorway of war and Hell and some pleasant distraction can work wonderrs
Billmon was the Jimi Hendrix of blogging. Nobody else has ever come close. Haven't heard anything about him in quite a while. Anybody know what he's up to?
Posted by: William Verick | Jun 17 2023 20:48 utc | 67
restating the posting title....Drifting from hubris we drown in ignorance
On a daily basis, as a personal hubris check, I go to https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html which is an astronomy picture of the day. I am providing the link and this comment to announce that the current pic is of the hexagonal northern pole of Saturn.
from the posting explanation
Movies of Saturn's North Pole show the cloud structure maintaining its hexagonal structure while rotating. Unlike individual clouds appearing like a hexagon on Earth, the Saturn cloud pattern appears to have six well defined sides of nearly equal length. Four Earths could fit inside the hexagon.
I see beauty in my awe of my ignorance of the Cosmos
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jun 18 2023 5:11 utc | 68
The comments to this entry are closed.
That's awesome work.
Wish the would-be aesthete reactionaries who post here would shut up and paint a picture of how they feel! Let's lay the gauntlet down now: if you express reactionary cultural opinions but can't oil paint, put up or shut up!
Posted by: fnord | Jun 15 2023 14:14 utc | 1