Artists of the Month
Perspective is the code word of all creativity, which is the reason why we have chosen these talented artists work to portray the art of Hollywood. Not only do the camera men offer perspectives, so do the directors and every actor. In fact, hundreds of perspectives create the big perspective of a film. Every artist has his or her own perspective thereby enlightens the perspective of the audience and broadens their horizon. Art imitates life and life imitates art.
Helga Gruendler-Schierloh is a bilingual writer with a degree in journalism and graduate credits in linguistics. Her articles, essays, short stories, and poetry have appeared in the USA, the UK, Canada, and South Africa. Her debut novel, Burying Leo, won second place in women's fiction during Pen Craft Awards' 2018 writing contest.
Alexander R. Weghorst is a young, budding artist who likes to sketch, draw, paint, and work with clay.
CALLING ALL GODS
By Gregg Norman
Seesha, consort of Thoth, divine scribe,
sheathed in panther skin
with horned headband
and starred monogram,
visit me now.
Bragi, of the hall of Odin,
regaling Valhalla’s dead
with your runic tongue,
singing the elite’s exploits,
visit me now.
Nabu, patron of the wise and literate,
oracle of the moon god, Sin,
astride your winged dragon
with tablet and stylus,
visit me now.
Sarasvati, Bronze Age goddess,
daughter of the great Brahma,
with your many arms and aliases,
strumming your long-necked veena,
visit me now.
What is art? When you hear that word, what do you think of? Rococo diamonds? Baroque art? Salvador Dali? Isn't that too limited? A meticuloulsy crafted animated film is also an artwork. Or a single mother raising two kids while working full time. Or you trying to manage working, taking care of your family and yourself. A kiss is an artwork. Lovemaking turns into a child, making you a mirror image of God. A beautiful woman's body is an artwork. A guru's life. Nature. You are a collection of trillions of cells. A walking wonder that started as a fetus in your mother's belly. Art is the world. Look at these pictures and ask yourself if there is a difference between art and life.
Art Meets Poetry
The poems of
LindaAnn LoSchiavo
accompanied by paintings
Before the Baton Lifts
Before night falls, we light lamps, doubling
Our shadows, our defense against the dark.
Before batons are lifted, new lives rise,
Created by composers who possess
A magic pencil, precious wood condensed
By storms in whose gusts higher notes are born,
Absorbing each celestial tone, dream-fuelled.
As this light ignites the musician,
New arias increase their range, take shape — --
Laments, threats, maledictions, love duets — --
Intensity erupting through the stick
Whose tip’s in service of the sorcerer.
Before night falls, we light lamps, doubling
Our shadows, our defense against the dark.
Before batons are lifted, new lives rise,
Created by composers who possess
A magic pencil, precious wood condensed
By storms in whose gusts higher notes are born,
Absorbing each celestial tone, dream-fuelled.
As this light ignites the musician,
New arias increase their range, take shape — --
Laments, threats, maledictions, love duets — --
Intensity erupting through the stick
Whose tip’s in service of the sorcerer.
Lost Music
The sweetest music you will never hear
Chases the phantoms of the air, sends moans
From ancient orchestra pits. Songs once known,
Applauded, hailed for furthering careers
A hundred years ago have disappeared.
Grand operas described as a milestone,
That polished reputations, were dethroned,
Blown into the unknown — — a silent sphere.
Niccolo Van Westerhout had that fate.
Asleep in Naples’ paupers grave, he learned
To master incapacity as stacks
Of symphonies and operas, first-rate,
Met destiny’s cruel wrecking crew. Concerned
Fans rallied— --and financed his bright comeback.
The sweetest music you will never hear
Chases the phantoms of the air, sends moans
From ancient orchestra pits. Songs once known,
Applauded, hailed for furthering careers
A hundred years ago have disappeared.
Grand operas described as a milestone,
That polished reputations, were dethroned,
Blown into the unknown — — a silent sphere.
Niccolo Van Westerhout had that fate.
Asleep in Naples’ paupers grave, he learned
To master incapacity as stacks
Of symphonies and operas, first-rate,
Met destiny’s cruel wrecking crew. Concerned
Fans rallied— --and financed his bright comeback.
Papaveri e Papere
Air was his art, ingenious farmer’s son,
Young Paolo Soprani had no heart
But for accordions, obscure, unsung.
Air was his art.
Grand seeds exist though scattered. City-smarts
In minds that jump without much planting spun
From small Italian towns. Meet this upstart.
With calloused hands each tool implies, he’d won
A measure that might care from squeezed air, parts
Of music’s airy permanence begun.
Air was his art.
Note: inspired by the tarantella composed by Vittorio Mascheroni
The Translation Trap
Translator, traitor— — even if you care
How the Egyptian rulers swore at maids,
Or chafe against those misinformed faux pas
In Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, you can’t
Impose yourself on the libretto’s text,
Erase unreasonable treasons. No!
Your fine translation will be second best,
With far less wit than the original,
The critics will be happy to point out.
Preserve rejection slips and drafts of doubt.
Take comfort in a new perspective’s route.
You can’t tame mongrel dictions or bestow
Historical repairs on the argot.
If you’re translating from Italian know
Those characters — — high-born or Figaro — --
Whichever dialect they might dabble in,
Are yakking in inferior Latin.
Violence
If we must have violence, opera
Is the place for this unravelling urge
That fulminates in a high C’s shrill surge
Or culminates in drama --not trauma.
If there must be suicides, let them be
Confined to a libretto, clever twists
Amazing us— not body counts nor lists.
How many bullets, guns, bones were retrieved?
Catharsis makes the viewers go berserk
As the composer tips the scales, invokes
Those audible exhales with each careful stroke.
No audience was harmed writing this work.
INTERVIEW WITH MR. WERNER HAAS
The following interview was held on a warm spring day, May 20th 1985, on the terrace of the Park Avenue Hotel Restaurant in Vienna, Austria. I was in Vienna since one year and a freshman at the American International School. I wrote articles for a hobby magazine that honoured The Beatles.
When I found out that my associate, a Mr. Werner Haas had, next door to the famous building The Dakota, been a neighbour of John Lennon’s at the time of his death at 10:50 p.m. on December 8th 1980, I realized that this was a scoop I couldn’t miss for the magazine that came out under my friend Uncas Rydén’s supervision. We had founded THE B.S.F.C. – The Beatles Special Fan Club as kids and now living in Vienna I kept writing articles for the pamphlet.
This is the conversation as it was recorded on that day and transcribed. This copy is an August 3rd 2011 re-transcription of the original from 1985.
This interview has been lying untouched in the vaults since then.
CM – CHARLES MOULTON
WH – WERNER HAAS
CM – How was Lennon? What was your impression of him by any personal contact?
WH – Well, my contact with him was as a neighbour. When his baby was very, very young, he used to have a harness he’d put him in, to walk in the park. My personal contact was merely as a neighbour. I think the reason he was friendly was that we didn’t talk about anything in particular. I never treated him as John Lennon or felt that he was due any great respect or any ooh’s or aah’s. I think he got tired if everybody just looking at him. I guess it is the price you pay. I think the fact that I just said hello or that we talked about nothing important at all ever, certainly not about The Beatles or about music or anything like that, made him grateful not to have to worry about who he was or who he was pretending to be.
CM – And how did you find his wife, Yoko Ono?
WH – I think she was very protective of him. Maybe it was the fact that it was his fame. She was an artist in her own right when they got married. She was still Yoko Ono, albeit Mrs. John Lennon. She became prominent because she was his wife. I think that she was either trying to “protect her turf”, as it were, or merely the fact that she didn’t want to share him with a lot of people, particularly with people she didn’t know or who didn’t know her or who were not her professional peers, so just occasional passers-by or neighbours, she was not overly friendly or polite to. When you get to that level of stardom, it might be quite understandable.
CM – Did you ever hear John sing in person?
WH – No, no, never did. I had one chance to do it when they performed in New York City and were still The Beatles, but I never went and, of course, now in retrospect I wish I had gone.
CM – But he never talked about his singing or composing or anything like that?
WH – Not to me. And I don’t know if I would really have encouraged him to do that, because I think it would have spoiled a good rapport, just two people who happened to live a few feet apart. And all of a sudden if I had become just another Beatle-worshiper or another celebrity-clown, I think that would’ve destroyed the adult, or whatever, relationship there was. You know: “How are you?”, “Good to see you”, “How’s your son?” I’m not sure if he would’ve remembered my name, although I’d mentioned it to him. It was just one of those things that was purely neighbour-to-neighbour, person-to-person. Not adult-body VS. superstar John Lennon. Thank God.
CM – How was his son? How did you find his son?
WH – Julian? Or the little one?
CM – No, the little one.
WH – When I knew them he was just a baby, and as all babies do or did, he screamed and wet his pants and did everything fairly normal. I haven’t seen him now, although I know that they still live next-door, but I haven’t seen him. So when I was there, he was just a couple of years old.
CM – The big question: what happened on the day he was shot? How did you react when you heard about what had happened?
WH – Well, I had come home just about ten minutes before. I was out-of-town myself and I had come back late by plane and by taxi from the airport and I went into the apartment and decided to get into the shower. A friend of mine who was living with me at the time was watching television and a friend of ours phoned and she said, “My God, what’s going on over there?” I was still dripping wet from the shower and I said, “What are you talking about?” And she had the news on: John Lennon was shot and they rushed him to the hospital. That was the first that I had heard of it. Other people, I guess neighbours of ours, said or at least claimed to have heard the shots. But then, almost within minutes, people started to gather. And then of course, I guess he was really dead on arrival at the hospital, so when the news flashed out, by then hundreds of people came and the crowd just grew. The streets were blocked. There were probably thousands of people getting as close as they could. I even sent my friend out with a tape recorded to try to get try to get some on-the-spot interviews and the people were really quite angry about that and said: “How can you commercialize at a time like this?” It wasn’t that, it was just the idea of gathering some off the cuff, improvised, casual momentos of their impressions. I was going to send them home to Casey Kasem in California. As a matter of fact they had phoned me because they knew I lived next door and they wanted them for their show the next day on their Los Angeles radio station. But we were really so inundated with people and police that all we could do was to get out of our apartment building and go to the store.
Of course, from where we were, we could look into the side entrance of the Dakota building at all the celebrities that went in and were herded around. We would just look out the window and see Ringo Starr and the other people coming by.
CM – How did you feel about all this?
WH – Well, I don’t think it sank in right away. With some people, when something like this happens, you feel an immediate sadness or sense of loss. But this was the kind of thing that it took some time and probably what made it sink in finally was the fact that these people of all ages, colours, creeds, whatever, came and stayed and, usually when you have big crowds, you have some problems, but these were just very quiet. Some of them had candles. Some of them left flowers at the entrance to the building. And it was very subdued and a very orderly crowd. I don’t know, I think probably it was the only crowd of its’ type that I have ever seen and it was really that subdued feeling. It was not really sadness, although it was sad and it was not really anger, although there was anger. It was just a situation that they didn’t know how to deal with. There were a lot of people who seemed to feel that something like that was coming, that either John or – well, they felt that the whole era of the Beatles was officially dead. You know, they had talked about getting together for one last concert, but then they had all denied it. There were all these rumours that they hated one another and that the problem with Brian Epstein, the accusations for Paul marrying Linda and John marrying Yoko had escalated. I think now the great shock was that this was the end of an era and that something would that people had hoped for would never come again. Because there probably was never a group like it and never will be again. They just changed so many things from hairstyles to clothes to the type of singing to the type of entertainment. The variety of musical talent was endless. It wasn’t just pop. It was classical pop.
CM – When did you first meet Lennon?
WH – I couldn’t tell you the year, but I guess it was just shortly after they moved in. I talked to the man with this little baby and I didn’t know who he was. But to me that wasn’t rare. I spent a half an hour once talking to someone who turned out to be Red Skelton. I walked my dog with somebody who turned out to be Elliot Gould, so I’m not a good celebrity-recognizer, I guess. Just one day I was walking with the dog in the park and along came this guy with a harness and a little baby in it. We started to talk about the dog. He went on his way and I went mine. A friend of mine saw me and he said: “What did you and John Lennon have to talk about?” And that was the first time I knew it was John Lennon.
CM – John was a private person, as well.
WH – You just see all these posters of someone who has changed somewhat and he doesn’t look like you remembered John Lennon from all the album covers and all the publicity stills. He just looked different. Well, I guess the time of the Beatles was over.
CM – Let’s talk about his solo career.
WH – He was doing music and recording, but I don’t exactly know what he was releasing at that time. According to rumour, there is still a lot of unreleased stuff. Mrs. Lennon may eventually release it.
CM – Was he a good neighbour? Did you find him a good neighbour?
WH – That’s the wrong thing to ask any New Yorker, because there are no such things in New York. Neighbourhoods don’t exist in a big city like New York. Every building is its own neighbourhood. He is reputed to have owned six or seven apartments in the Dakota, which is the oldest apartment building in that part of the world. It is also one of the most expensive buildings to live in in New York. All the celebrities live or lived in it. Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Boris Karloff, when he was alive, Basil Rathbone lived there, a number of well-known writers and actors and musicians. So, it wasn’t really a neighbourhood-thing. When you have buildings where you are guarded by X-number of doormen and guards, it isn’t a neighbourhood. It’s just a building where people just happen to nod their heads and say: “Isn’t it terrible about so-and-so?” No, there is no such thing as being able to make judgement about anybody possibly being a good neighbour.
CM – What was the reaction in the house to his death?
WH – Well, I think the greatest reaction was the terrible inconvenience of not being able to get through huge crowds and of being asked by police as to why you are here and why you are trying to get across the police barrier. I think particularly the older people in his building and in our building next door were terribly inconvenienced because they couldn’t get their groceries or the medicines delivered. The pizzas and Chinese food from down on the corner couldn’t come in, because there were just thousands of people there. The fact that it went on around the clock didn’t create any chaos. The people were quiet, but when you get three or four thousand people in a small area, you just can’t have complete quiet. Along about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning it can get a bit disconcerting, even at such a poignant occasion.
CM – Is there anything you would like to add?
WH – Let me ask you a question. Since you are trying to do something involving what was, why is the interest still today in a lot of people in something that was and never can happen again? Why not concentrate a lot of that energy in trying to develop something new and exciting and different and interesting today? I, frankly, find that most of what’s around today is – well, you know, can’t last the way a lot of the Beatles-stuff has lasted. Yet nobody seems to be doing very much about trying to come up with something or get behind or boost a group that has something to say and does it well. When you look at who’s number one and number three and number four, it’s a little frightening, the lack of talent and ingenuity. It’s just a lot of promotion. Who do you like today? Springsteen?
CM – John Lennon.
WH – (Laughs) Of course.
CM – I am the son of opera singers, so it does tend to get classical. The Beatles, Elvis, ABBA. If it’s good music, it appeals to me.
WH – One of the interesting things is that a lot of the Beatles’ songs were recorded by other people as well. When I was growing up, whether it was Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, you know, what we call middle-of-the-road-artists, would all record the same songs. If you liked the one artist better than the other then you bought that version of it. So, The Beatles songs were recorded by many of the greats.
Through the James Webb telescope, astronomers are now finding hundreds and thousands of galaxies way older than the big bang. Which leads us to infinity. Several theoretical physicists have said that infinity is scientifically less of a problem than something ending. It could mean that the universe didn't explode into existence but expands and withdraws like a breathing giant. Now, in that sense we have to realize that everything in life works by the same rules. Trees sleep in the winter but wake up in the spring, but they are the same trees. Souls leave their bodies, but come back in new lives. Our cells are seperate entities that constitute our bodies. Could we then, like the cells in our body, be cells in God's body? We are energy and our energy mingles with other energies. Scientists are now considering that, because the universe seems to be endless, quantum physical energy created the universe and not the other way around.
There is no astronomical time. Faith creates the world. Love creates the universe. Trust is real. Feelings are real places. We are now embarking on new time in history when our perspectives change. This spiritual awakening is glorious.
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
— Dalai Lama
"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit."
- Khalil Gibran
"Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity."
— Roger Ebert, film critic
Bond
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Bond is the original British gentleman. More, even. He is the Jungian archetype of the hero we all want to be. He is Superman and Prince Charming rolled up into one. A guy we can count on when times get rough. He is the best we can be. That does not only go for men. He is the spirit we want to be. The guy that pretty much controls his addictions. He drinks, but he does not let it control him. He has affairs, but he does not become gluttonous. He serves the good cause and he would die for it. He is what we want to be.
Bond is also interesting because he has been played by so many different kinds of actors from the British isles and the colonies. So he is a kind of embodiment of the British Empire beyond the Aston Martin and the smoking. The Scotsman, the Australian, the British guy, the Welshman and the Irishman. There you have 80 % of the Victorian age right there. And Bond visited Eton in his youth, he is a Commander of the British Empire and he has been everywhere.
Bond is our hero. He will prevail, even though he died in the last flick. And if it is his son or daughter or clone that returns, we can still watch the old movies and remember: Bond is the gentleman we all wish we were.
He remains shaken, not stirred.
This Month's Artist
Photographer Isabel Gomez de Diego
ISABEL GÓMEZ DE DIEGO lives in Burgos, Spain capital. Bachelor of Art and Superior of Design, amateur photographer and higher degree, she is a poet and writer as well as an excellent painter participating in many Festivals of Poetry and Theater. She has two children and is published in several print journals, spending her summer vacations in Dublin, Ireland, as well as doing Street Theater with the Theater Group "Elogio de la Poesía”, made up of a group of five people, three girls and two boys; she having performed in Berlin, Hannover, Minden and Cologne, in Germany; in Brussels, Saint Nicolas of Liege, from Belgium. Their Works are in The Stray Branch; Down in the Dirt; GloMag; Alien Buddha Zine, Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, and others.
This Month's Artist
Mario Loprete
This is what he says:
"Painting for my is the first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cords…
In the last years , I worked exclusivly at my concrete sculptures .
For my Concrete Sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistical process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them in artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as they were urban artefacts.
I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 -2022 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was covid 19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period.
clothes that survived covid 19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.
I believe much in this project and there will be expose in these events exhibitions already scheduled:
-from 5 june 2023 at AVAPAI COLLEGE PRESCOTT ART GALLERY of Prescott Arizona U.S.A.
-from 14th august 2023 at Overcash Gallery - Central Piedimont Community College in Charlotte - North Carolina USA
-from 1st October 2023 at Nantwick Museum - Nantwick - U.K."
Delight with Light
By Alex Andy Phuong
The end of a year
Might imply that the end is near,
But rather than live in fear,
Know that the present
Is truly here,
And then let reindeer
Fly across the sky,
And why not try
To make a resolution
To find a solution
To issues as they arise,
And then rise
Like the break of dawn
While allowing life
To continue on,
And then be the light
That shines so bright
So that a new day
Shall come about
Without a doubt
See Beyond a Holiday Tree
By Alex Andy Phuong
Enjoying the holidays
Can happen in a number of ways,
And as days full of cheer
Happen near the end of a year,
Dare to look towards
The majesty of reality
By striving to help
Society thrive
While expressing gratitude
For being alive,
And by doing more
Than merely survive,
Prepare for the unknown
Only to realize
How much one has grown
Only to own
A personal identity
That could inspire others
To help one another
While making this holiday season
Unlike any other
As a reason to see
Ways to celebrate
Rather than hate,
And fully appreciate
This important date
Spirited Away to a Winter Wonderland
By Alex Andy Phuong
Without falling down a rabbit hole,
And definitely without a lump of coal,
There is no doubt
That when the holidays come about,
There are definitely many reasons
To enjoy festive seasons,
And by marveling at the majesty
Of a winter wonderland,
Doing good
Is just as essential
And fundamental
As being good,
So find ways
To help during the holidays
So that the simple act
Of lending a hand
Could create a more
Sublime way
To utilize time,
And the timelessness
Of the holiday spirit
Could hopefully result
In newfound opportunities
To spread love and cheer
For everyone
And anyone
Far and near
With ethereal elegance
Hermia and Lysander
is a watercolor painting created in 1870 by British illustrator and miniature portrait painter
John Simmons.
Based on a scene from Act II, scene II of William Shakespeare's comedy play
A Midsummer Night's Dream, it measures 89 by 74 centimetres (35 by 29 in).
Paintings of fairies had a resurgence of popularity in the 19th century with many based on scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Simmons produced several pieces in this genre. According to Christopher Wood, an expert in Victorian art, the details included in Simmons' fairy paintings were "executed with an astonishing clarity" and gave the impression they had been painted on a glass surface. The majority of Simmons' depictions of fairies were of naked females and Wood considered them the "bunny girls of the Victorian era".
A watercolor painting using gouache, the artwork shows Hermia with her lover Lysander when they are lost in an enchanted wood. The couple are surrounded by a community of fairies; some are pictured in flight using their delicate wings, others are transported in chariots shackled to mice. The couple are tired and disorientated, appearing unaware of the crowds of animals and fairies around them. Lysander is seated and touching Hermia's fingers with one hand while indicating the soft forest moss with his other hand. It is the point in the tale of
A Midsummer Night's Dream when he invites her to rest, saying:
One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.
The painting achieved a sale price of £42,470 when auctioned in New York by Sotheby's in May 2012, a record price for work by this artist. It had previously been auctioned by Sotheby's in London on 19 June 1984 and a decade later by Sotheby's, New York, on 25 May 1994, when it was wrongly attributed to Julius Simmons.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
is a watercolor painting created in 1870 by British illustrator and miniature portrait painter
John Simmons.
Based on a scene from Act II, scene II of William Shakespeare's comedy play
A Midsummer Night's Dream, it measures 89 by 74 centimetres (35 by 29 in).
Paintings of fairies had a resurgence of popularity in the 19th century with many based on scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Simmons produced several pieces in this genre. According to Christopher Wood, an expert in Victorian art, the details included in Simmons' fairy paintings were "executed with an astonishing clarity" and gave the impression they had been painted on a glass surface. The majority of Simmons' depictions of fairies were of naked females and Wood considered them the "bunny girls of the Victorian era".
A watercolor painting using gouache, the artwork shows Hermia with her lover Lysander when they are lost in an enchanted wood. The couple are surrounded by a community of fairies; some are pictured in flight using their delicate wings, others are transported in chariots shackled to mice. The couple are tired and disorientated, appearing unaware of the crowds of animals and fairies around them. Lysander is seated and touching Hermia's fingers with one hand while indicating the soft forest moss with his other hand. It is the point in the tale of
A Midsummer Night's Dream when he invites her to rest, saying:
One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;
One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.
The painting achieved a sale price of £42,470 when auctioned in New York by Sotheby's in May 2012, a record price for work by this artist. It had previously been auctioned by Sotheby's in London on 19 June 1984 and a decade later by Sotheby's, New York, on 25 May 1994, when it was wrongly attributed to Julius Simmons.
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Art by Caravaggio
Poetry by Alex Andy Phuong
Nighttime Phenomenon
Once upon a dream,
After a long day,
Dreaming while sleeping
Permits people to say
What they could
Within fantasy,
And coping with reality
Involves the endurance
Through the fright of plight,
And even as sunlight
Surrenders to
The music of the night,
Trying to do
Anything right
Can allow dreams
To become reality,
And hopefully
Benefit society
Analyze to Realize Dreams
Sleeping beautifully
After living life fully,
Serene serenity,
And then coping with reality
Day by day,
And also enjoying
The joys of being alive
While also appreciating the sublime,
For tales as sumptuous
As poetic rhymes
Can help people
Go above and beyond
To journey on
After sleeping peacefully
So that each new day
Brings hope and opportunity
While also doing anything
To improve reality
The Beam of Dreams
Rays of light
That light the way
To an even better day,
And on this day
Of thanks and gratitude,
Overcome any sense
Of ineptitude,
And experience the joys
And sense of hope
Knowing that it
Is actually possible to cope,
And dream on
Knowing that the past
Is long gone,
But letting the heart go on
Can enrich the soul
To make people truly whole,
And an entire life awaits,
And in fact,
Sometimes waiting
Is the best action to take
For patience can actually
Help people make
A better life
Rather than suffer from strife,
And cheers to the dreamers
That can inspire others
To believe
That a life without grief
Really is such a relief
Artwork by Charlise Eileen
Art by Askar Takirbassov
Making Music
Reflections over my career and life as an artist
Published letter / article to 'STÄMBANDET' - The Magazine for the Swedish Vocal & Speech Pedagogue Association from 2003.
By Gun Kronzell-Moulton, Operatic Mezzo-Soprano, Concert- and Oratorio-Singer , Professor of Solo Voice at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. English translation by Herbert Moulton. Further translations and additions by Charles E.J. Moulton
Dear Colleagues!
I'm delighted to have a chance to write to you again. It's been over ten years since my last article. At that time I told you about my work in Vienna as Professor of Voice at the State Academy of Music.
Now I intend to take you on a little journey of reminiscence, hoping to touch on some of the people who have influenced me most as human being, singer, and pedagogue.
During my student time in Stockholm --- up until 1958 --- I was privileged to work with many fascinating people:
One of these was Ǻke Nygren, unforgettable for his lessons in Speech Technique, as well as for his uncanny ability to remember each and every student he ever had. Shortly before his death he attended a recital of mine at Waldemarsudde, after which he came back, shaking with laughter: "Have you seen the mistake in the programme?"
What they had done was write 'Rangström's The Only Student (Den Enda Studenten)' instead of 'The Only Hour (Den Enda Stunden)'. A fortnight later he was dead from a heart attack. A splendid and unforgettable man.
Wilhelm Freund was an unbelievably fine teacher of German Lieder, as well as an outstanding personality. Every time I travelled down to Germany he asked me to bring him some Pumpernickel and Harz cheese.
Bernhard Lilja taught Solfeggio Ear Schooling at the Academy and was one of my very favourites, not only for his splendid instruction, but also because his lessons were always so hilarious. We roared with laughter through most of them.
From Isa Quensel I learned a great deal --- a magnificent woman full of temperament and a passion for fair play. She was a fabulous actress and speech pedagogue and I know I would never have become such a successful actress as a singer if it hadn’t been for Isa.
My final year in Stockholm brought me to the legendary Russian pedagogue Madame Andrejewa de Skilondz: a fascinating atmosphere steeped in Russian culture provided by her two round little sisters, an Angora cat and a Pekingese on a silken cushion. Surely many of you are with the many intriguing tales about the Madame, who, when still very young, sang with Caruso.
Torsten Föllinger, my dear old friend and collegue, whom I met during a course being given by Professor Josef Witt in Stockholm, has, with his tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge of human nature, always meant more to me than I can say.
Part of my income during my student days came from church music. Often I'd go to various organizations and ask if I could sing at a church service or concert. Many times, especially out in the country, I came home with a sack of coins from the collection!
Naturally all the student concerts at the old Academy were worth hearing: almost every week a delightfully mixed program of classics. One concert I recall in particular featured Georg Riedel playing his famous double-bass. Lasse Länndahl is another one.
In 1959 a Ruud Scholarship enabled me to travel down to Wiesbaden to study with Professor Paul Lohmann, one of the individuals who influenced me most. I still use many of his exercises in my work. The extraordinary thing is that, after so many years, their meaning suddenly becomes so crystal clear that you know precisely what he wanted from them. Paul Lohmann was a true sorcerer, with a vast amount of humour.
With every new engagement I took pains to find a teacher with the wisdom to guide my voice in the right way. In Bielefeld there was Herman Firchow, who, besides being a source of valuable advice, had a family who soon were among my best friends ... and good honest friends are something we all need.
Every Sunday during these three years in Bielefeld found me working at Bethel, the renowned institution for mentally handicapped children. This provided a perfect balance with my work at the theatre and gave my life a secure and solid meaning.
The four succeeding years at Hanover were the busiest of all, with my repertoire expanding to include many of the great Wagner- and Verdi-roles such as Ortrud, Brangäne, Eboli, Ulrica, Abigaille, Azucena, and Preziosilla .
At the same time --- in order to keep the voice healthy and fresh --- I studied Brahms Lieder with the legendary pianist Sebastian Peschko, who had been the regular accompanist of Heinrich Schlusnus. He had me write down everything we did together, and for this I shall be eternally grateful as these notes have been a source of untold benefit ever since.
As voice teacher in Hanover I had Otto Köhler, a worthy colleague, then seventy years of age and still singing splendidly at the opera. Sometimes we did vocal exercises for four hours together --- Heaven! Later, when I was engaged in Graz and at the Volksoper in Vienna, I went to Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek, who always came to all my premieres, and has continued to do so to my student concerts in Vienna.
Quite soon after our son Charlie's birth in September of 1969, I was asked to create the role of Adriano in a new production of Wagner's RIENZI, with the strongly imaginative Stage Director from Vienna's Burg Theater, Adolf Rott --- a marvellous role and a fantastic assignment, but extremely dramatic and taxing for the voice, especially so soon after my caesarean! So, I turned to Professor Eugenie Ludwig (Christa's mother), whose wondrous head resonance exercises brought the voice clear up to the high C, even with a heavy cold!
In Graz we shared a two-family theatre house with the Australian soprano Althea Bridges, and her Danish-born husband. And precisely in September 1969 each of us gave birth to a son at the very time we should have been appearing as Leonora and Azucena in a new Trovatore-production. You can imagine how popular that made us with the management!
We spent the ten years dating from 1974 in Göteborg, where I was engaged at the Music Acedemy, and, with my husband, wrote and staged a Children's Play named LONG LIVE THE TROLLS! , where Charlie also had his professional stage debut as the clumsy troll Klampe-Lampe. I also taught disc jockeys on the Stena Line-ferries, as well as teachers to Chinese immigrants.
Besides all that, I jumped at a day's notice at the Gothenburg Opera into the role of Ulrica (Mamzelle Arvidsson) in Verdi's MASKED BALL, singing it in Swedish for the first time, after having already performed it in both German and the original Italian. Added to that, there were every summer intensive church music courses, hard work, but fun and rewarding.
All these varied activities gave me a ready-made and invaluable backlog of experience when I was made a fulltime Professor of Voice at Vienna's State Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in the autumn of 1984 --- this, after a trial lesson before some thirty voice teachers --- both gratifying and rewarding .
At first I was so taken with all the various nationalities around me at the Academy that I took on a class of twenty different students, but with the passage of time I narrowed it down to only those I myself had prepared or who had convinced me of their future potential .
Entrance examinations in Sweden are considerably more difficult than in Austria, as we Swedes are a singing people with a singular feeling for speech and song. However, it's also clear that to sing German as, say, Fritz Wunderlich did is indeed wonderful. He once confided that he sang German as if it were Italian!
Since the fall of the Wall our problems have been entirely different here. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, and the like are all extremely talented and musically prepared, but with so little money that the barely come up to the existence-minimum.
To return now to some welcome visitors:
Torsten Föllinger sometimes journeys down here to help us achieve more vocal freedom, as well as self-esteem.
The Russian basso Nesterenko gave a course for our students, an outstanding singer, who also presented me with a book of exercises for the bass voice, which had been used in Russia since 1915.
Ingrid Bjoner was also here a few years ago for a seminar and impressed everyone with her depth of understanding, especially for individual students.
For a few years I had a brilliant young Hungarian girl as a student, who suddenly became Luciano Pavarotti's right hand and general Girl Friday for a period of seven years, travelling with him the world over. Thanks to her, not only did I have free tickets for his concerts and opera performances, but also had many opportunities to meet with him and attend some of his rehearsals, not only instructive but endlessly fascinating.
The positive advantages of living in Vienna are not so much the old-fashioned teaching and traditions, but the enormous bill-of-fare readily available in terms of international concerts operatic performances, theatre and dance events of every possible type. We have also enjoyed several visits by Kjell 'Mr.Choir' Lönnâ and his large, delightful and enthusiastic singing ensembles. Besides performing 'Haus-Musik' in the Swedish Embassy (as I have done numerous times), the success they scored in St. Stephen Cathedral verged on the sensational. Then, too, Stockholm's Radio Orchestra, Drottningholm's Baroque Ensemble, and also the Maestro Eric Ericsson, with whom I sang in the 50's, all of whom have concertized here to great applause. And it's always a joy to meet with any of them are my old colleagues from home.
My husband Herbert Moulton has long been associated with ORF School's Radio, as well as with both English-speaking theatres, the International (where he played everything from Shakespeare to Wilder and Orwell and the Uncle in Charlie's Aunt) and Vienna's English Theatre, the latter serving high-quality performances from London (Ayckborn, Shakespeare, Christie) or the States (such as Second City) for large and distinguished public. He has a versatile background in all fields of art: as a playwright and actor , singer of everything from simple folk tunes to 'Grand Opera' and has done commercials and been in films with the likes of Audrey Landers, Alan Rickman, David Warner, Clint Eastwood and Zsa-Zsa Gabor.
Inspired by all this and early stage-work as well as years of concerting in his back-pocket, our son Charles E.J. Moulton's career has advanced from theatre projects and small roles in Vienna's Chamber Opera (Offenbach, Gershwin, Vives, etc.) to a two-and-a-half year's run of Roman 'Rosemary's Baby' Polanski's Broadway-destined World Premiere 'Grusical' DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, written by Webber-collaborator Jim Steinman . At present he is playing the first cast role of The Big Bopper in Hamburg's long running musical BUDDY in Germany, from which he recently took time off to fly down to Vienna for two concerts as bass-soloist in Joseph Haydn's THE CREATION (once in the Haydn Museum, the baroque house where Papa Haydn wrote the piece) then to Sweden for a tour of church concerts with famous Swedish all-round saxophonist Johan Stengård, followed by a most rewarding week at a Master-Class outside Oslo in Norway, a seminar featuring the eminences of Ingrid Bjoner and Håkan Hagegård . He spent a half year cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas as a singing soloist, after which he joined the company of Jesus Christ Superstar in the Bad Hersfelder Festival. Before joining the Dutch Stage Holding Corporation to play Scar and Pumbaa in Disney's THE LION KING in Hamburg, he was soloist with the city’s Mozart Orchestra, performing Rossini and Bizet.
One great blessing for me is having had the good fortune to meet and get to know a magnificent Franciscan monk in Salzburg back in 1953. He has ever since enriched my life with good advice and the deep understanding that a true Christian vocation can provide.
As a resting-place next to the productive lives that we all have enjoyed, mine is, has been and always will be my home town of Kalmar. This city, with its grand 12th century castle and seaside lifestyle and my many friends and relatives, has been my lifelong summer-home and will always be so. Since my 1998 retirement I have enjoyed not only more freedom as a pedagogue and singer but as a globetrotter as well, travelling not only more to Sweden but to my friends in Germany, Hungary and Ireland as well. Living in Vienna, Austria is, on the other hand, also a blessing. I can, therefore, heartily welcome you here and to my Studio in the second district with all God's blessings.
As I think back over my life, I see now how tremendously important it is to never lose sight of why we do what we do. Why we are engaged in Making Music. This is not only a nine-to-five job. If it were we might as well stand as cashiers in a mall. It is an attitude, a vocation, a life-style. We search for the deepest part within us and dwell within its mysteries, taming our technique, bettering ourselves as people to make us finer as artists, generously sharing with others the benefits of our experience, giving our public love and joy with it all and leaving our hearers nobler with the experience. Art is calling forth emotions and making people believe in life again. As such, and if done right, this is the noblest of all professions.
Color Art by Lonfeldt
Visitor Art
How did these five women depicted in the pictures below change history?
They are Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Catherine the Great, Jo Anne Robinson and Evita Peron.
Send an answer to
[email protected]
and maybe your answer will be published in the next issue.
Peter Paul Rubens
(1577-1640)
was a Belgian painter and diplomat. This dramatic portrait of the Duke of Lerma was painted in 1603 while Rubens was in Italy.
Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval (1552/3 – 1625) was a favorite of Phillip III of Spain. Phillip II had worried the noble would take advantage of his son. History provides a divided opinion as to whether or not Sandoval used his favor with Phillip III to his personal advantage or was a loyal advisor to the young king. King Phillip III would elevate Sandoval to the Duke of Lerma in 1599 and the Duke would become the King’s most trusted advisor.
The Duke would become a powerful statesman. Nobles and the wealthy were thought to have showered him with gifts to curry his favor. Whether this stunning portrait of the Duke riding as if to battle on a fine white stallion was one of those gifts is unknown. To my untrained eye, the horse is the real star of this painting and the man sitting astride his back is just along for the ride. The long and thick flowing mane, upright ears, thick tail and stance of the horse exemplify the Andalusians Spain would often use as a tool of diplomacy. Rubens would later in his life maintain a fine stable and enjoy evening rides on his own prized Andalusian.
The young king, who favored festivals and prayers over most everything else would see his power erode as his son, Phillip IV, himself perhaps corrupted by an older and stronger advisor would seek to overthrow his father. As the country fell into bankruptcy, Lerma issued a number of policies that were ruinous to the country but lined his own pockets. However, much of wealth that he amassed was spent on religious houses, rather than on his own excesses.
The Duke’s position also eroded and he was compelled to leave the court in 1618. Months earlier, perhaps knowing the end was coming to Phillip III’s rule, Lerma had persuaded Pope Paul V to make him a cardinal. Phillip IV set out to destroy Lerma but Pope Gregory XV defended him. The cardinalcy protected him from prosecution. Lerma’s secretary, not protected by such a high station within the church, would be tortured and executed in his stead. Lerma would be sentenced to return over a million ducates to the state. He died less than a year later and there was no indication whether or not he paid the fine.
Rubens had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Spain in 1603 to meet with Phillip III. It was likely that the artist and the Duke met during that trip.
“Venus at her Mirror” by Diego Velazquez
"Venus at her Mirror” by Diego Velazquez depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by Cupid.
Painted by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, between 1647 and 1651, it is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez.
Nudes were extremely rare by seventeenth-century Spanish artists, who were policed by members of the Spanish Inquisition.
Despite the Spanish Catholic church’s restrictions, foreign artists’ nudes were keenly collected by the Spanish court nobles.
This painting is also known as “The Rokeby Venus” and “The Toilet of Venus.” It was inspired by famous Italian works of the nude Venuses, which were the precedents for this work, which was painted during Velázquez’s visit to Italy.
Velázquez combined two traditional compositions of Venus in this painting, the recumbent Venus and the Venus looking at herself in the mirror.
This Velazquez painting also illustrates the “Venus Effect,” which is a phenomenon in the psychology of perception, named after Venus, because of the various pictures of Venus gazing into a mirror.
Viewers of “Venus Effect” may assume that she is admiring her reflection in the mirror. She is actually looking directly at the viewer, through the mirror; she is looking at the reflection of the painter, not herself.
This perception effect is often used in the arts, the cinema, and photography.
This painting has a fascinating history. For its first 150 years, it hung in the houses of Spanish courtiers before being purchased and brought to England to hang in Rokeby Park, a country house, in Yorkshire in 1813.
Then after the National Gallery, London acquired this painting, it was attacked and severely damaged in 1914 by the suffragette Mary Richardson, in what was her most famous act of defiance.
The picture was restored and returned to display at the National Gallery and is today one of its more famous works.
The Lovely Ingredients of Christmas
- An Art Gallery
50 Romantic Couples
in
History, Art, Film and Literature
***
1. Albert and Armand in "The Birdcage"
2. Marc Anthony and Cleopatra
3. Napoleon and Josephine
4. Axel von Fersen and Marie Antoinette
5. Romeo and Juliet
6. Tony and Maria in "West Side Story"
7. Veauty and the Beast
8. Tarzan and Jane
9. Rhett and Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind"
10. Rick and Ilsa in "Casablanca"
11. James Bond and Moneypenny
12. Ethan Hunt and Nyah in "Mission Impossible 3"
13. Paris and Helen
14. Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII
15. Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour
16. Jack and Rose in "Titanic"
17. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley
18. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo
19. Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII
20. Grace Kelly and Prince Rainer of Monaco
21. Johnny Cash and June Carter
22. Elvis and Priscilla
23. John and Yoko
24. Paul and Linda McCartney
25. Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach
26. Cathy and Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights"
27. Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester
28. Rachel and Ross in "Friends"
29. Penny and Leonard in "The Big Bang Theory"
30. Doug and Carrie in "The King of Queens"
31. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson
32. David Bowie and Iman
33. Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell
34. Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan
35. Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy
36. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
37. Frank and Nancy Sinatra
38. Baby and Johnny in "Dirty Dancing"
39. Sandy and Danny in "Grease"
40. Forrest and Jenny in "Forrest Gump'
41. Han and Leia in "Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back"
42. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
43. Bogey and Bacall
44. John F. and Jackie Kennedy
45. Kermit and Miss Piggy
46. Lady and the Tramp
47. Mork and Mindy
48. Bonnie and Clyde
49. Bobby and Pam Ewing in "Dallas"
50. Gomez and Morticia in "The Addams Family"
Singin' on the Love Boat
By Charles E J Moulton
The M/S Arkona used to be the filming location of the German version of “Love Boat”. It was the Traumschiff, the Dream Boat. Furthermore, this ship was the home of several rich people.
One man had been there 13 times. His joy in hearing us perform Elton John, ABBA- and The Four Tops -songs on the deck was so grand that he jumped into the pool with clothes on during “Crocodile Rock”. A rich widow had been on the ship fifty times.
The cruise liner was my address for six months. My job was to sing and act in seven shows, performing 150 songs and playing seven roles in the ship’s theatre. I had the joy of planning my own shows in the ship’s bars and while I was at it I also saw the world. It was a fantastic time. It was a turbulent time. A relationship ended during a ship wreck. The motor caught fire and the ship had to be pulled in and repaired in Barcelona.I had a hard time dealing with this ship wreck of my own life while on land in my own flat in Hamburg. Nevertheless, the hot tears that I cried were actually a sea that made me set sail to meet my new wife beyond the horizons of the world back in Germany.
I got to see the Atlantic ocean. This wonderful experience was unforgottable. Below us 15 000 feet of water, over us only stars, one ship on the horizon, the moon a silver disc at one a.m. I had just finished a show. My relationship was over. My soul was aching. And yet, this was the most precious moment of my life. So much beauty.
I have been a performer since I was eleven. Now, in 2011, I have performed in 85 productions, sang 300 concerts, written countless articles and made seven movies. But actually seeing three continents while performing was a blessing.
I got on board in September of 2001. The planes had just crashed into the World Trade Center and two weeks later I set sail. Barcelona gave way to Cannes, Naples and Sicily shook hands with Croatia and Malta, Tunisia gave way to Greece and Turkey. After the ship wreck we flew to Rio for four days. I got severly sunburned on the Copacabana. My day climbing the Sugar Loaf Mountain was spectacular. My mother, Gun Kronzell kept all my emails from my trip and my dad Herbert Moulton was proud to say that his Hamburger son was cruising the seas.
In Kingston, St. Vincent, a very nice Rastafari man showed me the Botanical Gardens. There a tree had been planted by the actual Captain Bligh of the Bounty and was still standing. I was later impressed to hear that the film Pirates of the Caribbean had been filmed here. A footnote to this story is that Johnny Depp, the star of the movie, had already seen me as Koukol in the musical “Dance of the Vampires” in Vienna three years earlier.
A memorable experience was laying on the beach among turban-wearing, champagne-sipping rich ladies in Cannes. I walked the beach of the original Carthage, sipped a cocktail named “As Time Goes By” at the recreated Hyatt Bar of Casablanca. I bought a carpet in Morocco from a man that was reduced five hundred dollars for me to buy it, just so that he could feed his family during Ramadan. I saw a free climber in Rio. I received a marriage offer from a woman with four children in Fortaleza, Brazil. I got mugged in Rio. I ate original Maltese food and drank port wine in Madeira. I tire rafted in Corfu. I saw the Sistene Chapel and almost came late to the cruise ship with an Italian Taxi. I took a trip down the Indian River in Dominica and was offered white stuff in Antigua.
One wonderful event took place in the idyllic Brazlian town of Salvador de Bahia. True to my fashion, I had spent too much money and could not pay a restaurant bill. The waiter and I searched the banks in order to withdraw money with a European bank card. We succeeded and promptly I invited him for a drink as a thank you. He spoke only Portugese. With my English and a bit French and Italian, we did well with sign language. He was a father of a daughter and I was a singer on a boat. We needed no language. We did well anyway. Lingustic capabilities were superfluous.
All in all, this trip was the memory of a life time. After coming on shore again I was ready to join the audition circuit again. It led to my work in “The Lion King” and to meeting my future wife, with which I now have a beautiful five year old daughter.
If you do go on a cruise, you will probably not have as wild a time as I did. However, I can recommend it if you had the money. I got to work on a cruise ship. If you have the money to travel I can recommend an ocean cruise with South American trips.
It is unforgettable.
The moon over the Atlantic is the most fabulous thing you can witness.
If you lost your sense of direction, you will find it on the Atlantic.
Why? Because God lives there.
The cruise ship M/S Arkona showed me that.
Make up and tell each other or yourself a story with the following pictures as an inspiration!
It's Story Time!
Remember: reality is an illusion, but your dreams ARE real!
Artist of the Month
Jerome Berglund
graduated from the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program and spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the midwest where he was born and raised. Since then he has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Berglund has exhibited many haiku and senryu online and in print, most recently in Tofu Ink Arts, Vermillion, Hey I'm Alive Magazine, and Fauxmoir. He is furthermore an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been shown in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica. You can read Jerome’s earlier published works collected in Bindle Bum and Paint Chips, available through Amazon.
Hello ,
My name is Mario Loprete . I'm an italian artist.
I wish show you my artistic project . Painting for my is the first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cords…
In this year, I worked exclusivly at my concrete sculptures .
For my Concrete Sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistical process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them in artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as they were urban artefacts.
I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was covid 19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period.
clothes that survived covid 19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.
In the last 2 years about 250 international magazines wrote about my work turning on the spotlight on my art project , attracting the attention of important galleries and collectors.
I believe much in this project and I hope that I can exhibit in important art spaces other those already in program:
-from 4th september at North Carolina University of Charlotte
-from 1st october at Bibliotheke of Venlo in Netherlands
-from 5 may 2023 at AVAPAI COLLEGE PRESCOTT ART GALLERY of Prescott Arizona U.S.A.
-in september 2022 at Falkirk Cultural Center - SAN RAFAEL - U.S.A.
-in September 2023 at DOMINICAN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in SAN RAFAEL - U.S.A.
THE TALE OF A MISSING LINK
FROM INDIANA
An analytical review of the five films known as THE PLANET OF THE APES
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Folks of all generations flock to see dragons fly and strange creatures in spaceships ruling topsy-turvy worlds. Science-fiction-fans can be categorized into three groups: those who dress up in the clothes of their idols, speak the language and collect the items, attend the congregations and sing the songs, those who see everything as pure entertainment, popcorn-fun below all Shakespearian tradition. Between the two lies a group who would gladly consider themselves analytical. Their chief characteristic is looking at the real background of the piece and are thus probe into the story like a gold miner looking for a treasure.
The original Planet of the Apes-Series (films dating from 1968 to 1973) entail a striking message. The dialogue a striking parody of all things human, all things civilized and racist, the humane plea against injustice seems imbedded within it like litmus paper. It is a wonder that the movies are not discussed at sociological seminars.
Current civilization teaches us that dressing up is for fun and certainly anyone who dresses up as a monkey is not to be taken all too seriously. But rewind the tape: are they right? Theatre, like storytelling, shows the audience-member snip-bits from his own life from a new angle. Sci-Fi, especially, is able to use symbolism in order to map out the eternal allegory.
In the story, human astronauts from 1972 are frozen through deep space to arrive in the year 3955 on a planet ruled by monkeys. Only one survives, Taylor.
After torture and persecution he discovers that he is back home on Earth and the apes have simply taken over Earth after a nuclear catastrophe.
There are human survivors of this holocaust and they have worshipped the ultimate bomb for millennia. Taylor is witness to how the monkeys invade their underground city and ultimately destroy Earth by exploding the ultimate bomb.
Three apes escape in Taylor ship, arriving back in 1972 and find they are being treated the same way as Taylor was back home, only worse for it comes with intrigue. The one ape is pregnant and by fooling the police, she manages to rescue the baby, who grows up to start a revolt to found the Planet of the Apes.
The story is a vicious circle: A travels to B and creates havoc, which sets off a time warp that sends off A to B again. It is probably the most famous one in films. Had not Taylor decided to travel into the future, the apes would never have been able to travel to the past to found the future that Taylor discovered.
Ultimately, the proverbial dog chases his own tail until we sit there, blubbering and cooing like, well, a monkey in a tree.
But what does all this mean?
It means that Man (in reality and fiction) ultimately works against himself. He discovers something that he ultimately destroys. He won’t listen to truth because he is too caught up in his own desires and lack of honesty to admit that he has done things wrong.
To put this bluntly, he cannot let go of his own past mistakes. He regrets them so much that he lives not to better himself but to try to better his mistakes. If he could let them go, he would never have to fight the foes that arose from this action in the first place.
Some interesting dialogue from the film proves my point and how it is put across in a twisted manner. Take, for instance, the Gorilla General’s word in the second film. Centuries of slavery ring in his words:
“I am not saying that man is bad just because his skin is White. I am saying that the only good Human is a dead Human.”
It is protest in its purest form. You cannot critique humans on their own level like this (replace “Human” with “Negro” and “White” with “Black” and you’ll see what I mean). But you can put a human in a civilization of a different race and see how he reacts to this, thereby letting man point his own finger at himself.
The problem is that people don’t hear between the lines because the munching of the popcorn is too loud in their ears.
“Ignorance is Evil”
Doctor Zira says in the same film and mirrors the kangaroo trial that occurs in the previous film, where Colonel Taylor is held before a tribunal that only exists to hang the chimpanzees (who think he is a missing link) & the court (who won’t believe that he comes from Fort Wayne, Indiana). Neither side, however, is right. He is from humankind’s own past. The fact that the Gorilla-Army is blessed by priests in the movie & halted by pacifist chimps should be revealing to us humans. We have two parables here: the flower-power-generation who burnt their own draught cards & finally Nazi Germany, church blessing cannons.
So, the characters in the movie have the same problem as the human beings watching the story. They don’t listen. The characters in the movie are so caught up being mad at each other’s folly that they keep doing the same mistakes over and over. The people paying to see what they are doing, pay their popcorn and walk out just as oblivious to the countless divorces and badmouthing and intrigues that they are responsible for, not really interested in looking below the surface because they only do so in society-approved things of shiny surface and university approved dogma. But there are signs that try to help them, if they listened.
Shortly before the fourth film there was a racist riot in a city called Watts. Director J. Lee Thompson remodelled these riots, making the leader of the riots the Monkey Revolutionary whose parents were futuristic space travellers and thereby made him responsible for the proverbial dog we mentioned earlier chasing his tail in his own never ending vicious circle.
But we find a positive energy flowing from the remaining words of film 5:
“Life is like a highway. A driver in lane A might survive whilst a driver in lane B might not. By foreseeing his own future correctly he might plan his life better and change it.”
Accordingly, we see apes and humans sharing their lives at the end, giving us a possible hint that things maybe are not as bad as they look. The responsibility lies only in following your own good intuition.
It is up to you, dear reader of this article. Next time you go to a movie or a play, try to find messages within the storyline. Look closely, for you might find more than you think. Even if it is only the interesting analysis behind the bad acting.
Within everything … lies a message.
PLANET OF THE APES: Five Motion Pictures (20th Century Fox, ©1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973) Directors: Franklin J. Schaffner, Ted Post, Don Taylor, J.Lee Thompson; Actors: Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Charlton Heston, Maurice Evans, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Williams, Sal Mineo, John Huston; Based upon the book “Monkey Planet” by Pierre Boulle; Make-Up by John Chambers
Catherine – the Faithful Queen Dowager
A Historical Portrait by Charles E.J. Moulton
The daughter of Gustaf Olofsson Stenbock and Brita Eriksdotter Leijonhufvud was like so many other 16th century aristocratic girls: she became the victim of the political willpower of her parents. What she felt was unimportant.
In 1552, 56-year old Gustav Vasa had been King of Sweden for almost three decades. When he came to ask for Catherine Stenbock’s hand in marriage, the 16-year old girl ran away from him and hid behind a bush. She was already engaged to be married with another boy, a boy also named Gustav, but the engagement was broken off so that the king could have his chosen Queen. After all, it was said that a Stenbock family member marrying into the Swedish royal line again would greatly benefit and strengthen the friendly Stenbock alliance with the Vasa-clan.
The church and the clergy were not amused. Catherine was King Gustav Vasa’s former wife Margareta Leijonhufvud’s niece. According to the bible, that was incest. The intertwining of these two bloodlines exists to this day. A lady friend of mine from south Sweden can show off her decendance to two prominent Swedish Queens.
Vasa, true to fashion and very much like England’s Henry VIII, insisted on the liaison and got his way. He had never cared what the church recommended or felt and he didn’t care now. Back in the 1520’s, he had forcibly obtained precious treasures from the churches of Sweden, melted them and handed over the remains to his German allies in order to pay back his war debts.
He only acted according to his own custom.
The 40 year age difference between Gustav and Catherine was not the only problem.
Catherine had an image to fulfill. After all, the third wife of Swedish King Gustav Eriksson Vasa had two very tough acts to follow.
The king’s first wife, Catherine of Sachsen-Lauenburg, had been the daughter of protestant German aristocracy and chosen to strengthen the political relations between Germany and Sweden. Although the marriage itself was everything else than a success – it had been violent, silent and spiteful – her only son Erik XIV turned into one of Sweden’s most culturally gifted noblemen. Not only did he paint and draw excellently, he also played several instruments, spoke several languages and turned into an eccelent sportsman. This knowledgable personality gave him a haughty air and a regal attitude. It inspired him to create a family tree that traced his own lineage back to Adam and Eve. Be that as it may, the folly was founded on a certain status that Catherine of Sachsen-Lauenburg had acquired, in his mind, over the years.
When Gustav’s first wife died, one day before her 22nd birthday, she was buried in the Dome of Uppsala, where she lies to this day.
Catherine of Sachsen-Lauenburg’s successor, the king’s second wife Margareta Leijonhufvud, a name that means Lion’s Head, belonged to one of the most powerful noble families in Swedish society. Among the 10 children she gave birth to, all of them King Gustav’s, two became Swedish kings and at least one of them married into prominent German nobility. The fact that the king had chosen Margareta as a second wife had been a logical decision, due to the first wife’s German origin and the unhappy liaison.
It was considered an advantage to now choose a Swedish Queen.
In effect, Margareta became popular with the court and the country and subsequently a great negotiator. She also managed to control King Gustav Vasa’s violently aggressive temper, something that had gotten him into great trouble in the past.
He had executed people for not obeying him and written superbly angry letters in order to crush any rebels against the crown.
When Margareta Leijonhufvud died of pneumonia on Monday, the 26th of August, 1551, there was talk of a solar exclipse and about people remembering her last words. She excused herself for not having been worthy of her position and pleaded for the family to try and get along. She left her carnal existance with phrases of a regal gratitude to the country.
If one believes that or not, clear was that she left a large void in King Gustav’s life.
Margareta had been the love of his life.
Less than a year later, this void led him to Catherine Stenbock.
Now, one can afford to speculate why the king chose such a young wife. A 56 year- old man with so many ailments, leg troubles and massively chronic tooth pains, would maybe think of marrying a woman young and strong enough in order to take care of him. Catherine Stenbock became that royal and nuptial nurse: peaceful, worthy, resilient – and, at first, reluctant.
The coronation took place on Sunday, the 23rd of August, 1552, one day after the expensive wedding in Vadstena. Events, that were seen as evil omens, gave the royal courtiers a cause to worry. A plague was sweeping through the country, parts of Vadstena and the city of Turku burned down after the coronation and people also thought they saw evil signs appearing in the sky.
The marriage was not proving to become a happy one.
Not at first, at least.
What saved the marriage was Catherine’s poise, how she handled her fate.
The sickly king was not a contemplative loner. Celebrations continued, regardlessly. Almost three months after the nuptial feast in the ravaged Vadstena, Vasa ordered a honeymoon to take place in his favorite castle in Kalmar, one of his 16 exquisitely renovated palaces. A logical choice. After all, he had named the castle “the key to my kingdom”. This stronghold against the sworn Danish enemies on the other side of the border, at the time only 25 miles away from Kalmar, was Gustav’s pride and joy. He hoped that the honeymoon would present the relationship with a necessary foundation.
Queen Catherine could only obey her master and act according to her position. Her initial fear of Gustav couldn’t overshadow her sense of purpose. The omens proved wrong. The young girl impressed everyone with her sense of duty.
In November of 1552, Catherine and Gustav arrived with 365 courtiers, preparing to wallow in culinary wealth for a course of three months.
Catherine also prepared to enjoy Kalmar during those months, engage in light conversation, make a political decision or two, behave how she thought a Queen should behave and learn something about Kalmar in the process. She knew that “he who wants to invade the kingdom from the Baltic Sea or the South must take Kalmar first”. After all, Kalmar Castle had been and would be invaded 22 times, protected successfully by 287 cannons. The fortress was strong and so she felt protected with its walls. Renovations of the king’s castle had been going on now for three decades and would continue throughout the coming century. So, it could very well be that architects and builders spent time here during the festivities. By fireplaces filled with burning logs – to the sounds of estampies and saltarellos played by old instruments such as quill plucked lute, rebec, and aulos – Queen Catherine filled her belly with food in what today still remains Scandinavia’s most well kept Renaissance palace.
An assembly of local ordinary citizens arrived, from time to time, invited to watch the royals eat. Catherine didn’t much like the fact that some of the noblemen chose to throw food at the peasants or that they tickled their tongues with feathers, just so they could empty their bellies in order to eat more.
She concentrated more on her official duties as a Queen and in keeping warm.
The winter months must’ve been cold, to say the least, with only clothing and fire as heating utilities. The guests, Catherine included, probably wore several layers of fabric to warm up their bodies in that 50°F chill, in spite of walls that were at least six feet thick and green lead glass windows overlooking the whitewalled courtyard with its snowy cobblestone ground.
No efforts were spared in providing the entourage with good entertainment and spectacular gastronomy during Gustav’s and Catherine’s honeymoon festivities. As many as a thousand spent their days here during these three months, because of the political allies and relatives that came their way up until February of 1553.
There was a total consumed intake of 228 000 litres (60 231 US gallons) of beer between all of them. The political ally Germany had lost in Swedish royal significance, but maintained its financial position as trading partner and exporters of good ale and mead. The 16th century Kalmar beer, in actual fact, was classified as “undrinkable”.
The inventory list of slaughtered live stock kept the kitchen working day and night. The festivity cooking list looks like the annual report of a major franchise: adding it all up, thousands of animals were served on the palatial banquet tables, beef, lamb, chicken, rabbit, peacock, swan and pork, the number reaching up way over two thousand animals, not counting the half thousand barrels of fish served. All of this was spiced and peppered and salted. So richly, in fact, that liquids like beer almost seemed life-preserving.
This introduction to royal gluttony only accentuated the young girl’s opinions of the importance of behaving in a sympathetic and regal manner, staying away from abusive and useless celebrating.
Eventually, then, reality ran up Catherine’s spine and she became Queen for real. During the rather quiet 8 years and 30 days of her royal reign, Catherine’s nobility of endurance became renowned and respected. Especially since everyone knew of how mismatched a royal couple they were. Catherine talked in her sleep about her former fiancé, “Gustav Tre Rosor” (“Three Roses”), not being able to conceal her suffering:
“King Gustav is very dear to me, but I shall never forget the rose.”
King Gustav understood that they had almost nothing in common and tried to implement a law that proclaimed that no older person should be allowed to marry a younger person. It is then especially impressive how dear and caring she was toward him.
On several occasions, there were signs of pregnancies, but no official announcement was ever made or confirmed. In 1555, she spent a longer time in Finland away from her husband, but returned to the king in good health.
Her good relationship with her stepchildren gave her a good regal position, though, two or three of which were her own age. When one of the children, the wild child Cecilia Vasa, got into deep trouble with an adulterous count during a party in Vadstena in 1559, Catherine became one of those responsible people who succeeded in negotiating the matter. She could not have been more different than Gustav’s first and very temperamentful wife, Catherine of Sachsen-Lauenburg, who had been her own age during their unhappy marriage.
Queen Catherine matured as a regal leader in a way that impressed even her enemies. During King Gustav’s last days, as he lay sick and tired and aching in his bed, she sat by his side, waiting day and night for a positive sign of betterment. But her willingness to sacrifice her own peace of mind made her sick, as well.
Finally, she asked her courtiers to bring her a bed and position it next to her husband, so that she could lie next to him until his final hour came on Sunday, the 29th of September, 1560. Before his last moments, he summoned his chancellors and his children and asked them to remain united. This fact was especially important to the king. After all, he had driven out the Danish occupants back in 1521 and literally created this new strong country out of the bloody ruins and ashes of a difficult war.
After the king’s death, Queen Catherine became “The Queen Dowager of the Realm”. This Swedish premiere title was one she kept for her 61 remaining years of mourning, always wearing black, never remarrying and probably always remembering her first lover, whom she nicknames “The Three Roses”.
This was now a more mature woman, one whose representative assignments included opening festivities and acting a political mediator in nuptial negotiations. Her prominent place as Queen Dowager, guesting at balls, walking first in line in processions and attending festivities gives us the image of a well liked public personality.
One of the few unfortunate battles she became involved in concerned the escalation of events between her late husband’s sons during the late 16th century. It was Duke Karl, the later King Karl IX, who denied her the right to live in her own mansion. Apparantly, her homestead lay on his grounds. The protestant Duke Karl pulled her into the middle of a religious feud between himself and his Catholic nephew Sigismund and accused her of taking Sigismund’s side. The situation was resolved by Karl’s brother, King Johan III, but not for long. Luckily, she managed to pull out as mediator before Karl invaded Kalmar and executed several of Sigismund’s courtiers, throwing Sigismund out of the country and crowning himself king.
Surviving many of Gustav’s sons by a large number of years, her perseverance gave her the winning card. Devoting much of her time to charity, she gained a great deal of respect as a spokeswoman for the destitute. So much so, that it was said of her of her, when she died in Strömsholm at age 86 on December 13th, 1621, that “the poor have lost and friend and the orphans their mother.”
She was buried alongside her husband in Uppsala Cathedral, without a monument of her own. Her real monument, however, was the position she upheld and the respect she gained as an honest, intelligent, softspoken and sympathetic Queen Dowager.
Initially reluctant, finally conscientious.
Catherine’s greatest legacy was taking the unfortunate initial circumstances of her marriage and turning it into something quite extraordinary. Her attitude was so exemplary, in fact, that people still talk about her four hundred years after her death.
Not bad for a teenager, who hid behind a bush when her royal husband came to ask of her hand in marriage.
She was royal, not only in position or stature.
First and foremost, she was a royal soul.
Anna’s Noble Heart
Article about Anna Kronzell (1900 – 1996) and the Old World
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Introduction
Time has changed. Here, in the life of one certain creative woman, we see how much time really has changed. Time was a musical sonata when she grew up. Today, it is a presto jig played by electric guitars, accompanied by the symphony roared onwards and upwards by trains and automobiles. What that has done to our art is a testament to our creation: versatile, insane and mundane.
When my wise and witty, noble and eternally curious grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell was born on October 18th, 1900, Queen Victoria still ruled Great Britain, William McKinley was the American president, Henry Ford was yet to invent his T-Model Ford and horses were still used in transportation. It was twenty-one years after the invention of the electric lightbulb and fourteen years before the First World War. Emperors still ruled Russia and Germany, Puccini’s opera “Tosca” had just seen its world premiere, Charlie Chaplin was still an unknown kid living in London, the Boxer Rebellion had just taken place in China and nobody had ever heard of Adolf Hitler.
There was no internet, no short message service. Taking a stroll, even to the local shop, meant dressing up nice, putting on elegant gloves and a hat and dressing for a respectable reputation.
It was another world, a world we have forgotten, a world we could learn from with character traits like nobility and style, well-spoken manners and gentility.
Noble Anna
In our world of iPods, Smartphones, Mp3s, Apps and DVDs, we have become distantly excessible, aggressive and fast. Superficial contacts grace our microcosmos, contacts that pretend to be close. We think we know who our friends are, but our chatty virtual world is like a comic book filled with constant Facebook-Lingo like “lol”, “rofl”, not to mention all those comic-book like outburst like “Wow!”, “Bam!”, “What’s up?” and “Far Out!”. In many ways, there is a great danger in becoming a cliché. There is no shame in a world like that, it has its merits. The old world, however, had something that we lack.
Poise.
My grandmother was a spiritual aristocrat in all her ways. In my mind, she outshines most of the historical noblewomen I have known. This woman, who lived to be 95, had something most people should have more of in this day and age. Something that we seem to have lost along the way.
Nobility.
She witnessed the demonstration of the first radio in 1911 and was a contemporary of the Titanic disaster in 1912. She was a pianist in a silent movie cinema and a charity organizer for the destitute during the Second World War. The car, the telephone, the cellular phone, the grammophone, the television, the film-camera, the CD-player, the VCR, the airplane, the helicopter and the submarine: these were all inventions that either appeared during her lifetime or were introduced to a broad audience during her days. During the course of her 95 years on this Earth, she saw inventions come and go, she saw them revolutionize society and change history.
She had to walk a long way to school every morning.
Back when she was young, life was slower.
Step into the time-machine, folks. It’s a cool ride.
“I paid five Swedish crowns for my driver’s license back then,” she always began. “After that, however, I had to go to the police office and get a license that I was sober and orderly. The driving school had forgotten one thing, though. They had not taught me how to drive in reverse, so we went out of town to practice that. Once I was on the road, however, I felt like the Queen of Kalmar. The people warned each other about me, I must admit that. They told each other to look out if I came driving down the road. I was a very good driver, it wasn’t that. I was a very fast driver. 40 km/h (25 miles per hour) was pretty speedy car-travelling back in 1923. One day I encountered horse-driven carriage and stopped the car, just to be nice to the horses. I got a friendly laugh from the man driving the carriage. He asked me if I was afraid of the horses. I had a Fafner, you know, a pretty fancy car at the time. A car from Germany with the horn and the breaks on the outside. I really was the Queen of Kalmar back then. That’s what it felt like, anyway.”
You know what is really nice? My daughter still has that driver’s license in her play-room handbag. Time passes by. Family remains.
We’re in that time-machine that took us from 1993 back to 1923. Now, we go back even further. I really can’t help thinking about Rose in the film “Titanic” when I remember hearing these stories. Rose, played by Kate Winslet, came out of the Titanic disaster alive only to experience all the things a new woman could experience. It was a new world, a world that came exploding out of the cataclysm that was called the Great War, which was what the First World War was known as before Hitler launched the second one.
Anna Kronzell was a selfmade woman, a female driver, a female citizen with her own opinion and a right to vote, a good cook, a musician, an educated poet and a good friend.
I remember sitting on her lovely blue couch in Kalmar and hearing her tell me about how she had been walking to school that April of 1912 and reading the headlines on the front pages of the local press: “Titanic Sinks, 1500 die”.
Back in school that day, there were probably more discussions about how that could’ve happened, more that than any actual teaching going on.
I feel the echoes of history reverberating into my own life into what happened on September 11th, 2001, and how the World Trade Center was attacked by two airplanes. History repeats itself, doesn’t it? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, shall we?
Anyway, we are not here to brood. In fact, my grandmother had quite an eventful youth. Now let’s go even further back to see that youth. Are you ready? Here we go. Press the button. You there, scrolling the screen of your tablet. There. We’re back in the past.
Born in Åseda on October 18th, 1900, with eight brothers and sisters to call her own, she spent the first 8 years of her life in open Swedish farmland, helping her father Gustaf milk the cows and clean the barn. Her father wrote his initials – “G.N.” – on the wall of that barn close to Brädsäta when my mother was born in Kalmar back in 1930.
What happened next, that one day in 1908, sounds just like a scene from a true Hollywood-epic. Picture it:
A rich Uncle named Thomas arrives at Farm Friskamålen one sunny spring day with his wife Emilie, politely offering to take Anna to Kalmar to give her an official schooling and a wealthy home. So, Anna packs her bags and her one old doll and moves away from her parents.
At first, it is an unusual situation for Anna. Thomas and Emilie tell her that she can call them “Mom and Dad”. Anna declines, here we see the pride that signified her throughout her life. She uttered the proud words of a young child:
“I already have a mother and a father.”
Promptly, Anna writes home to her parents that she gets all the most expensive clothes and the greatest toys in Kalmar, but that she would rather be at home with them.
Those initial days may have been difficult, but Kalmar became as much a part of her soul as music was or literature or good friends. She remained true to that city until they day she died, back in 1996.
The story continues.
Although her stepbrother does get more domestic benefits than her, what we discover through the filters of history is a girl who constantly meets theatrical stars, writes poetry, learns how to play the piano, spends a summer at a girl’s camp in Wernigerode in Germany (learning how to speak German) and witnesses the official presentation of the first local radio as well as the first machine she has ever seen of its kind: the grammophone.
Motion-picture-like scenes keep flirting with our minds when we read about the events in her life and at every moment of the way, we see her dignity in action.
It was dignity with a naughty giggle, though.
In the Kalmar Girl’s School, her teacher endeavoured to teach her the art of baking cookies.
“Turn the oven baking tray around,” the teacher claimed.
Anna promptly turned the tray upside down, making the cookies fall down on the floor. She uttered the cute inquiry: “Like this, Miss?”
“Be careful not to ruin your reputation,” Aunt Emilie always snapped in true Victorian fashion. “Once you loose it, you’ll never get it back.”
Anna Julia Sofia Nilsson quoted that phrase back in the 1990’s, but always added some detail with a mischieveous wink. Let’s hear what she had to say:
“I was on my way to work as the fastest typist in the Hultsfred Fuel Commission when a man named Knut Kronzell arrived at the scene of my life. He would definately change my life forever. At the time, he was just the friend of a friend, whom I chatted with for a bit. He obviously took a liking to me, because he jumped up on the sideboard of my car while I was driving off. He wooed me until I gave in. The funny thing was, though, that I was already engaged to be married to another fellow. Our announcement had been presented promptly in the local paper. Now, three months later, I was engaged to be married to another man altogether with another ad in the paper about me and this new fellow Knut. What were people going to think? Anyway, I became Anna Kronzell. It was the best decision of my life. In 1926, Bengt-Åke was born. In 1930, Gun Margareta was born. Well, three year-old Gun could never pronounce Bengt-Åke’s name. She always called him Bohkke (Båkke), so that is what he became: from then on, he was Båkke. Now, my grandchild Mikael has taken over that name as Båkke the Second. Funny, isn’t it, though? Both my children have became musicians. I must have excellent musical veins, after all, just like that phrenologist told me in the hotel I worked in, back in 1919.”
That was true, indeed. Uncle Thomas, the owner of a big hotel in Kalmar where Anna worked part-time, had invited a phrenologist to examine the staff for free. He claimed to be able to tell what someone’s talents were just by looking at how the bloodveins criss-crossed in someone’s scalp. When he examined Anna, he exclaimed:
“My dear, you have excellent musical veins.”
These musical veins made her choose the musical profession, at least for a while. She was a pianist at her brother Carl Albien’s cinema “Saga”, which happened to be Sweden’s first cinema ever. Anna always mused that she had to play her pieces faster or slower depending on the how drunk the camera operator was.
The cinematographical cameras back then were circumcolved and operated manually. When the operator was drunk, he cycled slower and Anna had to play slower. The worst case scenario was, of course, when the operator was inconsistent and revolved fast and slow.
She didn’t always work alone, though, and could share the pain with a few colleagues. On a few occassions, other musicians were invited to earn a few extra crowns. The violinist who got his bow caught in her hair during a gig, though, never got a second invitation.
Anna’s husband, and my grandfather, Knut Allan Kronzell had a fantastic singing voice, besides being a sea captain, an accountant and the boss of a steel company. He and Anna were probably responsible for my mother Gun Kronzell’s international opera career. Anna and Knut took the family on vacations to Stockholm to go see operatic performances. That really launched Gun’s career and prompted a subsequent decision to study music in Stockholm and audition in Germany. Bengt-Åke became the bandleader of Resårbandet, a local big band, and his son Krister Kronzell, became a drummer. I even played the drums in that big band. These days, I am the lead vocalist of the J.R. Swing Connection in Germany.
I remember sitting on the floor in my grandma’s flat on Bremergatan 11 in Kalmar, Sweden, sometime during my favorite summer of 1993. I’d completed two successful scholastic exams that year and performed a couple of concerts. In return for my efforts, lots of relatives invited us over for food and chit-chat. As many as 24 invitations came rolling in that summer. As you might gather, this made me a little bit chubbier and roly-poly than I am now in my slender and workaholic self.
That night, though, was quiet. I was staying in my grandmother’s very elegant flat, sleeping under the artwork of baby Jesus among livingroom chandaliers and tapestries, the art on the walls kissing my soul, silver candleholders gleaming in the moonlight, a white-and-golden fireplace with a mirror and Egyptian figurines silently making love to the starlight.
My mother Gun Kronzell hadn’t arrived over from Vienna, Austria yet. You see, we lived in Vienna at the time, where my mom was Professor of Singing at the Music Academy. My father Herbert Eyre Moulton was working in Amsterdam that year, I think, playing a role in the musical “Piaf” and performing in a TV-show together with Nina Simone.
Anyway, I sat alone on my grandmother’s livingroom parquet floor, drinking something on the rocks (water, coke, whiskey, whatever it was), watching the lit lampposts throwing their light on the wall. My grandma was sleeping in her room and I (ever the nightowl) enjoyed a bit of contemplative philosophy, watching the ice melt in my glass, crying tears of joy while listening to the Julio Iglesias and Stevie Wonder duet “My Love”.
It was right then and there that I had a what could be called a revelation. The diary that I wrote my thoughts into doesn’t exist anymore, but the thought that inspired it is eternal: “The real goldmine, the real treasure chest in anyone’s life, is not a monetary one. It’s spiritual. It’s inside the soulful fibre of your personal experience and the love you feel, the love you give, the love you get.”
My passion for things spiritual, things that concern the soul and the beings of people (the essence of what exists beyond what we can see), started in my grandmother’s flat.
So, I felt it was important to tell you this story before I told you about her life.
She inspired me.
So it was fitting that had that golden revelation in my grandma’s flat.
Her soul was indeed a goldmine of treasures.
After spending four hours on the road in our Volkswagen on any given Saturday morning, we stopped at the gas station in Hovmantorp and gave her a call.
“Grandma, we’re on our way!”
“Great, I’ll prepare dinner and set the table. I think I have a soft-drink and a bar of chocolate in the fridge for Charlie.”
There were balloon tennis matches in the livingroom (Moultonian World Record: 829 throws) and card games in the kitchen. We went for summertime strolls around town. When we came back, I helped her bake some deliciously warm, freshly home made cinnamon rolls. On Sunday afternoons after church we’d invite someone over for coffee and talk about old times. My mom sang a song, my dad would would tell our relatives what was going on in our fascinatingly theatrical lives. There was laughter and joy, music and art, intellectual discussions, board games and welcome-home dinners. Those were good times back in Kalmar in Sweden, my grandma and I. They were summer days filled with fun.
Anna was also a true friend.
For 70 years, she kept contact with her schoolpals from her girlschool graduation class of 1918. They met every year in my Great-Uncle Carl Albien’s City Park Restaurant Byttan (he gave it the name “The Butter-Tub”, when he took over as its boss after the First World War, because of its similarity to the era’s popular breakfast accessory).
The old girls, that used to be little maids from school, would sit there and chat about old times on every yearly anniversary of their graduation. I am sure that there were no huge differences between their behavior in 1988 and their behavior back in 1918. Okay, they were older, more dignified, more experienced, but they were still those giggling little girls that chatted about poetry and perfume and local personalities. The only difference was that they now had grey hair and were wearing pretty cotton gloves and dainty hats.
I’ll tell you a little secret about grandmother Anna. She was a brave girl. When our old dog Wutzi, a poodle-dachshund-mix, bounced about her feet one day during her Austrian visit in our Mödling home, my grandmother fell and badly injured her head.
Holy Mother of God, what did she do? She didn’t gulp down an Irish whiskey like my dear father did. She didn’t flutter to the window like my mother did, looking for the ambulance. No, she went to the mirror and powdered her nose.
There’s more where that came from. One summer, 1988 I believe it was, her legs weakened terribly and she had one of her doctors come home and give her a cortisone injection that was supposed to strengthen them. Unfortunately, the injection had the opposite effect and within a year, my grandmother was in a wheelchair.
Did that stop her from pushing forward? No way, not her. Her lifestyle remained dignified, her lavish birthday parties remained lavish, she still invited over friends for meat and potatoes. She still had loads of fun and she still remained the gracious landlady.
She even had her good childhood friend Mrs. Lesseur serve the afternoon coffee, who, at the time almost 80 years old, even came to the party wearing an apron and a white shirt, looking like a top waitress in a fashionable hotel.
One of the things I admired so much about her, later on I understood how much of her was to be admired, was that she never complained about the pain she felt in her legs. One of her legs was shorter than the other, so she walked with a slight limp. The truly amazing thing was that nobody ever thought of it at all. She had such class, such poise, such style, such joie-de-vivre, that her personality outshone anything that might’ve been to her disadvantage.
How I enjoyed going with my grandmother to visit her friends. They were all so nice and, heck, I always got candy to take home with me and they all listened to what I had to say.
Anna lived alone in her fashionable apartment for another six remaining years (her husband Knut had died back in 1973). Thanks to the fantastic Swedish social system, the state had a caretaker come home to Anna’s flat three times a day. The caretaker made her breakfast, cleaned her flat and helped her pay her bills. The journalist Palle Bobecker, a life-long friend of hers who was born in the same house as my mother, was granted the same social service and could enjoy a respectful old age because of it.
One summer afternoon, we were off to the library, leaving grandma alone for a bit. She fell off her wheelchair by accident and remained seated in the hallway for almost two hours until we came back. Her caretaker at the time, a Danish woman named Karin, even called her to see if everything was okay. Anna told her nothing about her falling off the wheelchair. She chit-chatted with her on the phone about this and that, hung up and waited for our return. Anna knew that we were coming back, so why make a problem out of it?
Courage, stamina and, yes, nobility of heart. That was Anna in a nutshell.
She frequently used the local taxi-service for seniors, as well. They were wheelchair-friendly larger cars that took her across large regional areas to visit her relatives.
Quite frequently, she used those cabs in order to hear us sing in concerts. The drivers even escorted her into the concert hall and told her when they would be back to get her.
Those caretakers and cabdrivers all heard her tell them her endless anecdotes about her eventful life. They were the anecdotes to end all anecdotes: she was the first female driver in Kalmar 1923 and she made sure everyone knew that.
Conclusion
One person’s musical interests, her friendly ways and dignified appearance can mean a lot, not only for the children and grandchildren, but for the great-grandchildren, as well. When my daughter Mara Sophie Moulton pretends that her great-grandmother Anna’s driver’s license from 1923 is her own passport, then I know that Anna is alive somewhere in time and space. Maybe Anna hears us, reads this, smiles and thinks to herself:
“Those were good times, weren’t they?”
Back in 1918, no one really thought of networking, attention or fame. Today, like Andy Warhol foretold, everybody wants their fifteen minutes of fame, but we are chasing the wind, so preoccupied these days with that golden rainbow with the treasure at the end of it that we miss the train that takes us home to our hearts.
Once we get to that rainbow’s end all we might find is a bowl of corn flakes.
Let’s live in the present, but let’s fill it with the kind of spiritual light Anna possessed.
The soul glitters.
That’s the real goldmine, the real wealth.
Anna had something we should all want: nobility of heart.
How does humanity retrieve what it lost when the modern age caught up with us?
We have to rediscover how it is to be aware of our lives, not only letting the life pass by in a daze. We have to be able to wait, realizing that patience really is a virtue, realizing that personal thought might be better than letting others do the thinking.
My grandmother gave me a feeling that there always was enough time. She always took the time to read me a bedtime-story and sometimes we laughed until we cried even during those bedtime stories. Even our cocker spaniel Snuffy loved falling asleep on her feet in our flat in Gothenburg. After all, she was the only one that never moved around. After she picked me up from school – after our customary visit to the café for a bite to eat, that is – she sat down in our sofa “Clothilde” and knitted and that is where she remained for the rest of the evening: in her own cosy corner.
She could afford to remain seated.
After all, she had around moved enough in her life, organized shiploads of clothing for the poor and given so much money to the blind that it actually helped her own self at her old age when her eyesight started failing her. The Kalmar Library had audiobooks even back in the 1980’s. She often called our flat in Vienna, Austria and enthusiastically informed us what Jane Eyre right now was doing in Bronté’s book or what the prehistory behind Mahler’s 2nd Symphony was and how incredible Chopin’s Etude Opus 10 sounded when Rubinstein played the piece. Laughter, joy, pride, love, intellect: all these things and more were Anna’s vibrant gifts to enjoy. I know that she hears me when I tell her in the presence of all you sweet readers: “Grandma, wherever you are: we love you! You were one of a kind!”
Time waits for nobody. What we call our own has turned into an absolute necessity. We can regain something that we lost, though. Something that disappeared once we became too facebook, too cool and too casual. It could be found inside my grandmother’s heart, inside her adamant joviality and witty poise.
We need a little nobility of heart.
We need to be acutely aware of the echoes of time as it passes by our vision every given day and understand that the people of yesteryear were no different than we are. We need to understand that there is more to time than meets the eye.
It’s the ultimate illusion.
The people of the the world that disintergrated when the First World War started were just way more aware of the excitement of the prospects of creating a new world.
Have we become too cool to understand that we can change the world just by following our dreams and finding inside us what Anna had all along? Namely: integrity.
And, yes, Anna had the time. She took the time to think, to feel, to love, to hope, to become wise, to laugh, to cry, to hug, to kiss and to dream.
Anna’s old world was another time in history, but the virtues are eternal.
So, in actual fact, we, too, can become as eternally wise as she now is in heaven.
References
Literary References
Lundh, Kiki. 1997. Jag ger dig mitt liv. Borgholm, Sweden. Bildningsförlaget.
Hofrén, Manne, 1961. Historieglimtar från Kalmar Slott. Tidningen Barometern.
Nordstrom, Byron J. 2002. The History of Sweden. Greenwood Press.
Kent, Neil. 2008. A Concise History of Sweden. Cambridge University Press.
Grimberg, Carl, 2008. A History of Sweden. Dodo Press.
Larsson, Olle. 2008. Sveriges Historia. Historiska Media.
Websites
Charles E.J. Moulton, 2011. ”As A Matter of Fact, I Do!” Vocal Images.
http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=774
Charles E.J. Moulton. 2011. “Gun Kronzell” Vocal Images.
http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=746
Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell
https://www.facebook.com/AnnaJuliaSofiaKronzell
Artist of the Month
Tara Jones
The Science-Fiction Art of
Chris Foss
The Animal Kingdom
People Who Broke the Barriers
Can You Name Them?
(Answers at the end!)
Answers:
Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi
Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi
Painter of the Month
Alexander Roslin
(1718 - 1793)
Alexander Roslin was one of Sweden's most successful Rococo painters. Not only did he work for many Swedish kings, he also painted for most of the European aristocracy of the time, working and living in cities such as St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Paris. His speciality was portrait-painting with a faible for colors and jewels.
The painting above is "Damen med slöjan" (The Lady with the Veil). Some international historians claim that it is a young aristocrat named Élisabeth Vigée Lé Brun. In actual fact, it is Roslin's wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust Roslin. The original hangs in the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. A copy of this painting has been in the possession of my family for almost a hundred years. It hung on the wall in the flat belonging to my grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell (1900 - 1996), who was the first female driver in her home town of Kalmar, Sweden.
Rococo seems to be my favorite eras in human history, musically, artistically and historically. This might have to do with the fact that I spent a past life there as Swedish aristocrat Axel von Fersen. My spirit guides have communicated with my repeatedly, assuring me of the truth of this fact. The painting naturally has a significance to me in more ways than one. On several occasions the connections between this 18th century woman and my own life back then as Axel has become increasingly poignant. The Marie on the painting looks like another Marie I knew and loved in that life: Marie Antoinette. Sometimes, I even see the lips of the woman on the painting move as she breaks into a smile, communicating with me from the other side.
During garden work at home, I was listening to a documentary about Marie Antoinette. Just by coincidence, I was planting Dahlias. During that work I heard an inner voice telling me to plant the whitest of the three Dahlia in the middle of the trio. The flower was the queen of all flowers, the voice said, and Marie Antoinette's favorite flower. I had no idea that the information I received was true. I checked it a half hour later. Indeed, it was.
The next day, I received a visit from Marie's favorite bird, the crane (she said it was like a ballet dancer). It landed on my neighbor's roof during a summer breakfast. A few days after that, on a walk alone through my hone town, I received a hunch to stop and admire a blue wisteria, an ivy like plant. Somehow, I felt that this plant, too, had something to do with Marie. I told no one about this, but it was confirmed a few days later. My wife stopped during a subsequent walk and admired another sample of this plant. I checked the records. The blue wisteria was one of Marie Antoinette's favorites. A couple of month's later, I had a spontaneous regression, claiming to know that the minuet was the queen of all dances (I teach quite a few minuets as a piano teacher). The spontaneous information was correct. Also the fact that I danced many minuets with Marie in the 18th century.
To stress the fact that my spontaneous regressions are true, I will mention that life circumstances have led me to understand the consistancies. In my latest life (before this one), I was stillborn. In this life, I had the same problems being born, but I made it. In my previous life, I had a twin who did survive while I didn't. This twin and I had the same accident later in life, falling off the toilet seat (he in 1977, me in 2013). For me, it was low sugar attack. For him, it was a heart attack. Both of us diabetics, he didn't survive. I did. Two mirror images. His name was Elvis Presley and I was Jesse Garon Presley. It explains why I discovered Elvis first after he died in 1977 and why he seemed to be so familiar to me. I could not explain it until after my accident.
Nor why I almost induced the accident in 2013.
If you are still not convinced of my connection to the spirit world, listen to this. During a quiet moment this morning, taking a break from house work by avoiding another diabetic low sugar fit, I was reminded of Sean Connery. I had seen a documentary about his work in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crucade". His line always came to mind: "I find that when I sit down a solution presents itself!" Well, my instinct of always talking to people who have passed away has always come in handy. This time, though, it was Sean that took contact. I saw the picture of a joint as I sat there. Sean's voice said that he had been a smoker, but only tried smoking a joint once. He didn't do it again because he didn't like it very much. Sean Connery told me to check that information online just to prove he really was speaking to me. I did. It was correct.
Yes, the angels do speak to us. Yes, reincarnation and the afterlife are facts.
One portrait painting of Roslin's was sold to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2006 for $ 3 million.
The painting below is "Flora". It hangs in the Museum of Bordeaux in France.
The painting above is "Damen med slöjan" (The Lady with the Veil). Some international historians claim that it is a young aristocrat named Élisabeth Vigée Lé Brun. In actual fact, it is Roslin's wife Marie-Suzanne Giroust Roslin. The original hangs in the Nordic Museum in Stockholm. A copy of this painting has been in the possession of my family for almost a hundred years. It hung on the wall in the flat belonging to my grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell (1900 - 1996), who was the first female driver in her home town of Kalmar, Sweden.
Rococo seems to be my favorite eras in human history, musically, artistically and historically. This might have to do with the fact that I spent a past life there as Swedish aristocrat Axel von Fersen. My spirit guides have communicated with my repeatedly, assuring me of the truth of this fact. The painting naturally has a significance to me in more ways than one. On several occasions the connections between this 18th century woman and my own life back then as Axel has become increasingly poignant. The Marie on the painting looks like another Marie I knew and loved in that life: Marie Antoinette. Sometimes, I even see the lips of the woman on the painting move as she breaks into a smile, communicating with me from the other side.
During garden work at home, I was listening to a documentary about Marie Antoinette. Just by coincidence, I was planting Dahlias. During that work I heard an inner voice telling me to plant the whitest of the three Dahlia in the middle of the trio. The flower was the queen of all flowers, the voice said, and Marie Antoinette's favorite flower. I had no idea that the information I received was true. I checked it a half hour later. Indeed, it was.
The next day, I received a visit from Marie's favorite bird, the crane (she said it was like a ballet dancer). It landed on my neighbor's roof during a summer breakfast. A few days after that, on a walk alone through my hone town, I received a hunch to stop and admire a blue wisteria, an ivy like plant. Somehow, I felt that this plant, too, had something to do with Marie. I told no one about this, but it was confirmed a few days later. My wife stopped during a subsequent walk and admired another sample of this plant. I checked the records. The blue wisteria was one of Marie Antoinette's favorites. A couple of month's later, I had a spontaneous regression, claiming to know that the minuet was the queen of all dances (I teach quite a few minuets as a piano teacher). The spontaneous information was correct. Also the fact that I danced many minuets with Marie in the 18th century.
To stress the fact that my spontaneous regressions are true, I will mention that life circumstances have led me to understand the consistancies. In my latest life (before this one), I was stillborn. In this life, I had the same problems being born, but I made it. In my previous life, I had a twin who did survive while I didn't. This twin and I had the same accident later in life, falling off the toilet seat (he in 1977, me in 2013). For me, it was low sugar attack. For him, it was a heart attack. Both of us diabetics, he didn't survive. I did. Two mirror images. His name was Elvis Presley and I was Jesse Garon Presley. It explains why I discovered Elvis first after he died in 1977 and why he seemed to be so familiar to me. I could not explain it until after my accident.
Nor why I almost induced the accident in 2013.
If you are still not convinced of my connection to the spirit world, listen to this. During a quiet moment this morning, taking a break from house work by avoiding another diabetic low sugar fit, I was reminded of Sean Connery. I had seen a documentary about his work in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crucade". His line always came to mind: "I find that when I sit down a solution presents itself!" Well, my instinct of always talking to people who have passed away has always come in handy. This time, though, it was Sean that took contact. I saw the picture of a joint as I sat there. Sean's voice said that he had been a smoker, but only tried smoking a joint once. He didn't do it again because he didn't like it very much. Sean Connery told me to check that information online just to prove he really was speaking to me. I did. It was correct.
Yes, the angels do speak to us. Yes, reincarnation and the afterlife are facts.
One portrait painting of Roslin's was sold to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2006 for $ 3 million.
The painting below is "Flora". It hangs in the Museum of Bordeaux in France.
Author of the Month
Marcella S. Meeks
Clementine Was An Artist
By Marcella S. Meeks
In the early 1800's, there lived a girl named Clementine Hunter. She lived with her family at the Melrose plantation located near Natchitoches, Louisiana.
A plantation is a large farm where crops are grown, like cotton, corn or other vegetables. Clementine spent her entire life living and working on a plantation.
She was very poor as a young girl. She didn't attend school in her younger days often, and she never learned to read or write. Clementine lived a hard and harsh life.
When Clementine grew up, she married, and had five children. She picked cotton, and had to take her children to the fields everyday. Picking cotton was no easy job, but she enjoyed it.
Clementine was promoted from the fields to the house. She became the gardener and took care of the laundry. She made clothes for the plantation owner's children and their
dolls. Designing clothes was another of Clementine's many talents. She loved to make quilts in beautiful rich colors.
Over the years, Melrose Plantation where Clementine lived became a haven for many artists and writers. They came from all over to paint or write in the peaceful atmosphere at Melrose.
Clementine couldn't afford crayons, markers or paints. She would receive small amounts of paint from artists who came to Melrose. Sometimes, she'd find paint left over after they'd leave.
She couldn't afford a canvas or expensive paper to use for her drawings so she would use things like bottles, pieces of cardboard or brown paper bags to paint pictures on. She painted things about her life on the plantation, about things she did, what she saw, and what others about her were doing. Without using words, she used her paintings to tell the story of her life and work on the plantation. These paintings, though they were simple, became the storybook of her life.
She became the first African American woman to exhibit in the New Orleans Museum of Art and Louisiana's Most Famous Folk Artist.
After all Clementine's hard work, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by Northwestern State University of Natchitoches. Her name is preserved in the famous walk of stars in the city of Natchitoches.
***
This is what Marcella says about herself:
I have been writing since 1988 – I have several hundred published credits in hundreds of small press publications nationwide, and several local newspapers.
In 2005, my first book of poetry was published entitled Bittersweet Morsels, and I am working on several romantic suspense book novels at this time.
One of my many passions is writing for children - some of my articles and children stories appeared in publications such as Funds For Writers, First Writer, Southern Writer's Magazine, Primary Treasure, Christian Educator and Adelaide Literary Magazine, to name a few.
In 1991, I graduated from THE INSTITUTE OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: Writing for Children and Teens; WRITER'S DIGEST SCHOOL : Nonfiction Writing; and ICS School of Short Story/Journalism.
I taught Sunday School for over twenty years for children ages 7-9, and designed and wrote Sunday School curriculum for Word Aflame Publications in the early 90's.
On the Death of Chyna (1969-2016)
By Steve Tutino
You were the Princess Warrior, Queen of Hearts, Queen of all our love-songs, the heart-break songs. Consider this Pagan Trinity: ultimate blend of Strength, Beauty and Intelligence. An eroticism with an undertow of the sexual, the orgiastic, yet wonderfully pagan in your idolatry of self, in your worshipping of the image. I believed you were more than human, made in the image of your own god, the Watchmaker. Stone cut from stone, marble carved out of a Graeco-Roman dream inscribed on Keats’ Grecian Urn, and carved out of the turbulence of chaotic Mother Nature, carved out of the shapelessness of water and the hardness of earth and mud and the symmetry of rock and stone and alabaster, carved out of forces ungoverned and ungovernable: God-like, triumphant, looking out into the infinite and the great void beyond, a god amongst men whose immortal “splinter of dream-filled marble pierces me / in the eye, where I am most vulnerable to beauty.”1
You carved yourself out of flesh into a heart of stone, created your god-self in the image of that part of you seeking salvation, that part of you seeking a mastery of life and with it, a conquering of all your fears and anxieties. You aimed high without recovery, without the prospect for what the grounding of finitude might offer the turbulence within that restless soul of yours. Yet from a heart of stone, you longed to return to a heart of flesh, could not conquer that Frankenstein monster made from your own making out of a desperate need for greatness and self-sufficiency. And so, you traded in your soul for the illusion of glory and bliss, the ideal of the attainment of the infinite. In mistaking the finite for the infinite, you traded in your real self for an ideal self, a pseudo-self built out of a desire to build an identity, a structure, a kingdom that would counteract the emptiness within, counteract the unbearableness of being a mere human being, finite, ordinary, prone to the same fate as the rest of us. Little did you know what was waiting for you on the other side, little did you know what was to follow: the god you created would crumble in front of our eyes. Yet to the very end you were still in temptation, still lured on by the phantom of glory …
Out of desperation you retreated to the normalcy of a life in Japan teaching English, made ‘peace’ with yourself in the name of God, not your god but the Mormon God. Yet still hungering and lusting after life, you returned to Hollywood, determined to return to your former glory, take your seat on the throne that was once rightfully yours and arguably still was: from Wrestling Superstar to Warrior Princess to Zen Queen to Queen of all our Hearts. But maybe, in those final days before your departure back to the realm of the gods from which you came, maybe, you finally saw yourself as you really are: irredeemable, all-too human.
1 Ingeborg Bachmann, “Autumn Maneuver,” translated from the German by Peter Filkins.
Ode to Joanie “Chyna” Laurer (1969-2016)
By Steve Tutino
Immortality is the gods’ way of saying
we have spent too much time with you
and not enough
by ourselves.
You died in order to be real
even though none of us
ever wanted you to leave.
Your body was a pagan dream.
Your dream, a body
one could take pride in,
a body one could die for.
And that’s just what you did.
The cremation of your body
was the dissolution of your god,
that monument you held high
as your most-prized possession,
the bearer of all your fears and anxieties,
that marker of identity formed out of the chaos
of a pained early life.
Immortal, shinning bright,
bathed in eternal light –
muscle-bound, raven-haired beauty,
“marble-heavy, a bag full of God,”1
your locks could be the curls
that seal the darkness away;
darkness spoken2 riding “on a beam of light
in a single night’s sleep,”3
radiating that old flame
Prometheus stole from Zeus …
You made us all believe in immortality again,
that we too could somehow steal fire from the gods
and become gods in the image of our making.
1 Sylvia Plath, “Daddy.” 2 From a poem of the same name, by Ingeborg Bachmann. Translated from the German by Peter Filkins. 3 Ingeborg Bachmann, “Theme and Variation”: “All sweetness was carried away on a beam om light / in a single night’s sleep.” Translated from the German by Peter Filkins.
Our Artist of the Month
Steven Tutino
1) Astronomical Consciousness - previously published in The Montreal Gazette
2) Pneuma
3) Underwater Dream - previously published in After Happy Hour.
These pieces are very spiritual to me. In fact, all art is for me, spiritual, and the creative process, the act of making art, is deeply spiritual and liberating. This is who I was meant to be. In art, there is no division within me, but rather congruency: what I feel and what I show to the world are aligned. Nothing in this world offers me any fulfilment and joy as does the practice of art. It nourishes my soul, replenishes my spirit and I know now, that I am cherished and loved. Affirmation and validation. Love and healing, but not just any kind of healing. By healing, I mean spiritual healing, refurnishing the mind-body-spirit connection that has unfortunately been distorted, disconnected and relegated to the sidelines, especially in recent times. Art is a recovery of transcendent meaning and plays an important role in the quest for meaning and value, as well as a recovery of a sense of who I am as a spiritual being. Art is, for me, a revelation of the persons we can be, as well as the enormous potential we have within ourselves to transform and be transformed, to love and ultimately be loved back just as strong if not stronger because I, you, we, deserve happiness, and no one needs to be alone, in pain, without love, without a center of gravity to their lives that holds and binds them together. Art is a celebration of life in a world that is at times, too quick to pass judgment.
Through the practice of art-making, I ultimately become myself, the person I know I am meant to be. Art allows us to envisage further possibilities for fuller, richer living in a world already filled with possibilities, so many possibilities, in fact, that it can be quite overwhelming, and understandably so. Art reaches toward Spirit. Art is Spirit. Throughout my practice, I intuitively know that I am engaged in a spiritual pursuit of creating meaning and order out of nihilism, hopelessness and heartbreaking tragedy and despair. Therefore, art plays a vital role in spiritual healing – the process of finding peace within ourselves everyday and being at peace with who we are and this life we’re living.
I am reminded of a workshop I attended as a graduate student on the topic of positive psychology. According to Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, positive psychology is the science of happiness, well-being, and what makes a life worth living, which of course, have deep spiritual implications for how we choose to navigate ourselves in the world. For the Christian theologian Ronald Rolheiser, art is about what we do with our desire, that eros of the human spirit. Spirituality is characterized by the choices and actions we take, as well as the practices we develop around managing and directing our desires. The way we channel and direct this fire burning deep within us will either leave us more integrated or disintegrated; that is the drama of the human condition. The practice of making art is one such way in which I choose to channel and direct my desire, burning ever-bright within my soul. The yearning and longing for something bigger than myself has led me to art, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
There is much to be learned about the link between psychology and spirituality. I am particularly interested in the state of being one is when one is doing art – their state of mind, and the various health benefits to be gained from art as therapy in spiritual healing. What I find particularly insightful was the concept known as E-Engagement - a state of flow, also known as being “in the zone” where we experience a loss of sense of time and complete absorption in whatever we are doing. I know that for me, my art practice makes me feel alive and grateful for this life I'm living - I lose myself and all sense of time only to be re-born: energized focus, full involvement and enjoyment. Through my art practice, I become a free spirit.
No, wait, I already am a free spirit.
Creator of the Month
Sophia Behal
and her POETRY ADVENT CALENDAR
Her presentation:
I am Sophia Behal and I am a published and self-published author and poet. I have published #WUHAN an award-nominated book of Poetry as a print, ebook, and audiobook, all in 3 languages. My latest publication is “A Poetry Marathon: Day1 - Day 7 Pancemic Poetry”. It is published as an eBook and audiobook series available at Kobo.
In my leisure time, I produce music and graphics, and I run a Poetry Podcast called www.PoetsUnplugged.com. We stream on all the majo spots such as Spotify, iTunes, Radio Public and so many more. I have started the podcast at the beginning of this year and from that time on has a lot happened. We didn't just stream over 120 episodes with poems, book showcases, author showcases, and diverse classes. We are proud to great thousands of listeners from around the globe.
As a cherry on top of the poetry cake have we from poetsunplugged.com produced a mobile phone application: the POETRY ADVENT CALENDAR.
It is available for iPhone and Andriod Phone.
This application counts down the days till Christmas. It starts on December 1st and can be used daily till the 24th of December.
The user of this application will be able to unlock one Christmas poem every December day.
Download links:
Android Phone: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sophia.poetryadventcalendar
iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1528002917
Enjoy <3
The making of POETRY ADVENT CALENDAR
The production of such a thing as a mobile phone application is pretty complex. Luckily, was I able to produce all the graphics and animations myself and now I needed a developer. I am working with my lovely developer friend Giang T. out of Vietnam. She implements the source code and my pictures come to life. Now, what is there left to do? Oh yes, the Sound. I have narrated and also sound edited and tweaked the recodings to the application. And all the poems have been edited beforehand by The Word Count, Naomi herself has partnered with www.PoetsUnpludde.com.
The realization of the mobile application was only possible because we have been sponsored by Dennis Moritz, The Word Count, me, myself and I, and my parents. So Thank you all for helping us getting poetry one step closer to the readers and listeners in a playful way. We have produced something very different than just a book or ebook. We have produced this application so that people that barely pick up a book get to read and listen to a piece of poetry each, and every day. We aim to bring poetry to every doorstep.
The POETRY ADVENT CALENDAR will also be available in the Czech Language 2021.
Poets: Sophia Behal, Dennis Moritz, Frogg Corpse, Carrie Magness Radna, Sailor Uke, Aldo Quagliotti
Translator: Sophia Behal
***
Testimonies:
... by Dane Ince:
I am very excited that poetry is moving in and expanding to fill the void in technology applications. The kids call them apps. The POETRY ADVENT CALENDAR is one such an app. Presented by www.PoetsUnplugged.com. Going livein November and staring December 1st you can unlock poems for 24 days. Poetry is many things and some of it is joyful and uplifting and just what the soul needs in sad times as we face today. I am happy that the joy of the upcoming holiday season now includes a pocketful of poetry that you may carry with you on your journey.
www.poetsunplugged.com
***
... by Caroline Burrows'
Although the poems on the Poetry Advent Calendar aren't available to click on until the countdown to Christmas starts on the 1st December, my initial impression of the app is that it's prettily designed, with a cute Christmas tree with snow falling around it, and pleasant incidental music. I look forward to reading the poem's each day when they become active.’
A few examples of the daily poetry you can look forward to:
Day 2
I am like a special star
You once knew
in blue
it glew
at queue.
From me to you
Bright like you are
Is solely the north-star
Day 9
15 days to Christmas-day
14 angels sway
13 elves singing carols
12 well dressed fairies
11 ways to stay jolly
10 Commandments that are holy
9 bells together ringing
8 Angels in chorus singing
7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 are around the tree, celebrating
Day 11
Hey you
Yes dear
You look like a reindeer
Four long legs
And a red nose too
A reindeer, that is you!
Artist of the Month
Teresa Ann Frazee
Ineffable Intelligence
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Ineffable intelligence, beyond a mortal's share, invaded my grey matter this morning
In every language an omniscient voice began to explain such things only geniuses comprehend
I learned lessons of academicism, without obstacles, clearly understanding every word
Simultaneously transmitted signals, where several thousand interpreting synapses transcend
An intricate network of specialty circuits like crackling light, communicated with one another
Without compromise I listened to each extensive syllable with the most articulate ear
A round of artillery could not divert my focus from the scope of my abilities
Altered, I began hoarding more perceptibility than does the inner eye of a seer
By some unforeseen force, I have been chosen to question and to explore all that there is to know
Awoken now from this idle bed of idiocy and doubt where perplexities manifest
Contemplation freely roamed boundless depths while ignorance strained its neck from its rusted chain
Cerebrally rewired, I metamorphosed, emerging from a drowsy career of mental rest
Accurate details gorged my brain as encyclopedic data entered Broca's area
Through an untresspassed cerebellum, vagueness vanished as billions of neurons organized
As the morning wore on, I knew something had happened to my psyche, something vastly profound
And in brilliance, I discovered misunderstandings and all contradictions simply vaporized
Captivated by reason and its pursuit of knowledge, I left my slow to wake peers in the dark
Along with the familiar guise of hope, fear and sentiment to which the fooled are always such slaves
With a grave truth that all my life my thinking has been so wrong, I took my place among the savants
As the indocile slept on, my consciousness absorbed the stimulating nourishment it craves
I was aware, there in the light, that not for a moment did I buckle under the pressure
Surely, it is not egotism in which I speak, I am not one who embraces idolatry
This is not self applause but merely a factual record by my own account and nothing more
Still, there are those who may feel my words, pompous, in their opinion, require an apology
Almost a year since having eradicated all irrelevant thoughts such as the inconsequential
Those clods who rush about with feeble notions that prove unintelligible, I've lost all affection
With sensibilities put into practice, I have receded even further from the absurd
And from the inferior who rant with transparent tongues, I have not the slightest devotion
Rampant keenness has ruled out any connection with my fellow man, leaving one to progress alone
Shadows replace friends as silence grows louder in isolation, cut off from the rest of the world
True, I will admit, I am no longer confined by societies prescribed cardboard virtues
But you do not know me if you think I am blest in this cloistered asylum which I've been hurled
I remain in the role of master, absolved of the ordinary, beyond the threshold of belonging
Yet, I shall willingly pay the dear price for this mentality where perfection is well bred
Quoting Shakespeare's Sonnets before breakfast, reciting Plato's Parables well into the afternoon
And at night, the sparks of lucid dreams smolder deep in the folds of the pillow where I lay my head
About Teresa Ann Frazee
A visual artist for over thirty years, receiving many awards and honors. Also, Teresa has been pursuing her other love, writing. She is a published poet and has published short stories and is a Playwright: 100 Thousand Poets for Change at World & Eye, Founder & Host, Poetry Reading series “Art & Literature”, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Artists’ Guild, “New City Souls", A Poetry Cabaret, Sebastian Kane, Performance/Workshop, 2nd place winner short story, Creativity Webzine, Empty Closet Women's Theater, Trifecta, Incomplete Sentences, One Act Play, including 5 others.
Inside her world of make believe she paints and writes what she knows to be true. Bound by the creative force, she leaves reality entirely up to you.
Charles E.J. Moulton and the Moulton Family
in association with the Friedenskirche Herten-Disteln in Germany
proudly presents
The Magic Journey
A Time-Travel-Musical
By Charles E.J. Moulton & Mara Sophie Moulton
November 1st at 4 p.m
November 8th at 5 p.m.
November 15th at 5 p.m.
November 21st at 4 p.m.
Starring:
Mara Sophie Moulton as "Clara"
David Köhle as "Paul"
Charles E.J. Moulton as "Leonardo da Vinci" and "Salvador Dali"
Mercedes Felling as "Mona Lisa" and "Mrs. Moser"
Eddy Schüssler as "The Time Art Thief"
Franziska Pletwoski as "The Time Fairy" and "Raphaela"
Emilia Ulmer as "Gisela" and "Princess Francesca"
Quentin Althaus as "Dominic, the evil Jester" and "Ezra, the Bad Guy"
Emily Kleingries as "Margit the Chatterbox" and "Pauline, the Good Jester"
Emely Müller as "Zoe, the Bad Girl" and "the Maiden with the Pearl Earring"
Based on the good night stories of Charles and his daughter Mara, "The Magic Journey" ("Die Magische Reise" in German) tells the story of two straight A-students who find a time-clock in an old haunted mansion and travel back in time with it.
They journey back to the Renaissance and witness the painting of the Mona Lisa. But, lo and behold, the painting soon gets stolen by an evil art thief, who wants to exterminate all famous art in the world in favour of his own art. Soon, our heroes find themselves trapped in a dungeon battling the evil antagonist. But Clara and Paul have a plan...
Reserve seats for one of the shows, contacting Charles or calling the Friedenskirche at
+49 - 2366 - 88030
The Portrait
by John Mueter
Charles Koranda was found one fine spring morning lying in the low grass beside a country lane in Somersetshire. Things had gone exactly according to plan: Dr Callum Gibson, who was on his way home from a visit to a nearby patient, was going to drive by in his carriage just after Koranda materialized. Koranda wasn’t there two minutes when he heard the low rumbling of the carriage wheels and the unmistakable plodding of hooves on the well-trod earth. He didn’t need to feign illness as he felt quite out of sorts after his ordeal––the effect was something like a hangover. He remained as he was, sprawled in the sweet-scented grass. As the carriage was passing him Dr Gibson commanded the driver to halt. Even before the vehicle came to a complete stop the doctor nimbly jumped down and knelt beside Koranda who was holding his head and moaning softly.
“My good man, whatever is the matter?” he asked, at the same time sizing up the young stranger who was dressed in a strikingly unusual manner.
“Oh, I’m not quite sure. Don’t think I can stand on my own just yet, though.”
The accent was peculiar, like no English dialect Dr Gibson had ever heard. And what clothes! Gibson had never seen anything like them. This mysterious gentleman was not wearing a coat but had on a shirt, quite well made from the looks of it, with curious buttons in the oddest places and some sort of monogram stitched onto the left breast pocket. And the color! The man’s bearing was not that of a laborer or field worker; the quality of his clothing was fine, too fine for a person of low social standing. He seemed to be a well-bred young man. Dr Gibson guessed he was in his early thirties.
At a signal from the doctor the driver jumped down and assisted in getting Koranda to his feet and into the carriage. The driver was a well-fed country type by the looks of him, perhaps no more than eighteen or nineteen years old, blond, with a solid build and rosy cheeks.
“I think you had better come with us and we will get you sorted out properly,” was all Gibson said.
The doctor was a kind and compassionate man. That was part of the reason he had been selected to find Koranda that morning. They rode along without exchanging a word, Gibson eying his passenger curiously from time to time. Koranda, who had by now fully recovered, delighted in the sights passing him by: the splendid English countryside, glimpses of country homes in the distance, the view of a village in the valley a few miles away. That will be Banbury, he thought.
There was also the pleasure of riding in an open carriage pulled by a pair of horses. After about a quarter of an hour they pulled into the drive leading to a fine country home. It wasn’t an estate, but was still quite impressive, a large house in neoclassical style. A set of curved steps led up to the front entrance. There was an expanse of lawn in front, a generous amount of shrubbery, and a well-tended garden to one side.
Koranda thought it best to still play the invalid. He let himself be supported by Dr Gibson and the driver as he alit from the carriage. They slowly ascended the steps to the front door. It was opened by a waiting maid who made no attempt to conceal her astonishment at Koranda’s appearance, gawking openmouthed as he passed. He was brought to the sitting room and was gently deposited into a wing chair.
“Are you all right?” asked Dr Gibson.
“Sure. I’ll be just fine in a few minutes.”
“Let me get you a brandy, and after you have recovered your equilibrium you might care to tell me who you are and what brings you to this county. Mr Thomas Hilfiger, is it?”
“What? Oh no, the name is Koranda, actually. Charles Koranda. But my friends call me CK.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Koranda realized that addressing someone by their initials was an informality not likely to be known here. He was trying his best not to make any gaffes of speech or behavior, but knew it was inevitable that he would say or do something inappropriate. He had been distracted by the ‘Hilfiger’ bit and it took him a few seconds to realize that his permanent press cotton chinos had a logo emblazoned over the rear pocket.
“Your home is just splendid, Dr Gibson,” he said, striving to keep his feelings in check. He would have liked to dance about in sheer exuberance; here he was in a house, a room, that looked like a set out of Masterpiece Theater. Only this was the real thing. Dr Gibson had lifted an eyebrow, surprised that this stranger would know his name.
“Yes, I do know who you are, though you don’t know me. Your good reputation goes far and wide.” Just how far and wide the good doctor could hardly imagine, but Koranda didn’t want to get into it at this moment. “That’s why you were chosen to find me in the lane. It was no accident.”
Dr Gibson’s visage expressed even greater astonishment. “Chosen to find you in the lane? Whatever do you mean?” He leaned forward in his chair.
“I am very grateful to you for your willingness to come to my aid, more than you can know. I realize that I owe you an explanation. My unusual appearance and general manner must raise a few questions in your mind.”
“Indeed they do. But please proceed.” He had settled back and resumed his impassive demeanor. Whatever thoughts were occupying Dr Gibson’s mind, he was not going to reveal them too readily, being the well-bred Englishman and doctor he was.
“There is a simple explanation for all this, and I could tell you the whole story, but I’m afraid you shall think me mad.” He had actually prepared this part of his speech before his departure. It sounded so British, like a line from the dialogue in a Jane Austen novel. ‘You shall think me mad’ was not something he was in the habit of saying at home. His friends would have thought him pretentious. He paused a moment, wondering just how to continue, when approaching steps were heard in the hallway.
“That will be Mrs Gibson,” said the doctor.
The door opened and in walked a very well dressed woman in her mid-forties, about the same age as her husband. The material in her pale-green dress (Koranda guessed it was raw silk) shimmered in the light. She was further adorned with a gorgeous necklace and matching earrings, a Kashmiri shawl with tassels, and topped off by an elaborate hairdo into which a bit of lace had been intertwined. So, he thought, the upper classes really did dress up like that, even during the day. He was so impressed with her appearance that he nearly leapt out of his chair. Mrs Gibson stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him, and her eyes scanned him from head to toe and back again.
Dr Gibson took charge of the awkward moment. “My dear, I should like you to meet Mr Charles Koranda who is paying us an unexpected visit. He apparently knows of me already and was about to divulge the nature of that acquaintance.”
“How do you do.” Mrs. Gibson recovered her composure, smiled graciously and stepped forward, extending her hand. Koranda took the proffered hand and bowed slightly. He couldn’t help noticing how her eyes seemed to be riveted first on his shirt (a button-down in magenta had apparently not been the best choice), then on his shoes. He had made a point of putting on his best leather dress shoes (Cole-Haan wingtips they were), but they must have looked odd anyway. He noticed that Dr Gibson had on high boots. The driver had worn boots as well, though his weren’t as nice.
“Well, Mr Koranda, do tell us what brings you to Bexhill House,” said Mrs Gibson while taking her place next to her husband on the settee. She was still smiling graciously, but with an added air of mischievous curiosity.
“Well....er....this is going to be a little difficult. I beg your indulgence.” He downed the last gulp of brandy and continued. “Dr Gibson, you are known to be a rational, kind and fair-minded individual. Please hear me out. You have observed, I hope, that I am not a lunatic, nor am I inebriated.” Gibson nodded in assent. “As you might have already guessed, I am not from this country. My home is in the United States of America. But that doesn’t explain the crucial point. The truth is that I am not from this world.” Here he paused for dramatic effect. “I come from the future.” He waited again to let the dust settle after dropping this bombshell. Neither Dr nor Mrs Gibson moved a muscle. They stared at him in incredulous silence. “I am not from this century––it’s 1832 isn’t it?––nor from the next, but from the beginning of the twenty-first century, 2016 to be exact. We have made some remarkable, for you unimaginable, technological advances. My appearance here is part of an experiment that has been underway for quite some time at the university where I teach.”
Koranda went on to explain the particulars of the time travel project as best he could. But as he wasn’t a part of the making of it, he wasn’t able to provide too many details. Science wasn’t his field at all; he taught Art History. He was, however, good friends with Dr Ramachandra, the eccentric but brilliant scientist who masterminded the whole thing from the beginning, running his grand experiment out of his house with the help of a few graduate assistants sworn to secrecy. The person originally scheduled for this particular ‘launch’ had dropped out suddenly and the time could not be put off. It all had something to do with planetary alignments and energy fields, that much Koranda knew. Ramachandra had approached him just the day before, begging him to consent to be the traveler. He was available, he was willing (though a bit skeptical of the whole thing), and was the only person in on the secret who had a comprehensive view of European history. The prospect of traveling to early nineteenth century England was irresistible. Of the two previous launches, one had been a disaster (the chosen traveler had been unwilling or unable to return from the France of Louis XIV), and the next an unqualified success, though that candidate had been so enthusiastic after his visit to first century Rome that he had put the whole project in jeopardy with his indiscretions. It was unfortunate that there had been so little time for preparation on Koranda’s part. He did the best he could.
Not only did Ramachandra have the capacity to transport individuals back in time, he was able to observe the doings of selected individuals at any point in time he wished. Koranda understood none of this. To him it seemed something akin to the Google street level feature. Dr Gibson had been observed by Ramachandra for a while and was deemed a suitable contact for the traveler. The doctor had a sterling character, was a generous individual, open-minded (though how he would react to anything as outlandish as a time traveler was anybody’s guess), and was of a respectable social standing. The most fortuitous confluence of particulars had come together quickly and Koranda was on his way to Somerset. One moment he was sitting in a chair in a house in Connecticut, a metal halo resting on his head, and the next moment he found himself sprawled by the side of a country road in early nineteenth-century England.
And here he was now, sitting in an armchair in a magnificent country house, on a lovely spring day in the year 1832, calmly explaining his situation to the Gibsons. They had relaxed a bit but hadn’t taken their eyes off of him the whole time. He thought he’d better stop for a while.
“Well,” said Mrs Gibson after a long silence, “I think the best thing now would be a nice cup of tea. Don’t you agree, Mr Koranda?”
He agreed, quite relieved they hadn’t thrown him out. Mrs Gibson got up to ring for the maid who appeared within seconds. She must have been waiting outside the door.
“Jenny, tea for three here in the sitting-room, please.”
Jenny unabashedly stared at the guest. Rumors of a strangely clad, attractive visitor must have been making the rounds among the domestic help. Koranda was grateful for the lull in the conversation at that moment.
He got up to have a closer look at the furnishings, and in particular the many oil paintings that adorned the walls of the room. Nearly all were landscapes, with a few portraits––and one of these interested him in particular. He admired a Sheraton side table, a stunning specimen, the kind of item that would cause antique dealers to go into ecstasy. What a hit it would be on Antiques Roadshow! “You know, Dr Gibson, if I had a table like this in my century it would be worth a small fortune.”
“Really? How extraordinary.”
“And your collection of paintings is admirable. I hope you can tell me about them.”
He remained standing and continued with the explanation of his origins. “I understand why you would be hesitant to believe me––why should you?––so allow me to present you with more tangible proof of my origin.” With that Koranda took out his wallet and peeled out a twenty dollar bill, handing it over to Gibson. “That’s Andrew Jackson. He’s currently President of the United States, as you well know. He’s at the end of his first term and will win a second in the next election. His vice president, Mr van Buren, will succeed him in 1836.”
Gibson examined the banknote with great interest. When he saw ‘SERIES 1999’ next to Jackson’s portrait he did a double-take. “My word, this is extraordinary. Charlotte dear, have a look at this.”
“They don’t ordinarily put someone’s portrait on a bill while he’s still in office, do they now?” offered Koranda with a hint of smugness. For good measure he also handed over his Connecticut driver’s license, his university ID, and a credit card. “These are made of plastic. It’s a synthetic substance that won’t be invented for quite a while yet. We’re rather fond of it.”
The Gibsons handled each item with increasing wonderment. They were truly dumbfounded. Koranda’s exact likeness in color on his license and again on his ID elicited gasps from both of them. As the coup de grâce Koranda took off his wristwatch and handed it over. It was nothing special by twenty-first century standards, an ordinary Timex digital with date and chronometer, but the Gibsons examined it like they had just been handed the Crown Jewels. At this moment the tea was brought in, the tray placed before Mrs Gibson.
“Do you take milk, Mr Koranda?”
“Why yes, thank you. No sugar, though.” He had to admire the ‘stiff upper lip’, the ability to carry on like it were the most normal thing in the world to have tea with a guest visiting from 184 years in the future!
“There’s a lot I could tell you about the future, some of it good, some not. Let’s see...if everything worked out right, today should be the 14th of May, 1832.” Dr Gibson verified that it was, indeed. “The current monarch is William IV. He will reign until 1837, to be succeeded by his niece Victoria who will occupy the throne for an incredible 64 years, until 1901. That’s a record that would be unsurpassed for a long time.”
Gibson perked up and proffered a very British “positively astonishing!”
“I could go on with the royal succession (know most of ‘em, I think) but that’s less interesting. The current monarch, I mean in 2016, is Queen Elizabeth II whose reign began in 1952. She recently passed Victoria’s tenure. The British monarchy seems to be blessed with some long-lived individuals. Most of the other monarchies in Europe were swept away at the beginning of the twentieth century. But that’s another story...”
He had been able to read up on the events of the 1830s before he left, but there were still many points he was foggy about. “Your beloved author Sir Walter Scott will pass away this year, on September the twenty-first. I’m sorry to report that the cholera epidemic will really rage next month, too. Next year Parliament will abolish slavery in the Empire.”
“And thank God for that!” exclaimed Gibson who was listening with rapt attention.
“The situation in my country will not resolve itself so easily on that issue, I’m afraid. There will be a bloody civil war in thirty years with the antislavery forces ultimately winning and the Union being preserved. It’s one of our darkest chapters.”
The Gibsons had many questions and Koranda went on to deliver a brief history of the world, or as much as he knew. The twentieth century, with its barbarous world wars and other horrific events, was painful to recount and he glossed over much of it. One could so easily become a cynic looking at history from either vantage point, from before or after. The Gibsons were enthralled with his recitation and seemed to welcome him completely.
“Now, Mr Koranda, what can we do to make your visit with us, however long that might be, as pleasant as possible?” asked Gibson cordially.
“We are delighted to make your acquaintance and look forward to many interesting hours in your company” added Charlotte Gibson.
“You are so very kind. I am entirely at your disposal and indebted to you for your generosity.” He continued, “I will need the proper clothing, of course, and your assistance in dealing with the niceties of your society. You see, things have changed a lot in the intervening years. I feel like a fish out of water here.”
The Gibsons very quickly assembled a wardrobe for him, down to every detail. The laundry maids would undoubtedly be fascinated with his Polo Ralph Lauren shirt and trousers with a permanent crease, thought Koranda as he was changing, as well as his modern underwear. If he had only had time to contact the wardrobe department of the university theater before his departure, he could have avoided making such a fashion spectacle of himself. Men of this era wore high-collared white shirts made of linen, wool trousers without a crease, a waistcoat, a dark frock coat and boots. The linen underwear was an interesting touch, he discovered. And then there was the problem of his hair. His was fairly short, with a part. The style of the day was long and often coiffed in what struck him as a ridiculous manner. He would have to see what he could do with a comb and Macassar oil.
His first outing was into the village, in the company of Dr Gibson. It was decided that Koranda’s true identity and origin be kept secret. He avoided conversation as much as possible. When he was introduced as an acquaintance visiting from abroad he nodded politely and let Gibson do most of the talking. At first he lived in constant fear of doing or saying something inappropriate, but after a while he relaxed and enjoyed the pleasures of living in a more gracious age. He learned to be evasive yet polite with strangers who inquired about the details of his own life. As virtually no one he met had ever encountered a real live American before, he could fudge quite a lot. He thought it best to say that he came from a small town in Connecticut––which happened to be true.
The outward aspect of everyday life in Banbury was a source of constant fascination. Of course everything was made by hand, sewn by hand, hewn and erected by craftsmen, cooked and baked from scratch. Observing the gentility of social interactions and the general elegance of dress, he had to remind himself that these were real people going about their lives––it wasn’t a film set. The level of sanitation took some getting used to. There was dirt and mud everywhere. It was hard to avoid. And the glaring poverty of the less fortunate was another shock. Well, those problems hadn’t been solved by the twenty-first century either, he thought.
The Gibsons very generously provided their guest with decent clothes. Besides the everyday suit they had somehow found for him, there was another outfit for traveling, and even formal wear for grander occasions. Charlotte insisted it was nothing, but Koranda knew that even the first suit couldn’t have been easy to find. Everybody was smaller, much smaller. How did she ever find his size? he wondered. And the newest outfits had to be made to order, no ready-to-wear stuff off the rack. He loved the frock coat and the boots; they made him feel like a real gentleman. Then there was the problem of money. Koranda didn’t have any, not a farthing. The Gibsons took care of all his needs and he was totally dependent upon the them. And no one ever asked him how long he planned to stay.
The Gibsons housed Charles in a separate building, a spacious apartment above the carriage house. He could come and go as he pleased, although he was expected to show up for meals. No one bothered him at all. The Gibsons maintained a comfortable life style and kept a number of servants. The young man who was so helpful on his arrival was named Andrew. He was technically a medical assistant to Dr Gibson but he helped out in many other ways. There was no real medical schooling at the time. An aspiring doctor attached himself to an established physician and, after a few years or so, he was ready to hang out his own shingle. This seemed a frightening arrangement to Koranda. But, no matter; he wasn’t interested in Andrew’s medical credentials anyway. He cultivated the young man for other reasons: as a possible abettor in crime. There was no other term for it.
Ramachandra was a genius, no doubt about that, but his research and time travel project had to be done in secret. The university would have never awarded him a grant, might have even dismissed him if it were known exactly what he was about. In order to fund his clandestine activities, such as paying his graduate assistants for their extra time, Ramachandra wanted something in return. He knew that the Gibsons had a portrait hanging in their parlor, a self-portrait done by Joseph Wright of Derby. This particular painting would eventually be sold to a collector in Belgium in the early twentieth century and would disappear during the carnage of the Second World War. It was thought to have been destroyed. If Koranda could bring it back (leaving a convincing reproduction in its place), Ramachandra could fund his work for many years. Joseph Wright of Derby was barely appreciated in his own lifetime (the portrait was not one of the Gibsons' prized acquisitions), but his work had gained popularity over the years. The painting would be worth a small fortune in the twenty-first century. Koranda deplored the idea of doing anything dishonest, especially the theft of a work of art, but he felt obligated and thought it could be done without too much difficulty.
* * * *
At the end of Koranda’s third week in Somerset the Gibsons announced a dinner party. The landowners of the neighborhood were a tight-knit group and word had spread that the Gibsons had a foreign guest. But the official reason for the party was the impending visit of Charlotte Gibson’s brother, Florestan Porter. He came to visit for a few weeks every year at this time. Porter was a member of Parliament who relished the elevated status of his position.
There are some people we meet with whom we feel an instant connection. To Koranda, Florestan Porter was just the opposite, a person whom he disliked from the first moment he set eyes on him. And the feeling was mutual. Florestan was a thin, stiff and haughty man, decidedly homely, with a permanent sour expression on his face. It was clear that Charlotte had inherited all the handsomeness and charm that was available in the Porter gene pool. He was used to people fawning over him and catering to his every whim. When the MP was introduced to the American he did not smile at all, and barely nodded towards Koranda. The American made more of an effort to be civil.
The undisputed center of attention during the dinner was Charles Koranda, a development deeply resented by the MP. Koranda had mixed feelings about attending a formal dinner party. He was enthralled by social conversation, but dreaded it at the same time. He was seated between a Mrs Hubbard (sporting a multi-stranded necklace of pearls), and a Viscount, one of the Gibsons’ nearest neighbors.
He noticed that whenever he spoke, which was not often, the other guests paid attention. He realized that his studied reticence might be contributing to a sense of mystery about himself. He didn’t intend any of this. He was not one to put on airs, nor was he so vain as to think that he really was mysterious (certainly no one thought so back home!), but he was different, in a way the others couldn’t quite define for themselves. His enthusiasm for certain subjects, his complete ignorance of others, the unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible opinions he expressed only served to enhance the perception of inscrutability. Dr Gibson exchanged knowing glances with his wife when their guests later commented on the enigmatic charm of their American guest.
He thought he knew something about the literature of the period––he had read his share of Byron, Shelley, Keats and Scott––but when other writers were discussed he was lost. William Hazlitt? Who was that? They all had read him and seemed perplexed that he hadn’t. He said that he really admired Charles Dickens and had read his works many times. But all Koranda got in return were blank looks. (Wasn’t Oliver Twist published yet?) He felt like a complete fool at that moment.
But worse was yet to come, when the subject of conversation turned to the new railway line that had just been opened between Manchester and Liverpool, the first in the country. There were varying opinions as to whether this was a good thing or not. Florestan Porter was especially vehement in his opposition to the railways. Koranda couldn’t resist and launched into an animated speech, one he was to regret later.
“We can hardly imagine what the future might hold for us, what the advancements of modern technology might bring,” he declared. “There might be trains that travel at speeds like 150 miles per hour, there could be flying machines that transport hundreds of people at once, there might be a tunnel built under the channel––imagine having breakfast in London and lunch in Paris! There might be devices that enable us to contact any person in the world at any time! Mankind might explore space and send men to the walk on the surface of the moon……and they’ll do it half a dozen times!”
He had said too much. There was stunned silence and all eyes were on him. It was Mrs Hubbard who rescued the moment, addressing him directly: “Mr Koranda, you speak on these matters with such conviction and enthusiasm. It is really quite charming.” He was determined to control his tongue better after that.
Florestan Porter was another matter. For the first part of the dinner he barely acknowledged Koranda and all but ignored him in the general conversation. During the pause before the serving of dessert, the conversation, limited to the far end of the table, turned to politics. Koranda kept silent as he knew he was out of his depth on the subject. That is, until Porter addressed him directly:
“Mr Koranda, what is your feeling on the slavery issue? I understand there is considerable debate in the United States at present on the subject.” He bent forward over the table, peering directly in Koranda’s direction.
Koranda was at first startled to be singled out, but his thoughts on slavery were well-formed and he had no hesitation in expressing his abhorrence of the institution. He finished by saying, “I am sure that the controversy will end in Great Britain with the abolition of slavery in the Empire, and sooner than you think.” Dr Gibson looked at him and smiled, recalling their previous conversation on the subject.
But Porter would not have it. “Spoken with the naiveté one expects from an American, and without any understanding of our traditions and social arrangements. You have no idea what will happen in this country or any other for that matter.” With that he turned away from Koranda, conversing with his neighbor to the left.
Koranda was taken aback by this unprovoked and unabashed insult. Charlotte Gibson lowered her head, too mortified to say anything. She was accustomed to the outspoken manner of her brother. The moment passed and general good feeling resumed around the table when the dessert was brought in and the subject of conversation changed.
The evening came to an end and the guests left. On his way upstairs Porter passed Koranda, muttering a frosty ‘good night’ in his direction.
Before he was ‘launched’ and transported to 1832, Ramachandra had provided Koranda with a list of possible times for his return. He had to be exactly in the right place at the right time or it wouldn’t work. Koranda mentioned this to the Gibsons, but was loathe to think about a departure; he was still enjoying himself immensely. By the following week there were only a few possibilities of return left and Koranda didn’t want to press his luck. He thought it best to say nothing directly. But first, there was business to attend to: how to get his hands on the Wright self-portrait.
The action was planned for a warm and overcast June night. He approached Andrew and asked him to leave the door to the kitchen unlocked that evening. The young man at first looked baffled, wondering why Koranda would ask that of him, but he readily agreed. Fortunately, Andrew was not the curious type and didn’t ask many questions. Koranda slept for a few hours and awoke at 2 AM, when everyone in the main house was sure to be fast asleep. He put on his shirt and trousers and made his way, barefoot, to the main house as quietly as possible, ever so gently opening the kitchen door and stepping inside. He lit a single candle. It provided just enough light for him to see his way through the dark room. From the very beginning of his visit he had gotten on famously with the house dog, Pluto, and he encountered an enthusiastic welcome from the animal whose tail beat wildly and made a bit of a racket. After calming him down, Koranda continued on through the dining room and into the sitting-room, where he had first come to know the Gibsons.
He wasn’t sure what excuse he would give if he were found here, in the middle of the night, in the Gibson’s drawing-room. He just hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. When he was in this room for the first time, admiring the furnishings, he had scouted the location of the Wright painting and had spotted it immediately. He knew exactly what it looked like as he had a copy of the portrait with him: a young man, gazing directly at the viewer, wearing a green coat with a fur collar, a curious silver turban on his head. A pang of remorse briefly overcame Koranda as he realized that he was going to commit a robbery against the Gibsons. Chances were that they would never even find out that their picture had been replaced with a copy. At least, he hoped so.
Koranda carefully placed the candle holder on a table near the painting (the Sheraton table he had so admired), and took the tools he had brought along out of his pocket, a screw driver and a small pair of pliers. He lifted the Wright off the wall. Fortunately, it was not very big. Good thing I don’t have to make off with Rembrandt’s Night Watch, he mused in an attempt to cheer himself up. He removed the painting from the frame. That was the easy part. The next operation was not so easy: he had to carefully remove every tack around the periphery of the inner stretcher frame in order to free the canvas so that it could be rolled up. The tacks were fairly easy to pull out and he was grateful for that. He put each one on the table. He slowly rolled the canvas as he had been instructed and inserted it under his shirt. Then he took the reproduction, a clever digital scan onto modern canvas (provided by the university art department), and prayed that the size was the same as the original. It fit perfectly. He muffled the noise of hammering the tacks back in with a cloth he had brought. He had just finished the task and placed the faux canvas into the frame when he heard a voice behind him.
“Are you so interested in art that you need to steal over in the middle of the night to examine it?” It was the unmistakably frigid voice of Florestan Porter, emanating from the gloom.
He nearly dropped the painting, he was so startled. Porter was in his nightshirt, appearing as an evil specter in the weak light of the candle. “Oh, good evening,” Koranda managed to stammer. “I couldn’t sleep and came over to have a look at the collection. But the light is very poor with only one candle and the glare was a nuisance so I…”
“I can see very well what you are up to,” said Porter. “You foreigners are all the same, not to be trusted. And you, Mr Charles Koranda,” he spat out with unmistakable disdain, “for all your supposed charm, you are an especially slippery character.”
“I meant no harm, really. Sorry to hear that you are so ill-disposed towards me, but I can’t help that.” With that Koranda turned to put the painting back in its place on the wall. Porter watched him in stony silence, not moving from his place in the dimness. “I’ll wish you a good night then,” offered Koranda in as composed a manner as he could manage. He headed back the way he came in, not wanting to prolong the conversation. Porter watched him exit the room, but said nothing further. How long has he been standing there? The sneaky bastard! What had he seen? What did he mean when he said, ‘I can see very well what you are up to’? This was a disaster. Now that he possessed the Wright canvas it was time to leave, and the sooner the better.
As he entered the kitchen he felt Porter’s hand on his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” said Porter. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“Unhand me, you slimy vulture! I know all about you and your dalliances.” This was a shot in the dark. Shortly after Porter’s arrival, Koranda had walked in on the end of a conversation between Charlotte and a maid who could not have been more than sixteen-years-old. She had been in tears and had said something like, ‘I cannot be in the same room with him, please keep him away from me.’ Koranda surmised that the ‘him’ must have been Porter. Was Porter a lech? It seemed very likely. Seeing the startled look on Porter’s face, Koranda continued, “You despicable seducer of children, how would you like all of London to know what kind of man you are? There is nothing you can or will do to me. You are nothing but a puffed-up baboon!” At that, Porter’s jaw dropped. Koranda wrenched his arm free, turned on his heels and briskly headed for the door.
He returned to his room. He was relieved to note that the next opportunity to return to the twenty-first century was coming up soon. He would have preferred to wait a few days, maybe even prepare the Gibsons for his departure, but that wasn’t possible now. He would have to skulk away, literally into the dark of night. He sat at his desk and hurriedly wrote a note for the Gibsons, expressing both his gratitude and sadness at leaving them. He enclosed the note in an envelope, sealed it, and left it on the desk.
He would have to be at the very place he was originally found, in the same country lane, at 7 AM. He couldn’t sleep, of course, and was too agitated to wait in the room. What if Porter decided to seek him out? He changed into the clothes he had arrived in, carefully folding the trousers, shirt and coat he had been wearing and placing them neatly on the bed. He was sorry to leave the boots. The ‘halo’ was recovered from its secure hiding place and put under his shirt, along with the rolled-up painting. He began the long walk in the dark.
Finding the same place with some difficulty, he positioned himself cross-legged in the now wet grass. It was completely quiet and nearly black, a solitude one could rarely find in the modern world with its light pollution and constant noise. It had become chilly and he wished he still had the woolen coat. Placing the metal band on his head, he waited for the moment of his transport to arrive. It did, and the return went smoothly.
He found himself in the laboratory, seated in the very same place from which he had departed some three and a half weeks before. Ramachandra and his assistants were all eager to hear about his adventure. Koranda told them everything they wanted to know, and Ramachandra was ecstatic when he handed over the Wright self-portrait. But his own enthusiasm was dampened by the realization that he had done something ethically unacceptable. He would have to live with the fact that he had deceived (even if they never realized it) the very people who had shown him such kindness and generosity. That would always remain a troublesome memory.
The next morning the Gibsons came down to breakfast at the usual time. They had already begun eating when Florestan shuffled in, looking a bit out of sorts. It was unusual for him to be late, but his sleep had been interrupted by the confrontation in the middle of the night. He went to the buffet and put some toast and jam on his plate, then seated himself in his usual place. When the server had finished pouring the tea he cleared his throat, always an indication that he had something important to say.
“Sister Charlotte, Callum,” he cleared his throat once more. “There were goings-on in this house during the night that you should be made aware of. It appears that your American guest, Mr Koranda…”
Charlotte cut him short. She was still annoyed with him for his rudeness to Koranda at the party. “I forbid you to mention Mr Koranda’s name,” she declared firmly, “and I don’t care to hear your tittle-tattle.”
“But Charlotte, I think you need to hear this, you would be shocked, as was I, that…”
“Enough, Florestan! To use an expression I learnt from Charles: you may put a sock in it!”
Porter was speechless. His sister was the only person in the world who could talk to him in that manner. He wasn’t quite sure what the expression meant, but he understood its intent. He stared at his toast and did not attempt to say any more on the subject. So, the Gibsons never learned about Koranda’s conduct. And they never discovered that their painting had been switched with a copy.
Sir Walter Scott did pass away on September the 21st of that year, just as Koranda had foretold. That day turned even sadder for the Gibsons as it again brought to mind their extraordinary friend from the future. Charlotte wished she had some memento of him––the magenta shirt, perhaps––but he had left nothing. Jenny the parlormaid, however, had pilfered Koranda’s underwear from the wash and stashed these curious items among her own things. Who was Calvin Klein, she wondered, and why was his name stitched into Mr Koranda’s undergarments? It was quite perplexing.
When Joseph Wright of Derby’s long lost self-portrait resurfaced, the art world was abuzz with excitement, and it fetched a handsome price at auction. Ramachandra offered Koranda a cut of the sale price, ten per cent, but he refused it. His troubled conscience was somewhat eased when he reflected that, by stealing the painting in the nineteenth century, he had saved it from destruction in the twentieth. Maybe it hadn’t been such a regrettable venture after all.
END
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Will There Be A David-Bowie-Street in Berlin?
By Charles E.J. Moulton
They flock in droves to Hauptstrasse 155 in Berlin-Schöneberg, laying flowers on the pavement in front of the megastar’s former flat. They listen to his music in order to calm down their sorrow. The legend, who sold 140 million records world wide, died on Sunday night, January 10th, 2016, of liver cancer, two days after his birthday. Since then, his Berlin-fans have launched a movement to inspire the city to name a street after the star.
Politician Daniel Krüger doesn’t exclude the possibility that this could become a reality, “but first in five years, according to state law”.
It would make perfect sense. Berlin meant a great deal to David Bowie. He spent many formative years here that shaped his musical career, recording the famous Berlin Trilogy at the Hansa Studios, changing Rock history forever and still keeping a safe distance to his own fame. On his 57th birthday, his friend Ricky Gervais joked: “Isn’t it time you got a real job?” Bowie mused: “I have one. Rock God!”
This wit was Bowie incarnate. He was the intellectual art collector with a brilliant mind and still the tongue-in-cheek-rebel with a brave heart. The director of Bowie’s Broadway-Musical “Lazarus”, Ivo Van Howe, told reporters Bowie broke down during rehearsals back-stage last year, but still spoke of writing another musical, soon enough.
A David-Bowie-Street in Berlin would most certainly make many fans happy, perhaps even give young rockers enough guts to try to make it as musicians.
Charles E.J. Moulton's
20th published book
"Turn Me On
- 39 Exclusive Erotic Stories"
is now available.
Erotica on a whole new level.
Spirituality and sexuality combined, all across the world,
all across the universe, throughout history.
***
Here a list of my published books:
1. Be the Ocean (Poetry)
2. The Mood of Midnight (Poetry)
3. Cosmic Waffles (Prose & Poetry)
4. Heaven Is a Feeling (Articles, Poetry, Stories)
5. Painting the Complete Picture (Articles, Philosophy)
6. When Your Spirits Climb (Short Stories)
7. Heroes and Villains
8. They Smell Your Fear (Horror)
9. The Andalusian Phoenix (Erotica)
10. Aphrodite's Curse (Short Sz)
11. Long Live the Heartbeat (Rock Poems)
12. The Singing Couple (Biography about my parents)
The Haunted Kingdom (Fantasy Trilogy)
13. I: Shadows of the Realm
14. II: The Wasteland of Lost Majesties
15. III: The Imperfect Angels
16. The Trolls (Kids)
17. Making Music (Music Book)
18. All the World's A Stage
19. Thoughts from the Other Side (Philosophy)
20. Turn Me On - 39 Erotic Stories
Available here:
https://www.amazon.de/Heaven-Feeling-111-Coffee-Moments/dp/3752973633/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Heaven+is+a+Feeling+Moulton&qid=1595439602&sr=8-2
or here:
https://www.epubli.de/shop/buch/Heaven-Is-a-Feeling-Charles-Moulton-9783752973631/101043
Collections
Another Wild West
Cheapjack Pulp 615 and 915
The Horror Zine 2016
New York, New York
Divine Choir
Skirmish
And the StoryStar Collection
"Brightest Stars"
Best regards from
Charles E.J. Moulton
Author and Baritone
Art by Mike Knowles
Anna’s Noble Heart
Article about Anna Kronzell (1900 – 1996) and the Old World
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Introduction
Time has changed. Here, in the life of one certain creative woman, we see how much time really has changed. Time was a musical sonata when she grew up. Today, it is a presto jig played by electric guitars, accompanied by the symphony roared onwards and upwards by trains and automobiles. What that has done to our art is a testament to our creation: versatile, insane and mundane.
When my wise and witty, noble and eternally curious grandmother Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell was born on October 18th, 1900, Queen Victoria still ruled Great Britain, William McKinley was the American president, Henry Ford was yet to invent his T-Model Ford and horses were still used in transportation. It was twenty-one years after the invention of the electric lightbulb and fourteen years before the First World War. Emperors still ruled Russia and Germany, Puccini’s opera “Tosca” had just seen its world premiere, Charlie Chaplin was still an unknown kid living in London, the Boxer Rebellion had just taken place in China and nobody had ever heard of Adolf Hitler.
There was no internet, no short message service. Taking a stroll, even to the local shop, meant dressing up nice, putting on elegant gloves and a hat and dressing for a respectable reputation.
It was another world, a world we have forgotten, a world we could learn from with character traits like nobility and style, well-spoken manners and gentility.
Noble Anna
In our world of iPods, Smartphones, Mp3s, Apps and DVDs, we have become distantly excessible, aggressive and fast. Superficial contacts grace our microcosmos, contacts that pretend to be close. We think we know who our friends are, but our chatty virtual world is like a comic book filled with constant Facebook-Lingo like “lol”, “rofl”, not to mention all those comic-book like outburst like “Wow!”, “Bam!”, “What’s up?” and “Far Out!”. In many ways, there is a great danger in becoming a cliché. There is no shame in a world like that, it has its merits. The old world, however, had something that we lack.
Poise.
My grandmother was a spiritual aristocrat in all her ways. In my mind, she outshines most of the historical noblewomen I have known. This woman, who lived to be 95, had something most people should have more of in this day and age. Something that we seem to have lost along the way.
Nobility.
She witnessed the demonstration of the first radio in 1911 and was a contemporary of the Titanic disaster in 1912. She was a pianist in a silent movie cinema and a charity organizer for the destitute during the Second World War. The car, the telephone, the cellular phone, the grammophone, the television, the film-camera, the CD-player, the VCR, the airplane, the helicopter and the submarine: these were all inventions that either appeared during her lifetime or were introduced to a broad audience during her days. During the course of her 95 years on this Earth, she saw inventions come and go, she saw them revolutionize society and change history.
She had to walk a long way to school every morning.
Back when she was young, life was slower.
Step into the time-machine, folks. It’s a cool ride.
“I paid five Swedish crowns for my driver’s license back then,” she always began. “After that, however, I had to go to the police office and get a license that I was sober and orderly. The driving school had forgotten one thing, though. They had not taught me how to drive in reverse, so we went out of town to practice that. Once I was on the road, however, I felt like the Queen of Kalmar. The people warned each other about me, I must admit that. They told each other to look out if I came driving down the road. I was a very good driver, it wasn’t that. I was a very fast driver. 40 km/h (25 miles per hour) was pretty speedy car-travelling back in 1923. One day I encountered horse-driven carriage and stopped the car, just to be nice to the horses. I got a friendly laugh from the man driving the carriage. He asked me if I was afraid of the horses. I had a Fafner, you know, a pretty fancy car at the time. A car from Germany with the horn and the breaks on the outside. I really was the Queen of Kalmar back then. That’s what it felt like, anyway.”
You know what is really nice? My daughter still has that driver’s license in her play-room handbag. Time passes by. Family remains.
We’re in that time-machine that took us from 1993 back to 1923. Now, we go back even further. I really can’t help thinking about Rose in the film “Titanic” when I remember hearing these stories. Rose, played by Kate Winslet, came out of the Titanic disaster alive only to experience all the things a new woman could experience. It was a new world, a world that came exploding out of the cataclysm that was called the Great War, which was what the First World War was known as before Hitler launched the second one.
Anna Kronzell was a selfmade woman, a female driver, a female citizen with her own opinion and a right to vote, a good cook, a musician, an educated poet and a good friend.
I remember sitting on her lovely blue couch in Kalmar and hearing her tell me about how she had been walking to school that April of 1912 and reading the headlines on the front pages of the local press: “Titanic Sinks, 1500 die”.
Back in school that day, there were probably more discussions about how that could’ve happened, more that than any actual teaching going on.
I feel the echoes of history reverberating into my own life into what happened on September 11th, 2001, and how the World Trade Center was attacked by two airplanes. History repeats itself, doesn’t it? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, shall we?
Anyway, we are not here to brood. In fact, my grandmother had quite an eventful youth. Now let’s go even further back to see that youth. Are you ready? Here we go. Press the button. You there, scrolling the screen of your tablet. There. We’re back in the past.
Born in Åseda on October 18th, 1900, with eight brothers and sisters to call her own, she spent the first 8 years of her life in open Swedish farmland, helping her father Gustaf milk the cows and clean the barn. Her father wrote his initials – “G.N.” – on the wall of that barn close to Brädsäta when my mother was born in Kalmar back in 1930.
What happened next, that one day in 1908, sounds just like a scene from a true Hollywood-epic. Picture it:
A rich Uncle named Thomas arrives at Farm Friskamålen one sunny spring day with his wife Emilie, politely offering to take Anna to Kalmar to give her an official schooling and a wealthy home. So, Anna packs her bags and her one old doll and moves away from her parents.
At first, it is an unusual situation for Anna. Thomas and Emilie tell her that she can call them “Mom and Dad”. Anna declines, here we see the pride that signified her throughout her life. She uttered the proud words of a young child:
“I already have a mother and a father.”
Promptly, Anna writes home to her parents that she gets all the most expensive clothes and the greatest toys in Kalmar, but that she would rather be at home with them.
Those initial days may have been difficult, but Kalmar became as much a part of her soul as music was or literature or good friends. She remained true to that city until they day she died, back in 1996.
The story continues.
Although her stepbrother does get more domestic benefits than her, what we discover through the filters of history is a girl who constantly meets theatrical stars, writes poetry, learns how to play the piano, spends a summer at a girl’s camp in Wernigerode in Germany (learning how to speak German) and witnesses the official presentation of the first local radio as well as the first machine she has ever seen of its kind: the grammophone.
Motion-picture-like scenes keep flirting with our minds when we read about the events in her life and at every moment of the way, we see her dignity in action.
It was dignity with a naughty giggle, though.
In the Kalmar Girl’s School, her teacher endeavoured to teach her the art of baking cookies.
“Turn the oven baking tray around,” the teacher claimed.
Anna promptly turned the tray upside down, making the cookies fall down on the floor. She uttered the cute inquiry: “Like this, Miss?”
“Be careful not to ruin your reputation,” Aunt Emilie always snapped in true Victorian fashion. “Once you loose it, you’ll never get it back.”
Anna Julia Sofia Nilsson quoted that phrase back in the 1990’s, but always added some detail with a mischieveous wink. Let’s hear what she had to say:
“I was on my way to work as the fastest typist in the Hultsfred Fuel Commission when a man named Knut Kronzell arrived at the scene of my life. He would definately change my life forever. At the time, he was just the friend of a friend, whom I chatted with for a bit. He obviously took a liking to me, because he jumped up on the sideboard of my car while I was driving off. He wooed me until I gave in. The funny thing was, though, that I was already engaged to be married to another fellow. Our announcement had been presented promptly in the local paper. Now, three months later, I was engaged to be married to another man altogether with another ad in the paper about me and this new fellow Knut. What were people going to think? Anyway, I became Anna Kronzell. It was the best decision of my life. In 1926, Bengt-Åke was born. In 1930, Gun Margareta was born. Well, three year-old Gun could never pronounce Bengt-Åke’s name. She always called him Bohkke (Båkke), so that is what he became: from then on, he was Båkke. Now, my grandchild Mikael has taken over that name as Båkke the Second. Funny, isn’t it, though? Both my children have became musicians. I must have excellent musical veins, after all, just like that phrenologist told me in the hotel I worked in, back in 1919.”
That was true, indeed. Uncle Thomas, the owner of a big hotel in Kalmar where Anna worked part-time, had invited a phrenologist to examine the staff for free. He claimed to be able to tell what someone’s talents were just by looking at how the bloodveins criss-crossed in someone’s scalp. When he examined Anna, he exclaimed:
“My dear, you have excellent musical veins.”
These musical veins made her choose the musical profession, at least for a while. She was a pianist at her brother Carl Albien’s cinema “Saga”, which happened to be Sweden’s first cinema ever. Anna always mused that she had to play her pieces faster or slower depending on the how drunk the camera operator was.
The cinematographical cameras back then were circumcolved and operated manually. When the operator was drunk, he cycled slower and Anna had to play slower. The worst case scenario was, of course, when the operator was inconsistent and revolved fast and slow.
She didn’t always work alone, though, and could share the pain with a few colleagues. On a few occassions, other musicians were invited to earn a few extra crowns. The violinist who got his bow caught in her hair during a gig, though, never got a second invitation.
Anna’s husband, and my grandfather, Knut Allan Kronzell had a fantastic singing voice, besides being a sea captain, an accountant and the boss of a steel company. He and Anna were probably responsible for my mother Gun Kronzell’s international opera career. Anna and Knut took the family on vacations to Stockholm to go see operatic performances. That really launched Gun’s career and prompted a subsequent decision to study music in Stockholm and audition in Germany. Bengt-Åke became the bandleader of Resårbandet, a local big band, and his son Krister Kronzell, became a drummer. I even played the drums in that big band. These days, I am the lead vocalist of the J.R. Swing Connection in Germany.
I remember sitting on the floor in my grandma’s flat on Bremergatan 11 in Kalmar, Sweden, sometime during my favorite summer of 1993. I’d completed two successful scholastic exams that year and performed a couple of concerts. In return for my efforts, lots of relatives invited us over for food and chit-chat. As many as 24 invitations came rolling in that summer. As you might gather, this made me a little bit chubbier and roly-poly than I am now in my slender and workaholic self.
That night, though, was quiet. I was staying in my grandmother’s very elegant flat, sleeping under the artwork of baby Jesus among livingroom chandaliers and tapestries, the art on the walls kissing my soul, silver candleholders gleaming in the moonlight, a white-and-golden fireplace with a mirror and Egyptian figurines silently making love to the starlight.
My mother Gun Kronzell hadn’t arrived over from Vienna, Austria yet. You see, we lived in Vienna at the time, where my mom was Professor of Singing at the Music Academy. My father Herbert Eyre Moulton was working in Amsterdam that year, I think, playing a role in the musical “Piaf” and performing in a TV-show together with Nina Simone.
Anyway, I sat alone on my grandmother’s livingroom parquet floor, drinking something on the rocks (water, coke, whiskey, whatever it was), watching the lit lampposts throwing their light on the wall. My grandma was sleeping in her room and I (ever the nightowl) enjoyed a bit of contemplative philosophy, watching the ice melt in my glass, crying tears of joy while listening to the Julio Iglesias and Stevie Wonder duet “My Love”.
It was right then and there that I had a what could be called a revelation. The diary that I wrote my thoughts into doesn’t exist anymore, but the thought that inspired it is eternal: “The real goldmine, the real treasure chest in anyone’s life, is not a monetary one. It’s spiritual. It’s inside the soulful fibre of your personal experience and the love you feel, the love you give, the love you get.”
My passion for things spiritual, things that concern the soul and the beings of people (the essence of what exists beyond what we can see), started in my grandmother’s flat.
So, I felt it was important to tell you this story before I told you about her life.
She inspired me.
So it was fitting that had that golden revelation in my grandma’s flat.
Her soul was indeed a goldmine of treasures.
After spending four hours on the road in our Volkswagen on any given Saturday morning, we stopped at the gas station in Hovmantorp and gave her a call.
“Grandma, we’re on our way!”
“Great, I’ll prepare dinner and set the table. I think I have a soft-drink and a bar of chocolate in the fridge for Charlie.”
There were balloon tennis matches in the livingroom (Moultonian World Record: 829 throws) and card games in the kitchen. We went for summertime strolls around town. When we came back, I helped her bake some deliciously warm, freshly home made cinnamon rolls. On Sunday afternoons after church we’d invite someone over for coffee and talk about old times. My mom sang a song, my dad would would tell our relatives what was going on in our fascinatingly theatrical lives. There was laughter and joy, music and art, intellectual discussions, board games and welcome-home dinners. Those were good times back in Kalmar in Sweden, my grandma and I. They were summer days filled with fun.
Anna was also a true friend.
For 70 years, she kept contact with her schoolpals from her girlschool graduation class of 1918. They met every year in my Great-Uncle Carl Albien’s City Park Restaurant Byttan (he gave it the name “The Butter-Tub”, when he took over as its boss after the First World War, because of its similarity to the era’s popular breakfast accessory).
The old girls, that used to be little maids from school, would sit there and chat about old times on every yearly anniversary of their graduation. I am sure that there were no huge differences between their behavior in 1988 and their behavior back in 1918. Okay, they were older, more dignified, more experienced, but they were still those giggling little girls that chatted about poetry and perfume and local personalities. The only difference was that they now had grey hair and were wearing pretty cotton gloves and dainty hats.
I’ll tell you a little secret about grandmother Anna. She was a brave girl. When our old dog Wutzi, a poodle-dachshund-mix, bounced about her feet one day during her Austrian visit in our Mödling home, my grandmother fell and badly injured her head.
Holy Mother of God, what did she do? She didn’t gulp down an Irish whiskey like my dear father did. She didn’t flutter to the window like my mother did, looking for the ambulance. No, she went to the mirror and powdered her nose.
There’s more where that came from. One summer, 1988 I believe it was, her legs weakened terribly and she had one of her doctors come home and give her a cortisone injection that was supposed to strengthen them. Unfortunately, the injection had the opposite effect and within a year, my grandmother was in a wheelchair.
Did that stop her from pushing forward? No way, not her. Her lifestyle remained dignified, her lavish birthday parties remained lavish, she still invited over friends for meat and potatoes. She still had loads of fun and she still remained the gracious landlady.
She even had her good childhood friend Mrs. Lesseur serve the afternoon coffee, who, at the time almost 80 years old, even came to the party wearing an apron and a white shirt, looking like a top waitress in a fashionable hotel.
One of the things I admired so much about her, later on I understood how much of her was to be admired, was that she never complained about the pain she felt in her legs. One of her legs was shorter than the other, so she walked with a slight limp. The truly amazing thing was that nobody ever thought of it at all. She had such class, such poise, such style, such joie-de-vivre, that her personality outshone anything that might’ve been to her disadvantage.
How I enjoyed going with my grandmother to visit her friends. They were all so nice and, heck, I always got candy to take home with me and they all listened to what I had to say.
Anna lived alone in her fashionable apartment for another six remaining years (her husband Knut had died back in 1973). Thanks to the fantastic Swedish social system, the state had a caretaker come home to Anna’s flat three times a day. The caretaker made her breakfast, cleaned her flat and helped her pay her bills. The journalist Palle Bobecker, a life-long friend of hers who was born in the same house as my mother, was granted the same social service and could enjoy a respectful old age because of it.
One summer afternoon, we were off to the library, leaving grandma alone for a bit. She fell off her wheelchair by accident and remained seated in the hallway for almost two hours until we came back. Her caretaker at the time, a Danish woman named Karin, even called her to see if everything was okay. Anna told her nothing about her falling off the wheelchair. She chit-chatted with her on the phone about this and that, hung up and waited for our return. Anna knew that we were coming back, so why make a problem out of it?
Courage, stamina and, yes, nobility of heart. That was Anna in a nutshell.
She frequently used the local taxi-service for seniors, as well. They were wheelchair-friendly larger cars that took her across large regional areas to visit her relatives.
Quite frequently, she used those cabs in order to hear us sing in concerts. The drivers even escorted her into the concert hall and told her when they would be back to get her.
Those caretakers and cabdrivers all heard her tell them her endless anecdotes about her eventful life. They were the anecdotes to end all anecdotes: she was the first female driver in Kalmar 1923 and she made sure everyone knew that.
Conclusion
One person’s musical interests, her friendly ways and dignified appearance can mean a lot, not only for the children and grandchildren, but for the great-grandchildren, as well. When my daughter Mara Sophie Moulton pretends that her great-grandmother Anna’s driver’s license from 1923 is her own passport, then I know that Anna is alive somewhere in time and space. Maybe Anna hears us, reads this, smiles and thinks to herself:
“Those were good times, weren’t they?”
Back in 1918, no one really thought of networking, attention or fame. Today, like Andy Warhol foretold, everybody wants their fifteen minutes of fame, but we are chasing the wind, so preoccupied these days with that golden rainbow with the treasure at the end of it that we miss the train that takes us home to our hearts.
Once we get to that rainbow’s end all we might find is a bowl of corn flakes.
Let’s live in the present, but let’s fill it with the kind of spiritual light Anna possessed.
The soul glitters.
That’s the real goldmine, the real wealth.
Anna had something we should all want: nobility of heart.
How does humanity retrieve what it lost when the modern age caught up with us?
We have to rediscover how it is to be aware of our lives, not only letting the life pass by in a daze. We have to be able to wait, realizing that patience really is a virtue, realizing that personal thought might be better than letting others do the thinking.
My grandmother gave me a feeling that there always was enough time. She always took the time to read me a bedtime-story and sometimes we laughed until we cried even during those bedtime stories. Even our cocker spaniel Snuffy loved falling asleep on her feet in our flat in Gothenburg. After all, she was the only one that never moved around. After she picked me up from school – after our customary visit to the café for a bite to eat, that is – she sat down in our sofa “Clothilde” and knitted and that is where she remained for the rest of the evening: in her own cosy corner.
She could afford to remain seated.
After all, she had around moved enough in her life, organized shiploads of clothing for the poor and given so much money to the blind that it actually helped her own self at her old age when her eyesight started failing her. The Kalmar Library had audiobooks even back in the 1980’s. She often called our flat in Vienna, Austria and enthusiastically informed us what Jane Eyre right now was doing in Bronté’s book or what the prehistory behind Mahler’s 2nd Symphony was and how incredible Chopin’s Etude Opus 10 sounded when Rubinstein played the piece. Laughter, joy, pride, love, intellect: all these things and more were Anna’s vibrant gifts to enjoy. I know that she hears me when I tell her in the presence of all you sweet readers: “Grandma, wherever you are: we love you! You were one of a kind!”
Time waits for nobody. What we call our own has turned into an absolute necessity. We can regain something that we lost, though. Something that disappeared once we became too facebook, too cool and too casual. It could be found inside my grandmother’s heart, inside her adamant joviality and witty poise.
We need a little nobility of heart.
We need to be acutely aware of the echoes of time as it passes by our vision every given day and understand that the people of yesteryear were no different than we are. We need to understand that there is more to time than meets the eye.
It’s the ultimate illusion.
The people of the the world that disintergrated when the First World War started were just way more aware of the excitement of the prospects of creating a new world.
Have we become too cool to understand that we can change the world just by following our dreams and finding inside us what Anna had all along? Namely: integrity.
And, yes, Anna had the time. She took the time to think, to feel, to love, to hope, to become wise, to laugh, to cry, to hug, to kiss and to dream.
Anna’s old world was another time in history, but the virtues are eternal.
So, in actual fact, we, too, can become as eternally wise as she now is in heaven.
References
Literary References
Lundh, Kiki. 1997. Jag ger dig mitt liv. Borgholm, Sweden. Bildningsförlaget.
Hofrén, Manne, 1961. Historieglimtar från Kalmar Slott. Tidningen Barometern.
Nordstrom, Byron J. 2002. The History of Sweden. Greenwood Press.
Kent, Neil. 2008. A Concise History of Sweden. Cambridge University Press.
Grimberg, Carl, 2008. A History of Sweden. Dodo Press.
Larsson, Olle. 2008. Sveriges Historia. Historiska Media.
Websites
Charles E.J. Moulton, 2011. ”As A Matter of Fact, I Do!” Vocal Images.
http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=774
Charles E.J. Moulton. 2011. “Gun Kronzell” Vocal Images.
http://vocalimages.com/?page_id=746
Anna Julia Sofia Kronzell
https://www.facebook.com/AnnaJuliaSofiaKronzell
Gun Kronzell-Moulton
(July 6, 1930 - April 11, 2011)
Operatic Mezzo-Soprano
Author
Professor of Singing at the Vienna Music Academy
Director
Speech Coach
Herbert Eyre Moulton
(July 15th 1927 - January 26th 2005)
As a film actor, Herbert Eyre Moulton worked with people like Clint Eastwood (Firefox, 1981), Audrey Landers, Zsa-Zsa Gabor and Mary Crosby (Johann Strauss, 1986), David Warner (Princess, 1992) and Alan Rickman (Mesmer, 1994).
He worked as a journalist for Hearst Newspapers in the 1950s and was a Dinner Show Star as Herbert Moore for MCA (see picture above.
His published and performed works include the novel The Minstrel Boy and the play Mark Twain's America.
Herb Moulton paused in his theatrical career from 1953 to 1957 to study at a priest seminar, but went back to his artistic career to work in Ireland as an actor and a singer.
Among his stage credentials are working on stage with Maria Callas at the Civic Opera in Chicago, having plays produced Off-Broadway in the 1950s, acting in Shakespeare and Shaw-plays in Dublin, Ireland, singing Strauss, Verdi, Puccini and Mozart at the Hannover Opera in Germany, touring Europe with his famous wife Gun Kronzell, working along side celebrities at the Vienna English Theatre, such as Larry Hagman, Linda Grey, David Carradine, Richard Olivier and Rue McClanahan, acting as an artistic collaborator of Luciano Pavarotti, playing hundreds of parts at the International Theatre in Vienna, Austria, playing Mr. Mushnik in Little Shop of Horrors in Vienna, 1986, PIAF - The Musical, Amsterdam, 1991 and Other People's Money in Prague.
Toward the end of his life, Herb became a well-known actor for television commercials, among others for Mozart Kugeln, Länderbank, Schärdinger Cheese, Moliform Hygiene Products and his popular TV-commercial as the Milka Tender Man.
Herbert Eyre Moulton is most remembered for his entertaining intellectual wit and his wide knowledge of the arts.
His written work can be read, among others, in the website of Story Star and as excerpts in the collections of Charles E.J. Moulton, available for purchase through Amazon, Epubli and other platforms.
If you want to hear Herb and his wife, the popular operatic star Gun Kronzell, sing, then check out Charles E.J. Moulton's and Gun Kronzell's homepages at Reverbnation. Then you will be able to hear the whole Moulton family sing.
Beautiful Women in Art
Carl Gustav Jung called the feminine characteristics Anima.
Tenderness and inspiration are creativity are the spiritual equivalent of female qualities. Let's be honest, those things, just like collaboration and communication, they change the world for the better. So, in that respect, mother's rule the world. Where would we be without women? They give birth to babies and have raised all the greatest minds of the world. The act of faithful lovemaking itself is an expression of hope and beauty, like the female form. It is a promise kept with a gift at the beginning: the new life. So we are creators, like our mother in heaven. Women reminds us that life is more than just structure. It is about contents. Women are the conscience of the world and we men have to work to be at their level.
So here it is: my homage to women in body and soul.
My collage of beautiful women in art is my way of saying thank you to all the fantastic women I have gotten to know in my life. The best two in my life are my wife and daughter, whom I love dearly. And my my grandmother Anna Kronzell, the silent movie pianist, and my mother Gun Kronzell, the famous opera singer, of course. They made me what I am today.
Fabrice B. Poussin
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
The Singing Couple
Gun Kronzell (1930 - 2011)
& Herbert Eyre Moulton (1927 - 2005)
Gun Kronzell-Moulton
*06.07.1930 †06.04.2011
was born in Kalmar, Sweden on July 6th 1930. Early on, my mother showed in passionate interest in music. She played the main part in the school play about “The Smallest Little Santa” and danced ballet to the sounds of “The Blue Danube Waltz”.
The family vacations in San Remo, Nice and Monte Carlo were memorable, but the visits to Stockholm, though, were the start of her love affair with opera. Here, she could share her love of music with her father. It was at this point that she really started to adore what happened on the opera stage. She and her family would travel to Stockholm in order to see the greatest stars sing. She and her very witty father Knut would be riveted, while her brother and mother found it witty that the singers died at the end and then went to thank for the applause. Soon enough, Gun Margareta Kronzell knew what she wanted to achieve: becoming a singer.
She now had solos in local concerts. This lead to singing studies for Ernst Reichert in Salzburg as well as the legendary Russian singer Madame Skilonsz in Stockholm after her debut as a singer in 1949 in the Cathedral of Kalmar. Ragnar Hultén tried to force upon her a vibrant volume of the voice; nevertheless Skilonsz truly perfected her technique. Sebastian Peschko worked meticulously on every single consonant and vowel. She became an expert.
Her first capital dwelling was in the French Dominican Abbey for Nuns in Stockholm. It was there she discovered her love for Gregorian Music. She then moved to a tiny apartment in Stockholm’s old city to study day and night at the Royal Music Academy, where she spent her formative years and worked with many a later famous singer. She sang in the opera with people like Jussi Björling, toured Europe with Eric Ericsson’s famous choir and sang the solo alto and soprano parts in oratories. Lasse Lönndahl was the operetta tenor turned famous pop star at this time and he was her colleague in Stockholm.
She sang Elisabeth in Tannhäuser as well as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro during the Academy years, something that would prepare her for the countless opera roles she would conquer in her lifetime.
In 1952, my mother spent three months studying in Salzburg and lived in the centre of town. She here met Bishop Bonifaz Madersbacher at the side entrance of the City Dome and this companionship would become the most important of her life. They would correspond and write letters to each other every time she felt dire about anything. Even when he moved to Bolivia and founded a Christian congregation there, he would answer her questions truthfully and eloquently. Bishop Bonifaz remained her most valued friend her entire life.
As soon as she was awarded Norway’s Rudd Foundation Scholarship by Kirsten Flagstad, she moved to Wiesbaden and studied for the legendary pedagogue Paul Lohmann. He had lost an arm in the war, but his skills as a singer gave him the greatest flexibility. He would work with her meticulously on every note and every single letter of the alphabet.
Gun Kronzell worked at the opera of Wiesbaden and launched a great career. From here on, she moved to Bielefeld and still speaks of this place as her greatest career experience. She here got to sing the greatest roles: Dorabella, Asucena, Abigail, Eboli and Santuzza. She in actuality got into her own as a prominent character-actress and brilliant mezzo-soprano. The media discovered her talents and she began attaining truly first-class critiques. She also had a great deal of success singing oratories and concert music, among other in London Festival Hall and in the Vienna Stephan’s Cathedral. Working simultaneously at a home for mentally ill children was a wonderful change. The children gave her the reality check she needed.
After that came engagements, among others in Augsburg, Paris, London, Recklinghausen, Köln, Essen, Lübeck, Berlin and Regensburg. Her great reviews became well-known and people spoke of Gun Kronzell as one of the fresh principal mezzos of Germany. The amazing thing was her range: she sang in all registers. The famous opera singer James King, when hearing her voice, burst out: “Jesus Christ, what a voice!”
Hannover was a bright professional position for her. From here she guested all over the country. By now she had sung and would sing most of the great roles: Erda in Rheingold, Kundry in Parsifal, Ortrud in Lohingrin, Brünhilde in The Ring, Adriano in Rienzi, Brangaene in Tristan und Isolde, Emilia in Othello, Eboli in Don Carlos, Dame Quickly in Falstaff, Abigaille in Nabucco, Czipra in Zigeunerbaron, The Innkeeper in Boris Gudonov, Chiwria in The Fair at Sorotchinzk, Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, Asucena in Trovatore, the mother in Hänsel and Gretel, Orpheo in Orpheo ed Euridice, the leading part in Antigone, Ludmilla in The Bartered Bride, The Countess and Madelon in Andrea Chenier, The Old Woman in Die Doppelgängerin, Begonia in Der Junge Lord and Ulrica in A Masked Ball.
To this was added a wide range of recitals and church concerts and a huge repertoire of almost any composer imaginable. She became a vast Bach-specialist. All of the Bach oratories were sung in most of the continental cathedrals. Furthermore, Gun Kronzell’s knowledge of Brahms, Copland and Gershwin was astounding. Her fantastic interpretation of songs like “Did they shut me out of heaven, did I sing too loud?” or “My Man’s Gone Now” was a feast for the ears.
1966 was a pivotal year. She studied for a teacher named Köhler and here met a young baritone named Herbert Eyre Moulton, who recently had moved to Germany from Dublin. She found it fascinating that he always took off his shoes when he sang. They met by chance at the post office and my mother asked him if he would talk English with her. My father’s joke was that he, after that, never shut up. That was typical for my father’s sense of humour.
They married in Bad Godersberg in 1966. Exceedingly fast, they began singing together and forming a successful team. My father taught my mother everything he knew about musical comedy. Together, they performed in the Hannover Opera House in operas such as Der Rosenkavalier and Zar und Zimmermann. Their long collaboration as The Singing Couple brought them not only European tours, but also concerts in the United States.
In Ireland, my parents performed on Irish television in a talk show between a Russian spy and a prize winning cow. I was conceived during this tour. I must’ve heard a great deal of music during my mother’s pregnancy. My parents moved to Graz, where my dad worked as an actor and a teacher. My mom worked at the opera and had to take mother’s leave simultaneously with another colleague. This other colleague had a child simultaneously with my mother. I ended up working with him 32 years later in Bad Hersfeld.
I have always been prone to eccentricity. I was born close to brewery in Graz and opposite gay couple with chickens in their yard. She was on constantly on stage. She sang for the Swedish King in 1970, but also came late for a concert because of a royal entourage of Her Majesty the Queen of England. She was royal in her artistry.
I do recall the next stop, Mödling, and my babysitter Tante Wolff with her apple strudel. I recall her German Shepherd at whom she would always shout “Schnaps!”
My mother sang at the Volksoper in Vienna, among others a world premiere of Salmhofer’s “Dreikönig”, where she received rave reviews.
In Sweden, she started working as a Gothenburg Music Academy singing teacher in 1974. Her work at the opera also included Ulrica in Verdi’s A Masked Ball in Swedish, which she had already sung in Italian in Hannover.
Their performance in Osage, Iowa in 1976 was my first family concert experience. For the encore, I wandered up on stage and sang with in “Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein”.
From 1979 on, she freelanced. In retrospect, it was admirable how my parents would keep us financially above water. My mother’s inventiveness was astounding. She wrote, directed and starred in a play called “Long Live the Trolls”. This was my first acting experience. She even toured with famous comedians in Swedish schools. I was her colleague at that time during my second production. She taught organists how to sing in Oskarshamn and held church music seminars. She taught private and official speech and vocal classes in a variety of schools and even taught Chinese immigrants Swedish and Stena Line Disc Jockeys how to articulate well into a microphone. She played the Goddess Justitia in a communist play about the fall of capitalism. My father and I, being true monarchists like my mother was, were a bit bothered. Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was murdered a few years later, came to watch and we were the only one not standing up when the audience sang the socialist songs. We knew the truth, though: my mother, like all actors, did it for the experience
Her extensive concert experience brought her good reviews and her work for the Gothenburg Ballet Academy gave her wide-ranging attention from the press. She started to come into her own as a singing teacher. Her broad knowledge from various teachers now gave her expertise how to teach every imaginable style. Sebastian Peschko had taught her how to enunciate the alphabet. Paul Lohmann gave her a smooth legato. Köhler widened her range. Now she could use speech exercises such as Myavabranya, Pradgaflaspya and Yakaganga to perfect her student’s consonants.
It was exactly this experience that brought her the offering of three professorships at once. Tucson, Arizona and Graz, Austria had wanted her, but the lure of the engagement in Vienna was too strong. The teaching try-out here was also the best of all of her auditions. By 1984, she had already auditioned in two Austrian cities for a professorship and applied in three American cities. Vienna won the personal award and so the family moved there. This was the start of a 26 year stay in the city where she sang over 300 concerts and taught students that eventually would work with the likes of Pavarotti. Her students would eventually end up singing at the Vienna State Opera, in Bern, Zurich, Cairo, St. Petersburg, Malmö, London, New York, Örebro, Växjö, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Gelsenkirchen and Stockholm.
Her student Judith was Luciano Pavarotti’s personal assistant for eight years. This gave us all intimate contact with the master and free tickets for many of his galas. Many opera stars like June Andersson, Nicolai Gedda, Claudio Abbado, Ricardo Muti, Per Grundén and Ingvar Wixell became acquaintances of ours through Luciano, if they hadn’t been so before. Gedda was an old friend of my parents from when my dad had worked in Ireland. When we met him again in Vienna in the 1980’s he told my father: “We are older today, but we are still gorgeous.” Gedda was kind enough to train a tenor student of my mother’s for free before he left Vienna as a service of gratitude to my mother.
My mother’s wide experience made her arrange numerous appearances for her students in such diverse places as Bamberg, Germany, Langentzersdorf, Austria and Kalmar, Sweden. Three Croatians became the charity centre of media attention in Sweden and so my mother became what she had been for a long time: a charity organization.
In 1998, she retired from the academy, but kept on performing actively until and after she moved to Gelsenkirchen in 2010 closer to her son and his lovely family (!). She had taken care of my father so well until he died in 2005. Now, I could take care of her. She had seen us so often from a distance, so now it was time to live close to us herself. What a better way to crown a glorious career than to follow her son’s career up close and personal in his own theatre? Every day provided a new gathering. She saw me in my biggest Gelsenkirchen role yet: Sam in Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and marvel at how fast I ran down the stairs and at the clearness of my lyrics.
She also planned on auditioning her Brünhilde for our theatre superintendent.
My mother had a glorious career and her personality was wide open and full of love.
She passed away on April 6th 2011.
Her soul is free.
M A K I N G M U S I C
Reflections over my career and life as an artist
Published letter / article to 'STÄMBANDET' - The Magazine for the Swedish Vocal & Speech Pedagogue Association from 2003.
By Gun Kronzell-Moulton, Operatic Mezzo-Soprano, Concert- and Oratorio-Singer , Professor of Solo Voice at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. English translation by Herbert Moulton. Further translations and additions by Charles E.J. Moulton
Dear Colleagues!
I'm delighted to have a chance to write to you again. It's been over ten years since my last article. At that time I told you about my work in Vienna as Professor of Voice at the State Academy of Music.
Now I intend to take you on a little journey of reminiscence, hoping to touch on some of the people who have influenced me most as human being, singer, and pedagogue.
During my student time in Stockholm --- up until 1958 --- I was privileged to work with many fascinating people:
One of these was Ǻke Nygren, unforgettable for his lessons in Speech Technique, as well as for his uncanny ability to remember each and every student he ever had. Shortly before his death he attended a recital of mine at Waldemarsudde, after which he came back, shaking with laughter: "Have you seen the mistake in the programme?"
What they had done was write 'Rangström's The Only Student (Den Enda Studenten)' instead of 'The Only Hour (Den Enda Stunden)'. A fortnight later he was dead from a heart attack. A splendid and unforgettable man.
Wilhelm Freund was an unbelievably fine teacher of German Lieder, as well as an outstanding personality. Every time I travelled down to Germany he asked me to bring him some Pumpernickel and Harz cheese.
Bernhard Lilja taught Solfeggio Ear Schooling at the Academy and was one of my very favourites, not only for his splendid instruction, but also because his lessons were always so hilarious. We roared with laughter through most of them.
From Isa Quensel I learned a great deal --- a magnificent woman full of temperament and a passion for fair play. She was a fabulous actress and speech pedagogue and I know I would never have become such a successful actress as a singer if it hadn’t been for Isa.
My final year in Stockholm brought me to the legendary Russian pedagogue Madame Andrejewa de Skilondz: a fascinating atmosphere steeped in Russian culture provided by her two round little sisters, an Angora cat and a Pekingese on a silken cushion. Surely many of you are with the many intriguing tales about the Madame, who, when still very young, sang with Caruso.
Torsten Föllinger, my dear old friend and collegue, whom I met during a course being given by Professor Josef Witt in Stockholm, has, with his tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge of human nature, always meant more to me than I can say.
Part of my income during my student days came from church music. Often I'd go to various organizations and ask if I could sing at a church service or concert. Many times, especially out in the country, I came home with a sack of coins from the collection!
Naturally all the student concerts at the old Academy were worth hearing: almost every week a delightfully mixed program of classics. One concert I recall in particular featured Georg Riedel playing his famous double-bass. Lasse Länndahl is another one.
In 1959 a Ruud Scholarship enabled me to travel down to Wiesbaden to study with Professor Paul Lohmann, one of the individuals who influenced me most. I still use many of his exercises in my work. The extraordinary thing is that, after so many years, their meaning suddenly becomes so crystal clear that you know precisely what he wanted from them. Paul Lohmann was a true sorcerer, with a vast amount of humour.
With every new engagement I took pains to find a teacher with the wisdom to guide my voice in the right way. In Bielefeld there was Herman Firchow, who, besides being a source of valuable advice, had a family who soon were among my best friends ... and good honest friends are something we all need.
Every Sunday during these three years in Bielefeld found me working at Bethel, the renowned institution for mentally handicapped children. This provided a perfect balance with my work at the theatre and gave my life a secure and solid meaning.
The four succeeding years at Hanover were the busiest of all, with my repertoire expanding to include many of the great Wagner- and Verdi-roles such as Ortrud, Brangäne, Eboli, Ulrica, Abigaille, Azucena, and Preziosilla .
At the same time --- in order to keep the voice healthy and fresh --- I studied Brahms Lieder with the legendary pianist Sebastian Peschko, who had been the regular accompanist of Heinrich Schlusnus. He had me write down everything we did together, and for this I shall be eternally grateful as these notes have been a source of untold benefit ever since.
As voice teacher in Hanover I had Otto Köhler, a worthy colleague, then seventy years of age and still singing splendidly at the opera. Sometimes we did vocal exercises for four hours together --- Heaven! Later, when I was engaged in Graz and at the Volksoper in Vienna, I went to Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek, who always came to all my premieres, and has continued to do so to my student concerts in Vienna.
Quite soon after our son Charlie's birth in September of 1969, I was asked to create the role of Adriano in a new production of Wagner's RIENZI, with the strongly imaginative Stage Director from Vienna's Burg Theater, Adolf Rott --- a marvellous role and a fantastic assignment, but extremely dramatic and taxing for the voice, especially so soon after my caesarean! So, I turned to Professor Eugenie Ludwig (Christa's mother), whose wondrous head resonance exercises brought the voice clear up to the high C, even with a heavy cold!
In Graz we shared a two-family theatre house with the Australian soprano Althea Bridges, and her Danish-born husband. And precisely in September 1969 each of us gave birth to a son at the very time we should have been appearing as Leonora and Azucena in a new Trovatore-production. You can imagine how popular that made us with the management!
We spent the ten years dating from 1974 in Göteborg, where I was engaged at the Music Acedemy, and, with my husband, wrote and staged a Children's Play named LONG LIVE THE TROLLS! , where Charlie also had his professional stage debut as the clumsy troll Klampe-Lampe. I also taught disc jockeys on the Stena Line-ferries, as well as teachers to Chinese immigrants.
Besides all that, I jumped at a day's notice at the Gothenburg Opera into the role of Ulrica (Mamzelle Arvidsson) in Verdi's MASKED BALL, singing it in Swedish for the first time, after having already performed it in both German and the original Italian. Added to that, there were every summer intensive church music courses, hard work, but fun and rewarding.
All these varied activities gave me a ready-made and invaluable backlog of experience when I was made a fulltime Professor of Voice at Vienna's State Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in the autumn of 1984 --- this, after a trial lesson before some thirty voice teachers --- both gratifying and rewarding .
At first I was so taken with all the various nationalities around me at the Academy that I took on a class of twenty different students, but with the passage of time I narrowed it down to only those I myself had prepared or who had convinced me of their future potential .
Entrance examinations in Sweden are considerably more difficult than in Austria, as we Swedes are a singing people with a singular feeling for speech and song. However, it's also clear that to sing German as, say, Fritz Wunderlich did is indeed wonderful. He once confided that he sang German as if it were Italian!
Since the fall of the Wall our problems have been entirely different here. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, and the like are all extremely talented and musically prepared, but with so little money that the barely come up to the existence-minimum.
To return now to some welcome visitors:
Torsten Föllinger sometimes journeys down here to help us achieve more vocal freedom, as well as self-esteem.
The Russian basso Nesterenko gave a course for our students, an outstanding singer, who also presented me with a book of exercises for the bass voice, which had been used in Russia since 1915.
Ingrid Bjoner was also here a few years ago for a seminar and impressed everyone with her depth of understanding, especially for individual students.
For a few years I had a brilliant young Hungarian girl as a student, who suddenly became Luciano Pavarotti's right hand and general Girl Friday for a period of seven years, travelling with him the world over. Thanks to her, not only did I have free tickets for his concerts and opera performances, but also had many opportunities to meet with him and attend some of his rehearsals, not only instructive but endlessly fascinating.
The positive advantages of living in Vienna are not so much the old-fashioned teaching and traditions, but the enormous bill-of-fare readily available in terms of international concerts operatic performances, theatre and dance events of every possible type. We have also enjoyed several visits by Kjell 'Mr.Choir' Lönnâ and his large, delightful and enthusiastic singing ensembles. Besides performing 'Haus-Musik' in the Swedish Embassy (as I have done numerous times), the success they scored in St. Stephen Cathedral verged on the sensational. Then, too, Stockholm's Radio Orchestra, Drottningholm's Baroque Ensemble, and also the Maestro Eric Ericsson, with whom I sang in the 50's, all of whom have concertized here to great applause. And it's always a joy to meet with any of them are my old colleagues from home.
My husband Herbert Moulton has long been associated with ORF School's Radio, as well as with both English-speaking theatres, the International (where he played everything from Shakespeare to Wilder and Orwell and the Uncle in Charlie's Aunt) and Vienna's English Theatre, the latter serving high-quality performances from London (Ayckborn, Shakespeare, Christie) or the States (such as Second City) for large and distinguished public. He has a versatile background in all fields of art : as a playwright and actor , singer of everything from simple folk tunes to 'Grand Opera' and has done commercials and been in films with the likes of Audrey Landers, Alan Rickman, David Warner, Clint Eastwood and Zsa-Zsa Gabor.
Inspired by all this and early stage-work as well as years of concerting in his back-pocket, our son Charles E.J. Moulton's career has advanced from theatre projects and small roles in Vienna's Chamber Opera (Offenbach, Gershwin, Vives, etc.) to a two-and-a-half year's run of Roman 'Rosemary's Baby' Polanski's Broadway-destined World Premiere 'Grusical' DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, written by Webber-collaborator Jim Steinman . At present he is playing the first cast role of The Big Bopper in Hamburg's long running musical BUDDY in Germany, from which he recently took time off to fly down to Vienna for two concerts as bass-soloist in Joseph Haydn's THE CREATION (once in the Haydn Museum, the baroque house where Papa Haydn wrote the piece) then to Sweden for a tour of church concerts with famous Swedish all-round saxophonist Johan Stengård, followed by a most rewarding week at a Master-Class outside Oslo in Norway, a seminar featuring the eminences of Ingrid Bjoner and Håkan Hagegård . He spent a half year cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas as a singing soloist, after which he joined the company of Jesus Christ Superstar in the Bad Hersfelder Festival. Before joining the Dutch Stage Holding Corporation to play Scar and Pumbaa in Disney's THE LION KING in Hamburg, he was soloist with the city’s Mozart Orchestra, performing Rossini and Bizet.
One great blessing for me is having had the good fortune to meet and get to know a magnificent Franciscan monk in Salzburg back in 1953. He has ever since enriched my life with good advice and the deep understanding that a true Christian vocation can provide.
As a resting-place next to the productive lives that we all have enjoyed, mine is, has been and always will be my home town of Kalmar. This city, with its grand 12th century castle and seaside lifestyle and my many friends and relatives, has been my lifelong summer-home and will always be so. Since my 1998 retirement I have enjoyed not only more freedom as a pedagogue and singer but as a globetrotter as well, travelling not only more to Sweden but to my friends in Germany, Hungary and Ireland as well. Living in Vienna, Austria is, on the other hand, also a blessing. I can, therefore, heartily welcome you here and to my Studio in the second district with all God's blessings.
As I think back over my life, I see now how tremendously important it is to never lose sight of why we do what we do. Why we are engaged in Making Music. This is not only a nine-to-five job. If it were we might as well stand as cashiers in a mall. It is an attitude, a vocation, a life-style. We search for the deepest part within us and dwell within its mysteries, taming our technique, bettering ourselves as people to make us finer as artists, generously sharing with others the benefits of our experience, giving our public love and joy with it all and leaving our hearers nobler with the experience. Art is calling forth emotions and making people believe in life again. As such, and if done right, this is the noblest of all professions.
FRAU PROFESSOR
GUN MARGARETA KRONZELL-MOULTON
Opera Singer, Oratory Soloist, Concert Soloist,
Vocal- and Speech-Pedagogue, Pianist, Director, Actress
Vocal range: Alto, Mezzosoprano und Soprano, 3 ½ Octaves
Excerpt from list of Roles
VERDI: EBOLI DON CARLOS
AZUCENA IL TROVATORE
ULRICA UN BALLO DI MASCHERA
PREZIOSILLA FORZA DEL DESTINO
DAME QUICKLY FALSTAFF
EMILIA OTHELLO
ABIGAILLE NABUCCO
WAGNER: ORTRUD LOHENGRIN
MAGDALENE DIE MEISTERSINGER
ERDA RHEINGOLD
BRANGAENE TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
ADRIANO RIENZI
KUNDRY PARSIFAL
BRÜNHILDE DER RING DES NIEBELUNGEN
ELISABETH TANNHÄUSER
R. STRAUSS: HERODIAS SALOME
GAEA DAPHNE
J. STRAUSS CZIPRA ZIGEUNERBARON
MASCAGNI: SANTUZZA CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
GLUCK: ORFEO ORFEO ED EURIDICE
MOUSSORGSKY CHIWRIA THE FAIR AT SOROTCHINSK
HUMPERDINCK: DIE MUTTER HÄNSEL UND GRETEL
MOZART: DORABELLA COSI FAN TUTTE
DRITTE DAME DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE
OFFENBACH: ANTONIAS MUTTER LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN
HONEGGER ANTIGONE ANTIGONE
KODALY DIE HAUSFRAU DIE SPINNSTUBE
SALMHOFER: ANNA DREIKÖNIG (URAUFFÜHRUNG)
SMETANA: LUDMILLA DIE VERKAUFTE BRAUT
GIORDANO: MADELON ANDREA CHENIER
HENZE: BEGONIA DER JUNGE LORD
Herbert Eyre Moulton
*27.07.1927 †27.01.2005
was born in Elmhurst, Illinois on July 15th 1927 as the grandson of Irish immigrants. His great love of theatre and opera lead to a lifetime of wide artistic endeavour. His passion for knowledge inspired him to studies for Roman Catholic Priesthood, Archeology and Literature at University College Dublin and Music at Northwestern University. He sang at the Chicago Opera with the likes of Maria Callas and Jussi Björling and conducted the Camp Gordon Chapel Choir for CBS Broadcasts during the Korean War. For MCA he became Herbert Moore, singing at New York and Chicago Supper Clubs and appearing on Broadway. In Ireland, after studying to become a catholic priest, Herbert spent seven highly productive years singing Gilbert & Sullivan and acting at the Gate, Pike and Gaiety Theatres.
Besides film roles and commercial television, he wrote opera librettos, sang at Glyndebourne Festival and performed Shakespeare, Wilde and Musicals in at least on six Dublin stages.
He married his wife, experienced opera-mezzo Professor Gun Kronzell, in 1966 and they began touring Europe with mutual concerts. His son Charles E.J. Moulton, himself an acclaimed singer and actor of productions such as “Buddy - The Musical” in Hamburg and “Meistersinger” in Gelsenkirchen, was born in Graz 1969. Together they all moved to Sweden, where Mr. Moulton played such roles as “Sweeney Todd” and Kemp in “Entertaining Mr. Sloane”. In Sweden, he was active as voice-over speaker and coach of the English language. For the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation he spent over 3 decades tutoring the juvenile and elderly about the music and art of America in his programs for radio. His working relationship with the International Theatre spans 3 decades. 6 productions of his plays have been performed here and in over a dozen productions has he played leading and supporting roles at the International Theatre in Vienna. Among his favourites were Pollonius in “Hamlet”, Christmas Present in “A Christmas Carol” as well as his roles in “Our Town” and Tennessee Williams’ “The Last of My Solid Gold Watches”. At the Vienna’s English Theatre he was seen in Joan Kelley’s “Vienna Patterns” and in Arthur Miller’s “I Can’t Remember Anything”. His film credits include Firefox, Dead Flowers, Desert Lunch (with “The Lord of the Rings”star Viggo Mortensen), Faust’s Roulette, Liszt’s Rhapsody and Johann Strauss. The latter proved a success for him as he got to coach the likes of Audrey Landers, Zsa-Zsa Gabor and Mary Crosby in correct English pronunciation in addition to himself playing the part of “Gypsy Baron”-librettist Yokay.
In Austria he will be most remembered as the Milka Tender Man. His anthologies also verified its long lasting thrive. “Mark Twain’s America” was performed on numerous occasions in Vienna as was his Edgar Allan Poe-adventure “The Strangest Trip”.
Herbert Moulton passed away 2005 at age 77. His remarkable wit and love of living was a great example to us all. Among his other works are the Off-Broadway plays “The Minstrel Boy” and his novel “The Twittering Machine”. He is also the author of many novels, such as “The Lunts on Broadway” and “The Wild Colonial Boy”.
For a more personal description of my father, read on.
My father Herbert Eyre Moulton went to school in Lombard at St. Petronelle’s Catholic School and rapidly became a humorous addition to the student assembly. His antics and sketches kept his friends laughing and the nuns furious.
Here are some miscellaneous, passionate, coincidental stories from his early days. On one occasion, after ruining another lunch break, he was banned from the cantina all together. The following day he brought a table, a plate, cutlery, napkins and food and ate his lunch gladly outside. The nuns passing by could barely conceal their mirth.
When it came to bragging about his knowledge about theatre, he was equally cocky. My father saw his first opera at a very early age and it was then clear, just as in my mother’s case, that he wanted to become a stage performer. In music class the next day, the nun was talking about the opera he had seen the evening before and was at fault many a time in her description of the story. Herbert then corrected her, where upon the sister said: “Well, of course, you would know!” Herbert then, truthfully, said: “Yes, as a matter of fact, I would!” He stood up from his chair and told the class the story the way it actually should be told, pronouncing the names in the right way.
When he was called a worm by a nun, he went down on the floor and crawled, explaining that since he was a worm he must crawl.
He played the wolf in a musical rendition of The Little Red Riding Hood, but was so fat that his suit almost burst open. He had to sing: “For three days I have had no food, no meat, no cake, no pie!” He wondered why people laughed.
At a birthday party, he emptied an entire bottle of whiskey in one gulp and ended up drunk for two weeks.
It was even rumoured that Nell’s brother Marmaduke Eyre had contacts with the mafia. A colourful family.
He would arrive at home with expensive gifts and rather dubious friends, clad in suits and spats, following him up close.
After graduation, realizing what Herbert wanted to become, he started studying singing and acting in Chicago. He joined the chorus at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and got to work with famous singers like Set Svanholm, Maria Callas, Tagliavini and Jussi Björling. Being an diligent man, he opened the curtain for Callas, watched her milk the audience for applause and handed Björling his beer. Set Svanholm received a pear from the cantina after his last aria in Rigoletto and called out: “Your Welcome!” Ezio Pinza pushed him away, saying “Out of my way, porco!” There was not one famous singer of his day that he didn’t meet there in Chicago.
Soon enough, though, my father became a name in his own right. He became Herbert Moore and was hired by MCA records as a dinner singer, performing in New York City and Chicago’s Ballrooms as Headlining Big Band Vocalist. His school pal Janice Rule went to Hollywood to film with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, while Janice’s brother Chuck moved to New York with my father, performing and auditioning.
The two school-pals lived together in one apartment in Greenwich Village and auditioned together and studied acting together. Eventually, Herbert got his play “The Minstrel Boy” performed Off-Broadway. He wrote books and freelanced as a journalist.
It was the time of the Korean War and as a result things changed. My father got sent to Augusta, Georgia to join the armed forces. His sergeant was a man they called Hog Jaw, who was known for his eloquent wording. “It don’t belong to be did that a way!” (a sentence with many grammatical mistakes) or “Men’s, let go of your cocks and grab your socks!”
My favourite conversation between my dad and Hog Jaw was the following:
“Moulton honey, what become of your ass?”
“Well, Seargent, you been chewing it off so much there ain’t much left of it!”
“Moulton honey, how about a couple of weeks in the eatable garbage section?”
With all of that humour going on, you would think my father took what went on lightly. Still, my father’s favourite cousin Frank had died in the second world war and so my father was never really a aficionado of war. He almost got sent to Korea, but prayed himself out of it. The fact that he was the chorus master of the Camp Gordon Chapel Choir helped. There are still recordings of this chorus and their work available on cassette tape.
Maybe it was the war or life in general, but after this experience my father had second thoughts about joining the life on the stage. He spent four years studying to become a priest. One of his teacher’s was a man he described as “a floating boat with a cigar”.
He gave the students a test assignment one day: “What is God?” and added: “Have fun!”
After this excursion into priesthood, my father had a very bad year sometime in the late fifties. His mother, father and girlfriend died the same year. He fled America to travel back to his roots: Ireland.
What began as a two week vacation ended as a seven year stay and commenced what was probably his most productive professional period. Working with the likes of Milo O’Shea, Michael MacLiomore and Siobhan MacKenna, he performed in most of the theatres of Dublin and played major parts in movies. His work as a model for commercials blossomed and his Irish soul prospered.
My father’s work in Ireland was, theatrically speaking, a time of thespian brilliance.
He made films, among them in main roles. One of them was movie named “Attack Squadron” made with lower than low budget money. One of his colleagues uttered these immortal words during a lunch break: “They should call this movie The Nine Commandments. They left out one: thou shalt not steal.” My father’s remarkable self irony remained with him throughout the years.
His accidental catching of a shark, during a commercial for fishing rods, was something he kept on bragging about until the day he died. His triumph was even mentioned in the local newspaper along with the advertisement.
My father worked with an esteemed composer named James Wilson in Dublin, Ireland. He sang his songs in concerts and wrote several librettos for operas, among others “The Hunting of the Snark” and “The Turning of the Screw”. This man became best friends first with my father and then with my mother. He arranged concerts for them and when I was born, Uncle Jim became my godfather. He kept sending me letters and money and gifts for the remainder of his life. When I came to visit him in his house near Dublin, he was a remarkably cordial host.
It was in Ireland he met his best friend: the stray dog Fred.
The sheepdog was roaming about with no one to his name and soon Herb and Fred became as indivisible as Laurel and Hardy. Nobody would say: “Look, here is Herb!” Now people said: “Here’s the guy that always comes with Fred!”
I was two years old when Fred died.
I do have some stray memories of him.
Charity Eyre and the relatives of west Ireland were farmers and quite wonderful people. Whenever he was there, he could stay in the house and enjoy the life on a farm. George is now, in the year of 2011, my age and would have taken over the Eyre farm by now, his agricultural skills leading him to give advice even to the hotshots of the European Union.
There were commercials, plays and pub crawls with friends in his flat in Grafton street. He would put on his nightie when his guests didn’t want to leave and they would sit on his bed. Milo O’Shea gave him the nickname “Horrible Herb”, but all in good fun. His bouts on the west of Ireland, though, included dear relatives and encounters with mysterious apparitions.
Herb heard all the strange ghost stories his ancestors had collected and how the two Eyre mansions now were ruins. He heard about how Bronte had taken been inspired to name the main character Jane Eyre after the famous Eyre Family of Eyre Court in west Ireland.
He also experienced some ghost stories of his own.
Here, too, are many fascinating ghoul stories from my father’s years in Ireland. Bear with my miscellaneous listing of facts.
An old man of the family died and his cocker spaniel howled outside his door at the time of his death. The dog knew only by instinct what on inside the room.
In the kitchen of the Eyre dwelling, there were loud noises of a staff of cooks getting the family breakfast ready around three in the morning. During one morning, my father complained to the lady of the manor that he wasn’t able to sleep. She answered: “Oh, those are just the ghosts. They always make a clamour of reverberation at that time of the break of day!”
My father took a walk around the Eyre house one day and saw an old woman covered in a scarf and begging for money. She disappeared behind a corner and was completely vanished. Those were the tinkers, it was said. They were Irish gypsies that used to stray about and beg around the countryside. No one had seen them for ages.
Then there were the stories about a window banging open and shut in the ruin of the old Eyre mansion, regardless of wind or weather. To this day, it is told, that shutter keeps on banging open.
A female friend of his saw an old horse driven carriage with aristocrats in 19th century clothing venture down the road toward her. There were two valleys in the road. In the second valley, the coach was gone and did not reappear.
The most mysterious of all these stories was one that one my father experienced himself on New Year’s Eve 1963 after a party in the west of Ireland. My father was intoxicated and tired when he took a short cut home across a field. Friends had warned him not to cross these fields. The bushes that grew there were perilous. The locals were very superstitious about this shrubbery. The fairies lived there, they said, and whenever they cut them down the crops died and a great famine struck the land. Important was also not to cross the field, but to walk around it.
Alas, the brave hardy American took the chance.
Somewhere on the field my father lost track of his path and got lost in the snow. He couldn’t find his way back out and started to grow dizzy. He saw lights and chandeliers and people in gala wear and elegant artists performing elegant songs.
He passed out on the field sometime in the middle of the night. It was just pure luck that a relative of his wondered where Herb was and started searching. He was found in the field sometime in the morning the next day.
The epilogue of this tale was that he met a good female friend a couple of months later. She told him that she had seen him in Dublin on her posh New Year’s Eve Party that previous New Year’s Eve. He had wandered in and looked around and not said a thing. It was very strange, because she had tried to talk with him and not succeeded. It was a gala evening and the couples wore gala wear.
That was actually impossible, knowing that he had been on the west coast that evening.
Apparently, his soul had travelled across the country that night by help of the fairies.
A funny story concerns my dad arriving with his dog Fred at a friend’s house. He was a welcome guest and only the man of the house knew that he would be there late after his concert.
Fred was hungry and Herb had bought a heart from a local butcher that he could boil for the dog. He had already put on his nightgown, when he walked down the stairs with the heart and a knife and a lit candle in order to fix some supper for his pet.
The wife of the household walked out of her bedroom at that moment just to check the noise and saw Herb walking down the stairs, suspecting a ghostly apparition. My father said: “Calm down, I’m just going to the kitchen to cut up a heart!” The woman screamed. “It’s all right, dear,” he said, “it’s my dog’s.”
The woman ran into her room and wasn’t seen for a week.
His great sponsor during this time was his rich relative Lady Mayer Moulton, an eccentric millionaire. She advised him to do something about his great singing voice. There were marvellous singing teachers in Germany. That’s where he must go, she alleged.
This commenced the next section of his life: life on the continent.
Meeting the famous Gun Kronzell was elation to Herb. He loved opera and soon became her biggest fan. They bought an old Renault that they named Monsieur Hulot, named after the Jacques Tati character. What really grew successful was their musical collaboration. Soon enough, they became Astaire & Rogers and Kelly & Crosby and were rarely seen apart. I grew up attending their concerts. They were marvellous together. That collaboration began in 1966.
My father was invincibly proud when I was born. He always spoke of the fact that I had smiled when I was born and not cried. Graz was also a place where he could teach, act and pursue his freelance career. Mum was working a lot. Things were going well.
Once we moved to Vienna in 1972, he started teaching English. He worked for the Austrian Radio and soon became the main producer-speaker-author school radio shows about a wide range of topics: Daphne de Maurier, Edgar Allan Poe, Protest Music, Black People Music, American Work Songs, The American Musical. His extensive work in the English speaking theatres of Vienna continued throughout his life. The collaboration was prolific.
We moved to Gothenburg on 1974 and my father kept on being active as an English speaking actor. Commercials, movies and plays kept on being his forte. Kemp in Joe Orton’s Entertaining Mr. Sloane, the major part in Sweeney Todd, plays by Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill as well as melodramas became part of his resumé. He played a small part in the movie Firefox, opposite Clint Eastwood. He introduced Tomra’s new can recycler to a Swedish 1984 audience. These were all things that characterized his Swedish years. This and countless concerts with my mother were his professional reality.
That year, in 1984, my mother again returned to Vienna. This time, it was real renaissance for my father’s career. Commercials without end made him a familiar face in Vienna: banks like Länderbank, wine areas like Niederösterreich, cheese brands like Schärdinger, music video producers in the vein of Doro, chocolate brands like Milka, magazines like Kronen Zeitung: they all carried Herb Moulton as a familiar face.
My father became famous as the Milka-Tender-Man, making commercials for a delicious brand of chocolate that still exists twenty years later. He was even recognized in the sauna. Imagine the fun the old senior citizens in the local pool had when they told my dad that they saw had seen him on TV yesterday.
Of course, these bookies and bakers thought he was just doing it for fun. Little did they know that this was the end of a glorious career of five decades as an actor. He had made movies with the likes of Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Alan Rickman, Jeroen Krabbé, Mickey Rourke, Audrey Landers, David Warner and Roger Spottiswoode.
Through his work in the English theatre, as an actor as well as a programme author and dramaturgic collaborator, we were invited to all the premiere receptions and got to commune with famous people.
Here, as well as at our regular visits at the Swedish Embassy Recidence, we met Rue MacLanahan, Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, David Carradine, Anthony Quinn, Helmut Zilk, Dagmar Koller, Claudio Abbado, Alois Mock, Erik Eriksson, Esa-Pekka Salonnen, Nicolai Gedda, Kjell Lönnå, Elisbaeth Söderström, Princess Alexandra of Kent, Ricardo Muti, Otto Schenk and Marcel Prawy. My father was always very valiant. He would wander up to the most famous person and chat them up. It has taken me twenty years to achieve that. Not even now do I possess that courage.
My father worked as an actor at the Vienna International and English Theatres, playing major parts in all the classics: A Long Day’s Jouney Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Animal Farm, Charlie’s Aunt, Harvey, A Christmas Carol, I Can’t Remember Anything and many more. In the last mentioned play, he wore a full plaster cast after a knee operation and trudged back and forth to the theatre every day. Playing an arthritis patient made it easy to hide his full plaster cast. The reviews were excellent: “Herbert Moulton plays the arthritis patient remarkably well.”
Of course, his rendition of Pollonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet remains the most memorable, full of wit and brilliance. His poetic collaboration of readings, not only with Melinda May and David Cameron – but also with myself, was fertile toward the end of his life. They read poetry and prose by many a famous author and their evenings became popular cultural events. Ezra Pound and Edgar Allan Poe were only two of the many writers we covered.
His film work includes “Mesmer”, “Dead Flowers”, “Wohin & Zurück”, “Business for Pleasure”, “Desert Lunch” and “Liszt’s Rhapsody”, but his favourite film was probably the all-star extravaganza “Johann Strauss”, directed by Franz Antel.
He starred in the film as the Gypsy Baron – author Yokai, but his work as speech and dialogue coach was probably the most extensive of his career. There were so many dialects present in this haphazard and chaotic big budget film that my father had a hard time teaching everyone to speak high British English. Audrey Landers and Mary Crosby were Americans, Oliver Tobias was British, Heinz Holecek was Austrian and Zsa-Zsa Gabor was Hungarian. Just imagine the mish-mash, trying to accomplish your job as a dialogue-coach.
Zsa-Zsa arrived in 1986 Potsdam and had no idea where she was, being used living and working in Hollywood. Finding out she was playing her age (72) and seeing her wardrobe of grey and brown dresses made her furious. She ripped the wardrobe to pieces and had a whole collection of costumes in pink and red made. When she walked on the set in her new gear, the East-German DEFA-camera-man said: “Oh, shit. Look: Miss Piggy has arrived!”
My father did his best to tutor her to speak eloquent English. She finally gave up, saying: “Get this awful American man away from me!” Dining with Oliver and Mary (the leading couple of the movie) in a restaurant where Herbert was entertaining them with wild stories about his youth in Chicago was an experience in its’ own right. Zsa-Zsa turned to them and said: “You two are, of course, sleeping with each other!” They said that they were happily married and had no reason in being unfaithful. Zsa-Zsa said that she didn’t understand this, since she never had worked this way herself. The Zsa-Zsa Method? Maybe. Humorous tales come into sight from working with obsessive actors. So it was with Zsa-Zsa, as well. She once told my dad that she resented her famous husband George Sanders killing himself. Not because he did kill himself, but because he didn’t do it in Hollywood like everyone else.
To sum up my views of my father, I can say only that my father was a good buddy I loved. Spending time with was fantastic. We went on bike rides together. We went to Copenhagen together to see operas and ballets, staying at the Astoria and eating Italian food before the show. We wanted to see a James Bond flick with Danish subtitles and asked the Italian waiter where the Colloseum was. He answered “The Colloseum is in Rome!” He was shocked when he found out we wanted to go to the Colloseum Cinema. Only a few minutes into the movie discovered we were in the wrong cinema. We were a bit confused when we saw Terry Thomas dubbed into French. Eventually, we changed entrance and got to see “For Your Eyes Only” in the right place. It was always fun travelling with dad! My mom and dad are now together in heaven.
HERBERT EYRE MOULTON
Actor, Author, Opera-, Musical and Jazz-Singer,
Oratory- and Concert soloist, Speech Pedagogue,
Teacher of English as a foreign language,
As film-actor and Gala-Singer for MCA: Herbert Moore,
Chorus Master, Radio Speaker,
Author: Radio programmes for School Radio, ORF,
Bachelor of Arts (Major: Philosophy, Minor: Education),
Vocal range: Baritone
THEATRES (Excerpt from Vita)
Chicago Lyric and the San Carlo Opera,
President Theatre, New York,
Gate, Gaiety, Olympia, Eblana, Pocket und Pike-Theatres, Milo O’Shea Company, Anew McMaster’s, Dublin Theatre Festivals, Aera Theatre, International Theatre, Vienna’s Emglish Theatre, Hannover State Opera,
Gothenburg Röhrska Museum Theatre
Photographic Artists of the Month
Daniel de Culla & Isabel G. de Diego
One of the most inventive and creative photographers of our time.
Jerome Coppo
https://jeromecoppo.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jerome.coppo/?hl=de
CHARLES E.J. MOULTON
Trilingual Work:
Author, Actor, Baritone, Translator, Drama & Singing Teacher
Born Sept. 8th, 1969
50 years old
Artist of the Month
Fabrice Poussin
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
Artist of the Month:
Chief Krishawna Belle
The set provided is an exclusive artistic collaborative effort by the following artists,
based in Fort Worth/Dallas/Denton, Texas:
Chief Krishawna Belle
https://www.instagram.com/chiefknownbymanynames/
Model`Creative Director`Stylist/Seamstress
HUV Photo
https://www.instagram.com/huv_photo/
Photographer`Editor
Bailey Turfitt
https://www.instagram.com/deaf.dead.girl/
MUA
John Hoover
https://www.instagram.com/playful.mr.j/
Male Model
Artist of the Month
Scarlett Neumann
Sculptor, Painter
Featured Artist of the Month
MARIO LOPRETE
Curriculum Artis
Mario Loprete, Catanzaro 1968
Graduate at Accademia of Belle Arti , Catanzaro.
“I live in a world that i shape at my liking, throughout a virtual pictorial and sculptural movement, transferrig my experiences, photographing reality throughout my filters, refined from years research and experimentation.
Painting for my is the first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to send a message to transmit my message, it’s the base of my painting. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting. That voluptous and sensual lover that gives me different emotions, that touches prohibited cords…
The new series of works on concrete it’s the one that is giving me more personal and professional satisfactions. How was it born? It was the result of an important investigation of my work, the research of that “quid” that i felt was missing. Looking at my work in the past ten years I understood that there was the semantics and semiotics in my visual speech, but the right support to valorize the message was not there.
The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created by two thousand years ago by the Romans. It has a millenary story, made of amphitheatres, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now it’s a synonym of modernity. Everywhere you go and you find a concrete wall, there’s the modern man in there. From Sidney to Vancouver, from Oslo to Pretoria, the reinforced cement it’s present and consequently the support where the “writers” can express themselves it’s present.
The successive passage was obvious for me. If man brought art on the streets in order to make it accessibile to everyone, why not bring the urban in galleries and museums? It was the winning step to the continuous evolutionary process of my work in that “quid” that i was talking about before and that is what is making me expose in prestigious places and is making me be requested from important collectors. When the painting has completly dried off, I brush it with a particular that not only manages to unite every color and shade, but it also gives to the art work the shininess and lucidity that the poster ,that each and every one of us had hanging on the wall, has.
For my Concrete Sculptures I use my personal clothing. Throughout some artistical process, in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform them in artworks to hang. My memory, my DNA, my memories remain concreted inside, transforming the person that looks at the artworks a type of post-modern archeologist that studies my work as they were urban artefacts.
In the past few years, i freed myself from all of the work relationships with galleries that I collaborated with. I think that my work has reached the maturity to covet and to be represented from an important gallery and I would like to use your art project in order to make it be known to who sees this in my project.”
Links to the socials
https://it-it.facebook.com/mario.loprete.5
www.marioloprete.com
www.instagram.com/marioloprete/
www.linkedin.com/in/mario-loprete-7aa22529
Jan Van Eyck
(1390 –1441)
Arnolfini "Wedding" Portrait
Spot the Star!
Who's on the pic below?
Anyone you know?
That Counts
THE CANDLE IN THE WIND
It's the story that counts
My name is
Jerome Coppo
I'm a Frenchman, but I live in The Netherlands. By way of Rotterdam, technically. Photography is my calling, and the thing that will undoubtedly drive me insane someday. I don't photograph subjects. I photograph the way they make me feel. Admittedly, it's a bit of a strange concept. But it's honest and it's the best way to describe my approach to the craft. I wrestle with every image I shoot. I assume perfection is possible and I want to wring it out of every picture.
Art
by
Daniel de Culla
The Art
Janine Pickett & Debasish Parashar
This is what Janine says:
"A singer/poet/songwriter from India, Debasish Parashar, contacted me recently after finding out about some of my paintings.
He asked for me to listen/meditate to his song while painting, and I did.
The results were fantastic, and the painting, the song ..."
You wanna hear the song that goes with Janine's painting?
Just click on the link below and be enthalled.
Better yet, click on the link, listen to the music
while looking at the painting above.
Janine and Debasish are what "The Creativity Webzine" are all about.
***
A Note on Pamaru Mana :
Links to ‘Pamaru Mana’ :
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdEMHqOVgjAcn6JFzMSWzw?view_as=subscriber
https://itunes.apple.com/in/album/pamaru-mana-single/1339196541
https://www.saavn.com/s/song/assamese/Pamaru-Mana/Pamaru-Mana/OVpSASFRfl4
Debasish : In Medieval India, there was a Bhakti movement. The Bhakti movement was a counter hegemonic, reformist movement against the ritualistic Brahminical structures of Hinduism in medieval India. The movement started from South India and extended to different parts of India. In the 15th and 16th centuries the movement gained high momentum in Eastern India, with one of the epicenters in Assam, under the leadership of Shrimanta Shankardeva. The Bhakti movement tried to look into the core values of Indian society by giving primacy to aesthetics over rituals. The Bhakti movement in general emphasised upon songs, dances, theatre, poetry, community singing etc. to unite the society and make faith democratically accessible for all.
Among all the Indian Bhakti saints, the most multi-dimensional personality was that of Shankardeva. Shankardeva can be seen as a true Renaissance figure and an organic intellectual. He was a musician, poet, lyricist, creator of musical instruments, writer, preacher, social reformer, founder of social institutions like Satras and Naamghars. He is often considered as the father of the Sattriya dance, which is one of the most beautiful classical dances in India. Borgeet (Bor-Big, Geet-Song) is a term, reverentially used to refer to the Bhakti songs that Shankardeva composed to promote faith democratically in the North-eastern India.
Borgeets, originally composed as songs, works of art, gradually started occupying a very sacred and reverential place in the collective conscious of the Assamese society. Deification of these songs, otherwise beautiful artistic masterpieces, happened over centuries followed by the usual trap of ritualism related to dos and donts and Codes of Decorum, the very ritualism that Shankardeva and his Bhakti tried to challenge. Today, people look upto Borgeets with devotion and awe, rather than appreciating them purely as works of art.
My song, Pamaru Mana is a Borgeet among many other Borgeets composed by Shankardeva. I try to question the conservatism and cultural hegemony of the so-called cultural elites apparently protecting and patronizing Borgeet. Traditionally
Borgeets are sung with Khol (percussion) and Taal. But I have done it with western orchestration and harmonies, which often break the constraints of the Classical Raaga this Borgeet is based on. Infact, I have changed the Laya (meter and rhythm) of the Borgeet as was handed down to me. While doing this song, I always tried not to compromise on its essence, which is its spiritually and meditative harmony.
The moment, a work of art is deified, the purpose of art fails, and the artistic work stops evolving. I have been criticized by certain cultural elites of our society for my ‘imperfect’ presentation of Borgeet (for not using traditional percussion instruments, deviating from the Raaga at times, etc.). First of all, I have never claimed that my presentation is perfect. In fact, at the very outset of the audio upload on youtube I have myself mentioned that this is not how a Borgeet is traditionally done. Secondly, who decides what is perfect or imperfect for a composition which is available in the public domain for hundreds of years? Thirdly, there are already multiple schools of performance in Sattriya culture itself. What is wrong if I add one more alternative ? Fourthly, it is written nowhere that a common man or a musician cannot sing Borgeet just because s/he loves Borgeet as a work of art. And every individual has a right to be imperfect.
In doing this Borgeet, ‘Pamaru Mana’, in the way I have done, I automatically had to unsettle the existing discourse of Borgeet protected by the cultural police. I was ready for all consequences. Secondly, this song is not at all a commercial song a debut artist opts for. I wanted to be the spark of a cultural renaissance with critical insight, than the fire itself. I know this song is gradually reaching out to its audience. I am not in a hurry.
A Note about the Painting, ‘The Sound of India’
Janine: I was honored to collaborate with Debasish on ‘Pamaru Mana’. My first impressions were that the song was ancient and meditative. As I listened prayerfully, I had a vision of woodlands, earthly colors with the song floating upwards then rising into an explosion of bright color as it neared the sun. As I began the painting, I immediately threw control out the window. I knew that if I tried to paint a forest with a song floating out of it into a burst of color, I would probably fail. Instead, I poured colors on the canvas, watched them flow and interact with each other, then I used a variety of fluid painting techniques, such as tilting, torching, and spinning. I prayed for the holy spirit to take control, and I wound up with this painting. I call it The Sound of India. The upper corner reminds me of an ear, which makes sense, music coming out of India to rise towards the sun and float, in blessing, across the Nations. The song is lovely!
Janine Pickett: Bio
Janine Pickett’s nonfiction work has appeared in a variety of print magazines and anthologies, including Country Woman, and Chicken Soup For The Soul Series. Her fiction was nominated for The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy #17. Current poetry appears in print anthologies, and various online journals. Her artwork has appeared in
IVJ, Spirit Fire Review, and Glo-Mag. She recently co-edited a poetry anthology: The Poets of Madison County. Janine is the founding editor and publisher of Indiana Voice Journal and Spirit Fire Review. You can view some of her fluid art paintings here: https://www.instagram.com/pickettjanine/
Debasish Parashar : Bio
Debasish Parashar is a Creative Entrepreneur, Singer/Musician, Lyricist and Multilingual Poet based in New Delhi, India. He is an Assistant Professor of English literature at the University of Delhi. Parashar is the Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Advaitam Speaks Literary journal. His debut song ‘Pamaru Mana’ from his debut EP ‘Project Advaitam’ under his Band name DEV.advaitam has hit the internet in January, 2018. His write-up on Majuli has been listed amongst top 100 online #worldheritagesites stories globally in May 2016 by Agilience Authority Index. His literary works have appeared in Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Enclave/Entropy, Praxis magazine, Expound, Indiana Voice Journal, Asian Signature, Five2One, Mused, Gazeta National (Albanian translations), Muse India, The Australia Times and elsewhere. Parashar has been (or will be) translated into Russian, Albanian, Persian, Assamese, Serbian, Afrikaans, Indonesian and many other languages. Debasish's works are featured in international anthologies such as 'Where Are You From ?' (English/Persian) (New York), 'Apple Fruits of An Old Oak' (U.S.A), ‘22 Wagons’ (Serbian) and 'Dandelion in a Vase of Roses' (U.S.A).
To know more about him :
http://debasishparashar.strikingly.com/
https://debasishparashar.wordpress.com/
https://www.pw.org/content/debasish_parashar
For Advaitam Speaks Literary Journal :
https://advaitamspeaksliterary.wordpress.com/
https://issuu.com/advaitamspeaksliterary
For his recent release and upcoming songs SUBSCRIBE to:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdEMHqOVgjAcn6JFzMSWzw?view_as=subscriber
https://itunes.apple.com/in/album/pamaru-mana-single/1339196541
https://www.saavn.com/s/song/assamese/Pamaru-Mana/Pamaru-Mana/OVpSASFRfl4
https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/devadvaitam
***
The Art Gallery
***
I Wanna Be Your Dog #2
Animal Liberation in Contemporary Art
05/05 – 01/07/2018Opening reception of Friday, May 4 at 20:00 h
"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." (Banksy)
Mast systems gave way to fields, animal transports and slaughterhouses are phenomena of the past. Animal experimentation has been replaced by computer models. Hunting is obsolete, animals are neither purchased nor sold. Pets went out of fashion, animal homes are redundant. Carnism is no longer considered normal nor necessary – it has been overcome. Animals are no longer at the sovereign disposal of humans. As sensitive creatures they were granted personal rights in the constitution, has once were slaves, women and homophiles.
What is expressed by these sentences appears like a different world but it has long been put down in words by pioneers like Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) or Tom Regan (1938-2017). Most people become more and more aware of the fact that violence against animals (and the environment) is a crime, and that we need to rethink our society. While we are still discussing ethical aspects, the statistical facts are unmistakable. From 1970 until 2009 alone global meat production has increased to almost 300 Mio. tons. 1.4 Bio. cattle, 1.0 Bio. pigs, 1.0 Bio sheep and approx. 19 Bio. chicken are reared for this purpose, and they have to be fed daily. Already today, livestock production requires one third of the available land and is responsible for 18% of the global propellant emissions. The share of the global meat production in climate change is thus larger than that of the complete transportation industry (14%).
"I Wanna Be Your Dog - Animal Liberation in Contemporary Art" sets out to question the universal consensus through contemporary positions from the visual arts and science, and to look for alternative models and utopias. How can we free the "Others", the enormous range of animal species, reduced to the single term "animals", from the peripheries of human thinking and recognize them as equitable individuals?
"Animal Liberation in Contemporary Art" is the resumption of the exhibition series "I Wanna Be Your Dog" at Künstlerhaus Dortmund and is moreover, and for the first time, associated with a symposium. Artists and scholars will talk about the subject "Is art able to liberate animals?". With a highly diverse program of events and mediation we aim to address a wide audience, and "I Wanna Be Your Dog - Animal Liberation in Contemporary Art" will be continued after 2018 as well. A regulary published series of texts is envisaged. The wish to contribute to a social-political change and to a rethinking for the benefit of all is at the focus of each and every activity.
An exhibition catalogue will be launched at the opening reception.
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. Banksy
Participating artists:
Der Artgenosse
Nico Baumgarten
Fjodorrr
Hörner/Antlfinger
Lin May
Robert Matthes
Alfredo Meschi
Chris Moser
Hendrik Müller
Sarah Palmer
Thekla Rickert
RAS
Katharina Rot
Krystyna und Manuel Valverde
Associated events:
Saturday, 5 May 2018
"Kann Kunst Tierbefreiung?" (Is art able to liberate animals?)
Symposium at Pauluskirche Dortmund
Moderation: Jessica Ullrich
Lectures: Der Artgenosse, Hörner/Antlfinger, Colin Goldner, Hartmut Kiewert, Chris Moser, Victoria Windtner
(more information on the participants below)
Further events
Readings, workshops & music
a.o. at Black Pigeon, Dortmund
https://www.facebook.com/IWannaBeYourDog2015/
http://www.pauluskircheundkultur.net/46.html?&tx_ttnews%5Bpointer%5D=3&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=546&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=45&cHash=e955579dd4de09c8cedc50b171b03df1
http://www.kuenstlerhaus-dortmund.de/en/exhibitions/exhibitions2018/your_dog2_en.html
Contact Sunderweg 1 | 44147 Dortmund, Germany | phone +49-231-820304 |
fax +49-231-826847 | email buero at kh-do.de
Opening hours Office Mon + Fri 10-14 h Tue - Thu 10-16 h |
Exhibition Thu - Sun 16-19 h
***
Der Artgenosse
Hendrik Müller
Georges de La Tour
was born in the town of Vic-sur-Seille in the Diocese of Metz, which was technically part of the Holy Roman Empire, but had been ruled by France since 1552. Baptism documentation revealed that he was the son of Jean de La Tour, a baker, and Sybille de La Tour, née Molian. It has been suggested that Sybille came from a partly noble family. His parents had seven children in all, with Georges being the second-born.
La Tour's educational background remains somewhat unclear, but it is assumed that he travelled either to Italy or the Netherlands early in his career. He may possibly have trained under Jacques Bellange in Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, although their styles are very different. His paintings reflect the Baroque naturalism of Caravaggio, but this probably reached him through the Dutch Caravaggisti of the Utrecht School and other Northern (French and Dutch) contemporaries. In particular, La Tour is often compared to the Dutch painter Hendrick Terbrugghen.
In 1617 he married Diane Le Nerf, from a minor noble family, and in 1620 he established his studio in her quiet provincial home-town of Lunéville, part of the independent Duchy of Lorraine which was occupied by France, during his lifetime, in the period 1641-48. He painted mainly religious and some genre scenes. He was given the title "Painter to the King" (of France) in 1638, and he also worked for the Dukes of Lorraine in 1623–4, but the local bourgeoisie provided his main market, and he achieved a certain affluence. He is not recorded in Lunéville in 1639–42, and may have travelled again; Anthony Blunt detected the influence of Gerrit van Honthorst in his paintings after this point. He was involved in a Franciscan-led religious revival in Lorraine, and over the course of his career he moved to painting almost entirely religious subjects, but in treatments with influence from genre painting.
Georges de La Tour and his family died in 1652 in an epidemic in Lunéville. His son Étienne (born 1621) was his pupil.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), also known as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, affairs of those times. Toulouse-Lautrec is among the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period, with Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. In a 2005 auction at Christie's auction house, La Blanchisseuse, his early painting of a young laundress, sold for US$22.4 million and set a new record for the artist for a price at auction.
- Courtesy of Wikipedia
Our Featured Artist
Daniel de Culla
G
Clock Art
Pictures courtesy of Google
Quotes courtesy of Goodreads
Clock Art
Pictures courtesy of Google
Quotes courtesy of Goodreads
“When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.”
― William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets
“Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.”
― John Fowles, Áristos
“Time is drowning,
Hearts are burning,
Heads are rolling,
Nothing can save you now,
Tick tock, tick tock;
Creatures talking,
Weak are rising,
White Queen’s nearing,
Nothing can save you now,
Tick tock, tick tock;
Cards are bleeding,
Crowns are sweating,
Tea is spilling,
Nothing can save you now,
Tick tock, tick tock;
Red Queen, here’s your warning,
Wonderland’s raging,
Alice is coming,
Highness, time is drowning,
And nothing can save you now,
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock…”
― Emory R. Frie, Wonderland
“In the silence of the ticking of the clock’s minute hand, I found you. In the echoes of the reverberations of time, I found you. In the tender silence of the long summer night, I found you. In the fragrance of the rose petals, I found you. In the orange of the sunset, I found you. In the blue of the morning sky, I found you. In the echoes of the mountains, I found you. In the green of the valleys, I found you. In the chaos of this world, I found you. In the turbulence of the oceans, I found you. In the shrill cries of the grasshopper at night, I found you. In the gossamer sublimity of the silken cobweb, I found you.”
― Avijeet Das
Artist Gallery
Charles E.J. Moulton
Book of the Month
The Pariah Child and the Ever-Giving Stone
by Natasha D. Lane
***
Amazon, Kobo and iBooks Publication Date:
March 22nd, 2018
Natasha D. Lane
is a friend of most things caffeinated, a lover of books, and a writing warrior to her core. As a big believer in the idea that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” she graduated from Juniata College in 2015 with hopes of becoming a journalist. While she still holds on to that dream, after spending some time in the corporate world and then completing a year of service, she decided it was time to return to publishing. Her first fantasy novel “The Pariah Child & the Ever-Giving Stone” is one of several works she plans on completing. If there were a single piece of advice Natasha could give to young writers, it’d be this: Write your way through life.
The Merry Christmas Gallery
The Winter Wonderland Gallery
Paragraph. Zur Bearbeitung hier klicken.
Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 - 1519)
Universal genius whose areas of interest included invention, architecture, painting, sculpting, mathemetics, invention, literature, music, cartography, history, anatomy, engineering, astronomy and geology. He is credited as the father of palaeontology and ichnology, is credited as being the inventor of the parachute and the helicopter and is the original inspiration for "The Creativity Webzine".
Raindrop Gallery
The Creature Gallery
Featured Artist
Wolfgang Sternkopf
Author, Painter, Sculptor, Cultural Therapist for Seniors
Doris Braendlein
Creative Artist
http://www.tonundmehr.de/
Featured Artist
Adam Gillespie
Illustrator, tattooer, fine artist
Owner and designer of apparel and accessories line The Occult Collective. The Occult Collective can be found at www.facebook.com/theoccultcollective
*Currently accepting clients
I am always open and looking to exploring potential business opportunities and networking. Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments or just a hello.
https://adamgillespieartwork.carbonmade.com/
"Burlesque"
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
"Lollipop"
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
"Ice Cream"
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
Artwork by Adam Gillespie
Hieronymus Bosch
born Jheronimus van Aken c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter from Brabant. He is widely considered one of the most notable representatives of Early Netherlandish Painting school. His work is known for its fantastic imagery, detailed landscapes, and illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.
Little is known of Bosch's life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. The roots of his forefathers are in Nijmegen and Aachen (which is visible in his surname: Van Aken). His pessimistic and fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best-known follower. His paintings have been difficult to translate from a modern point of view; attempts to associate instances of modern sexual imagery with fringe sects or the occult have largely failed. Today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with 8 drawings. Approximately another half dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop.
William Blake
1757-1827
British Painter, Poet, Mystic, Engraver and Printmaker
Education - At the age of 14 apprenticed to an engraver for seven years.
Attended the Royal Academy in London.
Mediums - watercolors, watercolored relief etchings, engraving
The Night City Gallery
The Road Gallery
The Creativity Gallery
The Heart and Soul Gallery
The Creativity Webzine's Top Ten
Rock Guitar Heroes
10. Yngwie J. Malmsteen
9. Angus Young
8. B.B. King
7. Carlos Santana
6. Jimi Hendrix
5. Eddie Van Halen
4. Eric Clapton
3. George Harrison
2. Chuck Berry
1. Elvis Presley
Giorgos Kolios
studied interior decorating. Later on, he studied art and scenic design at the Aristotel University of the Arts in Thessaloniki, where he received his diploma. As an Erasmus-student, he continued his studied in Hildesheim and in Braunschweig and has been working as a set designer in Athens, Greece since 1997. He has been working with Wim Wenders and Faith Akin, as well as in international theatres since then. He is a prominent set designer at the opera of Gelsenkirchen.
The Saltwater Gallery
A Gallery of Languages
A Legend Has Many Faces
Philosophical Art Gallery
Fame and fortune, magic and charisma, myth and legend.
What we see on the canvas of history creates that legend.
Sometimes, the legend is near reality.
Sometimes, we don't know where fiction ends and fact starts.
Is truth fact, is fact truth or are they different?
Bottom line, we are all unique, every one of us, every living being,
created to think and feel and love and embrace and develop our characteristics.
The Queen of England brushes her teeth before going to bed every night
... just like you.
And society creates a picture of celebrity that has little to do with the actual reality.
Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley were examples of people who, in the end,
had massive amounts of acquaintances who wanted their fame and their fortune,
but had very few true friends.
So, yes, a legend has many faces:
the public and the private, the cliché and the reality.
But what about the Yeti, Bigfoot, the Sasquatsch?
Well, we cannot deny that thousands of very well-grounded people
have seen something, people who won nothing by going public about what they saw,
people who gained no money from telling their story,
people who payed money to tell their story,
people who got ridiculed for saying the legend had a ring of truth to it.
People who stuck to what they said, although people begged them not to.
So, why have we decided to discard the story of a new animal yet to be scientifically discovered when zoologists and researchers discover new species every single day?
Do we really know what reality is?
If the nucleus were the size of a peanut, the atom would be about the size of a baseball stadium. If we lost all the dead space inside our atoms, we would each be able to fit into a particle of dust, and the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube.
Our bodies, and I emphasize this again: our bodies, are 99 % empty space.
The energy holding you together is what keeps it together.
You are energy.
You are and remain a soul living in a body.
The aura is measurable with scientific devices,
thoughts have been proven to have weight.
That's more real than the body, which is 99 % empty space.
Think about that before you smirk at theories you think are unsound.
Are you so sure that the story you heard in that documentary has no foundation?
Glance through the gallery. You will see many repeated pictures, mingled and side by side, snipbits of other pictures and people, but what are you actually looking at, photons and forcefields ... or the truth of light? Remind yourself that every legend has a background, every star was once not famous and remained an individual in spite of fame, every person is unique, we categorize things and tell others that these categories are real and other people's categories are wrong. Many say that only one religion can entail the real truth, but forget that God is above and beyond this world, and yet inside all of us. All religions are different phonelines to the same God, different interpretions of a truth that lies deep within every one of us.
Every person, every soul, every situation, has an inner truth.
That's the real reality.
Beyond that, there are a thousand interpretations.
Every legend has many faces.
Every truth a thousand paths that lead to it.
You might recognize something in this gallery as you glance through it,
because you've seen it before.
That's like recognizing someone you see for the first time,
because you recognize them from a previous life,
from heaven or another reality.
Some people just fit together.
They have a history.
Life is more than we think.
And yes, a legend has many faces.
- Charles E.J. Moulton
Flower Gallery
Featured Artist of
"The Future"
Teresa Ann Frazee
Painter, Playwright & Poet
Timekeepers - Acrylic - Diptych - 24"x24" ea.
Me and You
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Your first line to me
Was what I was to say
I attribute that to destiny
Convinced to this day
It wasn’t coincidental
A skeptic would agree
But some things are best left
To the powers that be
An open window
Under the neon sign
Blares an R&B riff
From my mother’s time
There all night
We dance to a single beat
Till dawn’s curfew
Clears the street
Creative energies are released
By igniting my fuse
Forget Shakespeare’s Erato
We are both each others muse
From our minds to paper
Like a sharpshooter always a pen within reach
We jot down brazen urban poetry
That no school could ever teach
In your dream I saw my future
Drawing mandalas in the sand
You beside me reading
A novella by Ayn Rand
Sculpting totems that rip the sky
Visions vividly appear
Backgrounds tend to fade away
Yet you always remain clear
Well now, you think your unique
But that’s so not true
There’s just one hitch
You didn’t expect, me to be you
Still can’t resist that familiar stare
Neath that ragged old hood
Cause when I see my reflection in your eyes
Our existence is understood
But it must be me, cause no fresh rose petals
Are strewn in your path
Yeah, I’m crazy about me, I mean you
I mean you do the math
So come on, lets be a pair of one
Our vibes hitching rides on a breeze
We don’t have to speak, move or touch
Our thoughts, conveyed with ease
You know I love us
I like you with me
Besides I should know
It seems I’m good company
The Following Moment - Acrylic - 12" x 48"
Entrances and Exits
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Once more, the monitors of society ward another unsuspecting generation, whose diversities are
sound asleep
We steadfast believers with eyes half-shut subscribe to a subliminal catalogue of schemes, routinely filling our heads
Oh to think, how delightfully the tainted masses gloat, interiorizing all the reigning pretense of
their wasted day
Shivering, our conscious drifts away upon an ice floe of anguished rest as we shake the cold from our already made beds
Personally acquainted with greed, profit our only plan, we prowl with poor judgment for material gratification
Desperately, clutching debilitated recycled emotions, having been sequestered in own manic isolation
Eluding oneself, while putting on a spiritual act, bitterness and resentment consume the hollow chambers of our hearts
With much rapidity, the powers that be, wager every individualistic thought, regret our
only compensation
Like straw men accommodating mocked grace, our loitering limbs prance compliantly, unshielded from the possessive whirlwind
Having disposed of reason, we qualify to trade our broken down instincts for falsehoods, compromising all integrity
And as things have always been, when our seasons over, bulging innards decay as our invalidation rampantly spreads
Living in the realm of contradiction, we are the stagnant guardians of infertile seeds, never to
reach maturity
As martyrdom runs its course, we're simply misguided followers, masters of satiric dialogue that no longer impresses
Bewildered garrulous souls, mutate into underfoot tyrannized strangers, in the way of our own unbridled progress
As far as we know, this elopement with charlatans who pervert ones free spirit and inner power cannot be annulled
Still, we boast about our honor with unpardonable indiscretion as we masquerade with all the sincerely we profess
Seemingly at our best, with our over rehearsed entrances and exits our worshiping audience
gasps with fascination
Vanity entices us to gaze into every mirror, giving us a sense of who we have been, yet our reflections not found
Without a doubt, happiness is over-rated in a house of make believe where the unconditionally content, call home
For those of us who are patrons of hypocrisy, expect no encore as the curtain comes down, nor applause, not merely a round
Reverent beneficiaries, schooled in the belief system of our fathers and their fathers before, hope for a sign from above
As if the bonds of blood, those familiar ghosts, could somehow sanctify our entire existence, even as our time depreciates
Yet, in the end those who lived a causeless life, would surely welcome even a minor saint to escort them to paradise
We stall, bowing in our final soliloquy but ultimately in the wings, the reaper's clapping shadow patiently waits
Above it All - Acrylic - 21" x 48"
Sebastian Kane
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
When Sebastian Kane was born in St. Anne’s ward, he had one eye on the clock
Even as a small boy he seemed to spend half his days waiting for something
As the years wore on his family took no pride in claiming him as kin
To those who knew him, this was surely not a phase that would soon be passing
Early on he competed for the love of his mother or his father
And so because of their concerns, he began to wear the mask of pretense
He went on balancing himself in a pantomime of being a good boy
A perfectly rehearsed life hiding different degrees of abstinence
His father sent him to military school to become more of a man
Mother later arranged for him to become a groom to the ideal bride
In spite of this miscast role, he tried to be a better husband to his wife
But knew in the end, he’d have no desire to be buried side by side
Living in a ritualistic Limbo, he never functioned as he ought
Moved in respectable circles, as one who represented society
He held his tongue of former desires and spoke the language of the lost
Drifting day by day, he was a businessman; he swore he would never be
So off to work, monitoring time he waited at the railroad crossing
Opened his car door and then on firm earth ran parallel with the track
And Sebastian Kane, in the hours of the AM threw away his watch
He hopped on the slow moving freight train and swore he would never look back
Duration of a Memory - Acrylic - 32"x 48"
Pictures from the Horizon
A Seaside Gallery
Kalmar, Sweden
Kalmar is a city in the southeast of Sweden, situated by the Baltic Sea. It had 36,392 inhabitants in 2010 and is the seat of Kalmar Municipality. It is also the capital of Kalmar County, which comprises 12 municipalities with a total of 236,399 inhabitants (2015).
From the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, Kalmar was one of Sweden's most important cities. Between 1602 and 1913 it was the episcopal see of Kalmar Diocese, with a bishop, and the Kalmar Cathedral from 1702 is still a fine example of classicistic architecture. It became a fortified city, with the Kalmar Castle as the center. After the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, Kalmar's importance diminished, until the industry sector was initiated in the 19th century. The city is home to parts of Linnaeus University.
Kalmar is adjacent to the main route to the island of Öland over the Öland Bridge.
Behind the Scenes:
At the Theatre
The Orient Express Gallery
Train Art
Featured Artist
Stefan Wilinski
Balloon Artist, Decorator
Stefan Wiliniski is a baloon artist based in Gladbeck,
in the midst of the Ruhr Area of Germany.
His artistry and craftsmanship in this his chosen area
knows no bounds.
owls, space-ships, witches on broomsticks,
reindeers and santas:
they are all part of his creative repertoire.
And you know what?
This guy keeps getting better and better!
Children watch in fascination as his creations are completed
at birthday parties, festivals, events, anniversaries, holiday events or any occasion of your choice.
Children are fascinated when he turns a few balloons into funny animals, large hats and fascinating artefacts, offering glitter-tattoos and creative art as a bonus.
This artists also works as a musician.
His work can be viewed and his services booked here:
http://www.ballon-verdreher.de/
His YouTube Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRw-jmNyzOY
Contact Email:
[email protected]
In German:
Träume aus Ballons auch für Ihre Anlässe.
Stefan Wilinski
Dekorateur, Ballonkünstler
www.ballon-verdreher.de
Bei mir ist der Name Programm. Normale Ballons verwandeln sich in meinen Händen in phantasievolle Figuren die Kinderherzen höher schlagen lassen.Staunend können die Kinder (und Erwachsenen) mich beim modellieren einer Wunschfigur beobachten.Gerne begleite ich Ihre Geburtstagen, Feiern, Festen, Jubiläen und und und …. Darüber hinaus biete ich neben der Ballonmodellage auch Glitzertattoos, kreative Bilder mit eine Farbschleudermaschine, gefüllte Geschenkballons sowie vieles mehr passend zu Ihrem Anlass an.
Featured Artist
Jerome Coppo
My name is Jerome Coppo. I'm a Frenchman, but I live in The Netherlands. By way of Rotterdam, technically. Photography is my calling, and the thing that will undoubtedly drive me insane someday. I don't photograph subjects. I photograph the way they make me feel. Admittedly, it's a bit of a strange concept. But it's honest and it's the best way to describe my approach to the craft. I wrestle with every image I shoot. I assume perfection is possible and I want to wring it out of every picture.
Our Featured Artist
David Thorpe
Located in Sinsheim, Germany,
David Thorpe works not only as a prolific and gifted poet.
He also is a painter of the highest and most gifted calibre.
He has been contributing to THE CREATIVITY WEBZINE as both poet and painter for all of 2016 and we are proud to feature him here.
Here are samples of his artistic work.
First, a poem.
Then, a row of paintings.
***
In the infinity of our souls
By David Thorpe
Your sorcery inebriated my senses
the evening star,
discreet witness of our pilgrimage
to our sacred temples,
tattooed our nakedness with her caresses
From the foothills of Mount Etna
we soared to summits of molten lava
to bury ourselves in our steaming crater,
the aftermath of our apocalypse
My kisses embraced your breath to revive my libido,
a seismic wave contrived by my conspiring testosterones
set aflame without lenience your sacrificed body,
to appease your whispered desires,
echoing through ancient legends
Engulfed in the heat of a volcanic eruption,
your very essence welded into mine,
this moment of sublime subjugation,
this gift of creation,
is blessed in the infinity of our souls.
This issue's featured painter
Gene McCormick
Gene McCormick has had twenty books published, a mix of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. He work appears regularly in select publications. His latest book, Obsessions, a novel in the structured form of a lengthy narrative poem, will be out this fall from Middle Island Press. He also paints, and his work has been exhibited throughout the United States. He has a custom line of clothing incorporating his art, and is the illustrator for Misfitmagazine.net. He lives in Wayne, Illinois.
Gene McCormick
Gene McCormick has had twenty books published, a mix of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. He work appears regularly in select publications. His latest book, Obsessions, a novel in the structured form of a lengthy narrative poem, will be out this fall from Middle Island Press. He also paints, and his work has been exhibited throughout the United States. He has a custom line of clothing incorporating his art, and is the illustrator for Misfitmagazine.net. He lives in Wayne, Illinois.
Important French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
looked like a bank clerk: suited, wire-rim bespectacled,
brief moustache, untoward proper appearance.
He painted, primarily, his wife Marthe.
He painted her nude sitting, standing, laying;
in the tub, in the garden, in the kitchen,
in front of a mirror; from the front and back.
Bonnard painted her continually through the years
of their marriage and when she died he continued
to paint her naked body from memory.
The paintings of her were all for sale
for strangers to see and buy.
She was a lean, lanky type, not much of a
rear end and average looks.
She wore shoes with heels
in nearly all the nude paintings
without looking sophisticated.
In her youth her looks were enough to cause Bonnard
to abandon his mistress, who then committed suicide
when Pierre married Marthe.
All in all, though, scoping nude images
of Bonnard’s wife is better than viewing
his “Still Life With Plum Pits.”
Pumpkin Art
By Tanja Moulton
The Creativity Webzine
In Retrospect
We became theme-based with issue 13.
Issues 1 to 12 remained nameless.
The Creativity Webzine was born on
August 7th, 2015.
Here the other issues in retrospect.
Issue 13: THE CREATIVE GLOBETROTTER
Issue 14: MOOD SWINGS
Issue 15: HALLOWEEN
Issue 16: AUTUMN LEAVES
Issue 17: THE TIMES THEY ARE CHANGING
Issue 18: LOVE
Issue 19: THOUGHT
Issue 20: SAINTS AND SINNERS
Issue 21: TRUTH
Issue 22: JOY TO THE WORLD!
Issue 23: HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Issue 24: WE THREE KINGS
Issue 25: OUTER SPACE
Issue 26: THE RENAISSANCE
Issue 27: SEX AND THE SPIRIT
Issue 28: WHY? THAT’S WHY!
Issue 29: CARNIVAL
Issue 30: THE GOD WITHIN
Issue 31: THAT’S HISTORY
Issue 32: YE SCALLYWAG PIRATES
Issue 33: LET’S GO TO THE MOVIES
Issue 34: UNICORNS AND FAIRIES
Issue 35: COLORS OF THE WORLD
Issue 36: TIME
Issue 37: VISITORS
Issue 38: SPRING IS HERE
Issue 39: A SEASON FOR MUSIC ‘
Issue 40: OTHER WORLDS
Issue 41. SHIPS AT SEA
Issue 42: THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNEY
Issue 43: FAITH
Issue 44: CLASSIC MEETS ROCK
Issue 45: SUMMER, SUN AND FUN
Issue 46: THE STORIES WE TELL
Issue 47: BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITIES
Issue 48: A LITARARY BUFFET
Issue 49: THE DISCOVERY
Issue 50: THE MYSTERY
This is the future:
October 16th: THE MAGICAL FOREST
October 31st: HALLOWEEN RETURNS
November 13th: A CHAT BY THE FIRESIDE
November 27th: DANCE!
December 11th: THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
December 23rd: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Life is a mystery, but don't we actually like that it is
... a mystery?
Wouldn't we miss it if life was not a riddle?
Discovery, after all, is also the magic of life.
The fact that we don't have all the answers is ... exciting.
This road of discovery is your own personal road movie.
So make it a good one.
Your script hasn't been written yet ...
and if it has, the authors are pretty good
about hiding their tricks.
Because they're there ... your guardians,
giving you a thousand hints along the way.
Look for the hints, baby.
Somewhere behind the scenes, we are guided by angels.
If we work together ... with each other, dealing with the cards that life has dealt us with,
then we can realize all our dreams, trusting those angels.
Prosperous family life and blooming career?
Possible if you want it.
God's presence in every part of your life?
Sure, just invite him into your life.
Peace on Earth?
Absolutely, if you believe in it.
What then is possible?
Everything.
People that had careers late in life:
Grandma Moses, successful painter at age 78.
Harry Bernstein, successful author at age 96.
Alan Rickman, successful actor at age 46.
Colonel Sanders, KFC founder at age 65.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie -Author at age 65.
Christoph Waltz, successfulfilm-actor at age 53.
Humility, friendliness, hard work, faith, perseverance,
intuition, timing, self confidence, trust in one's own abilities:
all these things are instrumental for success.
But life is not just about success, is it?
It is also about insight, wisdom and love.
Welcome to the discovery!
That is why we have put together a list of things
that are worth discovering:
... a mystery?
Wouldn't we miss it if life was not a riddle?
Discovery, after all, is also the magic of life.
The fact that we don't have all the answers is ... exciting.
This road of discovery is your own personal road movie.
So make it a good one.
Your script hasn't been written yet ...
and if it has, the authors are pretty good
about hiding their tricks.
Because they're there ... your guardians,
giving you a thousand hints along the way.
Look for the hints, baby.
Somewhere behind the scenes, we are guided by angels.
If we work together ... with each other, dealing with the cards that life has dealt us with,
then we can realize all our dreams, trusting those angels.
Prosperous family life and blooming career?
Possible if you want it.
God's presence in every part of your life?
Sure, just invite him into your life.
Peace on Earth?
Absolutely, if you believe in it.
What then is possible?
Everything.
People that had careers late in life:
Grandma Moses, successful painter at age 78.
Harry Bernstein, successful author at age 96.
Alan Rickman, successful actor at age 46.
Colonel Sanders, KFC founder at age 65.
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie -Author at age 65.
Christoph Waltz, successfulfilm-actor at age 53.
Humility, friendliness, hard work, faith, perseverance,
intuition, timing, self confidence, trust in one's own abilities:
all these things are instrumental for success.
But life is not just about success, is it?
It is also about insight, wisdom and love.
Welcome to the discovery!
That is why we have put together a list of things
that are worth discovering:
The World
Outer Space
Love
History
Art
Literature
Music
Good Food ....
And a million other things ...
Do you have any favourite discoveries?
And a million other things ...
Do you have any favourite discoveries?
Frans Snyders
(* 11. November 1579, Antwerpen; † 19. August 1657, Antwerpen)
was a Flemish painter of animals, hunting scenes, market scenes and still lifes. He was one of the earliest specialist animaliers and he is credited with initiating a wide variety of new still-life and animal subjects in Antwerp. He was a regular collaborator with leading Antwerp painters such as Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1526 or 1527 – July 11, 1593)
was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books.
Gun Kronzell
Born: July 6th, 1930, Nygatan 16, Kalmar, Sweden
Died: April 6th, 2011, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Operasinger (Mezzo-Soprano)
Author, Director, Vocal Pedagogue
Picture above of Gun Kronzell with her good friend
Luciano Pavarotti
Gun Kronzell, above, as Dorabella in Mozart's opera "Cosi fan tutte"
Gun Kronzell in her famous title role as "Orpheus" in Gluck's opera.
Gun Kronzell, after her royal concert for the Swedish king in 1971.
Here seen with H.R.H. the Swedish king Gustaf VI Adolf.
He was hard of hearing and joked:
"I heard you!"
Gun Kronzell's magnifiscent voice was loud enough to impress even royals.
The picture was taken exactly at the moment the king articulated his impression.
Gun Kronzell in her renowned role as Eboli in Verdi's "Don Carlos".
Concert program leaflet of Gun Kronzell's and her husband Herbert Eyre Moulton's concert in Osage, Iowa,
during their concert tour there in 1976. The married couple toured as "The Singing Couple".
PR photo from the Barometer daily newspaper of Gun Kronzell in the city park of
her home town Kalmar, Sweden, during a concert tour 1993,
among others in the Kalmar Renaissance Palace.
"The Singing Couple", Gun Kronzell and Herbert Eyre Moulton, at a concert in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1980.
Gun Kronzell's husband Herbert with their mutual friend, the renowned opera tenor
Nicolai Gedda at a party in Ireland back in 1967.
Gun Kronzell and Herbert Eyre Moulton during a promotional photo shoot for their European concert tour in 1968,
a tour that took them through Ireland (including an appearance on Irish TV), Austria, Sweden and Germany
Here seen with Herb's beloved dog Fred.
It was the 23rd of April 1939. My mother was in the third grade in the girl’s school in Kalmar in Sweden. John Steinbeck had just published “The Grapes of Wrath”. The filming of the epic “Gone with the Wind” had been going on for over three months. Lars-Erik Larsson famous Pastoral Suite was performed in Stockholm and Tina Turner was born.
During this eventful year, shortly before the Second World War, my ancestor Adolf Kronzell left the Orchestral Association of Helsingborg after 37 and a half years’ service. I took the time to transcribe some old clippings from my family scrapbook. These two pieces of musical history are well worth reading.
This is an excerpt from the newspaper Helsingborg’s Dagblad from April 23rd of 1939:
55 YEARS AS A TRUMPETER IN HELSINGBORG
When Maestro Lidner broke a conductor’s baton
Adolf Kronzell from the Helsingborg Orchestral Association shares his experiences with us
On Wednesday the Helsingborg audience takes a fond farewell of musical director Lidner. This concert will also be first trumpeter Adolf F. Kronzell’s last appearance with the orchestral association after 37 and a half years of service, just like he left the Swedish Royal Army Orchestra fifteen years ago, in 1924, after having played his instrumental parts as a brilliant soloist for almost four decades.
Orchestral conductor and musical Director Lidner conductor’s baton and Sergeant Kronzell’s trumpet have actually been companions for 45 years: in military march bands, in popular concerts and as parts of the orchestral association.
When we visited Mr. Kronzell for a farewell interview yesterday and asked him tell us about some old memories, he first tells us how Lidner took over the Swedish Royal Army Orchestra in 1894. The fact that Mr. Kronzell remembers this story first of all is no coincidence.
“I want to say that I have Mr. Lidner to thank for what I know,” Mr. Kronzell tell us with a strong magnetic gaze before going on to tell us about the new conductor’s entrance. “It was the 3rd of August, 1894. The by now 97-year-old Musical Sergeant Svensson presented Lidner to the Swedish Royal Army Orchestra. After that, Lidner took the conductor’s baton in his hand. We were going to rehearse Lidner’s own musical march composition in Herrevad’s monastery. He hit the music stand with his baton, in order to attract attention, and promptly broke the baton.
“It was fantastic,” Mr. Kronzell goes on, “to hear and play with so many orchestras and marching bands of such high quality.”
“But wasn’t it hard to compete with all those fantastic orchestras?” we ask.
“No,” Mr. Kronzell answers us. “We were popular everywhere. During our farewell concert in Hamburg we received a visit by the marvelous and by now deceased Danish poet Holger Drachmann, who gave Lidner a laurel wreath and showered us with compliments about how marvelous our concert had been.”
The concert on Wednesday the 26th of April 1939 will start with Beethoven’s most mysterious composition, his Symphony No. 5 in C-Minor, which has been performed successfully on numerous occasions by Lidner and the orchestra during his time as a conductor. The second part of the concert is completely dedicated to Stenhammar’s ingenious musical composition based on Heidenstam’s “One people”. The Symphony Chorus and the Male Chorus Harmoni are taking part.
Now, a newspaper article about my mother Gun Margareta Kronzell published during her heyday from the local newspaper Barometern in 1971:
KALMAR’S OPERASINGER IS A EUROPEAN STAR!
HER FATHER KNUT GAVE HER HIS UNENDING SUPPORT
Think about this for a moment: Gun Kronzell can sing!
This discovery was made during Gun Kronzell’s last year at the Girl’s School in Kalmar. Nobody at the school had heard her before, neither the teachers nor the school friends knew it.
Now everybody in Europe knows it.
She is a star.
Gun Kronzell, born on Nygatan 16 in Kalmar, lives in Vienna and works as a Dramatic Mezzo-Soprano all across the continent. She has been working at the Volks-Opera in Vienna during the Springtime and has sung on many European Stages , including London’s Festival Hall. Her appearances in Sweden have been few, but now the Kalmar audience has the possibility to hear her fantastic voice in the Kalmar Cathedral on Monday. There will be two other concerts in the local area.
She lives all summer in her mother Anna’s and her father Knut’s apartment on Odengatan and is taking with her son Charlie. Her husband Herbert Eyre Moulton is still in Vienna, working at the English speaking theatres as an actor, teaching English, creating school radio programs for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) and writing plays.
“My husband and I met in Hannover in Germany. We were both working singers and shared the same singing teacher. I asked him if he would speak English with me. Since then, we have only spoken English with each other. That is, when we are on speaking terms,” Gun laughs with a twinkle in her eye. “We love performing with each other and promote ourselves as The Singing Couple.”
MULTILINGUAL
Two year old Charlie is raised to speak many languages, among them English and German. His grandparents are right now teaching him Swedish. Some day he will be able to compete with his mother, who fluently speaks at least three languages, if not more.
Sea Captain and Swedish Church Chief Accountant Knut Kronzell wanted to become an opera singer, but his parents had other plans. He had to be satisfied with singing for his family at festive gatherings. In the beginning, Gun wasn’t impressed. But as time went on, she was.
When she applied to study at the Royal Musical Academy in Stockholm, her father Knut gave her all his support.
A FAMOUS FAMILY
Success came flying from high and wide and from all the right places. Her education was superb, her vocal range was phenomenal, her interpretation became renowned: a perfect mixture. Stockholm’s Opera House was too limited a forum and Gun moved to Germany, where Bielefeld, Hannover, Köln, Recklinghausen, Wiesbaden, Paris, Brügge and Graz has become her own “home turf.”
Her husband Herbert Eyre Moulton is from Chicago. He is a singer, author and works for Austrian Radio. Last year he joined his wife in order to sing at the festival Kalmar 70. This year he has not had any time to come to Sweden.
VITALLY ITALIAN
“I like acting on stage,” Gun Kronzell says. “It’s better than singing concerts. I feel lonelier on the concert stage. The opera stage is always lively and full of action.”
The Italian composers are among her favorites. Verdi is number one. Of course.
A LIFE FULL OF SONG
Gun Kronzell:
“I’m actually quite tired of Wagner. He was an amazing composer, but in his operas there is a whole lot of endless singing and that gets strenuous for the audience. Brünhilde, Erda, Kundry, Ariadne, I’ve sung them all, and I was always happy to have a good vocal technique to help me get through those roles and a happy to wear a good pair of shoes.”
The new kind of pop music world wide radio keeps playing is not something Gun dislikes. The Beatles have many good successors, she says. Charlie just loves pop music. The hotter, the better.
SWEDEN’S TOP 40
Gun Kronzell doesn’t mind hot music. However, schmaltzy Schlager Muzak is not her thing and she admits that she also doesn’t really know what’s hot in Swedish popular music today.
“I have no idea what vinyl EPs are being handed over the counters and what songs are making the top record charts in Sweden right now,” she laughs.
RADIO
Gun Kronzell will record a radio program for Swedish Radio this year. Her concert from last year, recorded at the festival Kalmar 70, will appear in a rerun.
This autumn there will be a whole range of continental concerts.
“I have to return to Kalmar at least once a year,” she says. “That family contact is important, the sea air rejuvenates me, the food, the sun, the laughter, the flowers and the friends. And my mom and dad are very happy when I come. Especially when I bring Charlie along.”
This Issue's Featured Painter
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Pubol
(11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989)
known as
Salvador Dalí
was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres,Catalonia, Spain.
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissancemasters.
His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.
Dalí attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.
Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics.
Talented "Creativity Webzine"-author Lucinda Berry Hill with her book "Coffee with Jesus" in England.
Lucinda Berry Hill in South Africa with her published masterpiece "Coffee with Jesus".
Art by John Frazee
www.frazeefinearts.com
Veyen 48"x48" Acrylic
Phoamor 24"x48" Acrylic
Mizreal 24"x 48" Acrylic
Art by Teresa Ann Frazee
www.frazeefinearts.com
FROM THE HIGH Acrylic 16"x44"
NO OTHER SEASON Acrylic 29"x29"
DO YOU TAKE RED Acrylic 36"x36"
Below you will find a selection of pictures from Charles E.J. Moulton's career.
He has sung and acted in 115 stage productions to date and played around 70 roles.
In a way, the roles he has played were, are and remain visitors in his soul, parts of himself coming out into the world and becoming reality.
Giorgos Kolios
The celebrated Greek painter works as a
set designer at the
City Opera of Gelsenkirchen, Germany
(Musiktheater im Revier).
His countless exhibitions across the globe
and his plethora of artistic pieces speak for themselves.
We proudly present his work here in "The Creativity Webzine".
set designer at the
City Opera of Gelsenkirchen, Germany
(Musiktheater im Revier).
His countless exhibitions across the globe
and his plethora of artistic pieces speak for themselves.
We proudly present his work here in "The Creativity Webzine".
Gun Kronzell-Moulton
(1930 - 2011)
Operatic Mezzo-Soprano, Concert- and Oratorio-Singer
Professor of Solo Voice at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts
Making Music
Reflections over my career and life as an artist
Published letter / article to
'STÄMBANDET' - The Magazine for the Swedish Vocal & Speech Pedagogue Association from 2003.
By Gun Kronzell-Moulton
(1930 - 2011)
Operatic Mezzo-Soprano, Concert- and Oratorio-Singer , Professor of Solo Voice at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. English translation by Herbert Moulton. Further translations and additions by Charles E.J. Moulton
Dear Colleagues!
I'm delighted to have a chance to write to you again. It's been over ten years since my last article. At that time I told you about my work in Vienna as Professor of Voice at the State Academy of Music.
Now I intend to take you on a little journey of reminiscence, hoping to touch on some of the people who have influenced me most as human being, singer, and pedagogue.
During my student time in Stockholm --- up until 1958 --- I was privileged to work with many fascinating people:
One of these was Ǻke Nygren, unforgettable for his lessons in Speech Technique, as well as for his uncanny ability to remember each and every student he ever had. Shortly before his death he attended a recital of mine at Waldemarsudde, after which he came back, shaking with laughter: "Have you seen the mistake in the programme?"
What they had done was write 'Rangström's The Only Student (Den Enda Studenten)' instead of 'The Only Hour (Den Enda Stunden)'. A fortnight later he was dead from a heart attack. A splendid and unforgettable man.
Wilhelm Freund was an unbelievably fine teacher of German Lieder, as well as an outstanding personality. Every time I travelled down to Germany he asked me to bring him some Pumpernickel and Harz cheese.
Bernhard Lilja taught Solfeggio Ear Schooling at the Academy and was one of my very favourites, not only for his splendid instruction, but also because his lessons were always so hilarious. We roared with laughter through most of them.
From Isa Quensel I learned a great deal --- a magnificent woman full of temperament and a passion for fair play. She was a fabulous actress and speech pedagogue and I know I would never have become such a successful actress as a singer if it hadn’t been for Isa.
My final year in Stockholm brought me to the legendary Russian pedagogue Madame Andrejewa de Skilondz: a fascinating atmosphere steeped in Russian culture provided by her two round little sisters, an Angora cat and a Pekingese on a silken cushion. Surely many of you are with the many intriguing tales about the Madame, who, when still very young, sang with Caruso.
Torsten Föllinger, my dear old friend and collegue, whom I met during a course being given by Professor Josef Witt in Stockholm, has, with his tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge of human nature, always meant more to me than I can say.
Part of my income during my student days came from church music. Often I'd go to various organizations and ask if I could sing at a church service or concert. Many times, especially out in the country, I came home with a sack of coins from the collection!
Naturally all the student concerts at the old Academy were worth hearing: almost every week a delightfully mixed program of classics. One concert I recall in particular featured Georg Riedel playing his famous double-bass. Lasse Länndahl is another one.
In 1959 a Ruud Scholarship enabled me to travel down to Wiesbaden to study with Professor Paul Lohmann, one of the individuals who influenced me most. I still use many of his exercises in my work. The extraordinary thing is that, after so many years, their meaning suddenly becomes so crystal clear that you know precisely what he wanted from them. Paul Lohmann was a true sorcerer, with a vast amount of humour.
With every new engagement I took pains to find a teacher with the wisdom to guide my voice in the right way. In Bielefeld there was Herman Firchow, who, besides being a source of valuable advice, had a family who soon were among my best friends ... and good honest friends are something we all need.
Every Sunday during these three years in Bielefeld found me working at Bethel, the renowned institution for mentally handicapped children. This provided a perfect balance with my work at the theatre and gave my life a secure and solid meaning.
The four succeeding years at Hanover were the busiest of all, with my repertoire expanding to include many of the great Wagner- and Verdi-roles such as Ortrud, Brangäne, Eboli, Ulrica, Abigaille, Azucena, and Preziosilla .
At the same time --- in order to keep the voice healthy and fresh --- I studied Brahms Lieder with the legendary pianist Sebastian Peschko, who had been the regular accompanist of Heinrich Schlusnus. He had me write down everything we did together, and for this I shall be eternally grateful as these notes have been a source of untold benefit ever since.
As voice teacher in Hanover I had Otto Köhler, a worthy colleague, then seventy years of age and still singing splendidly at the opera. Sometimes we did vocal exercises for four hours together --- Heaven! Later, when I was engaged in Graz and at the Volksoper in Vienna, I went to Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek, who always came to all my premieres, and has continued to do so to my student concerts in Vienna.
Quite soon after our son Charlie's birth in September of 1969, I was asked to create the role of Adriano in a new production of Wagner's RIENZI, with the strongly imaginative Stage Director from Vienna's Burg Theater, Adolf Rott --- a marvellous role and a fantastic assignment, but extremely dramatic and taxing for the voice, especially so soon after my caesarean! So, I turned to Professor Eugenie Ludwig (Christa's mother), whose wondrous head resonance exercises brought the voice clear up to the high C, even with a heavy cold!
In Graz we shared a two-family theatre house with the Australian soprano Althea Bridges, and her Danish-born husband. And precisely in September 1969 each of us gave birth to a son at the very time we should have been appearing as Leonora and Azucena in a new Trovatore-production. You can imagine how popular that made us with the management!
We spent the ten years dating from 1974 in Göteborg, where I was engaged at the Music Acedemy, and, with my husband, wrote and staged a Children's Play named LONG LIVE THE TROLLS! , where Charlie also had his professional stage debut as the clumsy troll Klampe-Lampe. I also taught disc jockeys on the Stena Line-ferries, as well as teachers to Chinese immigrants.
Besides all that, I jumped at a day's notice at the Gothenburg Opera into the role of Ulrica (Mamzelle Arvidsson) in Verdi's MASKED BALL, singing it in Swedish for the first time, after having already performed it in both German and the original Italian. Added to that, there were every summer intensive church music courses, hard work, but fun and rewarding.
All these varied activities gave me a ready-made and invaluable backlog of experience when I was made a fulltime Professor of Voice at Vienna's State Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in the autumn of 1984 --- this, after a trial lesson before some thirty voice teachers --- both gratifying and rewarding .
At first I was so taken with all the various nationalities around me at the Academy that I took on a class of twenty different students, but with the passage of time I narrowed it down to only those I myself had prepared or who had convinced me of their future potential .
Entrance examinations in Sweden are considerably more difficult than in Austria, as we Swedes are a singing people with a singular feeling for speech and song. However, it's also clear that to sing German as, say, Fritz Wunderlich did is indeed wonderful. He once confided that he sang German as if it were Italian!
Since the fall of the Wall our problems have been entirely different here. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, and the like are all extremely talented and musically prepared, but with so little money that the barely come up to the existence-minimum.
To return now to some welcome visitors:
Torsten Föllinger sometimes journeys down here to help us achieve more vocal freedom, as well as self-esteem.
The Russian basso Nesterenko gave a course for our students, an outstanding singer, who also presented me with a book of exercises for the bass voice, which had been used in Russia since 1915.
Ingrid Bjoner was also here a few years ago for a seminar and impressed everyone with her depth of understanding, especially for individual students.
For a few years I had a brilliant young Hungarian girl as a student, who suddenly became Luciano Pavarotti's right hand and general Girl Friday for a period of seven years, travelling with him the world over. Thanks to her, not only did I have free tickets for his concerts and opera performances, but also had many opportunities to meet with him and attend some of his rehearsals, not only instructive but endlessly fascinating.
The positive advantages of living in Vienna are not so much the old-fashioned teaching and traditions, but the enormous bill-of-fare readily available in terms of international concerts operatic performances, theatre and dance events of every possible type. We have also enjoyed several visits by Kjell 'Mr.Choir' Lönnâ and his large, delightful and enthusiastic singing ensembles. Besides performing 'Haus-Musik' in the Swedish Embassy (as I have done numerous times), the success they scored in St. Stephen Cathedral verged on the sensational. Then, too, Stockholm's Radio Orchestra, Drottningholm's Baroque Ensemble, and also the Maestro Eric Ericsson, with whom I sang in the 50's, all of whom have concertized here to great applause. And it's always a joy to meet with any of them are my old colleagues from home.
My husband Herbert Moulton has long been associated with ORF School's Radio, as well as with both English-speaking theatres, the International (where he played everything from Shakespeare to Wilder and Orwell and the Uncle in Charlie's Aunt) and Vienna's English Theatre, the latter serving high-quality performances from London (Ayckborn, Shakespeare, Christie) or the States (such as Second City) for large and distinguished public. He has a versatile background in all fields of art: as a playwright and actor , singer of everything from simple folk tunes to 'Grand Opera' and has done commercials and been in films with the likes of Audrey Landers, Alan Rickman, David Warner, Clint Eastwood and Zsa-Zsa Gabor.
Inspired by all this and early stage-work as well as years of concerting in his back-pocket, our son Charles E.J. Moulton's career has advanced from theatre projects and small roles in Vienna's Chamber Opera (Offenbach, Gershwin, Vives, etc.) to a two-and-a-half year's run of Roman 'Rosemary's Baby' Polanski's Broadway-destined World Premiere 'Grusical' DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, written by Webber-collaborator Jim Steinman . At present he is playing the first cast role of The Big Bopper in Hamburg's long running musical BUDDY in Germany, from which he recently took time off to fly down to Vienna for two concerts as bass-soloist in Joseph Haydn's THE CREATION (once in the Haydn Museum, the baroque house where Papa Haydn wrote the piece) then to Sweden for a tour of church concerts with famous Swedish all-round saxophonist Johan Stengård, followed by a most rewarding week at a Master-Class outside Oslo in Norway, a seminar featuring the eminences of Ingrid Bjoner and Håkan Hagegård . He spent a half year cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas as a singing soloist, after which he joined the company of Jesus Christ Superstar in the Bad Hersfelder Festival. Before joining the Dutch Stage Holding Corporation to play Scar and Pumbaa in Disney's THE LION KING in Hamburg, he was soloist with the city’s Mozart Orchestra, performing Rossini and Bizet.
One great blessing for me is having had the good fortune to meet and get to know a magnificent Franciscan monk in Salzburg back in 1953. He has ever since enriched my life with good advice and the deep understanding that a true Christian vocation can provide.
As a resting-place next to the productive lives that we all have enjoyed, mine is, has been and always will be my home town of Kalmar. This city, with its grand 12th century castle and seaside lifestyle and my many friends and relatives, has been my lifelong summer-home and will always be so. Since my 1998 retirement I have enjoyed not only more freedom as a pedagogue and singer but as a globetrotter as well, travelling not only more to Sweden but to my friends in Germany, Hungary and Ireland as well. Living in Vienna, Austria is, on the other hand, also a blessing. I can, therefore, heartily welcome you here and to my Studio in the second district with all God's blessings.
As I think back over my life, I see now how tremendously important it is to never lose sight of why we do what we do. Why we are engaged in Making Music. This is not only a nine-to-five job. If it were we might as well stand as cashiers in a mall. It is an attitude, a vocation, a life-style. We search for the deepest part within us and dwell within its mysteries, taming our technique, bettering ourselves as people to make us finer as artists, generously sharing with others the benefits of our experience, giving our public love and joy with it all and leaving our hearers nobler with the experience. Art is calling forth emotions and making people believe in life again. As such, and if done right, this is the noblest of all professions.
I, Charles E.J. Moulton, worked in the Renaissance castle above in Kalmar every summer from 1989 to 1992 as a trilingual tour guide, performing approximately one thousand guided tours. This most well kept Renaissance palace in Scandinavia is a part of my childhood. I played here, sang here, walked here, kissed and laughed, strolled and toured. Kalmar is a jewel for the eye and a song for my heart.
Raphael's painting "The School of Athens" is, to me, the embodiment of what we know as the Renaissance. An exquisite painting, painted on a Vatican wall, created while Michelangelo was working on his ceiling art in the Sistine Chapel. Antique philosophers, deep ideas rediscovered, recreated by one of history's most fantastic artists. There are people who claim that Raphael reincarnated as Mozart in 1756.
National Gallery of Art Reunites Rubens' Portraits of
the Three Magi for the First Time in More Than a Century
Three paintings of the Magi, or wise men, by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) were reunited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, for the first time in more than 130 years, during the Spring of 2015. On view in the West Building of the Gallery from March 17 through July 5, 2015,
Peter Paul Rubens: The Three Magi Reunited
also explores the relationship between the artist and Balthasar Moretus the Elder (1574–1641), head of the prestigious Plantin Press, the largest publishing house in 16th- and 17th-century Europe.Balthasar Moretus, a close childhood friend of Rubens, commissioned these paintings around 1618. Moretus and his two brothers were named after the Three Magi (Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar), thus these works had a special personal meaning for both the artist and his patron. Rubens executed these bust-length images with strong colors and vigorous brushstrokes that bring these biblical figures to life.
"At the time, the Adoration of the Magi was a common subject in art, but these intimate paintings take the kings out of their usual narrative setting," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "Rubens conjured them as tangible flesh and blood believers."
Make it Snow !
By
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Poem by Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Christmas
By John Clare
Christmas is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
E'en want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi' a holly bough
Tho tramping 'neath a winters sky
O'er snow track paths and rhymey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi' her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi' evergreens
The snow is beesom'd from the door
And comfort crowns the cottage scenes
Gilt holly wi' its thorny pricks
And yew and box wi' berrys small
These deck the unus'd candlesticks
And pictures hanging by the wall
Neighbours resume their anual cheer
Wishing wi smiles and spirits high
Clad christmass and a happy year
To every morning passer bye
Milk maids their christmass journeys go
Accompanyd wi favourd swain
And childern pace the crumping snow
To taste their grannys cake again
Hung wi the ivys veining bough
The ash trees round the cottage farm
Are often stript of branches now
The cotters christmass hearth to warm
He swings and twists his hazel band
And lops them off wi sharpend hook
And oft brings ivy in his hand
To decorate the chimney nook
Old winter whipes his ides bye
And warms his fingers till he smiles
Where cottage hearths are blazing high
And labour resteth from his toils
Wi merry mirth beguiling care
Old customs keeping wi the day
Friends meet their christmass cheer to share
And pass it in a harmless way
Old customs O I love the sound
However simple they may be
What ere wi time has sanction found
Is welcome and is dear to me
Pride grows above simplicity
And spurns it from her haughty mind
And soon the poets song will be
The only refuge they can find
The shepherd now no more afraid
Since custom doth the chance bestow
Starts up to kiss the giggling maid
Beneath the branch of mizzletoe
That neath each cottage beam is seen
Wi pearl-like-berrys shining gay
The shadow still of what hath been
Which fashion yearly fades away
And singers too a merry throng
At early morn wi simple skill
Yet imitate the angels song
And chant their christmass ditty still
And mid the storm that dies and swells
By fits-in humings softly steals
The music of the village bells
Ringing round their merry peals
And when its past a merry crew
Bedeckt in masks and ribbons gay
The 'Morrice danse' their sports renew
And act their winter evening play
The clown-turnd-kings for penny praise
Storm wi the actors strut and swell
And harlequin a laugh to raise
Wears his hump back and tinkling bell
And oft for pence and spicy ale
Wi winter nosgays pind before
The wassail singer tells her tale
And drawls her christmass carrols oer
The prentice boy wi ruddy face
And ryhme bepowderd dancing locks
From door to door wi happy pace
Runs round to claim his 'christmass box'
The block behind the fire is put
To sanction customs old desires
And many a faggots bands are cut
For the old farmers christmass fires
Where loud tongd gladness joins the throng
And winter meets the warmth of may
Feeling by times the heat too strong
And rubs his shins and draws away
While snows the window panes bedim
The fire curls up a sunny charm
Where creaming oer the pitchers rim
The flowering ale is set to warm
Mirth full of joy as summer bees
Sits there its pleasures to impart
While childern tween their parents knees
Sing scraps of carrols oer by heart
And some to view the winter weathers
Climb up the window seat wi glee
Likening the snow to falling feathers
In fancys infant extacy
Laughing wi superstitious love
Oer visions wild that youth supplyes
Of people pulling geese above
And keeping christmass in the skyes
As tho the homstead trees were drest
In lieu of snow wi dancing leaves
As. tho the sundryd martins nest
Instead of ides hung the eaves
The childern hail the happy day
As if the snow was april grass
And pleasd as neath the warmth of may
Sport oer the water froze to glass
Thou day of happy sound and mirth
That long wi childish memory stays
How blest around the cottage hearth
I met thee in my boyish days
Harping wi raptures dreaming joys
On presents that thy coming found
The welcome sight of little toys
The christmass gifts of comers round
'The wooden horse wi arching head
Drawn upon wheels around the room
The gilded coach of ginger bread
And many colord sugar plumb
Gilt coverd books for pictures sought
Or storys childhood loves to tell
Wi many a urgent promise bought
To get tomorrows lesson well
And many a thing a minutes sport
Left broken on the sanded floor
When we woud leave our play and court
Our parents promises for more
Tho manhood bids such raptures dye
And throws such toys away as vain
Yet memory loves to turn her eye
And talk such pleasures oer again
Around the glowing hearth at night
The harmless laugh and winter tale
Goes round-while parting friends delight
To toast each other oer their ale
The cotter oft wi quiet zeal
Will musing oer his bible lean
While in the dark the lovers steal
To kiss and toy behind the screen
The yule cake dotted thick wi plumbs
Is on each supper table found
And cats look up for falling crumbs
Which greedy childern litter round
And huswifes sage stuffd seasond chine
Long hung in chimney nook to drye
And boiling eldern berry wine
To drink the christmas eves 'good bye'
Saint Lucy's Day
is on December 13, in Advent. Her feast once coincided with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year before calendar reforms, so her feast day has become a festival of light. St. Lucy’s Day is celebrated most commonly in Scandinavia, with their long dark winters, where it is a major feast day, and in Italy, with each emphasizing a different aspect of the story.
In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Lucia, she is represented as a woman in a white dress and red sash with a crown or wreath of candles on her head. In both Norway and Sweden, girls dressed as Lucy carry rolls and cookies in procession as songs are sung. Even boys take part in the procession as well, playing different roles associated with Christmas. It is said that to vividly celebrate St. Lucy's Day will help one live the long winter days with enough light.
In Italy, Saint Lucy's Day is a church feast day dedicated to Lucia of Syracuse (died 304), also known as Saint Lucy, and is observed on 13 December. A special devotion to St. Lucy is practiced in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, in the north of the country, and Sicily, in the south, as well as in Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia.
Saint Lucy is one of the few saints celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Nordic people — Danes; Swedes; Finns and Norwegians but also in USA and Canada and Italy. The St. Lucy's Day celebrations retain many indigenous Germanic pagan, pre-Christian midwinter elements. Some of the practices associated with the day predate the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia, and like much of Scandinavian folklore and even religiosity, is centered on the annual struggle between light and darkness.
The Nordic observation of St. Lucy is first attested in the Middle Ages, and continued after the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, although the modern celebration is only about 200 years old. It is likely that tradition owes its popularity in the Nordic countries to the extreme change in daylight hours between the seasons in this region.
The pre-Christian holiday of Yule, or jól, was the most important holiday in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Originally the observance of the winter solstice, and the rebirth of the sun, it brought about many practices that remain in the Advent and Christmas celebrations today. The Yule season was a time for feasting, drinking, gift-giving, and gatherings, but also the season of awareness and fear of the forces of the dark.
13 December
In Scandinavia (as late as until the mid 18th century) this date was the longest night of the year, coinciding with Winter Solstice, this was due to the Julian Calendar being employed at that time.[3] The same can be seen in the poem "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day" by the English poet John Donne.
While this does not hold for our current Gregorian calendar, a discrepancy of 8 days would have been the case in the Julian calendar during the 14th century, resulting in Winter solstice falling on December 13. With the original adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century the discrepancy was 10 days and had increased to 11 days in the 18th century when Scandinavia adopted the new calendar, with Winter solstice falling on December 9.
It is very difficult to tell the exact date of the Winter solstice without modern equipment (although the Neolithic builders of the Newgrange monument seem to have managed it). The day itself is not visibly shorter than the several days leading up to and following it and although the actual Julian date of Winter solstice would have been on the December 15 or 14 at the time when Christianity was introduced to Scandinavia, December 13 could well have lodged in peoples mind as being the shortest day.
The choice of 13 December as Saint Lucy's day, however, obviously predates the 8 day error of the 14th century Julian calendar. This date is attested in the pre-Tridentic Monastic calendar, probably going back to the earliest attestations of her life in the 6th and 7th centuries, and it is the date used throughout Europe. So, while the world changed from a Julian to a Gregorian calendar system—and hence acquired a new date for the Winter Solstice—St Lucy's Day was kept at December 13, and not moved to the 21.
At the time of Saint Lucy's death, Winter solstice fell on December 21 and the date of the birth of Christ on the 25th. The latter was also celebrated as being the day when the Sun was born, the birthday of Sol Invictus, as can be seen in the Chronography of 354. This latter date was thought by the Romans to be the Winter solstice and it is natural to think of the sun being born that day. Early Christians considered this a likely date for their saviour's nativity, as it was commonly held that the world was created on Spring equinox (thought to fall on March 25 at the time), and that Christ had been conceived on that date, being born 9 months later on Winter solstice.
A Swedish source states that the date of (Winter Solstice, St. Lucia, Lucinatta, Lucia-day, Lussi-mass ...) i.e. December 13, predates the Gregorian which implies that "Lucia's Day" was Dec 13 in the Julian Calendar, which is equal to December 21 in the Gregorian, i.e. now. Same source states use of the name "Little Yule" for the day, that it was among the most important days of the year, that it marked the start of Christmas month, and that with the move to the Gregorian calendar (in Sweden 1753) the date (not the celebration) "completely lost its appropriateness/significance".
Lussi
Lussinatta, the Lussi Night, was marked in Sweden December 13. Then Lussi, a female being with evil traits, like a female demon or witch, was said to ride through the air with her followers, called Lussiferda. This itself might be an echo of the myth of the Wild Hunt, called Oskoreia in Scandinavia, found across Northern, Western and Central Europe.
Between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits, in some accounts also the spirits of the dead, were thought to be active outside. It was believed to be particularly dangerous to be out during Lussi Night. According to tradition, children who had done mischief had to take special care, since Lussi could come down through the chimney and take them away, and certain tasks of work in the preparation for Yule had to be finished, or else the Lussi would come to punish the household. The tradition of Lussevaka – to stay awake through the Lussinatt to guard oneself and the household against evil, has found a modern form through throwing parties until daybreak. Another company of spirits was said to come riding through the night around Yule itself, journeying through the air,
over land and water.
St. Lucy
According to the traditional story, Lucy was born of rich and noble parents about the year 283. Her father was of Roman origin, but died when she was five years old,leaving Lucy and her mother without a protective guardian. Although no sources for her life-story exist other than in hagiographies, St. Lucy, whose name Lucia refers to "light" (Lux, lucis), is believed to have been a Sicilian saint who suffered a sad death in Syracuse, Sicily around AD 310. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend first compiled in the 13th century, a widespread and influential compendium of saint's biographies, records her story thus: She was seeking help for her mother's long-term illness at the shrine of Saint Agnes, in her native Sicily, when an angel appeared to her in a dream beside the shrine. As a result of this, Lucy became a devout Christian, refused to compromise her virginity in marriage and was denounced to the Roman authorities by the man she would have wed. They threatened to drag her off to a brothel if she did not renounce her Christian beliefs, but were unable to move her, even with a thousand men and fifty oxen pulling. So they stacked materials for a fire around her instead and set light to it, but she would not stop speaking, insisting that her death would lessen the fear of it for other Christians and bring grief to non-believers. One of the soldiers stuck a spear through her throat to stop these denouncements, but to no effect. Soon afterwards, the Roman consulate in charge was hauled off to Rome on charges of theft from the state and beheaded. Saint Lucy was able to die only when she was given the Christian sacrament. All the details of her life are the conventional ones associated with female martyrs of the early 4th century. John Henry Blunt views her story as a Christian romance similar to the Acts of other virgin martyrs. In another story, Saint Lucy was working to help Christians hiding in the catacombs during the terror under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and in order to bring with her as many supplies as possible, she needed to have both hands free. She solved this problem by attaching candles to a wreath on her head.
There is little evidence that the legend itself derives from the folklore of northern Europe, but the similarities in the names ("Lussi" and "Lucia"), and the date of her festival, December 13, suggest that two separate traditions may have been brought together in the modern-day celebrations in Scandinavia. Saint Lucy is often depicted in art with a palm as the symbol of martyrdom.
is on December 13, in Advent. Her feast once coincided with the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year before calendar reforms, so her feast day has become a festival of light. St. Lucy’s Day is celebrated most commonly in Scandinavia, with their long dark winters, where it is a major feast day, and in Italy, with each emphasizing a different aspect of the story.
In Scandinavia, where Lucy is called Lucia, she is represented as a woman in a white dress and red sash with a crown or wreath of candles on her head. In both Norway and Sweden, girls dressed as Lucy carry rolls and cookies in procession as songs are sung. Even boys take part in the procession as well, playing different roles associated with Christmas. It is said that to vividly celebrate St. Lucy's Day will help one live the long winter days with enough light.
In Italy, Saint Lucy's Day is a church feast day dedicated to Lucia of Syracuse (died 304), also known as Saint Lucy, and is observed on 13 December. A special devotion to St. Lucy is practiced in the Italian regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Trentino-Alto Adige, in the north of the country, and Sicily, in the south, as well as in Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia.
Saint Lucy is one of the few saints celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Nordic people — Danes; Swedes; Finns and Norwegians but also in USA and Canada and Italy. The St. Lucy's Day celebrations retain many indigenous Germanic pagan, pre-Christian midwinter elements. Some of the practices associated with the day predate the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia, and like much of Scandinavian folklore and even religiosity, is centered on the annual struggle between light and darkness.
The Nordic observation of St. Lucy is first attested in the Middle Ages, and continued after the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, although the modern celebration is only about 200 years old. It is likely that tradition owes its popularity in the Nordic countries to the extreme change in daylight hours between the seasons in this region.
The pre-Christian holiday of Yule, or jól, was the most important holiday in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. Originally the observance of the winter solstice, and the rebirth of the sun, it brought about many practices that remain in the Advent and Christmas celebrations today. The Yule season was a time for feasting, drinking, gift-giving, and gatherings, but also the season of awareness and fear of the forces of the dark.
13 December
In Scandinavia (as late as until the mid 18th century) this date was the longest night of the year, coinciding with Winter Solstice, this was due to the Julian Calendar being employed at that time.[3] The same can be seen in the poem "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day" by the English poet John Donne.
While this does not hold for our current Gregorian calendar, a discrepancy of 8 days would have been the case in the Julian calendar during the 14th century, resulting in Winter solstice falling on December 13. With the original adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century the discrepancy was 10 days and had increased to 11 days in the 18th century when Scandinavia adopted the new calendar, with Winter solstice falling on December 9.
It is very difficult to tell the exact date of the Winter solstice without modern equipment (although the Neolithic builders of the Newgrange monument seem to have managed it). The day itself is not visibly shorter than the several days leading up to and following it and although the actual Julian date of Winter solstice would have been on the December 15 or 14 at the time when Christianity was introduced to Scandinavia, December 13 could well have lodged in peoples mind as being the shortest day.
The choice of 13 December as Saint Lucy's day, however, obviously predates the 8 day error of the 14th century Julian calendar. This date is attested in the pre-Tridentic Monastic calendar, probably going back to the earliest attestations of her life in the 6th and 7th centuries, and it is the date used throughout Europe. So, while the world changed from a Julian to a Gregorian calendar system—and hence acquired a new date for the Winter Solstice—St Lucy's Day was kept at December 13, and not moved to the 21.
At the time of Saint Lucy's death, Winter solstice fell on December 21 and the date of the birth of Christ on the 25th. The latter was also celebrated as being the day when the Sun was born, the birthday of Sol Invictus, as can be seen in the Chronography of 354. This latter date was thought by the Romans to be the Winter solstice and it is natural to think of the sun being born that day. Early Christians considered this a likely date for their saviour's nativity, as it was commonly held that the world was created on Spring equinox (thought to fall on March 25 at the time), and that Christ had been conceived on that date, being born 9 months later on Winter solstice.
A Swedish source states that the date of (Winter Solstice, St. Lucia, Lucinatta, Lucia-day, Lussi-mass ...) i.e. December 13, predates the Gregorian which implies that "Lucia's Day" was Dec 13 in the Julian Calendar, which is equal to December 21 in the Gregorian, i.e. now. Same source states use of the name "Little Yule" for the day, that it was among the most important days of the year, that it marked the start of Christmas month, and that with the move to the Gregorian calendar (in Sweden 1753) the date (not the celebration) "completely lost its appropriateness/significance".
Lussi
Lussinatta, the Lussi Night, was marked in Sweden December 13. Then Lussi, a female being with evil traits, like a female demon or witch, was said to ride through the air with her followers, called Lussiferda. This itself might be an echo of the myth of the Wild Hunt, called Oskoreia in Scandinavia, found across Northern, Western and Central Europe.
Between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits, in some accounts also the spirits of the dead, were thought to be active outside. It was believed to be particularly dangerous to be out during Lussi Night. According to tradition, children who had done mischief had to take special care, since Lussi could come down through the chimney and take them away, and certain tasks of work in the preparation for Yule had to be finished, or else the Lussi would come to punish the household. The tradition of Lussevaka – to stay awake through the Lussinatt to guard oneself and the household against evil, has found a modern form through throwing parties until daybreak. Another company of spirits was said to come riding through the night around Yule itself, journeying through the air,
over land and water.
St. Lucy
According to the traditional story, Lucy was born of rich and noble parents about the year 283. Her father was of Roman origin, but died when she was five years old,leaving Lucy and her mother without a protective guardian. Although no sources for her life-story exist other than in hagiographies, St. Lucy, whose name Lucia refers to "light" (Lux, lucis), is believed to have been a Sicilian saint who suffered a sad death in Syracuse, Sicily around AD 310. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend first compiled in the 13th century, a widespread and influential compendium of saint's biographies, records her story thus: She was seeking help for her mother's long-term illness at the shrine of Saint Agnes, in her native Sicily, when an angel appeared to her in a dream beside the shrine. As a result of this, Lucy became a devout Christian, refused to compromise her virginity in marriage and was denounced to the Roman authorities by the man she would have wed. They threatened to drag her off to a brothel if she did not renounce her Christian beliefs, but were unable to move her, even with a thousand men and fifty oxen pulling. So they stacked materials for a fire around her instead and set light to it, but she would not stop speaking, insisting that her death would lessen the fear of it for other Christians and bring grief to non-believers. One of the soldiers stuck a spear through her throat to stop these denouncements, but to no effect. Soon afterwards, the Roman consulate in charge was hauled off to Rome on charges of theft from the state and beheaded. Saint Lucy was able to die only when she was given the Christian sacrament. All the details of her life are the conventional ones associated with female martyrs of the early 4th century. John Henry Blunt views her story as a Christian romance similar to the Acts of other virgin martyrs. In another story, Saint Lucy was working to help Christians hiding in the catacombs during the terror under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, and in order to bring with her as many supplies as possible, she needed to have both hands free. She solved this problem by attaching candles to a wreath on her head.
There is little evidence that the legend itself derives from the folklore of northern Europe, but the similarities in the names ("Lussi" and "Lucia"), and the date of her festival, December 13, suggest that two separate traditions may have been brought together in the modern-day celebrations in Scandinavia. Saint Lucy is often depicted in art with a palm as the symbol of martyrdom.
Troparion of Saint Nicholas
Icon Card
St Nicholas Center Collection
You were revealed to your flock
as a measure of faith.
You were the image of humility
and a teacher of self-control.
Because of your humble life,
heaven was opened to you.
Because of your poverty,
spiritual riches were granted to you. O holy Bishop Nicholas
we cry out to you:
Pray to Christ our God
that our souls may be saved.
Antiochian Orthodox
The truth of thy deeds
hath revealed thee to thy flock as a canon of faith,
an icon of meekness,
and a teacher of abstinence;
for this cause thou hast achieved the heights by humility,
riches by poverty,
O Father and Hierarch Nicholas,
intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Greek Orthodox Dismissal Hymn
The sincerity of your deeds
has revealed you to your people
as a teacher of moderation,
a model of faith,
and an example of virtue.
Therefore, you attained greatness through humility,
and wealth through poverty.
O Father and Archbishop Nicholas,
ask Christ to save our souls.
Byzantine Catholic
The truth of your dealings,
our Father and Bishop Nicholas,
showed you to your flock as a standard of faith,
as the image of gentleness,
and as a teacher of self-discipline.
By lowliness you attained to the heights,
by poverty to great riches.
Therefore, we beseech you,
pray to Christ our God for the salvation of our souls.
The Man Behind the Story of
Father Christmas/Santa Claus
St. Nicholas was a Bishop who lived in the fourth century AD in a place called Myra in Asia Minor (now called Turkey). He was a very rich man because his parents died when he was young and left him a lot of money. He was also a very kind man and had a reputation for helping the poor and giving secret gifts to people who needed it. There are several legends about St. Nicholas, although we don't know if any of them are true!
There was a poor man who had three daughters. He was so poor, he did not have enough money for a dowry, so his daughters couldn't get married. (A dowry is a sum of money paid to the bridegroom by the brides parents on the wedding day. This still happens in some countries, even today.) One night, Nicholas secretly dropped a bag of gold down the chimney and into the house (This meant that the oldest daughter was then able to be married.). The bag fell into a stocking that had been hung by the fire to dry! This was repeated later with the second daughter. Finally, determined to discover the person who had given him the money, the father secretly hid by the fire every evening until he caught Nicholas dropping in a bag of gold. Nicholas begged the man to not tell anyone what he had done, because he did not want to bring attention to himself. But soon the news got out and when anyone received a secret gift, it was thought that maybe it was from Nicholas.
Because of his kindness Nicholas was made a Saint. St. Nicholas is not only the saint of children but also of sailors! One story tells of him helping some sailors that were caught in a dreadful storm off the coast of Turkey. The storm was raging around them and all the men were terrified that their ship would sink beneath the giant waves. They prayed to St. Nicholas to help them. Suddenly, he was standing on the deck before them. He ordered the sea to be calm, the storm died away, and they were able to sail their ship safely to port.
St. Nicholas was exiled from Myra and later put in prison during the persecution by the Emperor Diocletian. No one is really knows when he died, but it was on 6th December in either 345 or 352 AD. In 1087, his bones were stolen from Turkey by some Italian merchant sailors. The bones are now kept in the Church named after him in the Italian port of Bari. On St. Nicholas feast day (6th December), the sailors of Bari still carry his statue from the Cathedral out to sea, so that he can bless the waters and so give them safe voyages throughout the year.
How St. Nicholas Became Santa Claus
In the 16th Century in Europe, the stories and traditions about St. Nicholas had become very unpopular.
But someone had to deliver presents to children at Christmas, so in the UK, particularly in England, he became 'Father Christmas', a character from old children's stories (in Scotland he's more commonly known as Santa). In France, he was then known as 'Père Nöel'; in Germany, the 'Christ Kind'. In the early USA his name was 'Kris Kringle'. Later, Dutch settlers in the USA took the old stories of St. Nicholas with them and Kris Kringle became 'Sinterklaas' or as we now say 'Santa Claus'!
Many countries, especially ones in Europe, celebrate St. Nicholas' Day on 6th December. In Holland and some other European Countries, children leave clogs or shoes out to be filled with presents. They also believe that if they leave some hay and carrots in their shoes for Sinterklaas's horse, they will be left some sweets.
St. Nicholas became popular again in the Victorian era when writers, poets and artists rediscovered the old stories.
In 1823 the famous poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' or 'T'was the Night before Christmas', was published. Dr Clement Clarke Moore later claimed that he had written it for his children. However, some scholars now believe that it was actually written by Henry Livingston, Jr., who was a distant relative of Dr Moore's wife. The poem describes eight reindeer and gives them their names. They became really well known in the song 'Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer', written in 1949. Do you know all eight names?
Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner,and ... da-daahhhhhh ... Rudolph!
Doris Brändlein
Born 1956, lives in the German Ruhr-Area since 1980 and works as a creative artist, story teller, artistic geragogue and naturapath.
In her children’s stories she lets the beings, who have always lived within her imagination, inspired by her own world of fantasy, experience adventures in order to understand the meaning of friendship.
In working with clay she lets herself be inspired by natural forms. She also creates graphic reliefs that are “so light, open, yes, even so transparent that the viewer has the feeling of watching paper”, as the Index Art Magazine puts it.
Her work has been numerously exhibited nationally and internationally.
She is also the author of the children’s book “Molimol”
with pictures by Christina Häber.
The work is currently being translated into English by Charles E.J. Moulton.
http://www.praxis-braendlein.de/aktuell/
www.tonundmehr.de
François Boucher 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century. He also painted several portraits of his patroness, Madame de Pompadour.
A native of Paris, Boucher was the son of a minor painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a painting by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only three months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars. In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until five years later, due to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[1] On his return from studying in Italy he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731.His morceau de réception (reception piece) was his Rinaldo and Armida of 1734.
Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from this point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of the Academy, becoming inspector at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) in 1765.
Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his native Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it."
Boucher is famous for saying that nature is "trop verte et mal éclairée" (too green and badly lit).
Boucher was associated with the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay, whom he taught to draw. Later Boucher made a series of drawings of works by Guay which Madame de Pompadour then engraved and distributed as a handsomely bound volume to favored courtiers. The neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David began his painting instruction under Boucher.
A native of Paris, Boucher was the son of a minor painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a painting by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only three months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars. In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until five years later, due to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture.[1] On his return from studying in Italy he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731.His morceau de réception (reception piece) was his Rinaldo and Armida of 1734.
Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from this point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of the Academy, becoming inspector at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and finally Premier Peintre du Roi (First Painter of the King) in 1765.
Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his native Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it."
Boucher is famous for saying that nature is "trop verte et mal éclairée" (too green and badly lit).
Boucher was associated with the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay, whom he taught to draw. Later Boucher made a series of drawings of works by Guay which Madame de Pompadour then engraved and distributed as a handsomely bound volume to favored courtiers. The neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David began his painting instruction under Boucher.
