Clouds, stars and dreams

Modern art - do you like modern art?

How do you define modern art?

I'm not sure I feel like discussing this now.

Here is a link which I think provides a very good example of the modern art I like:

http://berndnaut.nl/works.htm

Enjoy! [Lucia, thanks for the link! ;) ]

Poetry - is it possible to understand poetry?

I often see it as cryptic and distant - yet sometimes a poem catches my attention, and it may happen that a line or two keep coming back to my memory.


Bright Star (J. Keats)

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death

Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (W. B. Yeats)

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym1M9vBVIYw (Yeats' Grave - The Cranberries) [I think there are a few mistakes and misspellings, but overall it's a nice video.]

On remembrance... And communication

In May I went to Berlin for a few days: I had a very pleasant time, and I thought I would now upload some photos that I took while exploring this lively city. Digital cameras are wonderful, but they do make it easy, far too easy to generate photos that rapidly add up to embarrassingly high numbers. For this reason, identifying a theme and selecting the few snapshots related to it seemed a quite reasonable strategy here. :)
The two pictures above show two memorials: the first one is found in the very central Bebelplatz and commemorates the - sadly famous - book burning ceremony that took place in 1933, while the second marks the spot where the body of Rosa Luxemburg was thrown into the Landwehr canal in 1919.
I have always thought that the choice of empty bookcases to remember a book burning episode is very meaningful. Absence is often regarded as a "lack of presence" and thus seen as a negative condition - yet an absence may be as significant as a presence, in a way which turns out to be much more intuitive than one may expect at first. A quote from Heinrich Heine is engraved next to the glass plate: "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people".
Since I included a quote, why not add another one? This time it is by Rosa Luxemburg: "Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter [the one who thinks differently]". The paragraph from which this sentence was taken can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Luxemburg.

This collection of concrete slabs of variable height is known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It was, and probably still is, a rather controversial project. I must say, I hesitated before I decided to visit it (also, I didn't go to the museum built - literally - under the memorial): even when I was there, surrounded by these grey blocks, my attention was mainly driven towards the construction itself - namely its spatial, geometrical features: light and shadow, uniformity, contrasts, loss of direction.

A memorial, whatever its form and nature may be, cannot provide a single, well-defined and universally (so to speak) accepted meaning: every individual will react differently to it and will be left with a handful of thoughts and impressions. As much as this may sound as an attempt to undermine the value of such monuments and sculptures, I believe it is not so.
Also, I think that an important aspect is their accessibility: anyone walking around Bebelplatz has a chance to see those white, empty shelves. I guess that a similar attempt to "bring a message to passers-by" has inspired science fairs and festivals organised in public squares, for instance: such initiatives are based on the line "If you don't come look for me, I will make myself almost impossible not to be noticed". The question is then: once you are indeed visible, will you be able to speak clearly, and will both parties understand each other? A sparkle that bursts communication is not overly complicated to generate. The point is: what follows the spark, and how?

Not all those who wander are lost

This sentence has been lingering in my mind for a while. It comes from the "Lord of The Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien, if I am not mistaken - I haven't read the books yet, but I do know this one bit. I suppose it caught my attention when I read it recently - on an advert, sadly - because it does describe very well how events in life sometimes seem to link to one another and form an oddly shaped, complex and fragile chain where luck, initiative and curiosity all find their places and times to come into play.
For instance, one may go to a café (without having planned to) and discover that Mary Hampton is in town for a concert - then one walks to Cowley and discovers the "Old Boot Factory"... Which is indeed a factory, or well, was one and is now turned into a sort of post-industrial music hall.
Despite the cold and windy weather I thoroughly enjoyed the concert, and I was so fond of the music I heard that I eventually bought "Folly", the album that Mary Hampton and her Cotillion released last year.
A song, "No. 32", is based on a poem by Emily Dickinson that I found extremely beautiful:

I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed,
"For beauty" I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are." He said.

And so kinsmen met a night
We talked between the rooms
Until the moss had reached our lips
And covered up our names.