cf. Keystone View Co., “Citizenship lessons: father washing in the morning” (ca. 1929)
She’s My Ex
Tag: animation
“diaphane III: evolution”
diaphane III: evolution (digital painting and animation by me)
Teenage Angst ca. 1978
cf. digitally edited, composited and sequenced Google Street View panoramic images
aria
cf. Nationaal Archief, “Underneath a parasol” (1933) (edit)
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory…
— Joyce, from Dubliners
Sunflower Variation I
John Sapiro, “Sunflower Variation I” (Pastel/Digital)
The furnace in which his soul was forged
cf. photograph by Erik Witsoe via Unsplash (edited) and video by Vimeo-Free-Videos via Pixabay (edited)
J. S. Bach, Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein performed by Monica Chew
When Smokey Sings
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done (excerpt)
We start believing now that we can be who we are
Please Mr. Postman
cf. Horace Bundy, Vermont Lawyer (1841)
Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me,
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom love’s subliming fire invades,
Rule and example found;
There, the faith of any ground
No schismatic will dare to wound,
That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.
— John Donne, A Valediction of the Book (excerpt)
Please Mr. Postman by Carpenters
The Calling
edited composite video: live action + Pudding Lane Productions
—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside… Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings…
—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts…
— Joyce, Ulysses
Vanity Fair
cf. John Margotta, “La Galleria” (Orange Coast Magazine, 1986)
Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?
— Thackeray, Vanity Fair
I met her on the strip. It was another lost weekend.
cf. The Denison Limner, “Miss Denison of Stonington, Connecticut” (ca. 1790)
“Talk To Ya Later” – The Tubes
I Want You Back
A Voice of One’s Own
Starry Night
cf. Vincent van Gogh, “Starry Night” (1888)
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
—Hamlet
Part III: It is the autumnal mood with a difference.
cf. Katsushika Hokusai, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa…” (ca. 1830–32)
Oh, never this whelming east wind swells
But it seems like the sea’s return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when after doubt
Our love came back amain.
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
—Robert Frost, “A Line-storm Song” (excerpt)
“What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?”
cf. LIFE, 1968
MIRANDA:
‘Tis far off
And rather like a dream than an assurance
That my remembrance warrants. Had I not
Four or five women once that tended me?PROSPERO:
Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
—Shakespeare, The Tempest
Blue Wind
cf. Joseph Wright of Derby, “Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery” (ca. 1768)
“Design For Dreaming”
cf. MPO Productions, “Design for Dreaming” (1956) (Digital Edit)
Washington Square
cf. Corson Hirschfeld, “Sporting Life” (Cincinnati Magazine, 1977)
Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. “Well, I was in hopes that we might still have been friends.”
“I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message — if you had waited for an answer — that it was unnecessary for you to come in that hope.”
—Henry James, Washington Square
Tell me why I never seem to make you happy though heaven knows I try
cf. Childe Hassam in Joseph Pennell, “Modern Illustration” (1895)
“Back out of all this now too much for us”
cf. Harry W. Watrous, The Passing of Summer (1912)
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off…
–Robert Frost, Directive
Don’t know quite what to say, haven’t seen you in seven ages
cf. LIFE, 1964
Doctor’s Orders
cf. Ladies’ Home Journal, 1953
To His Coy Mistress
cf. Heinrich Krenes, Vor dem Pantheon (1908)
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime…
–Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
All I Need Is The Girl
cf. Sergey Sudeykin: “Gentleman’s formal attire” and “Woman wearing a blue-green suit”
(additional drawing and animation by John Sapiro)
“Let us go then, you and I…”
cf. Remo Farruggio, Basin Street (1938) and LIFE, 1968
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
–T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (excerpt)
“Her eye discourses; I will answer it…”
cf. Gustav Kalhammer, “View from Café Heinrichhof…” (1911)
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, ’tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
—Romeo and Juliet
Unchained
cf. Lewis Hine, “Icarus, Empire State Building” (1930)
Deep is the light in her eyes
cf. Cincinnati Magazine, 1990
Squeeze Left
cf. Ladies’ Home Journal, 1964
Do you love me now that I can dance?
cf. Winslow Homer, “A Parisian Ball-Dancing At The Mabille, Paris”
Go Go Godzilla
Drawing And Animation By John Sapiro
Jackie Blue
cf. Unidentified photographer (Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection), “Woman sitting on window seat…” (between 1900 and 1920)
A Fifth Of Beethoven
cf. Victor Gabriel Gilbert, Scène de Bal and Joseph Karl Stieler, Portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven (1820)
Just when you think you got a good thing it seems to slip away
cf. Georges Seurat: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 (detail) (1884/86),
Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884)
and Gustave Caillebotte: Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 (detail) (1877)
“Why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia?”
cf. photographs by Jay Mantri and Paul Itkin via Unsplash
He dove in and swam the pool, but when he tried to haul himself up onto the curb he found that the strength in his arms and shoulders had gone, and he paddled to the ladder and climbed out. Looking over his shoulder he saw, in the lighted bathhouse, a young man. Going out onto the dark lawn he smelled chrysanthemums or marigolds—some stubborn autumnal fragrance—on the night air, strong as gas. Looking overhead he saw that the stars had come out, but why should he seem to see Andromeda, Cepheus, and Cassiopeia? What had become of the constellations of midsummer? He began to cry.
— John Cheever, The Swimmer
The world that we used to know
People tell me it don’t turn no more
The places we used to go
Familiar faces that ain’t smiling like before
The time of our time has come and gone
I fear we’ve been waiting too long…
“Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?”
cf. Photographs by Clem Onojeghuo (ocean) and Lukas Budimaier (man) via Unsplash (edited collage)
“Consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”
—Herman Melville, Moby Dick
She didn’t tell me there were rocks under the waves right off the shore
LIFE (1972)
Whenever I see your smiling face I have to smile myself…
cf. from William Mortensen, “Portrait Procedure” (ca. 1941)
“Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium.”
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
—T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night (excerpt)
If this is what’s real
If this is what’s true
Tell me how come
I keep forgetting we’re not in love anymore…
cf. from W. H. Broadwell, “Night Photography” (ca. 1909)
Morning, just another day…
cf. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)
East Side, West Side Blues
cf. Photograph by Adrian Williams via Unsplash
Leave It
cf. image from “St. Nicholas book of plays & operettas” (1900)
Nowhere Man
cf. Eadweard Muybridge, Animal locomotion (ca. 1887)
Night and day, you are the one
cf. Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night (1889)
Spacer
cf. Photograph by NASA via Unsplash
Smile a little smile for me, Rosemarie
cf. Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Comedia (Oil on panel) (ca. 1892-1894)
Midnight Rider
cf. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Carriage (ca. 1881)
Dancing In The Moonlight
cf. Henri-Julien-Félix Rousseau, Carnival Evening (1886)
That’s the power of love
cf. Winslow Homer, The Life Line (1884)
For rain that’s fallen halfway down the sky, I apologize
cf. Myra Albert Wiggins, Looking seaward (1889) and THE BULL PEN, mt baldy lightning
I just wanna stop
cf. Charles O’Rear, Two young people overlook the Colorado River (1972) and Sunset Time Lapse – YouTube
Echoes Of Love
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, The Great Hall of the Library of Congress (ca. 1911)
Silver Morning
cf. Johannes Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (ca. 1662)
Sad eyes, turn the other way
cf. Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665)
Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you
cf. Paul-César Helleu, Woman Reclining (edited and animated)
I’m A Believer
Girlfriend
cf. Daniel Berry Austin, Bergen House… (ca. 1899-1909) and James Tissot, Spring Morning (ca. 1875)
“Oh! Blessed rage for order…”
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker’s rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.
—Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West” (excerpt)
We Don’t Talk Anymore
cf. John Singer Sargent, Firelight (edited and animated) (ca. 1875)
Jackie Blue
cf. Eadweard J. Muybridge, “Dancing (fancy)” (ca. 1884 – 1887)
John Sapiro 