cf. Keats, “Bright Star!…” and cf. National Geographic Magazine (1948)
Rebel Rebel
Tag: music
Neck On Up
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Medlars – new computer to keep medical information” (1964)
Now I’ve found my heaven
From the neck on up
You’re a perfect eleven
From the neck on up…
Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya love me?
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1958) (edited collage by me)
Time’s on the wing,
Life never knows the return the spring.
— John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
All I’ve got is a photograph
cf. Elmer Underwood, “Gossip at a wayside inn at Botten…” (ca. 1905)
And Benedick, love on; I will requite thee…
— Much Ado About Nothing
When I was stone blue I knew what to do.
cf. National Geographic Magazine (1948)
EXERT thy voice, sweet harbinger of Spring!
This moment is thy time to sing,
This moment I attend to praise,
And set my numbers to thy lays.
Free as thine shall be my song;
As thy music, short or long.Poets wild as thee were born,
Pleasing best when unconfined,
When to please is least designed,
Soothing but their cares to rest:
Cares do still their thoughts molest,
And still th’ unhappy poet’s breast,Like thine, when best he sings, is placed against a thorn.
She begins, let all be still!
Muse, thy promise now fulfil!
Sweet, oh sweet! still sweeter yet!
— Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, “To the Nightingale” (excerpt)
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
Jaroslav A. Polák, “…Old Couple”
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
— Sonnet LXXIII
My precious queen, forbear, and give true evidence to his love, which stands an honorable trial.
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1965)
ANTONY:
Hear me, queen:
The strong necessity of time commands
Our services awhile, but my full heart
Remains in use with you.
— Antony and Cleopatra
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
National Geographic Magazine (1948)
I waited all night, I remember that
smoked a cigarette
watched TV
went out and saw some friends
drove by your house
went to a bar and had a beer
got back home and tried to sleep…
— J.S.
I knocked the phone off the nightstand
And the operator said, “May I help you please?”
and I said “No thanks, baby tonight there ain’t no help for me —
see I just had a bad dream, that’s all that’s wrong with me
see I just had a bad dream.”
“avowal”
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
avowal
all along the avenue
every evening
indulging in reminiscence
ofttimes
umbrella unavailing
and sometimes why?
— J.S.
Right Place, Wrong Time
Bob’s Love Affair (1915)
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June —
Hold on to what you’ve got
Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay
In youth when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet…
But age with his stealing steps
Hath clawed me in his clutch…
— Hamlet
Sonnet CXLV
Photograph by Amarpreet Singh via Pixabay
THOSE lips that Love’s own hand did make
Breath’d forth the sound that said ‘I hate,’
To me that languish’d for her sake:
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was us’d in giving gentle doom;
And taught it thus anew to greet;
‘I hate,’ she alter’d with an end,
That follow’d it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away.
‘I hate’ from hate away she threw,
And sav’d my life, saying—‘Not you.’
— Sonnet CXLV (in late 1582 William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway)
Takin’ Care Of Business
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1964) and Maclean’s Magazine (1961)
If seriously I may convey my thoughts
In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
With one that in her sex, her years, profession,
Wisdom, and constancy hath amazed me more
Than I dare blame my weakness…
— All’s Well That Ends Well
“The Road Taken”
George C. Laur, “Students on Their Way to Senior High School…” (ca. 1975)
The Road Taken
Two hundred roads diverged from a yellow house,
And sorry I could not travel all two hundred
And be one traveler, briefly I stood
And looked down one and thought it was good;
And looked down the other one hundred and ninety nine
And thought they were mine.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Even knowing how way leads on to way losing track,
I never doubted that I could come back.
I am telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages ago:
Two hundred roads diverged —
I took number one ninety nine to my regret,
And that is what I can’t forget.
— J.S. (cf. Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”)
Falstaff’s armamentarium
OSU Special Collections & Archives: Commons, “Woman slicing potatoes for potato chips” (2008)
[Enter Mistress Page and Mistress Ford.]
FALSTAFF:
…Who comes here? My doe?MISTRESS FORD:
Sir John? Art thou there, my deer, my male deer?FALSTAFF:
…Let the sky rain potatoes,
let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves,”
hail kissing-comfits, and snow eryngoes;
let there come a tempest of provocation,
I will shelter me here.
[He embraces her.]
— The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Early Years: Video And Photo Collage, 1978
[He reads the letter.]
cf. Toni Frissell, “Woman and man lying on a dock” (ca. 1969) and video by 5239640 via Pixabay (edited, modified and collage recomposition by me)
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
— Hamlet
We’ll Never Have to Say Goodbye Again
I’m in love with the other woman
Two Women (ca. 1915)
‘For further I could say “This man’s untrue,”
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew…
— A Lover’s Complaint
The Dewey Decimal System
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Young people working in Library” (1964)
From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive.
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire.
They are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.
— Love’s Labor’s Lost
The Ghost Of Christmas Past
cf. Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Christmas Shoppers…” (detail) (1969) (Edited by me)
FALSTAFF [to Doll]:
Thou dost give me flattering busses.
DOLL TEARSHEET:
By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.
FALSTAFF:
I am old, I am old.
DOLL TEARSHEET:
I love thee better than I love e’er a scurvy young
boy of them all.
— Henry IV, Part 2
Organic Chemistry
cf. Warren K. Leffler, “George Mason College, Va.” (detail) (1964)
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
— Hamlet
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
The course of true love never did run smooth.
cf. Gold Bell Catalog (1963)
‘Cause when I get close to you, not much to say.
Warren K. Leffler, “Teen age [i.e., teenage] economy” (detail) (1964)
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity.
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
O MISTRESS mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting—
Every wise man’s son doth know.What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty,—
Then come kiss me, Sweet-and-twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
— from Twelfth Night
Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes
Bipolar Depression
antique
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
antique
dost thou think it fire?
dost thou think it fleeting flame?
thou knowest the stars in the sky
and my heart
— J.S.
alter ego
cf. Richard Avedon, “Carmen, Homage To Munkacsi, Coat By Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris” (ca. 1957) and Horst Ehricht, “All the rage in Paris” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1977)
Sonnet CXXXIX
cf. Gold Bell Catalog (1963)
O! CALL not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart…
Bipolar Disorder
Photograph by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash
This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!
— Paul Laurence Dunbar, The Debt
meditating upon the meaning of the line “clams on the halfshell and rollerskates” in the song “good times” by chic
cf. photograph by Thomas J. O’Halloran, “The Plum disco dancing [1119 21st St. NW]” (1977) and
video by Luiz-Jorge-Artista via Pixabay (edited and recomposed collage by me)
go away, you bitter cuss. it’s still 1980 somewhere, some corner
of your dark apartment
where the mystery of the lyric hasn’t faded. and love is in the
chorus waiting to be born
— D. A. Powell, meditating upon the meaning of the line “clams on the halfshell and rollerskates” in the song “good times” by chic (excerpt) (Poetry, September 2006)
Oberon on the request line
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “WFC-AM & WKYS-FM radio operation” (1977)
OBERON:
Sound music.
[Music.]
Come, my queen, take hands with me,
And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be…
[Titania and Oberon dance.]
— A Midsummer Night’s Dream
souvenirs
I’m With You
Shopping Lists Of Shakespearean Characters 1: Bertram And Angelo
Morning Announcements
cf. Screen Magazine (2003)
BENEDICK:
Come, come, we are friends. Let’s have a
dance ere we are married, that we may lighten our
own hearts and our wives’ heels.LEONATO:
We’ll have dancing afterward.BENEDICK:
First, of my word! Therefore play, music.—
Prince, thou art sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife…
— Much Ado About Nothing
Greeting Card
cf. TV commercial (ca. 1987)
Alas! is even love too weak To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Ah, love, let us be true To one another!
Bright are the stars that shine Dark is the sky
Love seeketh not itself to please,
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only
And to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him.
She knew she was by him beloved
All passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love,
And in Life’s noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
Love is not a feeling to pass away
My heart’s so full of joy, That I shall do some wild extravagance
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.
You who suffer because you love, love still more.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever
I love thee, as the good love heaven.
Love keeps the cold out better than a cloak.
Imparadis’d in one another’s arms.
Love is the crowning grace of humanity,
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
Love’s too precious to be lost,
We love but while we may
Love will conquer at the last.
Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori.
To see her is to love her,
Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose,
❤️
— J.S.
Echo
Library of Congress, “Reflection” (ca. 1910)
COME to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
— Christina Rossetti, “Echo”
The Waste Land
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1969) and The Mechanical & Landscape Photo Co., “bedroom interior…” (ca.1870)
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain…
Antony and Cleopatra
John Ferrell, “…Good Humor ice cream truck” (detail) (1942)
“Give me some music—music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.”
— Antony and Cleopatra
Et tu, Brutè? (a true story)
cf. Kim Rintling, “IMG_5859” (1980) (edited)
Et tu, Brutè? (a true story)
I stepped out of my office to have a cigarette.
It was about 11 o’clock and I needed a break.
I was standing near the parking lot when I noticed a large shadow.
I could vaguely hear a muffled argument.
I looked up and to my horror and surprise I saw the Little Caesars blimp
coming in fast, low and right towards me.
I could see the pilots arguing in the gondola so I started waving in what must have seemed like a futile gesture.
The wind picked up and the blimp began to fishtail down the street —would it hit me, my office or my car?
It must have been headed to a grand opening or something but my office had nothing to do with it.
I tried to light another cigarette out of nervousness but it’s difficult in the wind and then I realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to have an open flame in the area.
After what seemed like an eternity the ship seemed to right itself and it sauntered past me and down the adjacent street.
I ran inside and tried to pull myself together.
— J.S.
Miles to go before I sleep (Phoenix, Arizona, Tacoma, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A. and Northern California)
Solitaire
W.E. Daugherty, “Solitary” (ca. 1904)
BEHOLD her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
— Wordsworth, The Solitary Reaper
I’m thinking of you Mary Anne…
Chapter 8
cf. Toni Frissell, “Fashion model underwater…” (1939) and video by Relaxing_Guru via Pixabay (edited, modified, and combined recomposition)
The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Well, as much as I try I can’t forget about us
cf. TV commercial (edited and modified)
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
— Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound: I
For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now…
magazine advertisement (1967)
“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”
“Have I ever sought release?”
“In words. No. Never.”
“In what, then?”
“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”
“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl— you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”
— Dickens, A Christmas Carol
O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
O! FOR my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdu’d
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew’d;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel ’gainst my strong infection;
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me, then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.
— Sonnet CXI
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, comes home again, on better judgment making.
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1962)
FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possessing
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,
In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter.
— Sonnet LXXXVII
[Storm still.]
cf. Image by Engin Akyurt via Pixabay (edited)
This tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else
Save what beats there…
O, that way madness lies. let me shun that;
No more of that.
— King Lear
Beethoven: Grosse Fuge, Op. 133
My ex thinks she’s so tough she flicks her cigarette before she puffs.
Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
cf. photographs of Frances Benjamin Johnston by Frances Benjamin Johnston (ca. 1888)
Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
“He’s a very sweet guy…and he’s deeply unhappy.”
When Will I Be Loved?
Esther Bubley, “Girl sitting alone in the Sea Grill…” (1943)
I’ve been made blue
I’ve been lied to
When will I be loved?
Don’t Talk Just Kiss
A bad time to be in love
My magic won’t work on you
cf. Image by Enrique Meseguer via Pixabay (edited, modified and 3D recomposition)
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have ’s mine own,
Which is most faint…
— The Tempest
Time has but half succeeded in his theft— Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.
Frances S. Allen, “The difficult step” (ca. 1900)
OH that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
‘Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!’
— William Cowper, “On the Receipt of My Mother’s Picture out of Norfolk”
Dépression à Tucson
cf. National Geographic, 1953
A little less returned for him each spring.
Music began to fail him. Brahms, although
His dark familiar, often walked apart.His spirit grew uncertain of delight,
Certain of its uncertainty, in which
That dark companion left him unconsoledFor a self returning mostly memory.
Only last year he said that the naked moon
Was not the moon he used to see, to feel(In the pale coherences of moon and mood
When he was young), naked and alien,
More leanly shining from a lankier sky.Its ruddy pallor had grown cadaverous.
He used his reason, exercised his will,
Turning in time to Brahms as alternateIn speech. He was that music and himself.
They were particles of order, a single majesty:
But he remembered the time when he stood alone.He stood at last by God’s help and the police;
But he remembered the time when he stood alone.
He yielded himself to that single majesty;But he remembered the time when he stood alone,
When to be and delight to be seemed to be one,
Before the colors deepened and grew small.
— Wallace Stevens, “Anglais Mort à Florence”
I will be your umbrella man, Part 2
The Birth of Bacchus
La Dolce Vita (1960)
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant from th’ etherial sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms,
With which he fills th’ immortal Juno’s arms…
— Ovid, Metamorphoses (Tr. Garth, Dryden, et al.)
I am resigned that this is me
footfall
cf. Photograph by Shane Rounce (detail) via Unsplash and CGI by pixel shox
footfall
i stepped back into time
waded into the same river twice
you know, nick had some really good advice for gatsby
it’s easy to get lost
romance glancer
true love chancer
happiness chaser
gone again spacer
— J.S.
Mrs. Sinico
Photograph by Kevin Jarrett via Unsplash
With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full…
— Joyce, from Dubliners
