by Olli Kekäläinen, 'Torn in Black.'


White parchment or fabric curves in the night wind.

Is the black torn?

Silence, torn by sound; emptiness, by being.

direct link: dance/ ...indigo folio leaves

Folio: a sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves of a book or manuscript.

Late afternoon, when the spring sun was pouring in, I videotaped some dancing to José Travieso's track, 'Monster,' on his album, "No More Faith":  Besides being technically beautiful, quite goth baroque in its composition, there is an undercurrent of feeling in this music. Music like this can awaken the inner self in its dance, or this is how it calls to me.

And I layered two different dances to the same music: first I separated the figures, but it didn't look quite right, so I superimposed them, allowing the dance of the two to occur in the same space, an intertexuality of subjectivities, like folio leaves.

I see the woman of the dance transformed into figures that are, but are not me.



I wrote to the Spanish musician, José, on his track, 'Monster': 'This piece is so beautiful, like the passion of angels, pain and transcendance in the music that you play, what is the monster? Is beauty the monster?

How can beauty be a monster?'

He teaches all day, and at night, the music. Stressful, hard. He rarely has time to read, walk, visit friends, relax. "Everyday I work on it with passion... or maybe just obsession. So, everyday, when I'm recording an album, I feel more and more tired, it consumes me... Music is my own monster, my search for the perfection and the beautiful thing is my own monster. This is my explanation."

'I understand. A consuming passion. A beauty that devours its creator in consummation.

I, too, prefer art that is vulnerable, without pretence.'



[still working on this prose poem]

Music

...enters your backbone, joints, plucks the
cartilage holding you together. Music is the
moon of the red tides of your bloodstream.
Drift to and fro, a willow tree, or sway, bend,
a flamenco, stretch, purple morning glories
on the vine, jump. Centre in your hips, your
delta of fiery flow. Feel your pain, power, joy.
Express yourself, woman. No-one is watching.
Say it all. The lyric travels tenderly through your
wrist, a memory of the wind on the hill. Be the
hands that play you. You are an instrument of the
instruments of the musician who is blind, absent,
gone. Whose music plays on; who does not know
you exist. Orphean muse. Twirl on the floor, the
beat in your ankles, room spinning, see through
the canvas walls, stars, sun, moon luminous
on the clock turning. Give everything.

Wanton woman. Harlot of the night. Mother of
angels. Insufferable radiance. Black hole of
emptiness. Sweet moan nectar.

Be loose as a cigarette on the lip in Rio de Janeiro.
The ruffle on a lacy skirt in Dusseldorf. Like the
ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. Glide as
diamonds on the Aegean Sea. Icy tundra of the
Arctic. Emerge and submerge a dorsal fin in the
Caribbean. Become a stone age myth, a magic
amulet hewn from rock. Goddess of the Oroborus
serpent, undulate your liquid bones. Mystery dangles
like your silver bracelets, the ghosts are present.
Approach yourself by disappearing. Rhumba to
this moment; tango to the other side. Primavera of
being. Beautiful in your sensuality. Seek invisible
illumination in your writhing steps. Flee time,
transform in your multiplicity, a seer searching
the spheres. Manifest your wishes - your dreams.
Shake them out of the air to materialize like light forms.
Shimmy, wet sweat, a flag in a wind storm. Thunder
the floor. Cross mid-section through a Pythagorean
theorem and come out the other end of Leibniz's prisms.
Play on Goethe's colour wheel. Trip like a stream
dashing over rocks as smoothly as a Shakespearean
sonnet's sexual ambiguity. Witch, werewolf, Goth
beauty, fragile starchild, cyberpunk, pull the sky
down. Sway those hips, woman. Sway them until you
ignite. Be you while you dance; don't let them
touch you. Dance with your ineffable
muse. Just, dance.

I pull purple veils over my eyes, in love with
indigo blue silk lights and shadows.

I dance the white and black keys of a harpsichord
while it dances me.

Listen: dance on the stage of your
imagination.


© by Brenda Clews, 2011 (a sort of inspirational poem for women, but there's a lot going on in it, too)

            


___
If you're fascinated by the way videos evolve through versions, there are two earlier versions at a Picasa album: The Canvas Backdrop

I've entered this poem in the Big Tent Poetry's Ring of weekly poems. 'dance, ...indigo folio leaves' is a performance piece that includes video and poetry. One, a poetry of motion; the other a written poem. They are on the subject of dancing, and the poem is still being drafted.

A Dance in Purple, in Folio Leaves from Brenda Clews on Vimeo.

(Recommend watching 'fullscreen' - movement and detail clearer.)

Folio: a sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves, or four pages, of a book or manuscript.

Late afternoon on Saturday, when the spring sun was pouring in, I videotaped some dancing to José Travieso's track, 'Monster,' on his album, "No More Faith." Besides being technically beautiful, quite Baroque in its composition, there is an undercurrent of feeling in this music. Music like this can awaken the inner self in its dance, or this is how it calls to me.

And I layered dances to the same tune: first I separated the figures, but it didn't look quite right, so I superimposed them, allowing the dance of the two to occur in the same space, an intertexuality of subjectivities, like folio leaves.

The figure is me mostly because I am a very private person and those closest to me, extended family I guess, don't want to be videoed. I see the figure as not me, though me.

I always leave space for text, but perhaps, there won't be any, it's unnecessary. Though it does need a title, and perhaps an inscription at the beginning, a quote, an image, not sure.

When this video is finished (and it might already be, not sure), I'll upload to YouTube (Picasa's great but doesn't offer an embeddable player like YouTube does, and without paying Vimeo you can only upload videos up to 500MG a week there, so YouTube for a higher resolution and potentially more viewers).

From The Canvas Backdrop

(The Picasa version, which is showing a blank green screen to some viewers, hence uploading to Vimeo this morning.)

___
After I'd finished this version of the video, I thought of this painting and poem, from 2006:

Dancing of the Selves, painting and    photographs, ©2006

Dancing of the Selves What is the self? Peel away to nothing. Only energies, inner winds and flames streams of thought a body of cells of earthdust. Who am I? Am I my memories shifting and changing like ice flows or the sand of the desert? We are transducers, relay switches, cross-currents of selves. I deconstruct in paint across the canvas. Am I what I offer-- scrawl of words, strokes of paint, a flash dance through the air, a few ideas, a point of gravity where the light bends?

My children who tumbled out of me? I am a link in the generations, an ancestor's granddaughter, great aunt of the future, a name for genealogists. A living person breathing over the page where I write. A slight tangle in the ganglia of neurons, and my memories, gone. That's not me. I am who I am loving you.

A poetry of motion today...

From The Canvas Backdrop

Birth of the Self

It is the poet's duty to keep the poem from spinning off into speculation.



"Three guys came, drunk, and the drunkest said he couldn't find his mother's gravestone, and they started a fight."

"Ed went out and they threatened to beat him up because they said we got rid of her grave."

"Did you find it?"

"Yeah, it took awhile to get the proper name, and, of course, they were in the wrong graveyard."

(NaPoWriMo #7)

A site on the forefront of multi-media poetry today, Moving Poems, is having a videopoem contest. Dave writes, "I thought it would be fun to have a contest where everyone would use the same poem in its entirety, either in the soundtrack or as text (or both)." The poem, "Fable," by Howie Good is short but full with metaphoric possibility. The deadline is April 15th; there is no limit to the number of times you can submit entries. Do submit. Details: Moving Poem's First Videopoem Contest.

Moving Poems is a special site because, unlike all the other video poem sites that I've browsed, which really are more 'short films for festivals' sorts of sites and which don't show you the video poems that win their contests, Moving Poems collects the best video poetry at open, public sites on the NET. It's an available treasure house of flicks.

Day is late; it is too late. The latte evaporates,
dry coffee grounds lie in the cold mug. The
thump when the car hit your body remains, as if
the echo effect is broken and repeats, thump,
thump. Metal, soft tissue, bone splinter.
Concussion of my heart.

When antelope dance over rock, smudges of
charcoal. In the cave day and night, and I
wouldn’t come out.

You were alright. You walked away, a bit
bruised.

I bled internally in my dreams, the pillow, the
sheets, under the car tire grown large as a
ferris wheel. My blood sometime ran like
Van Gogh’s wheat fields, the residue of burnt
souls. The ferris wheel ran day and night,
even in deathly winter when everyone
was absent.

Each day the sun comes later; no, earlier.
The green fury of spring is nearing like a
virescent bush fire.  The sumacs are pregnant
with multiple birth buds.

Who is reading me on this day that is later than
all the other days slipping under the wheel
as the tire drags on.

This woven bone, these smudges
of burnt wood,
these buds of spring.