Dear Zazie, How is your day? Hope it was good. Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge. Do you have a story to tell? Which way do you tell it? Is it a story of two? Rhett
The Lovers’ Chronicle
Dear Muse,
© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
watchin’ each other
stretched out
sated for the moment
the mornin’ breeze
billows the curtains
of the open windows
and first light
dances across the room
the gaze is the same
lips move, but do not speak
just two watchin’
and waitin’ for signs
© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved
a door in a hallway
and behind that door
you came to me
as i wished
fragments of a scene
but enough
to see me through
signs ahead
my friend bret mosley
sings a song of hope,
then a dark haired
high plains beauty,
and now The Lioness
speakin’ of hope
never been one
to ignore clearly
marked signs
on the trail
saddle up darlin’
shall we see what lies ahead
believe, courage
now wound tight enough
so i gotta know
the day you walked away
would it have mattered
if i had asked you to stay
© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
Two
Just us two
Two bodies lyin’
Naked, exhausted.
Two people livin’
Two people talkin’
Two people believin’
Two different voices
Two ways to tell the story
Was there nothin’ I could do
To save you?
When did we become so unhappy?
We were so disappointed
Our dreams disjointed,
Sleepin’ out of tune
Through all of the mistakes
We held each other in the doorframe
Through the earthquakes
But no one could fix us no one could
There are no other witnesses
Just us two
The still gazes
Do not change in the shadows
© copyright 2012 mac tag/Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved
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| Man Ray | |
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Man Ray, photographed at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse exhibition in Paris by Carl Van Vechten on June 16, 1934
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Today is the birthday of Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976 Paris); visual artist who spent most of his career in France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. Perhaps best known for his photography, he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Man Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself.
In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix (Donna Lecoeur) (1887–1975), in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and formally divorced in 1937.
In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France. He soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists’ model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray’s companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films, Le Retour à la Raison and L’Étoile de mer. In 1929, he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.
Man Ray was forced to return from Paris to the United States due to the Second World War. He lived in Los Angeles, California from 1940 to 1951 where he focused his creative energy on painting. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, Man Ray met Juliet Browner, a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer, who studied dance with Martha Graham, and an experienced artists’ model. The two married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.
He died in Paris on November 18, 1976 from a lung infection. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Ray’s epitaph reads “unconcerned, but not indifferent”. When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads “together again”.
Gallery
Portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse
Drink to me only with
1920, Three Heads (Joseph Stella and Marcel Duchamp, painting bust portrait of Man Ray above Duchamp), gelatin silver print, 20.7 x 15.7 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1920, The Coat-Stand (Porte manteau), reproduced in New York dada (magazine), Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, April, 1921
Lampshade, reproduced in 391, n. 13, July
With Salvador Dalí in Paris, on June 16, 1934 making “wild eyes” for photographer Carl Van Vechten
Fascinatin’ day today in romance history, dedicated to you.
On this day in 1930, one of America’s most eligible bachelors got married. Journalist H.L. Mencken, almost 50, had never before been married. He was a man who made fun of romance and who called marriage “the end of hope.” My friend Jett loves that quote, though he keeps gettin’ married, and Rhett believes it is so. So Mencken shocked America when he tied the knot on this day. The bride, his girlfriend of seven years: Sara Haardt, of Montgomery, Alabama, an English professor, suffragist, and fellow writer. She died of meningitis just five years after marryin’ Mencken. Mencken was grief-stricken and never remarried.
On this day in 1950, Italian poet, writer, Cesare Pavese died from an overdose perhaps due to the failure of a brief love affair with the actress Constance Dowling, to whom his last novel (La luna e i falò, The Moon and the Bonfires (1950)), was dedicated (“For C. The ripeness is all”.) And one of his last poems (“Death will come and she’ll have your eyes”) was dedicated to Dowling.
And on this day in 1953, William Wyler‘s film, Roman Holiday (1953) with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. It was Hepburn’s first starrin’ role and she would win an Oscar. A wonderful, romantic, sad movie.
The Poem of the Day is from Pavese:
Two
Man and woman watch each other lying in bed:
their two bodies stretched out wide and exhausted.
the man is still, only the woman takes long breaths
that quiver her ribs. The legs distended
are bony and knotted in the man’s. The whispers
from the sun-covered street are foisted on them.
The air hangs impalpable in the heavy shadow
and freezes the drops of living sweat
on the lips. The gazes from the adjoining heads
are identical, but they no longer find each other’s bodies
as when they first embraced. They nearly touch.
The woman’s lips move a little, but do not speak.
The breathing that swells the ribs stops
at the longest gaze from the man. The woman
turns her face close to the man’s, lips to lips.
But the man’s gaze does not change in the shadow.
Heavy and still weigh the eyes within eyes
at the warmth of the breath that revives the sweat,
desolate. The woman does not move her body,
supple and alive. The lips of the man come close
but the still gaze does not change in the shadow.
The Song of the Day is The Antlers – “Two”
Mac Tag
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