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«D’où vous vient, disiez-vous, cette tristesse étrange,
Montant comme la mer sur le roc noir et nu?»
— Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange
Vivre est un mal. C’est un secret de tous connu,

Une douleur très simple et non mystérieuse
Et, comme votre joie, éclatante pour tous.
Cessez donc de chercher, ô belle curieuse!
Et, bien que votre voix soit douce, taisez-vous!

Taisez-vous, ignorante! âme toujours ravie!
Bouche au rire enfantin! Plus encor que la Vie,
La Mort nous tient souvent par des liens subtils.

Laissez, laissez mon coeur s’enivrer d’un mensonge,
Plonger dans vos beaux yeux comme dans un beau songe
Et sommeiller longtemps à l’ombre de vos cils!

Ever the Same

‘What in the world,’ you said, ‘has brought on this black mood,
Climbing you as the sea climbs up a naked reef?’
— When once the heart has made its harvest (understood
By all men, this) why, just to be alive is grief:

A pain quite simple, nothing mysterious at all,
And like that joy of yours, patent to all we meet;
Stop asking questions, then, I beg of you, and fall
Silent a while, fair prober, though your voice be sweet.

Ah, yes, be silent, ignorant girl, always so gay,
Mouth with the childlike laughter! More than Life, I say,
Death has the power to hold us by most subtle ties.

My one fictitious comfort, kindly, let me keep:
To plunge as into dreams into your lovely eyes,
And in the shadow of your lashes fall asleep.

The Song of the Day is Rob Thomas – “Ever the Same”

I wish our together was still ever the same.

Today is the birthday of Helen Levitt (Brooklyn; August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009); photographer and cinematographer. She was particularly noted for her street photography around New York City. David Levi Strauss described her as “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.”

Levitt was most well known and celebrated for her work taking pictures of children playing in the streets. She also focused her work in areas of Harlem and the Lower East side with minority populations.  There is a constant motif of children playing games in her work.  She stepped away from the normal practice set by other established photographers at the time of giving a journalistic depiction of suffering. She instead chose to show the world from the perspective of children from taking pictures of their chalk art. She usually positions the camera and styles the photo in a way that gives the focus of her photography power.  Her choice to display children playing in the street and explore street photography, fights against what was going on at the time. Legislation being passed in New York at the time was limiting many of the working classes access to these public spaces. Laws were passed that directly targeted these communities in an attempt to control them. New bans on noise targeted working class and minority communities.  There was a movement to also try to keep children from playing on the street, believing it is unsafe for them out there. Instead, it encouraged safe new areas that were usually built more in upper and middle class areas. Helen Levitt instead explored the narrative of those who lived in these areas and played in these streets as a way to empower the subjects of her photos.

She had to give up making her own prints in the 1990s due to sciatica, which also made standing and carrying her Leica difficult, causing her to switch to a small, automatic Contax. She was born with Ménière’s syndrome, an inner-ear disorder that caused her to “[feel] wobbly all [her] life.” She also had a near-fatal case of pneumonia in the 1950s.  Levitt lived a personal and quiet life. She seldom gave interviews and was generally very introverted. She never married, living alone with her yellow tabby Blinky.  Levitt died in her sleep, at the age of 95.

Gallery

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And today is the birthday of Alan Jay Lerner (August 31, 1918 – June 14, 1986); lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, and later Burton Lane, he created some of the world’s most popular and enduring works of musical theatre both for the stage and on film. He won three Tony Awards and three Academy Awards, among other honors.  The Lerner and Loewe partnership spanned three decades and nine musicals from 1942 to 1960 and again from 1970 to 1972, the pair are known for being behind the creation of critical on stage successes such as My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, and Camelot along with the musical film Gigi.

Lerner married eight times: Ruth Boyd (1940–1947), singer Marion Bell (1947–1949), actress Nancy Olson (1950–1957), lawyer Micheline Muselli Pozzo di Borgo (1957–1965), editor Karen Gundersen (1966–1974), Sandra Payne (1974–1976), Nina Bushkin (1977–1981) and Liz Robertson (1981–1986 [his death]). Four of his eight wives — Olson, Payne, Bushkin, and Robertson — were actresses. His seventh wife, Nina Bushkin, whom he married on May 30, 1977, was the director of development at Mannes College of Music and the daughter of composer and musician Joey Bushkin.  After their divorce in 1981, Lerner was ordered to pay her a settlement of $50,000.  Lerner wrote in his autobiography (as quoted by The New York Times): “All I can say is that if I had no flair for marriage, I also had no flair for bachelorhood.”  One of his ex-wives reportedly said, “Marriage is Alan’s way of saying goodbye.”

Mac Tag