Tristan and Isolde: A Meeting of Musician-Lovers

Yseult la blonde by Gaston Bussiere

Isolde

"...Half dreaming melt into the elements,
When they seem most alive and beautiful :
To fade into the purple of the west."

Brangaena

"...Bad dreams are said to augur opposites,
And bring us joys in weeds of sorrow draped."
Tristan and Isolde: A Tragedy. Louis K. Anspacher. Brentano. NY. (1904). Act II

I first became aware of the special importance of the Tristan and Isolde legend reading Joseph Campbell. The first known literary attribution to the tale is by Gottfried von Strassburg. The incredible mark that this story has made on Western civilization and truly world history is based on the central theme in the tale: Love. It is love, outside of Christian wedlock, which motivates the principal characters towards dissolution. For the first time in history, the cast of collectivism imposed over individuality was broken by a spell of love. Suddenly, the individual appeared at the fore of socio-cultural continuity for the first time and proclaimed an as yet unknown impact on the founding institution of social cohesion. Not only did love surmount the apex of all human relationship, the creative life, which sparks and endures love, became attainable, enabling the sacrificial character of a new individuality of self-knowledge and self-development in the art of life on Earth. 

See my previous post: From Genius Mind to Genius Heart: Wagner, Liszt and Dream's End

_________

a strong wind blows, and night falls, penetratingly raw, I pick up my face and screw it to the side of a cabin, changing my ways before the all-consuming blush of my red wife, gently winnowing my insides into the decadence of a youthful love story, she is my only one, and we decide to attend a party, by invitation to perform music, she is diligent in her work

Female Musician by Unknown

and in this response, a mystery hangs breathless with the unprofessional glint of our new friend’s weakened sigh, and stammering over the frozen concrete mold of a battering casino avenue, the wading head of sky simmers in an uncooked pit of flesh as we enter a home riddled with the divorce of youth from the useable head, dark rooms of sexual witnessing, of strange rumors, and fatherless groans, cruel mothers bedecked with the sorrow of an empty need

Monday Morning by Hans Baluschek

old children sit silently staring at a naked couple, motionless and bearing nothing but their side skin in two separate rooms of frightening disarray, and back in the foreground, the entrance hall, two young men sport a frantic jam session with homemade instrumentation, wood and stone chopped in a dizzying fray of wires and bone, strung together for a wish-fulfilled greed of rhythmic sounding, which stuns and climbs atop the phantom noose of age with momentous fleeting tones

The Savoyard by Alfred Jacob Miller

in that moment, the hostess of our strange inkling of a human party hands us a small envelope, and in it a card, reading the names of my wife and I, and best wishes in our move to new york city

_______ 

A space for listening, to cleanse the air with sacred voice,
An incensed feeling,
Touching on lost beauty within and under the strongly pressed clothing
Worn like skin that drops sadly over her neck of virulent sorrow
As a shapeless feature in the energy of her following
...
Passing through a foreign box
Crafted with a tongue for sensuous musical fruition,
To meld in the sorrow and aftermath of prehistoric eyes
Dreaming around the enshrined doorway
Through our billions in pain

Excerpt from "To Play the Chord of Humanity beyond Taoist Shamanic Heights"