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" 

Kieran of Ireland and the Sainthood of Dream History

Detail of a stained glass window depicting Saint Kieran
(St. Brendan's Church, Ireland - Photography by Andreas F. Borchert)

"Kieran of Saighir was the first saint born in Ireland...Before she conceived Kieran in her womb his mother had a dream: as it were a star that fell into her mouth; which dream she related to the magicians and to the knowledgeable ones of the time, and they said to her: “thou wilt bear a son whose fame and whose virtues shall to the world’s latter end be great [i.e. notorious].” Afterwards that holy son Kieran was born..." Life of S. Kieran of Saighir. at Celtic Literature Collective

Strangely familiar to the origin stories for Buddha, I first read about this aspect of Irish history in Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology. Reflecting, I see similarities to Mexico's Virgin de Guadalupe, who was seen in a vision (see also my post: The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross), to incite the mask of christian history over the indigenous face. I wonder, was the story more brutal, covered up by fables of dream and superstition, to align with dominant perspectives on native irrationality.

See related posts: The Mother of Buddha Had A Dream & To Dream Is To Conceive An Other

______

In the penthouse suite version of my tiny apartment, I cavort around the fine art, baby grand piano, clear glass tables and impeccable wood floors with my mother. She is youthful and gay, enjoying the space with matchless ardor. As I look into her face, I begin to call out for my wife. “Where is she?” I ask pleadingly. Strangely, the stars shine clearly outside, entering our dimly lit space through the window. We are high above the smog and pollution, high above the human world of earthly obligation.

Cupid and Psyche in the natural bower by Hugh Douglas Hamilton

As I step down, to visit my grandparents in their New York home, I wait, fixed in place within the center of a foyer condensed by the continuous movement of relatives up and down the stairs. The air is heavy. I embrace each family member longingly, and with a strength characteristic of my waking need. Our grandfather is dying.

Interior by William Gerard Barry

Later that night, my wife and I decide to cross a high river. Our kayaks soon tip in the rushing torrent, flooded with murky water. We swim earnestly to the edge, where my wife quits on me as I gather strength enough to submerge in a second-hand craft to retrieve one of our vessels caught in the shoreline brush. Sitting in a sinking vessel, with only a dilapidated, half-worn paddle, a family of ducks begins attacking with an incessant hunger for my pruned, sore fingers.  

_______

Where am I falling?
Who do I call?
I have fallen, I am getting small.

- excerpt from "I Have Fallen"

The Imperial Ethereality of the Christian Cross

Eusebius of Caesarea 

"...when the day was already beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS."

EUSEBIUS PAMPHILUS OF CAESAREA: THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED EMPEROR CONSTANTINE. CHAPTER XXVIII. The Bagster translation, revised by Ernest Cushing Richardson, Ph.D.

For a magnificent compendium on Medieval and also Ancient and Modern Literature, visit Internet History Sourcebooks

________

A medieval townscape; similarly forged in the imaginative filmmaking of Kurosawa, yet in the guise of European history. I see lowered clay-roofed structures, and dirt roads amassing with each step into the muddy ground. There is an instinctual defensive glare from the executioner’s hat and the stymying bureaucrat’s shallow presence as I enter the gates of the stead. 

Meeting at the Golden Gate by Jean Hey (Master of Moulins)

At my first meeting, I am greeted by a youth, an apprentice to a knight, with radiant innocence so bright I am shocked to the core. And in that moment I lash out. In a single slash of my sword, an instantaneous move, I split the defenseless youth in half. 

Bors and Lionel

Blood sprays from his center and the gore filters through my footprints in stone and mud. I am taken aback by my own actions, yet as the clouds roll on, the silence is ever penetrating, unfulfilled by redolent justice, coursing on as voiceless blood, loyal only to the alive.

________

Witnessing the continuance of an apocalyptic crusade on these modern shores

Breaking open the earth-less ocean unto the final turning of Europe’s last romantic page,

Closure to the novel convulsions of a people well-practiced in ethnic cleansing and rife with general ethno-cultural frights

- excerpt from "Feel Old, Death?"

The Undeniable Truth...Interpreting the Dreams of Sun Ra

"...human history has not been an inevitable march towards a brighter future, that the world as constructed by Christianity, capitalism, and imperialism of all kinds is indeed doomed to self-immolation, and that man’s only hope is to radically reject the present and to dream of new and previously unimagined futures."

The "undeniable truth" written by OtherPlanesofThere, can be found on an exclusive Sun Ra Blog and on UbuWeb