The High Priestess

Back in the '80s I hadn't yet discovered photography, and of course there was no Internet and I didn't own a personal computer. In those days I was practicing calligraphy, even doing an informal business in it designing flyers, posters, wedding invitations, and show pieces. I also wrote poetry from time to time. AND... as many of you who have been following this blog for some time know, I also do things with the Tarot. My best piece of art combines all three of those, and I discovered (while going through my photo collection on my hard drive) that I hadn't made a digital copy of it. So here it is, "The High Priestess", a poem I wrote even further back in time than this calligraphic piece, based on my own meditations on and interpretation of the Tarot card. The calligraphy is on hand-laid paper in gouache, and the "illustration" is imitation gold leaf over an impasto base with some of the leaf rubbed to small pieces and sprinkled  on the paper to suggest stars. I love this piece but I've never had the money to have it properly framed. It's kinda big - 22" x 30" (56 x 76 cm) - so framing is something of an expensive proposition. In any case, here's my artistic pride and joy!

© 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Études

Or to give this post its full name, Les études dans l'abstraction - studies in abstraction. I set out to find objects and/or scenes that taken out of their context could be seen as an abstraction. I've done this before, back in the old days on the old Gather.com, and my inspiration for this kind of photography has been the work of Edward Weston, whose abstract studies of everyday and natural objects and the human body have always fascinated me. What I did today was look for things whose abstract potential caught my eye, and focus on elements which could lead to abstraction while setting up the shot and while processing in Photoshop. The following are finished copies of what worked best.

The Drape - This is a curtain in an apartment window along King St. What caught my eye was the pattern of the folds in the material, so I focused on that in the processing. I tweaked the color and the contrast and ended up with this.

Hommage à Jackson Pollock - This is a zoom shot of the water flowing over the rocks on a section of Gum Run. The flow of the water and the underlying colors are what caught my eye, and while processing in Photoshop I found that emphasizing the colors in the rocks and plants, tweaking the contrast in "curves", and playing in the sharpening tool gave me this Pollock-esque look.

Rings - Tree rings always make a good subject for abstraction, so I took the shot. In Photoshop I emphasized the colors in the wood, tweaked the contrast in "curves", and applied some Gaussian blur to soften all those edges in the rings.

Calligraphic Ripples - It was the ripples on the surface of the north duck pond in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park that caught my attention and made me want to see what could develop. Tweaking the color and contrast on this shot made me realize that the light reflecting from the ripples greatly resembled painter Mark Tobey's "white writing" work, which he based on Chinese calligraphy. So in a way this is another hommage, this time to Tobey.

And since I'm calling these "études",  which means "studies", and since Frédéric Chopin composed a series of studies for piano which he called "études", I thought I'd add one here to finish out this post. Enjoy!

Photos © 2015 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

The Art of Death

I've started rereading Sarah Stewart Taylor's Sweeney St. George mysteries. The first reading was several years ago, all borrowed from the Newport Public Library; now I'm buying digital copies to read in my Kindle app on my smart phone. I'm especially interested in these because the fictional Sweeney is an art history professor specializing funerary art, often involving gravestones and stone carvers; those of you who have been reading here for a while know my interest in and research into those same subjects. Sweeney also has Newport roots, and one of the books takes place there. Ms. Taylor herself is also interested in those subjects and knows Newport well. She visits there often, and once I was able to direct her to a little, semi-hidden colonial-era cemetery she didn't know about (yes, I wrote a fan letter/email; she even wrote me back to let me know she'd look for it on her next visit). Unfortunately, Ms. Taylor hasn't written a Sweeney St. George story since 2006; these days she seems to be concentrating on children's and young adults' fiction. I'm about to write another fan email encouraging her to continue with Sweeney books. If anybody wants to join in the crusade can click on the link above to her website and drop her a line. WE WANT SWEENEY!

In any case, reading the stories again got me thinking about all the gravestone and cemetery shots I've taken both back in Newport and here in the Shippensburg, PA area, as well as all the research I've done and posted here. And I'm thinking I might put together another photo book on Lulu.com using the best of all those shots and some of the research posts. It'll take a while, but it's an idea. In the meantime I collected four shots to post today to whet your appetite for more (plus you can always hit click on "Cemeteries and Gravestones" in the category cloud in the sidebar to read all the posts).

The perfect music for this subject is Natalie Merchant's setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Spring and Fall: to a young Child", from her 2010 double CD Leave Your Sleep. The poem is about a child's dealing with her own mortality, and Natalie Merchant's setting is especially moving. Enjoy!

Photos © 2008, 2009, 2012, & 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Two Birthdays

Yes indeed, TWO birthdays. For all these years I've been celebrating J.S. Bach's birthday here at Roy's World, but this year it dawned on me that it's also Modest Mussorgsky's (Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain, among others). He was firmly in the Russian Romantic school and was considered a major inspiration for later generations of Russian composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

Interestingly enough, Walt Disney Studios used works by both Bach and Mussorgsky in the 1940 animation tour-de-force Fantasia. The movie starts off with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philedelphia Orchestra in his own orchestration of Bach's most famous organ piece - the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

And Fantasia ends with Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, although Disney and Stokowski decided to segue into Schubert's Ave Maria to create a stylistic contrast at the end. In any event, here it is. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Papa Johann and Modest!

Time...

... and tide wait for no man.

... is of the essence.

... is, time was, time always will be.

... has come today!

Photo © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sight & Sound - Plumes

There used to be a flock of Peacocks here on Timber Hill years ago. They seem to have disappeared over the years, either due to the climate, predators, or the Amish farmers' kids, who seem to like to shoot anything with feathers. But my sister-in-law made a habit of collecting the feathers and made displays with them throughout the house. This is a detail of one of them enhanced in Photoshop - the saturation and contrasted amped up, brightness tweaked a little, and a moderate amount of posterization applied. I liked the effect.

And music to match, although it's a bit of a linguistic pun. "Plumeria" is from jazz/new age violinist Steve Kindler's 1990 album Across a Rainbow Sea. Now Plumeria is the botanical Latin name for Frangipani, but the name comes from the same source (the flower is named after someone named Plumier, which comes eventually from the French word for feather - plume). So here's the second, musical half of the pun.

Photo © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Shadow

I featured this card a couple of years ago as part of the Theme Thursday challenge, but I figured I'd repeat it today as part of the ongoing Tarot series.

The traditional #15 Major Trump card is The Devil; I renamed it after the Jungian archetype The Shadow because the two basically mean the same thing. The shadow represents the repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts lurking in the unconscious mind, the part of ourselves we're reluctant to show, and which we tend to project onto people we don't like. It's almost literally the "shadow" of the persona, the face we show the public. As a culture, we've conveniently projected those parts of human nature that we don't like onto the mythological antithesis of the deity, hence the figure of the Devil, Satan, Ahriman, devils, jinn, etc. He's a convenient scapegoat for avoiding dealing with our own shortcomings.

The interesting thing about the shadow is that Jung stresses the point that it's in the shadow because these are things we repress rather than integrate into the personality. Much of Jungian psychology is concerned with integrating those repressed instincts, compulsions, impulses into a healthy persona. Jung theorized that the repression itself is what makes these energies "evil", and that free from repression they become something positive: aggression becomes optimism, repressed sexuality becomes relationship, violent anger becomes passionate advocacy.

In the end The Shadow (both the archetype and the card) represents transformative energies rather than evil or danger. True, transformation can involve a certain amount of danger, but in the end the transformative energy of The Shadow is more challenge than threat. As you can see, The Shadow can be an interesting card to turn up in a reading!

No music for this one; I just couldn't find something that matched the Jungian concept of "shadow". Oh well...

© 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Impressionistic Reflections

A slight breeze and a sunny day created these reflections on the north pond in the Duck Ponds park today. I immediately thought of Claude Monet's work, especially his later paintings of the water lily pond in Giverny.

And what better music to go with these than the epitome of musical French Impressionism, Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopédies, in this case performed by pianist Aldo Ciccolini. Enjoy!

Photos © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Destruction

Destruction, #16 in the Tarot major trumps sequence, is traditionally called The Tower. By either name, the card is all about the dramatic destruction that clears the way for new growth; it clears away the clutter and the waste - old habits, traditions, paths worn to ruts - so that there's room for new growth. It's the prairie fire that clears off the old, dead grass so that new grass and flowers can grow, or the forest fire that clears out the cluttering underbrush, or the volcano that spews hot, destructive lava that eventually becomes rich soil. It's catastrophic, it's painful, it's destructive, but the aftermath is all good. And in the world of archetypes, it's Lord Shiva.

Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance, the god who dances to the song of his double-headed drum - dimi, dimi, dimi, taka nan tana keylo - which signals the dissolution of the universe so that a new one can grow in its place.

And that takes us to the music for this one, Jai Uttal's "Hara Shiva Shankara" from his 1995 recording Beggars and Saints. Jai Uttal is an American who discovered Indian music and went to India to study it. After coming back to the US and recording an album - Footprints - with jazz pioneer Don Cherry, he then formed the Pagan Love Orchestra, a conglomeration of very talented multicultural musicians. "Hara Shiva Shankara" is a traditional hymn to Shiva set to a reggae beat. This is one of my favorite songs. Enjoy!

Text and Tarot card artwork & photo © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Dogwood and van Gogh

The soft light after this morning's storm really brought out Nature's colors, and especially the colors of this pink Dogwood in the front yard.

There's something almost oriental about Dogwoods, and especially the Japanese look as portrayed in Europe by Art Nouveau and Post-Impressionism, when Japanese art made a huge impression in the salons of Paris and London. Since it bloomed this Spring this tree has somehow reminded me of Vincent van Gogh's Almond Blossoms.

Photos © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Star

The Star, #17 in the Tarot major trumps sequence, represents intuition, inspiration, insight, the creative spark, optimism, and hope. It's a very forward-looking card. I stuck fairly close to the traditional symbolism, although rather than having the central figure pouring water from a ewer into a body of water by starlight I had her sitting down reading and, with that look off into the distance, seeking inspiration.

The music for this one jumped up and shouted at me in its obviousness - Jiminy Cricket (actually singer Cliff Edwards) singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" from the Disney classic Pinocchio. Hmmmm... I wonder if ol' Walt was into the Tarot?

Artwork, photo, & text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Moon

The Moon, #18 in the Tarot major trumps sequence, is about growth and learning as a result of adversity. The traditional meaning of this card deals more with the "lunacy" aspect of the Moon - fantasy, illusion, deception. I've never liked that interpretation and decided to go with my gut in reaction to the symbol itself. I've always seen the Moon card as somehow depressing or expressing depression, and thinking about the card in my usual Jungian perspective I came to realize that the times we're the saddest, when nothing seems to be going right and we can't see a way out, are the times when we experience the most growth and increase in psychic strength.

The perfect song for this card is Paul McCartney's "Blackbird", most definitely a song about triumphing over adversity. McCartney himself said that he wrote the song while thinking about the civil rights struggles in the US, and thinking that the time was right to eliminate racial barriers.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise

Black bird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
all your life
you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly, Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise,
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Photo, artwork, & text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Double Duty

It's interesting how things work out. Today I had already planned to post about the Sun card, #19 in the Tarot major trumps. Oddly enough, it turns out that this week's Theme Thursday theme is "Face", and my Sun card has a nice, sunny medieval face on him. So today you get two for one!

The Sun is all about pride in accomplishment, the joy of victory or success, optimism, a "sunny" disposition... you get the picture. This has been the meaning of the card since people have been chronicling the Tarot, so I decided to go back to the oracle's past and depict it with a fairly typical medieval sun-with-a-face symbol. Heh, heh! I even have one of these as a wall hanging, a faux patina-ed bronze sun face that I bought at an art festival years ago.

And this is how you get a post on both faces and the Tarot in one neat package!

There's not one piece of music that covers both themes here, so you also get two videos this time. For the Sun theme of joy and triumph, the perfect pick for me is Van Halen's "Jump"; here's the original music video from Eddie and the boys.

For the "Face" theme, I thought I'd include the perfect Beatles song, "I've Just Seen a Face", this version from my favorite Beatles music movie, Across the Universe. This is the scene when Jude first meets Lucy. Enjoy!

Photo, artwork, & text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Independence

In the traditional Tarot deck this card is called "Judgment" and pictures the Archangel Gabriel up in the clouds blowing his trumpet, and below on the Earth the dead are rising from their graves. In the Tarot sequence this card stands for leaving the old life behind, shedding old habits and old mistakes that hold us back, retard our growth, like a snake shedding its skin. So you can see why I picked this image. I didn't want to use the old religion-specific title, though; being based on Jungian archetypes and theory, I didn't want to tie the card to a specific culture. I chose "Independence" to refer to the state described by the symbolism.

I decided that Bob Marley's "Redemption Song", all about triumphing over the past and moving forward, was perfect for this card. And especially this version from the Playing for Change people, incorporating musicians from all over the world as well as contributions from Bob's son Stephen and old footage of Bob Marley himself performing this song. It's a great tribute to a great man and an appropriate reflection on the meaning of the card. Enjoy!

Artwork, photo, and text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The World

I did a post about this card a couple of years ago as part of the Theme Thursday meme, but because I'm starting an actual series on my home made deck I decided it was worth doing an entirely new post.

Speaking of order... The Major Trump cards of the Tarot are traditionally numbered 1 (The Magician) through 21 (The World), with The Fool, the traveler on the path, as 0. But Micheline Stuart, one of Gurdjieff's students, proposed a reversal of that order in her book The Tarot Path to Self-Development; she shows how the flow of the symbolism actually starts with The World as birth through to The Magician as the end result, a fully developed being. That argument made a lot of sense to me, and I've followed that ordering ever since I first read the book back in the 1980s.

With that caveat attended to, onward!

The World is all about birth; the traditional versions of this card involve very womb-like symbolism. My own version incorporates my memory of the Apollo 8 Earthrise photos as fitting into that symbolism set, showing Earth emerging from behind the Moon in a very dramatic way. To quote my earlier post on this card:

I also added the Apollo 8 Earthrise shot to my symbolism because to me this emphasized even more the notion of beginnings and birth. For the first time in our history, humanity was able to view the Earth from an entirely new perspective; we had literally gotten outside ourselves and were able to see us from a distance. And what we learned was that as beautiful as our Earth was living in the midst of it, it was just as beautiful seen from a distance - a jewel suspended in the black of space.

In any event, The World card is all about beginnings, birth, and even rebirth (although that notion of rebirth is more rightly the territory of #13 Death - which in my deck is renamed Rebirth). It's about starting up, or getting things started. It's also about getting back to basics - the nature motif is also very strong in all versions of the card, and the female figure in the traditional decks has often been interpreted as Mother Nature. And that makes sense, too; we always start with what Mama Gaiea gave us, and we build on that.

The music I chose for this card fits well with that symbolism, too. Although the song "Morning Has Broken" is most associated with Cat Stevens these days, after his making a hit of it in 1971 on his Teaser and the Firecat album, the song is actually a hymn in many Christian denominations. The words are a poem written by Eleanor Farjeon in 1922, and they were set to a traditional Scottish hymn originally used as a Christmas carol. The words are certainly in sync with the symbolism of The World card.

Photo, artwork, and text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

The Fool

The Tarot series continues!

The Fool card represents the individual on the journey through life. We start life innocent, guileless, vulnerable; in the same way, when we start the conscious journey to enlightenment we are equally innocent and open to influence. The rest of the Major Trump cards represent the trials and experiences the individual goes through on the journey. The Fool is neither good nor evil; he or she is open to experience and ready to learn and become and is open to influences both right or wrong. We all travel the path with eyes and arms wide open, come what may.

And of course the perfect music for this card is Lennon and McCartney's "The Fool on the Hill". If I remember my music history correctly they wrote this specifically about the Fool card. It makes sense to me!

Photo, artwork, and text © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Painterly

Some painterly approaches to some of my favorite photos of the last month or so. A little day off activity because I didn't have a chance to get out and about.

© 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Timeless

Still Life with Clocks: The "antiqued" version (which reminds me of a window display I saw in an antique store back in Newport)...

...and the "Renoir" version.

Note: The title of this post is something of a pun. I played with these in Photoshop to create the look of years past, and... (wait for it)... none of the clocks work.

And just to make it all even more timeless, here's Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra in a performance of Leroy Anderson's "The Syncopated Clock".

Photos © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Note: I'll be over at my Mom's place for a couple of days; I'll be able to check my email and all, but I won't have access to my files to post anything here. So I'll see you Monday, if not Sunday.

Cut Glass Abstractions

I took some shots of some cut glass here in the house - a bowl and a vase - and then went to work in Photoshop.

Music: Thomas Ronkin's "Reconcile" seems to reflect the mood of the two pictures.

Photos © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sight & Sound - Oriental

These two still lifes - both of them Photoshop manipulations of photos taken this afternoon - were inspired by the Impressionist and post-Impressionist fascination with all things Oriental.

Music: "The Dusk Song of the Fisherman" by the group Ancient Future, from their 1993 CD Asian Fusion. This is a traditional Chinese song (Ching dynasty) arranged for guitar and gu zheng, the Chinese board zither.

Photos © 2011 by A. Roy Hilbinger