The following were written to accompany works by Joan Anderson (www.Joanandersonarts.com). To me, her work so poignantly invokes lives of vanished beings in unknown, but slightly familiar worlds.
1) DRAGON TABARD
Radiant but silver banded and aloof
He humbly received his father’s throne.
He raised up altars and made offerings to the sky.
He raised up altars and made offerings to the mountain gods.
He raised up altars and made the offerings of living beings
To the rivers and the streams.
2) PHOENIX and DRAGON
The Golden Dragon
Dwells in the hidden tree
That holds the earth and sky apart
And is the resting place of thirteen suns.
The phoenix,
Unconscious as a rainbow
Dives upward
Through the leaves and branches of the sky.
3) SMOKE AND WATER
Where is she;
Her small feet dancing,
Her small hands holding offerings
On upturned palms?
Where did she go?
4) GOLD CLASP and OJO GRID
The old slaves, sisters
Seized far off and many years ago,
They have served her.
The sisters have bathed and dressed her.
They have oiled her hair,
And they have watched,
5) WATER TRELLIS DRAGON'S ROBE
Even a mountebank has a moment
When beauty transforms him.
“This verse was etched on the grave stone of a magician, reputed to be able to enable others to see spirits. He was brought to court by the king. He gave the king give many foul tasting brews which made him ill. But, the King, rose from his fever and deliriously danced across the floor as if he were a god. When the King recovered, he remembered nothing and had the magician executed.”
7) HAWKMOTH
“The King gave the master of the hunt a robe so beautiful that all envied him. Later, during a hunt, A jealous courtier shot the master of the hunt with an arrow through the heart. He claimed that he thought he had aimed at a golden pheasant.”
8) OJO
Oh,
The new consort looks down
And shyly smiles.
Oh she blushes.
Oh how we are charmed.
9) CLOUD ROBE
The blind weaver felt the movements of the sky,
Imagining range on range of white mountain clouds,
Snow rising in the air.
Her clattering shuttle
Echoed like sure footsteps as she wove.
The king received the robe she made.
He held it silently, then had it hidden.
"No human," he said, "can wear it."
*
Bugaku, Japanese Court Dance- Tokyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFErNl3FvM4&feature=related
Showing posts with label Joan Anderson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joan Anderson. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
SOLDIER CRY
(This was written as part of an installation piece for work that Joan Anderson has made to invoke the vast, implacable and timeless world of fallen soldiers. Reading through section VII accompanies the installation of two large image/effigies. At that point alcohol and meat are shared with the audience. The reading resumes with the last verses of section VI.
In the first performance, Barbara Dilley choreographed the installation; Mark Miller played Soprano Saxophone; I and Robert Spellman were readers, all under Joan's overall direction)
I
Heaven divides the world:
In dark and light,
In night and day,
In the living and the dead.
Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars
Do we know ourselves.
We know ourselves only as movements of fleeting clouds.
Beneath the vast bright sky,
The living dwell in their villages and homes.
In fathomless shadow,
The dead inhabit their silent towns.
Now the living surround the Eastern capital.
Now the dead surround the Western hills.
Though inseparable,
The living and the dead
No longer know each other.
In moments of joy,
They do not remember the other,
In bitterness,
They do not long for one another. (1)
II
The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads. (2)
III
With a groan, I start from sleep.
All the earth is on the march to war.
The rulers have commanded it. (3)
*
Heaven is high and far away.
The king’s business never ends.
I cannot stay to plant my crops
How will my parents and my children live?
Heaven is high and far away.
The earth below must always march to war.
When will it end? (4)
*
We pray for a sovereign.
We pray the sacrifices he commands
Bring peace.
Yet we long for home.
In what month will we return? (6)
No breeze stirs.
We must wait.
I look down the highway
And my heart is blank. (7)
*
Oh bright Heaven high above,
Shining on the earth below,
How our westward march
Has brought us to the empty plains
We have suffered cold and heat.
Oh the aching of an empty heart
Oh the poisons of bitterness.
Thinking of the ones who raised us,
My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.
Though I long for life and home,
I cannot turn back.
Warfare drags me on. (12)
IV
The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold, each frozen in his own thoughts, even those who make jokes and can’t stop talking, the rank smell of fear and dust, choking.
At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries. And then, charging, scrambling wildly down the hillside, amid the hail of arrows and bullets, there is a sudden moment where the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine life will ever end. The enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. The work of killing begins.
V
Like a slowly moving flood gate,
Iron scraping iron,
The great hinge of battle opens.
A bow string snaps,
And there is silence.
Now time stops.
The white disc of a single cloud
Hovers in the pale sky.
Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.
Red, yellow and black banners flutter.
Sunlight glitters
On steel blades and spear points.
Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,
Soldiers freeze.
An arrow stops in mid flight.
VI
Shining like diamonds in the air
The gods of war
Descend in a circle of hard light:
Seated on their steeds of wind,
Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.
Radiant
They do not move.
Everything around them now erupts.
Soldiers forgetting all their names or home,
Charge forward as if there were no death.
They hurl themselves onto the iron teeth of war.
Wildly, they shout:
Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me
Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm
Tungsen Karma do not let me fall
Nyengen Deva deliver me.
Shinje Chogyal take me through the terrors of this world.
Now the living and the dead
Part.
The world of the dead falls into the black earth.
The world of the living bursts into flower.
VII
Soon behind us,
They rest in the soft earth on the hills
They, in tens of thousands,
The victors and the vanquished.
They have entered the dark world.
They are cut off from the living,
The tomb is sealed.
In their joy, they do not remember one another,
In their bitterness they do not long for one another.
(15)
*
The war gods have returned to their abodes.
The earth is gray.
Climbing to the ridge of a high mountain
I now look down on the capital,
Now lonely, and how still.
Palaces and houses burnt to ash.
Walls and fences broken, fallen down,
The royal names effaced from looted tombs,
Family gravestones crumble
As thorns and brambles clamber towards the sky.
I do not see old men or youths.
I turn aside: no straight road to walk
Through wasted fields.
I have been away so long.
I do not recognize the paths
Amid abandoned pasture lands.
A thousand miles without chimney smoke.
Thinking of the house I lived in all my life
I turn inward.
Alive or dead,
I cannot speak.
(16)
VII
In the torrent of existing,
The fires of endless war,
We have touched
The all- consuming heart.
The blazing sky touches this dark earth.
Our eyes are scorched.
Words have no meaning.
Parted,
The living and the dead
Hold the secret of fleeting love.
They do not know peace.
************************************************
Adaptations from:
(1) Mark Edward Lewis- The Creation of Space in Early China; SUNY 2007- p.123)(2) Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage Chapter1, p.1)
(3)Arthur Waley tr. The Book of Songs:Grove Press:1301;(4)#152;(5)#151;(6)#150;(7)#149;(8)#139;(9)#133;(10)#148;(11)#146;(12)#143;(13)#141;(14)#130-1(15) Lewis- supra, p. 123(16) Cao Zhi, son of Cao Cao- Lewis, supra.-p.188
**********************************************
This fragment of Ariane Mnouchkine's splendor and intensity is part of the conscience of the above
Theatre du Sloeil- Les Atreides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahkdsfIPgg
In the first performance, Barbara Dilley choreographed the installation; Mark Miller played Soprano Saxophone; I and Robert Spellman were readers, all under Joan's overall direction)
I
Heaven divides the world:
In dark and light,
In night and day,
In the living and the dead.
Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars
Do we know ourselves.
We know ourselves only as movements of fleeting clouds.
Beneath the vast bright sky,
The living dwell in their villages and homes.
In fathomless shadow,
The dead inhabit their silent towns.
Now the living surround the Eastern capital.
Now the dead surround the Western hills.
Though inseparable,
The living and the dead
No longer know each other.
In moments of joy,
They do not remember the other,
In bitterness,
They do not long for one another. (1)
II
The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads. (2)
III
With a groan, I start from sleep.
All the earth is on the march to war.
The rulers have commanded it. (3)
*
Heaven is high and far away.
The king’s business never ends.
I cannot stay to plant my crops
How will my parents and my children live?
Heaven is high and far away.
The earth below must always march to war.
When will it end? (4)
*
We pray for a sovereign.
We pray the sacrifices he commands
Bring peace.
Yet we long for home.
In what month will we return? (6)
No breeze stirs.
We must wait.
I look down the highway
And my heart is blank. (7)
*
Oh bright Heaven high above,
Shining on the earth below,
How our westward march
Has brought us to the empty plains
We have suffered cold and heat.
Oh the aching of an empty heart
Oh the poisons of bitterness.
Thinking of the ones who raised us,
My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.
Though I long for life and home,
I cannot turn back.
Warfare drags me on. (12)
IV
The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold, each frozen in his own thoughts, even those who make jokes and can’t stop talking, the rank smell of fear and dust, choking.
At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries. And then, charging, scrambling wildly down the hillside, amid the hail of arrows and bullets, there is a sudden moment where the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine life will ever end. The enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. The work of killing begins.
V
Like a slowly moving flood gate,
Iron scraping iron,
The great hinge of battle opens.
A bow string snaps,
And there is silence.
Now time stops.
The white disc of a single cloud
Hovers in the pale sky.
Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.
Red, yellow and black banners flutter.
Sunlight glitters
On steel blades and spear points.
Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,
Soldiers freeze.
An arrow stops in mid flight.
VI
Shining like diamonds in the air
The gods of war
Descend in a circle of hard light:
Seated on their steeds of wind,
Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.
Radiant
They do not move.
Everything around them now erupts.
Soldiers forgetting all their names or home,
Charge forward as if there were no death.
They hurl themselves onto the iron teeth of war.
Wildly, they shout:
Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me
Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm
Tungsen Karma do not let me fall
Nyengen Deva deliver me.
Shinje Chogyal take me through the terrors of this world.
Now the living and the dead
Part.
The world of the dead falls into the black earth.
The world of the living bursts into flower.
VII
Soon behind us,
They rest in the soft earth on the hills
They, in tens of thousands,
The victors and the vanquished.
They have entered the dark world.
They are cut off from the living,
The tomb is sealed.
In their joy, they do not remember one another,
In their bitterness they do not long for one another.
(15)
*
The war gods have returned to their abodes.
The earth is gray.
Climbing to the ridge of a high mountain
I now look down on the capital,
Now lonely, and how still.
Palaces and houses burnt to ash.
Walls and fences broken, fallen down,
The royal names effaced from looted tombs,
Family gravestones crumble
As thorns and brambles clamber towards the sky.
I do not see old men or youths.
I turn aside: no straight road to walk
Through wasted fields.
I have been away so long.
I do not recognize the paths
Amid abandoned pasture lands.
A thousand miles without chimney smoke.
Thinking of the house I lived in all my life
I turn inward.
Alive or dead,
I cannot speak.
(16)
VII
In the torrent of existing,
The fires of endless war,
We have touched
The all- consuming heart.
The blazing sky touches this dark earth.
Our eyes are scorched.
Words have no meaning.
Parted,
The living and the dead
Hold the secret of fleeting love.
They do not know peace.
************************************************
Adaptations from:
(1) Mark Edward Lewis- The Creation of Space in Early China; SUNY 2007- p.123)(2) Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage Chapter1, p.1)
(3)Arthur Waley tr. The Book of Songs:Grove Press:1301;(4)#152;(5)#151;(6)#150;(7)#149;(8)#139;(9)#133;(10)#148;(11)#146;(12)#143;(13)#141;(14)#130-1(15) Lewis- supra, p. 123(16) Cao Zhi, son of Cao Cao- Lewis, supra.-p.188
**********************************************
This fragment of Ariane Mnouchkine's splendor and intensity is part of the conscience of the above
Theatre du Sloeil- Les Atreides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahkdsfIPgg
Sunday, February 1, 2009
TEXTS FOR JOAN ANDERSON’S PERFOMANCE/EXHIBIT OF RETREAT PAINTINGS
CHANT OF THE WANDERING STARS
In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here.
Here: fathers and mothers;
Here: elders and children
In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here
To the red earth.
Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Here
On their long journey.
Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.
They stop
On their long journey.
They show themselves.
Shining in the dark soil,
They rise.
They show themselves;
They show the dream pattern
Of the stars.
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the brown earth
With the sweep of rainfall:
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the red earth
With furrows of water;
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the black earth
With the glare of reflected sun on water;
Wearing the dream pattern,
Red earth
Marked by the plow;
Wearing the dream pattern of stars,
The red earth,
Marked by the scars of battle;
Wearing the secret pattern,
The dark earth
Marked by the scars of memory;
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
To the earth.
Just for this moment,
They stop here
On their long journey.
Just for now,
They stop.
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.
They stop
On their long journey
They show themselves.
In nearby shadows,
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
III
As the spectacle endlessly ends & vanishes, somehow we refuse to accept the completeness of impermanence. But all the forms and instances of art that now exist, many are damaged, fragmentary, and all are devoid of their original context and hence meaning.
Beyond that, compared to all the things which have been made and still exist, how many more have been destroyed or lost, each of them a Repository of love and intuition, skill and concern, the outgrowth of a civilization that no longer exists.
So that being the likely fate of what we make, could we then embrace this? Could we regard what we do and the doing of it as completely momentary, having no future and accomplishing no communal result?
Momentary, surely. But cause and effect being inescapable, surely what we make and the making of it does influence the next instant in some truly unknown way.
So, making our diagrams of color or cloth, of sound or speech is perhaps like sand painting and may, for a moment, draw something into the world which has only hovered on its borders before being utterly swept away.
It is hard to overcome the desperate habits of permanence and completion. As the spectacle endlessly will be ending & vanishing.
***
FROM AN ACTOR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ByGXCey68
In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here.
Here: fathers and mothers;
Here: elders and children
In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here
To the red earth.
Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Here
On their long journey.
Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.
They stop
On their long journey.
They show themselves.
Shining in the dark soil,
They rise.
They show themselves;
They show the dream pattern
Of the stars.
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the brown earth
With the sweep of rainfall:
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the red earth
With furrows of water;
Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the black earth
With the glare of reflected sun on water;
Wearing the dream pattern,
Red earth
Marked by the plow;
Wearing the dream pattern of stars,
The red earth,
Marked by the scars of battle;
Wearing the secret pattern,
The dark earth
Marked by the scars of memory;
The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
To the earth.
Just for this moment,
They stop here
On their long journey.
Just for now,
They stop.
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.
They stop
On their long journey
They show themselves.
In nearby shadows,
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.
III
As the spectacle endlessly ends & vanishes, somehow we refuse to accept the completeness of impermanence. But all the forms and instances of art that now exist, many are damaged, fragmentary, and all are devoid of their original context and hence meaning.
Beyond that, compared to all the things which have been made and still exist, how many more have been destroyed or lost, each of them a Repository of love and intuition, skill and concern, the outgrowth of a civilization that no longer exists.
So that being the likely fate of what we make, could we then embrace this? Could we regard what we do and the doing of it as completely momentary, having no future and accomplishing no communal result?
Momentary, surely. But cause and effect being inescapable, surely what we make and the making of it does influence the next instant in some truly unknown way.
So, making our diagrams of color or cloth, of sound or speech is perhaps like sand painting and may, for a moment, draw something into the world which has only hovered on its borders before being utterly swept away.
It is hard to overcome the desperate habits of permanence and completion. As the spectacle endlessly will be ending & vanishing.
***
FROM AN ACTOR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ByGXCey68
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