life by radio (LOL)

It's a sign I've been in the car traveling to meetings TOO MUCH of late.

But did here an interesting little segment of the NPR morning news (12/7) on David Hockney.   You might want to check this out.   Perhaps a more specific "art application" of your interest in social media?

A

on becoming "known"

Yesterday on my drive home from Plymouth State I listened to a 1999 interview (Terry Gross with Dave Brubeck).  He'll be 90 this Monday.   In the interview he discussed a period of his long, collaborative career in which he used the phrase or something close to it:  "becoming known".   He traced the kick-off of "becoming known" to his appearance on the cover of Time Magazine.  

So in this sense, "becoming known" moves beyond being appreciated by a few people for the quality of your work.  "Becoming known" means widening the audience with all the implications that come with that.  

Then I suppose, once you "become known" that "becoming known" has become a dimension of your work.  

One wonders if the consequences this dimension are anticipated?   Certainly they can't be fully known.  

I'm sure this NPR interview is a podcast somewhere.  It was pretty good.

this week

what a week.....

we are part of a cooperative weekly delivery of fresh seafood from Portland, Maine.   grace picks it up on Friday afternoons at some guy's house in north sandwich.  so far it's been really great.

it seemed appropriate this week that we got fresh pollock

Allan

a few thoughts

I have arrived.

How does the emerging artist create with so much against him/her in a competitive/elitist art world? As a creator how do we employ artistic impact, where does it come from and can we create art with meaning? I would like to believe that most artists like myself (aside from making a dollar) would like to be known for their art as proponent of change of some sort. Too idealistic, and maybe too Utopian but at least I remain optimistic. 

Just some questions:  Is the concept of "the art world" a useful or healthy one to accept and aspire to?   Not sure what "employ artistic impact" means?   Does "art" have meaning?  Or do meanings arise in people's experiences "of art"?    I wonder.... one becomes known.   But not by "becoming known" as a goal.  

I suggest the abstract expressionist art of Jackson Pollock as an excellent example of a career evolving rhythmically in a post-war era and the emerging media driven society of the 1950s. 

Very curious that you should unpack how a "career evolves rhythmically"

He was a celebrity of his time, who at the time of his fame was strangely emotionally torn (and lacked confidence) about the meaning of his art.

What counts as "strangely emotionally torn" versus the many emotionally torn people I know?  What made his notable?   The business about "lacking confidence about the meaning of his art" is (I think) important.   How is this known or documented?   It can't be as easy as connecting that he was "strangely emotionally torn" to "lacking confidence about the meaning of his art".  It could be.   But how does one establish this?

 It is known that throughout his life he dealt with many emotional difficulties. He also disliked authority and not to mention had a terrible addiction to alcohol. 

A bit like being a teenager these days it seems.  Again, there must be something about become that commonness?  

His early works show a passionate artist in process working to harness a voice through several styles …like that of Picasso (in the 1940s) for example.

What is a visual artists "voice"?   And how does it engage with other voices?

It’s engaging I think that by Pollock taking charge and unknowingly developing a new style of painting

This is documented, right?  He consciously narrated this at the time (not in retrospect)?

 ...his interpretations may have also been a reflection and or a representation a shifting society at the time. 

That's an interesting thing for you to interpret and demonstrate.

Pollocks drip technique was an unconventional art form to many (critics) as it lacked any identification of skill whatsoever. Yet for many this is why it may have been considered modern art. Pollock almost forces the individual to think that all art has to have a foreground, background, perspective, a tree, or a dog. 

Are you saying that it set out deliberately to defy any possible notion of "representation"?   That's interesting.   What's even more interesting is if this goal is humanly possible in the viewers experience?   Or does it take a certain kind of viewer who belongs to "an art world".

I believe that Pollock’s art unravels all of the comfortable notions which help those with artistic authority determine whether art is bad or good. 

This may be true.  Although I don't think it could possibly unravel "all" those notions.   Who exactly are those with "artistic authority"?   Used to be critics in certain highly visible forums?   But no one reads or pays attention to them today?   Associations of gallery owners?   Are all critics bad?   What distinguishes good ones from bad ones?  Does one have to be "uncomfortable" to be a discerning critic?

It is here where one might think a shift is taking place (K. Varnedoe, MoMA,1999) “The cigarette hanging from his lips, crossed leg, crossed arms, staring you down, tough guy, the sense of a kind of blue collar, macho tough guy as an abstract artist changed the whole definition of what the avant garde was in the United States. I think Pollock created an art into which a lot of people projected a lot of anxieties of the post-war era. They felt that this war was savage, violent, apocalyptic in a way that they felt was attuned to the age of the atom bomb, the age of an intense interest in Freudian matters, and psychological matters. At the same time, his confidence, his macho, his very celebrity and success fed the notion of America's emerging from the war as a leader on the global cultural stage.”

I agree that a dissertation might undertake to show these things.   Develop critical perspectives on the items above in order to find when and where they are accurate characterizations/interpretations of a life and career and it's "output" (which lives on).

Personally I wish I had an answer on how to find this “voice”

Isn't that your inquiry?   Which, I think, needs to be defined in a way that makes it a possible quest.   

 ...one that creates change and or a shift at least in my world of art. 

Nice....but the dissertation has to aspire to more than that even if modestly.  What I mean is that what you wrote above isn't mutually exclusive with creating and understanding or insight about how a person's art, life lived, celebrity (encouraged or imposed?) function or functioned in a particular time and place.   If that insight/understanding is developed in the right way, it can inform other times and places, lived lives etc.   But usually the point-of-departure is not "my world of art" although it is a completely essential dimension of the journey/quest.

Fortunately Pollock had the support of a major Life Magazine 4 page spread/article exposing his arts supposed impact. 

I think you used "supposed" very deliberately here.   And that starts to develop the notion from above:   How does a person's "voice" cut through the various myth-making mechanisms of our culture?   And what are they?  It's more than cutting through the "art work authorities".  It's also cutting through new layers of cultural phenomena...."media" over my lifetime has changed, evolved and shifted.   How people (who they are?  what they access?  and where?  and when?) combined with how they lives their lives in different places has changed.   So the cultural calculus about one person's career intersecting with an evolving culture is enormous.  By-the-by:  What was and is Jackson Polliock's status overseas in Europe.  That's always an interesting bench-mark to grasp that puts what you think was happening here in a comparative light.   You have to accept that it is very hard for us to see ourselves in our own culture.  Until you grapple with that a bit and let it change how you see yourself and what we "swim in" you are, I think, in a risky position.  It's not that we evaluate what we do here against those appreciations and authorities or whatever over there.  It's not that.   

Was he simply in the right place or right time? 

LOL:  That would be too too easy.

I suppose media had much to do with Pollock’s success at the time...as it still does. I spent twenty five dollars for a ticket to see his work not to mention his paintings are now worth millions. 

Yes.   Surely these are dimensions of the culture we live in that inform and define success.   But I think you yourself are ambivalent about what "counts as success".   Is being understood (however variously) success?   Appreciated?   Honored?  Supported?   Or, is the marks of success just the opposite of these things?   

"And this helps explain why 50 years after the fact, it's still hard for many people to see what's original in Pollock. They continue to see him as Jack the Dripper, American art's first media celebrity, a bald James Dean in black denim, a glorified doodler. It's remarkable that at the end of the 20th century, pure abstract painting, which he brought to a peak, remains the most difficult art for many people to grasp because content is still commonly mistaken for subject matter, as if a picture with no recognizable images in it can't be about anything."

Yes.  But this is the type of justification that supported "pure music" in the 20th Century?   The parallels (USA and Europe) are striking.  So when does the critic become a comfortable authority?  And when is the critic actually elaborating and extending the cutting edge of someone's work?   I suggest....the parallel to Picasso is worthy of investigating.   He was a figure who has celebrity status for sure.  And his work did pretty consistently defy many received conventions.   But, his work also (don't care to speculate WHY here) entered (I think) the popular culture of the entire world and affected how people see things, themselves, etc.   Could the same be said of Jackson Pollock?   So I'm wondering when a critic or ourselves for that matter judge a person to be relevant and addressing the "world" (or some part of it) or "the world of art".  Personally, I think having a relationship "to the world of art" is the sure death of the imagination unless one is prepared to either take it someplace else it's never been....or to deconstruct it into something new.

"Nothing in art since then, not Pop or Minimalism or anything else, is as radical and audacious. It doesn't matter that other artists dripped paint before Pollock; they didn't make of it what he did. To play C-E-G on a piano is not to compose a Mozart sonata. Pollock's paintings remain the central story of modern art in the second half of the century, above all because they gave permission to all other artists to break the rules."

Yes again.  So what's the baseline in this critical appraisal?   It's easy to write words like "radical and audacious".  Where is their "substance" in a commonly accessible worlds of experience?   

(M.Kimmelman, NY Times, 1998)

Through this Jackson Pollack journey I felt inspired to write, arrange and record a song called “I have arrived”...which was inspired by a poem called Pollock 51. Lyrically I believe this piece captures much of the emotional torment Pollock went through …not just with the tumultuous relationship he had with Lee Krasner (his wife) but the struggle he had with “arriving” at this identifiable movement in his work. These two recordings are from an impromptu session with my band The Cabin Kings. On recording number two our vocals were mic’d but the tambourine came in too loud. On recording number one we were un-mic’d...which resulted in a slightly more muddied version...but passable for listening. Although they are somewhat crude recordings....they to are evolving. I imagine this song will eventually make its way on our second album. I will email you the songs Allan. 

I'm still absorbing the lyric/song.....

Performed by: The Cabin Kings

Lyrics and Arrangement by: John Kane, 2010

Pollock 51 (I have arrived) 

Performed by: The Cabin Kings

Lyrics and Arrangement by: John Kane, 2010

I can’t love you Lee, I know you Love me

No accidents...no beginnings...no end.

From all 4 sides, all 4 sides

Looking down –at – my –control

Yes …I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived

Take another drink, take another peek

Please put it down, before it drowns your soul

From all 4 sides, All 4 sides

Broken glass, string and sand

Yes…I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived

I paint what I see, paint what I see.
Broken glass, string and sand

I can’t love you Lee, even though you Love me

This statement is a means to my technique

Yes…I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived, I have arrived

in the Raverty sort of direction

Here's a title I enjoyed and that you might find useful:

The New York Schools of Music and Visual Arts (2002).  Edited by Steven Johnson.  Routledge.  ISBN:  0415936942

Doesn't essay directly on Pollock but has 20 references to his name in the index.

I got it for the discussion on John Cage who was part of this scene.   The cover has a vintage picture of the Cedar Street Bar on it.

Another angle:

http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/essay_gann07.html

I have some CD's of Morton Feldman's music.   I wonder if examining Pollock through a musical lens might be sustainable?  

Pollock/Raverty

I downloaded the Raverty article and read it.  Thanks.  I enjoyed.

The general approach he takes in this article is.....very much the type of work I think we would aspire to in the DA.  Such that:  when one has read the article, perhaps, your previous notion of what it takes to be a "leader" in the USA has shifted?  

It is curious and interesting to me that just about the full range of considerations in thie piece are ones that Ralph Waldo Emerson made in 1838, in part in "The American Scholar".   Then there is spillover in other essays where certain themes are elaborated.   I only mention should  Raverty's observations seem new or unusual.   It's all part of a long-standing approach, a definition of a certain kind of romance (mythological or otherwise) that is part of the American scene or the American Difference.  

I am more familiar with the musicians who hung out at the Cedar Bar.   But it was the mixing of artists and musicians and poets thats so interesting in the NYC scene at that time.   It, in effect, is a little bit of model for interdisciplinary work in the arts. I may have a book on this knocking around somewhere if you are interested.

What I think would be really good to do:  is to to take this entire essay and create a set of marginal notes (could be done with PDF annotations).  These should all be framed as critical questions (not answers or refutations) about the authors assertions, documentation, proofs etc.   They really need to be your genuinely skeptical takes since  the genius of a certain kind of writing is that it's convincing at one level.  But perhaps not under a fuller kind of scrutiny.   Put differently, Is the author just "making another myth" and certain readers will merely line up behind it believing.   That is not a doctoral dissertation (for better or worse).   Something a bit more is needed.

I think this would be a good exercise if this is the kind of work you want to do and this is the general topic as well.   After such an exercise, I think you'll come away with a better sense of your point-of-departure from such work.  One that leads into your own questions, developed contexts and eventually, insights.

Allan 

ives

A lineage of influence:     Ralph Waldo Emerson - Charles Ives - John Cage

My Jackson Pollock is Charles Ives.   Out there, revolutionary, misunderstood, cranky.

What is beautiful in music is too often confused

with letting our ears sit back in easy chairs.

Charles Ives

a book

As long as we're agreed that this IS may dribble over for a while?   Here is a book you really need to put your hands on.   I think you'll enjoy the way "Life Not Death in Venice" treats the arts and change.   And as promised below, I'll attempt to scan in the Geertz short piece that comes at the end.   Also there are essays on "performance" and "images" and how they "in experience" can be studied.   

Here's the note I wrote to Jim Lacey this morning and also posted in the Running and Doing Blog I maintain with Kurt.

 I got a really excellent book off my shelf last night (one that I think I've grown into over the last year).    It's a collection of essays edited  by Victor Turner and Edward Bruner.  And it has a short epilogue by Clifford Geertz:

The Anthropology of Experience. (1986).    Edited by Turner and Bruner.  UP of Illinois.  ISBN:  0252012496

I may scan in the Geertz eiplogue and send it to you and few other people.   It says a lot about how to get at the study of human experiences (leadership?).   Anyway, within it there's a really moving essay by Myerhoff about the studied dynamics of change in a retirement community of older European Jews living in Venice, CA.  Called "Life Not Death in Venice".   And then a really good essay making really fine connections to Thoreau, James and Dewey by Roger Abrahams called "Ordinary and Extraordinary Experience".   

----------

I will get into the Pollock materials on Tuesday.  

found objects

I rather like found object projects.   For years (being a runner and now a walker) along many roads....I have been interested in lost or discarded clothing.   But have never pursued it deliberately.  Although in my photo files I probably have (historically) a kind of assembly of photos.

I see each piece of clothing as a spur to the imagination.

Underwear of course is the most interesting since by being under wear it is more intimate.   Losing a baseball cap is not as intrinsically as interesting as a bra or boxers.   Or is that just me?

Where you find these things is interesting too.   Along a state highway is one thing.   But on a trail on a mountain is much more interesting.

For years I photographed a red scarf on a trail I hike every spring in Canada.  I think someone hung it on a tree branch, perhaps the owner would see it?  But they (perhaps) never did.  And it gradually rotted and faded on the branch.   On that same trail (but way off the trail where one might go to avoid a swampy area) I photographed a pair of mens Jordash jockey shorts draped over a bush.  After four years they had melted into the landscape.  Then this year, I found a really nice windbreaker under a picnic table on a remote point facing the Maine coast from the island I was on.   It was there most of the spring getting washed by nature and fading a bit.

There's a place on the Sandwich Notch Road where there's a red article of clothing embedded into the gravel road.  Who knows how old it could be?

It's the story with these things that's important.....how one connects them back to some version or vision of a possible reality.

Also thought a while about collecting the actual artifacts and collaging them.   Your piece here made me think of that.   But don't like to touch found underwear for some reason.   I don't think that's just me....

This approach to objects d'art  is I think the antithesis of zillion dollar classic paintings.  

Hi John,

I think this past week has been highly successful in broadening the scope of sources/materials for interpretation.  Especially if we are going to style “leadership” as concept that has to be explored as “culture”.   Then many things that relate to this study also relate to other human activities/endeavors/forms of production/performances.  

But, there several hurdles or impediments to this “broadening”.  Some of these are part of the cultural we’re part of (embedded norms for “how to see” and what we might do as a result of that seeing”).   I think in a way our culture dulls people from actions of interpretation.   It makes them passive consumers of other people’s production.   Usually at a price and with a dulled sort of consciousness to the insight that they could be doing this for free on their own.  

And that spells out a kind of divide in the DA students and faculty as well.   It’s the difference between actively “doing” and “interpreting” versus a different kind of doing that’s oriented toward “finding” and “receiving meaning”.  

If there is anything useful to be realized about leadership I think it has to come through actively doing and interpreting.  And that is precisely the dominant mode of good stuff in the arts I think?  Or am I mistaken?  And it doesn’t cost anything since you can do and interpret anything anywhere you are.....   Just like thinking and reflecting.   These are choices.  

Educating is helping people become aware of their ability (LOL) (that they are doomed) to choose and that they themselves are the cultural repository that resists this the most (most often).

Allan

PS  I'm very interested in "Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird are twelve too many for someone who still believes that facts are born not made, and that differences of perception reduce to differences of opinion."  Clifford Geertz    Especially the last phrase....  it seems very important to me in the activity of the course as we're teaching it.  

art in the making

making art is a kind of human performance.... not always exactly like a performance on stage....but still per-forming.

i'm wondering about the relationship "art" to

in-forming

de-forming

per-forming

re-forming

what's the relation of "form" to art?

if we understood the experiential engagement with making/performing.....situationally...."originally" as it's made and  observed in particular situations in time....might we not get a better qualitative grasp of something interesting?

But the received categories for "grasping" seem to me to always carry a lot of baggage....a lot of givens that in fact most of us who perform and create don't really mean to subscribe to?

Below: From

Below:  From 

http://www.runninganddoing.org

The blog I'm maintaining with Kurt Stuke (also a DA Student).   Between Tl 600, ED 5010 at PSU, I've been allocating myself toward Kurt's Bog recently since the highlight of the blog is him running a marathon on Mt. Desert Island (hmmmm on the day of your wedding, is it 10/18?) and Grace and I will be over there the week before and that particular day there celebrating our 40th.)

Interesting.   Or I may not remember your date correctly?    However....below is a post by Kurt recently.   May be relevant to things we have going.   Once we get over the hump with his IS I know I'll be able to think about the great stuff you are posting here.....

Allan

-------  

Reflection - Bourdieu

I feel pulled to Bourdieu's thoughts as a result of our recent transactions...

“A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code into which it is encoded.”

“A beholder who lacks the specific code feels lost in a chaos of sounds and rhythms, colors and lines, without rhyme or reason…he cannot move from the ‘primary stratum of the meaning we can grasp on the basis of our ordinary experience’ to the ‘stratum of secondary meanings,’ i.e. the ‘level of the meaning of what is signified’, unless he posses the concepts which go beyond the sensible properties and which identify the specifically stylistic properties of the work.”

Truth seems impossible; meaning seems illusory .

Music ,Emotion and the Lived Experience.

One could say that contemporary musics the past 20 years or so) downfall is that we have attached the nasty habit of compartmentalizing it from its original intent...which is-in the most humanly innate sense-to entertain human emotion.We package it,process it,compress it,chop it and polish it all to serve a premeditated (advertised) desire that may not exist.Neil Young once said he preferred the sound quality of Vynl to the unnatural sound quality of the CD.Its barriers exist heavily in media driven capitalistic cultures/society's like here in the US.I am curious how much of the music we listen to is as holistic as it were originally intended? I assume thats what makes basement tapes so interesting...the process of sound development (or creative intent) can be heard.How are society's affected when they are not exposed to the creative process?Even the non-artist should have a slight comprehension of the artistic sacrifice.Could it be that our emotions and lived experiences are compromised when musics organic (holistic) intention is not exposed?Can a seventh generation recording of aboriginal music retain its pure intent in this format?
Keep in mind that we may be in a new kind of digital revolution. When Napster and Limewire presented itself (to money hording record companies) as a resource of free music, also surfaced the idea that accessible music was a tool of empowerment~that music was ours again.The idea that accessible-free music (regardless of its category or genre) may speak to our emotions more freely as opposed to a more corporate controlled entity is something I feel that's is research worthy.In this sense the quality of its impact in our lives could be a different experience.

Swinging back to my post regarding the transformation of bohemian (index) cultures, where music actually began as an accessible venture...then shifts in content,venue and position in commerce, is also something that interests me.For example ,Woodstock 69 was intended as a capitalistic venture and it ended up being a free event,what if the fence never came down? This fact I believe contributed much to the events impact socially and politically~not just here in the U.S. but globally.

Thank you for your sharing your email with me.Culturally Ishamel and I have may have a different experiences with music ...but its lived existence in our emotions (whatever form and or concept) is something I am sure we can relate to.Think of the global impact the Beatles music has example,our attachment to it in a lived sense could be something we may all share.Now the Beatles music was not free,they made a ton of money and still do.Yet what makes their music touch us so,while still having underlying capitalistic intent?Regardless each moment, within each song, could mean something different for all of us.The idea then shifts to the creative control of the artist.I believe if the Beatles did not inolve themselves in their own creative process, then it would have had less of an impact.Briefly,I explored this idea in another post "Leadership In The Arena" regarding an experience I had just recently with a band (Rush) I quite fancy.

John Kane

September 12

Found objects on Grand Manan cobble beach, September 5, 2010.   Diverse plastic bottles get close to each      other and tie the knot.   If you look enough....eventually almost anything will appear.

The Disappearing Creative Class

There's a lot of talk about the polarization of our society.  [Not nearly enough.]  You are either very rich or poor. The middle class is disappearing. Among the disappearing middle class are also the 97% of the highly talented creative minds who are invisible to the naked eye. [Doesn't this bring into question how a "highly talented creative mind" is defined?   Honestly, via my definition the real ones are rarely "invisible".]

Have you ever gone to a local club and heard a band play and wonder how they could be so talented, yet unknown? [I've gone to a lot of clubs that have made me wonder exactly the opposite.]  Makes you realize how narrow the odds of being discovered are.  [I'm not sure more "discovery" is what we need?]   The internet was supposed to be the magnet that would raise this undiscovered talent pool to the surface.  [Okay....now that we're over the cliches....this is interesting.  Of course I don't think the vast majority of internet users "supposed" it would be a magnet for such things.   But we can grant that for the sake of argument/consideration perhaps.]

But so far, the internet is about enabling the "masses" to express themselves. So far that has created a lot of flotsam and jetsam. The undiscovered talent remains, well, undiscovered.  [Stealth elitism rears its ugly head.   It's a confusion of how people use the internet....she takes as a given in this paragraph what she supposed in the previous one.  And now what she supposed has become the standard of judgment in either/or fashion.    Also a confusion here about the necessity of "discovery".  Undefined and ambiguous in her use of it.]

The more the internet evolves, it seems to be all about helping the mainstream publishers and production companies find advocates among the masses. [Hello?   Where do you live?  Estonia?  This is AMERICA love it or leave it.   You are just noticing this feature of living in the USA?]   Specifically, I've seen statistics that more tweets and blog links connect to traditional media than "alternatives".   [Again, should we be surprised?  Is this news?]

There is nothing wrong with what is on the internet. Don't get me wrong. [Perhaps a tad overstated.   Huge pornographic endeavors with women being raped and other forms of violence and bigotry....."there's nothing wrong with what is on the internet".   But if it is innovation we seek, and I hope that's true, let's get back to what the promise of the internet was supposed to be -- to help the truly talented, creative class master their craft and help those who seek to find and encourage them participate too.  [Utopian....which isn't bad.   But only points in the direction of a decisions that have to be personally made....which is much harder than pontificating about society.]

Arianna Huffington is drawing attention to the disappearing "middle class" in the US in this series.  [In my world, the use of "class" in creative and also more traditional socio-economic uses needs to be closely examined.   Was there every a "creative class"?   And if so, what did that mean in socio-economic terms?   We are seeking partners to develop MusikMosh specifically to enable the both culture and commerce to flourish in the music making community.  [The sheer proliferation on the net of Platforms and Venues—just the sheer number of them—is an issue.  And then there's the issue of knowing about them and judging what to use or invest time in.]

at Kiah Pond

Indian Cucumber Root at Kiah Pond

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Today after too many hours at the computer I hiked to remote Kiah Pond in the Sandwich Notch.  Bushwhacked around the north end where I have never been before.  Experimented with taking a few pan shots of the pond which are viable at my usual photo site

Saw the above, some blooming turtlehead, and best of all some small white fall blooming orchids called "ladies tresses".   Overall, a great hike....it was pretty cool.  

Technically I was doing "research" for my Saturday hiking class.   And thus....work and play conjugate for me.

First Post

L' invitation au voyage

the song

the movie

the text:


Mon enfant, ma sœur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble,
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble.

Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

[ Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre,
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale
Tout y parlerait
À l'âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté. ]1

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l'humeur est vagabonde;
C'est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde.

Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D'hyacinthe et d'or;
Le monde s'endort
Dans une chaude lumière!

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

--------

the translation:


My child, my sister,
think of the sweetness
of going there to live together!
To love at leisure,
to love and to die
in a country that is the image of you!

The misty suns
of those changeable skies
have for me the same
mysterious charm
as your fickle eyes
shining through their tears.

There, all is harmony and beauty,
luxury, calm and delight.

----------

the art of going there is the art of the blog?