Friday, April 22, 2016

Muse

The lamp swings like a pendulum, pictures sway on their nails 
Then slip down the walls, leaving scratched trails 
Amidst the quake, the grief, the confusion and scare 
Slowly ascending is my father's armchair 

And beyond all these outlines of what I see there 
Beyond the sofa, the knickknacks, the old furniture 
Light pours in, and it paints something new 
It reveals, it unveils at this moment a clue 

The clue to a presence only he could once see 
A presence he longed for, because only she 
Could call him back home, and envelop him so 
Touching-not-touching, her hands all aglow 

These pages, upon which he'll never scribble a line 
Are floating from the shadows, into the shine 
Only she can now read the blanks, she and no other 
He's ascending into the hands of his muse, his mother.




Here is a detail from the top center of my oil painting, My Father's Armchair, and a detail from its bottom. These details are also visible on the cover of my poetry book, HomeWhile everyone notices the hands at the bottom, few discover the subtle appearance of the face at the top, because it exists in a different layer than reality, hinting at the presence of a muse... 

 It is extremely difficult to photograph this piece, because the layer of gold, which is exposed in places, reflects light in unpredictable ways. So I snapped the picture in one room, then another, with diffused daylight coming from the side, the front, the top, with and without flash, then took it outside and snapped it in sunlight, in the shadow, here, there and everywhere... You get the picture.

At last I found one version that looked fine to me. First I had to fit the image to a prescribed size (according the book size I have in mind.) Then I created the shadows of the lettering. You may notice that the shadow's color is not black, but rather it is the darkest purple of the painting (which can be seen in the lower left corner.) Also, I blurred these shadows, so they do not have hard edges, but fuzzy ones. Then I selected a soft yellow, with which I typed the title, Home; and a less bright version of this yellow, with which I typed my name and my father's. Being brighter, the title 'comes forward' in relationship to the author names. 

Normally I would make sure that all text fields are of the same width, or that they are arranged in a way that the one on top has the shortest width, and the one at the bottom has the longest width, which creates a sense of stability. Not so here, because I view my childhood home through the shaky lens of memory...

★ Inspired by poetry? Treat yourself a gift ★
"Not only does the author take the reader into a wonderful world where words are like music, ebbing and flowing with a rhythm that is captivating and beautiful, but she also gives life to her father's writings"

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