take no notice of my darkness, because the sun has discoloured me

i lived in thoughts of her. where are you, i thought, where may my lonely spirit find you, sweet maiden? do you gaze before you and reflect? have you laid your work aside and rested your arm on your knee and your head on your little hand and yielded yourself to lovely thoughts?
may nothing disturb my peaceful one when she refreshes her heart with sweet fantasies, may nothing touch this bunch of grapes and graze the invigorating dew from the tender berries!

to comfort him virgil explains how beatrice descended to him in limbo and told him of her concern for dante. it is she, the symbol of divine love, who sends virgil to lead dante from error. she has come into hell itself on this errand, for dante cannot come to divine love unaided.

it is as if my soul were spinning through every nerve. she plays a melody on her clavichord with the touch of an angel, so simple, so ethereal! it is her favourite tune, and i am cured of all pain, confusion and melancholy the moment she strikes the first note.


- friedrich hölderlin - hyperion - 1797/1799 (for diotima)
- dante alighieri - inferno from the divine comedy - 1321
- j.w. von goethe - the sorrows of young werther - 1774/1786
- the letters of abelard and heloise - 12th century

univers du western - wagon master, my darling clementine

don't shoot,
please don't shoot,
my boys,
you killed my boys,
good boys they was too,
jesse, luke, luke was my oldest boy

john ford - wagon master - 1950
(charles kemper)

don't shoot me marshal,
marshal,
my boys,
ike, sam, phin, billy
(they're dead)

john ford - my darling clementine - 1946
(walter brennan)

(number 10 of 500 detailing westerns)
(number 1 of * on john ford)

about alienation

jeanne dielman was considered a feminist film, but that was not my goal when i made it. my goal at the time was to show someone who organizes her life so that there is no hole in her time, because when there is a hole, there is also anxiety. i could have done that same film about a man, except that i was more interested in showing a woman's everyday gestures. i don't think it was feminist in the sense that many people have said - at least, a film about alienation because of gender was not my goal. maybe the film became that, but for me, jeanne dielman... was an act of love for those gestures that you see when you're a child, that you are surrounded by as a child. in a way, the repetition of those gestures is very good for a child.

interview with chantal akerman found in scott macdonald's a critical cinema 4 - university of california press - 2005

the universities have completely imploded. they're places to go if you believe that the media discourse of french philosophy is the only viable approach to film, and that the empirical relationship of the viewer to the work of art is utterly passé. a generation of followers of foucault, lacan, and derrida has made the universities as hermetically sealed against the presence of this art (avant-garde film) as the universities in the fifties were.

interview with p. adams sitney found in scott macdonald's a critical cinema 4 - university of california press - 2005

impressions in the upper atmosphere

images collected of the work of josé antonio sistiaga

inspired by last nights screening of
ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren - 1970
impressions in the upper atmosphere - 1989

(one of the big influences on the art of memory)
(first seen at articulated light: the emergence of abstract film in america
curated by bruce posner)

abstraktes bild

stan brakhage - love song - 2001

stan brakhage - stellar - 1993
collaboration with sam bush

gerhard richter - watorcolours

it is breathed by stars

sb: have you seen my last hymn to the night: novalis?

pt: no, i haven’t.

sb: that’s a short film, maybe four and a half minutes, where i scratched sections of that poem onto the film, so the words appear as electrical fires interwoven with paint. the other version i made this past year, pulling out from under all this awful cancer treatment i’ve been through. i tried to imagine what novalis’ last hymn to the night might have been, when he’d be beyond language. it’s a twenty-five minute film, the most elaborate hand-painted film i’ve made. *


the universally gladdening light... as inmost soul... it is breathed by stars... by stone... i seek to blend with ashes **


... night became the mighty womb of revelations - the gods drew back into it - and fell asleep, only to go out in new and more splendid forms over the changed world ... the new world appeared with features never seen before... ***


* philip taaffe: composite nature - peter blum edition - 1998
** david e. james (edited) - stan brakhage: filmmaker - temple university press - 2005
specifically - r. bruce elder - brakhage - poesis (text used in film)
*** novalis - hymns to the night - 1800 - translation dick higgins

yggdrasill whose roots are stars in the human mind

stan brakhage
yggdrasill whose roots are stars in the human mind - 1997

brakhage and landscape art
images from fred camper's site

the stars are clear sounds; the sun a magnificent silence; the moon?...whispers that are almost sounds in the undulating wave of noise the universe is

cracks in stan brakhage's dog star man - prelude - 1964

painting in dog star man - prelude

painting and some scratching in dog star man, part 3.

- related work -

jackson pollock - triad - 1948

jackson pollock - number 22a, 1948 - 1948

jackson pollock - untitled ca. 1950 (detail)

jackson pollock - one: number 31 - 1950

jackson pollock

barnett newman - untitled - 1961

clyfford still - painting - 1951-52

clyfford still - untitled (ph-58) - 1951 - detail
(one of my favourite paintings in the sfmoma)

robert motherwell - untitled - 1967

robert motherwell - octavio paz, three poems 8 - 1987

robert motherwell - in plato's cave

robert rauschenberg - untitled (glossy black painting) - ca. 1951

alberto burri - cretto - 1973

lucio fontana - concetto spaziale - 1952

(title from brakhage's the stars are beautiful)