Dreaming of Life: An Essay on Edgar Alan Poe, Walt Whitman and Zhuang Zi

Dreaming of Life: Poe, Whitman, and ZhuangZi

By Armando Ortiz

As I searched for some topic materials for a student I was tutoring, the idea came up of introducing him to a few poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and while looking for two that would be a good fit, I came across A Dream Within A Dream. After reading it I was left feeling that somehow this particular piece went well with a poem by Walt Whitman, though I had trouble remembering which piece that was. After choosing the later and The Raven, the lesson was pretty much set on what the discussion would involve; hope, dreams, and the symbolism of the raven. Later the idea that had been born while examining some of Poe’s works returned like a bird that lands on a branch and perches outside your window, propelling me to write on A Dream Within A Dream, and Whitman’s Facing West from California’s Shores. Though plenty has already been written by both authors, my reinterpretation of their pieces along with personal past experiences will crystallize, in some way, the messages that these two authors attempted to convey. I will then end my brief discussion on these two poets with an older writer, Zhuang Zi, and compare his piece The Butterfly Dream to the ideas gathered from Poe and Whitman.

Both authors stand at the edge of the giant land mass of the North American continent  and look towards the ocean, watching the waves and viewing the horizons of the East and West coasts while the approaching, yet diminishing soapy waves slightly touch their feet, concurrently their different perspectives connect with me on a personal level. My experiences matched the things they talked about, though not in the manner that they wrote. Reading their passages transported me back to the Summer of 2001, to the beach, where my body sat on the sand and looked out towards the ocean, my mind pondering the future; I’d be flying to South Korea soon. Sitting there I thought of the other side of the ocean, and wondered if there were people also sitting and looking toward the ocean facing my direction, as I faced theirs.

In South Korea, I visited Seoraksan National Park, which lies on the East Coast, and on the first day of arrival I explored the fish market that was by the coast and got to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time, from the other end of the world. The ocean was still blue, maybe a slightly deeper blue, and the waves appeared magnificent with their engulfing white noise, and with my back to the fish market, where hundreds of squid hung drying on wires- I stared across the massive body of water, thinking what people on the other side of the ocean were doing.

My eyes had glanced through A Dream within a Dream, but they had yet to decipher the words of Whitman, and still the meanings of both writers were far from becoming internalized in my life, but that’s no longer the case. Ten years later, as I read those passages once again, the past immediately reappeared, like discovering an old random photograph of vivid memories. Whitman stands looking West, pondering life, and all that has happened to mankind and his own life, and takes us back to the times when we traveled alone in a cramped bus or inside a cold train cabin where people asked innumerable questions about our lives and family in a language one was yet unable to register. On a personal level, the things seen and experienced in the past twelve years have been like one endless adventure, like an extended journey of discovery and learning, and yet all of that was expressed and rediscovered within Whitman’s lines. As I read those lines for the first time, I was immediately transported to the places I had once walked through, like the night market of Urumqi, China and as I continued toward the end of this piece it seemed to affirm life’s great gift. It took me through an epic journey where my life joined the life of many strangers that have walked and traveled this earth and have made the present moment their home.

Whitman has several lines that punctuated with realities that I had once experienced, like traveling through the Northern parts of the Himalayas in Sichuan, China and though I’ve yet to claim having traveled around the world, the long road trips and the long train rides seemed to merge with his lines, “Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,” and there I was now in Santa Monica beach pondering life, and wondering what the future held. With every gain there is a loss and with every action there is a reaction.

Facing West from California’s Shores

Facing west from California’s shores,

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,

             The land of migrations, look far,

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

For Asia, from the north, form the God, the safe, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,

Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

         -Walt Whitman

Reading Poe pulled me back to the present and made me think of life’s ephemeral experiences that are accented by our present emotional roller coaster rides, and the pace at which nature, though slowly, at a patient and steady pace passes us bye, making us reflect on our unfolding realities that can be traced back to the moments where we made decisions on a whim or due to someone’s random advice. Decisions that took you from climbing a peach tree in the front yard of the house as a child to hiking up the sacred TianShan in China as an adult, and the thought of the undecipherable future comes into focus. “Is all that we see or seem, a dream within a dream”?  His piece is more personal though in the sense that it revives emotions experienced with loss and with the closing of relationships along with the uncertainty of tomorrow’s hope. At the moment it happens all these feelings come alive, like a dry creek bed in the desert that suddenly becomes a raging river with the rabid summer rains that are difficult to control, and yet after an hour of downpours, everything dissipates and things go back to normal. Poe looks at the waves making contact with the coast, and thinks, “Yet if hope has flown away, in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it there for the less gone?”

Time passes, and we want to hold on to the precious memories that seem to keep us from getting hurt by the world, but as we head West and we follow the sun to the edge of the continent one comes to the conclusion that at times we just have to let go of the past and move on because time is ceaseless;  “I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of golden sand- How few, Yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep,” and in the end we will ask if all this that has been experienced was a dream or “a dream within a dream.”

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow –

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of golden sand –

How few! Yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep – while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! Can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

         -Edgar Allan Poe

Zhuang Zi

The possibility of Chuang Zi, a Chinese poet and philosopher from the Fourth Century BCE, having visited the ocean and pondered the very same thoughts that we have while looking at the waves and getting caught up in our introspection of life is very likely. In this case though, he writes about dreaming as another being, and gets caught up in his dream, but then stops to wonder if what he dreams is reality or a dream. As time passes and as we come to the realization that we cannot be anyone but ourselves, and reflect on the decisions made, one cannot help but think that if this life is and were a dream then we are living an incredible reality, because it suggest that we are in control of this dream and all possible outcomes are probable, and yet they are not, because in life the future is obscure.

                 

The Butterfly Dream

Once Zhuanzi dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuanzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. -Zhuang Zi

Life in its entire vicissitudes remains ours to make, like the painting that all writers have claimed life to be. It is ours to set up, sketch out, test out, prepare and paint, and like Gabriel Garcia goes on to describe in his epic novel, One Hundred Days of Solitude, we choose what to do with the life that we are given. 

Farewell to Manzanar: Book Review

Farewell to Manzanar

By Armando Ortiz

            The book Farewell to Manzanar details the life of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, before, during and after World War Two. The book tells the story of her family that lived at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, which is located in Manzanar, California and the different modes of socialization that shaped her life; from family, religion, media and the people she met at camp. It is also about her life as an American that despite being U.S. citizen she was treated differently, and regardless of all the barriers that were confronted, hopes and dreams, as well as independence were nurtured in her family.

            I was surprised to find out how quickly Japanese-Americans became targets soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the haste with which they were relocated to camps. People took advantage of them by paying pennies for the valuables and property that they owned. Nonetheless, the narrative shed some light into the manner in which people cope with tough circumstances. At Manzanar, a community formed and people adapted to their new environment and made the land theirs, for example a lot of the bungalows started to have small stone monuments in front of every entrance, and the community built a small park to have normality in their lives.

Jeanne’s father was authoritarian and influenced her life and though as time passed she lost respect for him, his disposition in conjunction with an adventurous spirit and independent mind were aspects of his character that greatly socialized her. Having taken the risk of moving to America, and spending time in places like Idaho and Washington made him a man with a full life experience. There is a point in the story where she tells of the time she wanted to convert to Catholicism and he tells her that she was not old enough to think for herself, thus stopping the conversion process. Jeanne describes an instance where Mr. Wakatsuki and her brother, Woody, had a long discussion on the rational and moral consequences of becoming a soldier for the United States. Eventually, Woody, joined the Army and went on to fight in Europe. It was through such examples of giving his children feedback that Jeanne and Woody were raised to think for themselves independently.

While growing up in Inglewood, her access to Japanese culture was limited, but at Manzanar she came to discover socio-cultural similarities between the community that developed there with its traces of Japanese culture, and the American culture she knew outside of camp. At camp, she learned about Japanese traditional dancing, and was exposed to Japanese aesthetics and symbols, like rock gardening. This was well illustrated when she explained the connection between the Japanese National Anthem, also known as “Kimigayo,” and the Japanese belief that even in a barren landscape, like a rock island, hope can exist, which is symbolized by the moss that grows on the rock.

Religion was a socio-cultural force that she kept experiencing throughout her stay at Manzanar. There catholic nuns offered catechism classes to the community, and at one point she decides to convert to Catholicism though she was too young to really understand the choices she was making. Though not explicitly told, her experience at Manzanar accented certain aspects of Japanese culture in her life. Towards the end of the book she states her belief in spirits and ghost, as she explains the sense of respect and silence that gripped her during a visit to Manzanar as an adult, solidifying her belief of Shinto traditions.

Media and mainstream culture were prevalent throughout her life and she connected more with Western and American culture than her Japanese heritage. She knew the different actors in films, and had liked watching television. Extracurricular activities like baseball, and ballet classes were available. Though different forces passively and actively influencing her life, slowly, and progressively an identity of individuality was being forged in Jeanne.

            

Music in Los Angeles and the Hotbed of Talent: Birthday Weekend

Birthday Weekend

by Armando Ortiz

My extended birthday weekend began a few days before Spring Break, soon after completing my last final at Cal State L.A. Once that was done my brain shut down and all I wanted to do was relax. A day before my actual birthday began, and during the self induced brain coma of not learning theories and ways of teaching, and with a somewhat rested body that had had two days of longer sleep and endless hours of downloading music, a pre-celebration took place. The day before the big birthday a friend, Tom, would be performing at the Hard Rock Café in Hollywood with Rivet, a local hard rock band, with whom he plays bass.

My friend Tom on the bass.

I arrived early to find a spot to sit, but inside the place was packed with people of all kinds eating burgers and other greasy foods. The shatter and murmur of the people was a mixture of English and other languages that I did not have the time to decipher  There was a pit where most of the family tables were located and where the majority of people sat and that's where I stood for a while searching for my friends. I began texting Tom but there was no reply, so I kept walking around the venue until I found his wife, Semmy, at a distance. I approached, announcing my presence and she took me to the green room where Tom and the band were getting ready and chatting it up with the other bands that were competing in the Battle of the Bands, which included Lookin' For Trouble, Take 48 and Kid Gramophone.

Rivet

After a few minutes of being introduced to the other members I ordered a Hard Rock burger, a Cesar salad and a glass of water. It might have been one of the best burgers I’ve had in a while, though it wasn’t able to replace the tasty Tommy’s Burgers' sloppy tastiness  In the middle of the meal Rivet went on stage and began blasting away with their hard sonic rock sounds. Their style resembles a slower version of Queen’s of the Stone Age with a bit of an edge to the lyrics. I left the burger half way and went out to the pit where a mass of people was gathering and swaying to the live music. As everyone stood watching them perform energy began to fill the entire room, these guys were in the pocket and were getting the crowd into their music. Their set ended and everyone cheered them on applauding the four song performance. Returning to the green room greetings and congratulations, along with handshakes were given and the burger that was left on the table was finally finished. All there was left were specks of fries and smears of ketchup. I'd requested to go in late to work that night, and once all formalities were done I took La Brea Ave south to LAX. The drive was about thirty minutes, and from the hilly slopes of Hollywood one could see the grey fog at a distance, but once driving past Jefferson and driving through the oil fields that divide Los Angeles from Inglewood, the watery clouds were beginning to settle. This is one of the few spots in LA that while driving makes you wonder how it must have been driving these areas fifty years ago, when there was more nature and less people. The incandescent street lights gave a light orange glow that perfectly blended into the natural and man-made Los Angeles landscape. The drive to work was smooth and easy matching well with the music that was coming out of the speakers of the car- Lil Keke's Addicted 2 Fame.

            The next day was the birthday celebration which was a bit subdued due to extenuating circumstances that made me want to relax more than go out and party. After completing a tutoring session with my student at the Chinatown Service Center a bee line to the LA Bakery was made, where I bought a delicious chocolate mousse cake. I was going to go home to eat cake with coffee, and relax, maybe watch a netflix film. Nonetheless, after relentless calls and questioning from a friend I decided to go check out a local band called Buyepongo. 

Honduras Kitchen flyer:
Punta Cartel

            I took the 10 Freeway east, and exited Alameda, making a turn at the stop light and then drove to the place, but missed my destination by a few blocks. Driving around the mean streets of South Central was a reality that had to be lived out at that very moment. I finally got to the venue, Honduras Kitchen, at around ten thirty in the evening, which is located on Santa Fe and Slauson. It was my first time there and the parking space in the locale was packed, so the security guard suggested parking the car across the street from where the place was. I contacted my friends, who were inside their car, too scared to go out and blend with the environment. Entrance was simple with a cover charge of ten dollars. Once inside we were told to go to the table that was nearest to the band that was performing at that moment, Cumbia Cartel, who is made up of musicians that are from different parts of the Caribbean and Central America. The performance they put down was good, and one of the guys even had a set of instruments made of turtle shells. Their combination of West African beats with their mixture of accordion like synthesizer at times made for a very enjoyable rhythmic ride. I was transported to a beach, where I drank cold coronas, enjoying the punta/cumbia beats that were emanating from the instruments of those unknown musicians.

Buyepongo

Once their set was done DJ Subsuelo began his hour long set, which started out good, but ended up turning into an odd mix of cumbia and house, which was made a bit hectic with the house sound systems which was out of whack. Finally, Buyepongo began their set. They do not need all that sound system stuff to get their groove on because once they start playing the dancing begins and things get off fast with people beginning to move to their groove. The venue was ideal for a band like theirs because the need to connect a lot of electrical and sound devices is not necessary. What especially stands out from this particular band is how well they sound as a whole unit, and the fact that they play a variety of instruments makes them one of the more versatile and original bands in the Los Angeles area. They have soul, grove, estilo, and some firme sounds that will make anyone get up and dance. My good friend Ismael, though, who is more of an observer and an analyzer of people decided to stay in his seat, next to his wife. I went up to the dance floor and asked a lady to dance, who moved like a snake, and swaying like a Heron. She would quicken her pace with her youthfulness, and moved as if her feet were touching fire, with a seasoning of ritualistic fire dancing, I was humbled but was too excited to care because I was in the pocket. There is a sense of satisfaction that comes when thinking of the choice that was made for that day because Buye always puts on bad ass shows, and the fact that beautiful women show up and are down to dancing with anyone is one big incentive to show up and shake one’s skeleton.

House Lounge flyer featuring
all the bands.

            Saturday evening had me at the edge of Maywood. To continue my celebration and for entertainment purposes my friends invited me to dance some Spanish rock at the House Lounge, which changes their name to El Ritual on Saturdays. To my amazement there was a huge Ska concert in the back of the venue, which everyone that entered the club had access too. The bands there were getting down and a giant mosh pit had been made by a giant human circle that moved clockwise. The scene was a bit intimidating, seeing people in their twenties with beer bottles, and Pendleton shirts buttoned up while others wore wife beater shirts made you think twice of where you stepped, but I walked around and found a sweet spot where I could watch the show without being bothered by some crazy mosher that might suddenly push you. I climbed on a platform that was beside a wall and from there watched The South Central Skankers, Matamoska, and Roncovacoco put on a show that was a mixture of punk and symphonic banda trumpeteering that included about two saxophones and one trombone. I went back inside and bought a beer and there found my friend swaying to music from Heroes Del Silencio. Though the mosh pit was big and lots of people would join the pushing and the bumping nothing serious happened. I ended my night by driving west on Washington Blvd to where I live.

Good Micheladas

Flyer for the nigh's event.

            My weekend ended with meeting up with a good friend at Eastside Luv located in Boyle Heights where there was yet another live performance, but this time it was a lady’s show with women that were not only beautiful but very talented. There was a lady whose name I never got who was busting out some amazing mariachi songs, and was being backed up by a female band that played the fiddle, the guitar and a guitar bass. Eastside Luv has one of the best micheladas that I have had anywhere in Los Angeles. The show, which was a 5 dollar cover charge, was really good and made the drive east well worth it. I even got to see Marisoul who makes up part of the La Santa Cecilia, a very talented band that has been touring the southwest for a good minute. My birthday weekend ended, and I had to finally wake up from the brain haze and readjust to the new quarter and picking up from where I left off. 

Me

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Fourteen): Los Angeles Pompeii

Part 14: Los Angeles Pompeii

By Armando Ortiz

I walked across campus today, from the student union out to the new library. Every step I took brought back reminders of when I’d walk the dry and brittle field. The Southern California summer sun shone on me and the perspiration on my body transported me to that time, when days were hot, and afternoons were spent playing baseball, practicing catch with brown leather gloves, and drinking from the water fountains.

Today, a layer of grey concrete and black asphalt covered it all, like the sweat that covered the body after running up and down the bleachers that were there, the field was not there anymore, but was with me (but my feet were walking on the grass).

Layers of memories and strata of former realities lie beneath, unexposed to the eye and deep as the Grand Canyon, like the strawberry shortcake that I’d cut for my birthday. Like a time capsule that silently waits to be uncovered, unearthed at once as we walk past once beaten paths.

It seemed like walking through library stacks and passing encyclopedias of instances that were covered within the new structures. Then I imagined giant Caterpillar engines tearing through walls, crumbling adobe foundations and old rail tracks, and within the creamy icing and layers of cake I would find pieces of strawberry. Birthday celebrations and a time of carefree childhood came to be. Rows of dusty tomes describing a Los Angeles that was, with its collective history of gestures and looks, with smiles and frowns, with unknown pine boxes covered in dirt and memories hidden in that forest of the mind like a Pompeii of the American dream, like a desert mirage that dissipates as we arrive.

For an instant, I think of those Shanghaied from foreign lands, desperados enslaved in native shores, of the families that came from distant countries, traditions casting shadow of when the elderly were cared for and plates of food that were always shared. Images instantly conjured up by the mind, but I return to the present, and remember the child that didn’t fear the sun, and the home-runs that were scored during the endless afternoons.

The real libraries of this city are edited by film crews, and bulldozed by giant yellow tractors, reconstructed by unregistered names, making sterilized versions of what was and isn’t, projecting a collective memory of the population, but my experience is here on this land and on that invisible and forgotten field. Memories are like shadow puppets to the mind, every surface has unseen layers of personal experience and every detail is hidden behind a blinding silhouette.

Potter fields talk to us with multi-colored beaded work, Jade bracelets, and Mexican silver coins, click clack against each other inside Chumash baskets, where golden Mormon books, adjacent to iron skillets, porcelain pipes with sage, and tomahawk smokers filled with opium adorned by the scattered burial incense of tobacco, veiled over by cement sidewalks that are imprinted with acronyms of local hoods.

Hieroglyphs spray painted on the walls of crumbling plastered walls testifying of the presence of earth’s gypsies, shadows of the past casting images with the present light on nameless graves where mummified miners lay forgotten. What memories did they take into the eternal time clock?

Walking across campus also brought back that tumultuous time, when glass pipes were used and broken, and jitteriness was a vexing reality, mother would come home tired and unharmed at half past eleven, after the sirens and flashing red lights disappeared from down the street. Unknown shadows would merge with darkness stabbed by the hand of death that quickens time. The glare of the television had us captive and its luminosity kept us safe from the wails of night, its images somehow magically protected the home.

These memories unwove themselves with every step that I took and loosen up the dyes and the fabric that have always been there, like the time two junkies started fighting in front of the apartment and the hollow acoustics that could be heard outside the window, when a head bounced off the concrete sidewalk and the person laid motionless. We would order pizza to be delivered to the unsuspecting neighbor next door.

Now there is more of everything everywhere, throngs of students here and there, countless pedestrians exiting the subway, like a faucet that gushes people. Maybe I’m just getting old, becoming nostalgic for the past, somehow though the memories are there within the layers of experience and within the brush strokes of life’s moment, everlasting, the child inside the adult me, but I am here now.

We walk through every valley on this earth, and in death voiceless bones cannot be silenced and sacred artifacts, like holy temples that stand on perfect space, speak volumes of truth to me and everyone else.

The science building is not there, nor is the library, only a barren grassy field where time went by slowly because the memories we made on fields of grass, will carry us through the golden meadows of time becoming holier than thou art and thou was. And even when we return to the slides of our youth that have been replaced by condominiums images, like Lazarus are revived. It is in those visions, conjured up by memory, despite places covered over by a new strip mall, where we hear the hollow clang of the aluminum bat that sent the ball flying over their heads and it will be like it always has been, with the sun shining over our withering bodies.

Los Angeles Rain: Poem

Los Angeles Rain

by Armando Ortiz

Standing under the cover of night

watching the rain clouds paint

Downtown L.A. with Dodger grey

Palm trees sway goodbye to another day

as electric ensembles purify the streets

under the shimmering incandescent lights,

Wheels swish through water and disappear from sight

the rhythm of the acoustic ensemble continues

liquid cymbals splashing throughout the night,

Someone steps outside their tiny room and with all their might

remember their first winter storm in L.A.

and begin to play their trumpet to clear skies nigh.

Beijing Winters

Beijing Winters

by Armando Ortiz

Winter evenings in Beijing are frigid

Nights bring freezing winds

And though at noon the skies are clear and sunny

You don’t want to be outside for too long.

Red is everywhere during this time

And sticks with crab apples sealed fresh

Inside hardened caramel sugar abound

And seasonal preparation for the New Year begins

Bringing red pasted banners and signs on the sides of doors.

Though the eye is blind during these months

The flavors that season the soul are many.

Handmade noodles made to order are at hand

Which are served on steaming white bowls

Topped with thin slices of beef

And a fried egg on top for an extra 5 mao.

A stew of mutton innards quickly warms up the body

I don’t know if it still exists, but when I was there

One could feast on instant huoguo on a side street

Where I ate it on tiny chairs and miniature tables.

It’s also the time when one takes liberal servings

Of dumplings of all kinds; cabbage and pork

Pork and chives, mutton and onions and the veggie and egg kind.

It’s during the night that the dry steppe air of the north passes through the city

And which is further squeezed of its humidity by the centralized heating

With its miles of hot tubes, that connect to a network of pipes

That pumps hot oil and water from a coal furnace that keeps blocks and blocks of people warm

And with severely dry throats.

When those nights of lonesomeness get intertwined with nightmares

It’s as if one were being choked by the devil’s hand

And one awakens desperately reaching for water.

Winters in Beijing also bring into focus

The celebration of the longest night

Which I did once outside a pub, while eating

Grilled chicken wings and drinking Yanjing beer.

The celebration of the longest night and the birth of spring.

When preparations for Chunjie begin to appear.

People bundled up in layers and layers of thick cotton and synthetic wool

Prepare to go back to their hometowns,

And the long lines at the train station are common.

It’s the sign of optimism that we all have survived the terrible winter

And begin to celebrate by buying rolls and rolls of firecrackers and rockets

That for a week will light up the midnight sky, and all the ghosts

That are fast asleep will awaken and be sent back to where they belong,

And we triumphantly declare to spring to open herself and begin forth

The colors of life and the blossoms of spring.

Winters in Beijing are long,

But now they seem short and distant,

Like an old recurring dream that disappears with every waking moment.

The first snowfall that blanketed the school benches,

And topped the pine trees melt from the memory

As the changing jet stream shifts from Northwesterly to Southeasterly direction.

Sebastian Orth: Tattoo Artist and Writer

     I had the good fortune of meeting Sebesatian several times. Some of the more memorable conversations I ever had with any tattooer took place inside his shop. In the midst of Tibetan images and classic works of art by other tattooers that hung on the walls is where he spoke eloquently on the many different histories that exist in every valley on earth. He recently published Many Stories: The Point of the Needle, and in this short video he briefly discusses his book and how the psyche is transformed once one gets a tattoo. Great explanation to something that is mysterious yet modern, mythical but imbued with symbolism.

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

(Jupiter and Semele, 1894-95) G. Moreau

Gustave Moreau: Hieroglyphic Myth and Modern Symbols

By Armando Ortiz

(Fairy and Griffon) G. Moreau

                Understanding Moreau’s works of art and how I came about learning of his work came full circle when realizing that the cover of Bolan’s 2666 was taken from Moreau’s epic piece Jupiter and Semele, where the symbolism and message being projected from his painting are both religious, cryptic, political and imbued with so much epic mythology that to come to a full understanding of them is quite a challenge. The cover and the novel it protected fit well with the apocalyptic story that is told inside. Nonetheless one comes to understand that even in darkness there is a flicker of light that either shines a light that reveals a hidden path or it simply lights the cigarette of someone who is just standing on the sidewalk contemplating the darkness. Though subconsciously I had been exposed to his work during my reading of Bolano, it was only while reading James Joyce’s Ulysses that I became interested in knowing who was Gustave Moreau. The quasi introduction came about as I was engrossed in the midst of a conversation on art and literature that one of the characters in Ulysses was having with one of the main characters in the novel,

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelly, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.” (Ulysses p.185)

(Death on the Pale Hore, 1865) G. Dore

I wanted to learn more on this artist, but this was only one part of the puzzle because aside from his name I was aware of two other Gustave’s that also made masterpieces in their perspective fields of art and in their time, and these are Gustave Dore who is best known for his etchings and engravings of master works such as Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and The Raven. I discovered Dore while reading 2666 where his work appears several times, becoming in a way an apocalyptic and quasi mystical message of the world that Bolano was depicting. It was then that I was able to appreciate many of Dore’s pieces of art, especially those depicting legions of angels and the fallen angels casted as demons.

(Mermaids/Whitefish, 1899) G. Klimt

Gustav Klimt who is best known for painting people that looked to be both floating in a dream world and going down the current of time had a certain appeal when I first saw his work, and as time has gone bye an appreciation for his genius has only increased. But both these artist will be touched upon on a later time. The fact that there are a number of accomplished artist with the name Gustav is enough to make anyone that likes connecting the dots spend months on end studying the lives of these artist. Nonetheless, their names do partially open the door to a better understanding of the late-19^th and early 20^th century art world.

                 

                Gustave Moreau’s art is very apocalyptic and what really stands out is that many of his paintings are watercolor, a medium that was not used much those days. It is one thing to paint landscapes with oils and mix white into different colors, but with watercolor one builds colors on top of the blank paper, and once that lightness is gone it is hard to recapture.

“It is in them that Moreau displayed his boldest technical freedom and the most remarkable facets of his personal style. <<Watercolor makes a man a colorist,>> said Delacroix. This is true of Moreau.” (Jean Selz p. 56)

(Persus and Andromeda, 1870) G. Moreau

His work is very compelling. The hues and combinations of colors are key to his art. In some areas he seems to have saturated the paper with multiple layers of color to the point that backgrounds turned purple or brown, all of which was contrasted by peach colors or faint limes and deep blue colors that make up his skies.

(Phoebus and Boreas, 1879) G. Moreau

“In the room that housed them (Moreau’s paintings) there was an auto-de-fe of vast skies all aflame; globes crushed by bloody suns, hemorrhages of stars flowing in purple cataracts on somersaulting clusters of clouds.”  - J.K. Huyusmans

His technique makes you think of light, and how when we look out towards the horizon is virtually impossible to assimilate to a painting, because though one may try, light and refraction plays a big part in the way we see light and color, and yet Gustave succeeds in this exercise with his paintings.

“Moreau undoubtedly saw in his painting much more than they were able to express. The dream he had of them was a vision more literary than pictorial. In his descriptions of his paintings he went so far as to mention elements which could not be represented graphically, such as fragrant smells and sounds. In this respect the careful notes which he wrote to explain his most important painting are very revealing.” (Jean Selz p. 36)

(The Apparition, 1876) G. Moreau

One need not worry about reading his notes on the paintings he created. Though it might reveal the artists worries and thoughts about what he wanted to accomplish on canvas. What he managed to paint is something that is very much along the lines as one of those songs that one just likes to listen to over and over. There is a connection in this case with his creation and the outside which still happens even today. Some might ask, well, what is so special about that, and I say that the same concerns that people back in his day had still have, and though the symbols used today are slightly different there is that concern of whether this life is a dream or not and lies beyond.

“Moreau did not remain enslaved to those traditions (Impressionist movement of the late 19^th century) so greatly respected  by the painters who, like him, were devoting themselves to interpreting scenes drawn from mythology or the Bible……… he sought to express personal thoughts and to develop ideological themes. The need to invest even the smallest detail of a picture with significant symbols that his most understanding admirers occasionally confessed that they could not decipher them.

                In order to grasp how the painter was able to fuse his intellectual vision with his particular type of pictorial expression, it is necessary to examine his work from the beginning of his career.” (Jean Selz p.6)