The Bride of Corinth

the end stanzas of Goethe's "Bride of Corinth" --1797

"But from out my coffin's prison-bounds

By a wond'rous fate I'm forced to rove,

While the blessings and the chaunting sounds

That your priests delight in, useless prove.

Water, salt, are vain

Fervent youth to chain,

Ah, e'en Earth can never cool down love!

"When that infant vow of love was spoken,

Venus' radiant temple smiled on both.

Mother! thou that promise since hast broken,

Fetter'd by a strange, deceitful oath.

Gods, though, hearken ne'er,

Should a mother swear

To deny her daughter's plighted troth.

From my grave to wander I am forc'd,

Still to seek The Good's long-sever'd link,

Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,

And the life-blood of his heart to drink;

When his race is run,

I must hasten on,

And the young must 'neath my vengeance sink,

"Beauteous youth! no longer mayst thou live;

Here must shrivel up thy form so fair;

Did not I to thee a token give,

Taking in return this lock of hair?

View it to thy sorrow!

Grey thoult be to-morrow,

Only to grow brown again when there.

"Mother, to this final prayer give ear!

Let a funeral pile be straightway dress'd;

Open then my cell so sad and drear,

That the flames may give the lovers rest!

When ascends the fire

From the glowing pyre,

To the gods of old we'll hasten, blest."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Goethe is often credited as having written the first modern vampire tale in the Bride of Corinth, but it's truer to say that it's a classic ghost tale. It's a fairly direct retelling of an ancient Greek excerpt from The Book of Marvels (and probably a folktale much older than that)-- the story of Philinnon as related by Phlegon of Tralles, a Greek freedman acting as a town official during the Roman reign of Hadrian, whose task it has been implied was to cover up the events by which Philinnon returned from the dead so as not to cause a scare. The tale goes something like this...

The only young daughter of Demostratus and Charito had fallen ill and died. Her name was Philinnon. Six months pass in the household, and they take on a guest lodger, a young man named Machates. One evening, the grieving mother Charito believes she spies a young girl who resembles her daughter entering Machate's room. On the following morning she asks Machates about this female guest he entertained so late. He said that the girl's name was Philinnon. He showed the shocked parents a ring and breastband that she had left behind, which the parents immediately recognized. Machates admitted that though he entertained the lady two nights in a row, he did not know her. Nor did he understand how this lovely lady could be the long deceased daughter of Demostratus.

The following night the parents hide and they catch a glimpse of Philinnon entering the chambers of Machete. Demostratus and Charito are so excited to see their daughter alive that they burst into the room as Philinnon and Machetes are entwined in bed.

Philinnon leaps into a fury at the parents' intrusion. She reveals that since she had died before she had tasted passion, Hades had granted her to return for three nights so that she might know the pleasure of a man... But the arrival of her parents meant that she must immediately return to the underworld. And her flesh corroded into a corpse before the eyes of her lover and family.

Stalker

A beautiful dream sequence from the Tarkovsky film "Stalker".

Despair

There is another dream my mind revisits. An evil, feverish dream... I am walking on the cobblestones beside the Mississippi River, and it is twilight time. As I pause to watch the water rushing by, I see something move in the darkness. It's an apparition of some sort, a man who is only half there. His face seems familiar. The ghost begins to move until it is out of view behind a floodwall. The dream asks me to follow this spirit, and I do. I climb the barriers beyond the area deemed safe. There are still cobblestones beneath my feet, but I am much closer to the river now. It mists my face like ocean waves, and it smells of catfish. The stones I am walking on are wet and greasy and this path is sloping ever downward. But I can still make out the spirit ahead. It keeps rounding brick walls, yet at all times the river follows at my right.
The cobblestones slowly turn into stairsteps as the sky grows darker, and from somewhere I have produced a lighted torch. The ground levels out below, and there at the bottom stands the faded spirit, close to the crawling river's edge. As I reach flat ground I wave the torch and see myself surrounded by many shades, faded people who don't seem to notice me. Now the spirit I have followed puts on a pair of thick glasses, and I recognize him as my grandfather. I am mortified, yet I see that he cannot speak to me, and I am too unsure to say anything to him.
A small light is now moving across the surface of the water, and as it draws near, I can see that it is a lamp hanging from the bough of a small boat. And standing in the boat is a tall cloaked figure clutching a long pike, which he sweeps like an oar. He approaches the bank, and my grandfather's spirit moves to enter the boat. I plead with this Charon-figure to allow me to ride. My grandfather gives the ferryman coins and they both wave me in.
We glide across the surface of the river, which seems completely placid save for the occassional eel or tentacle that roils to the surface, and the sky has changed to a violent neon color. Everything is lit vibrant, but still there are shadows everywhere. I squint downriver at the opposite shore to see if I can spy our destination... I stare and then I know. There is a forest of spiky trees and atop them, men and women impaled, writhing in agony yet dim and hardly present at all. I have to squint to see, but I spy a large mountainous terrain with a large fortress built into it and in the center, a collosal door that has begun to opun for us. The river rushes in to flow through it, and now I see that the river is pure blood. Our ferry's destination is the Underworld.
I become frightened and I plead with my grandfather's silent spirit. I explain to the ferryman that my grandfather was a good man when he was alive and that I myself am still among the living. Neither of us belong in this place. Neither the ferryman nor the spirit move and we are about to pass through the doors of this hell. Seeing no other way out, I leap out of the boat into the warm river of blood and struggle to swim against the current. I exert all my strength to push against the rushing crimson waters. I swim past other sullen shades who moan and drown beneath the waves, but I have the advantage of being alive and my pace is stronger. I finally reach a tiny island of moss and dead trees. I climb up the brittle branches and survey my surroundings, but it is too dark too see my way out, and the river seems like an ocean with no banks. I do not even know the direction of the hellmouth I swam away from. I wrap myself around the slimy limbs and try to sleep, but I know that there will be no dawn to wake me up...

This is where I get things done

Here's another photosynth, this time of my workstation in the tattoo studio. This is such a neat program. I want to do the entire shop.... one big No Regrets photosynth.

Bizarro

I've been experiencing this recurring dream over the past two weeks... one that starts off amusing, then exciting, then becomes painful and finally leaves me brokenhearted.

When it begins I'm exploring the forest. I'm usually just running recklessly through the woods when I stumble into a depression in the dry leaves. The more I stare at it, the more it resembles a cave, but made of sticks and root with a canopy of red and orange leaves. If anyone I knew was traveling through the woods with me, they at this point fade away and are no longer part of the tale.

I shout into the wood-cave and throw a rock to see if a snake springs out. A very small person appears with red hair, and it's hard to distinguish the sex of this person because there is something very inhuman about this creature besides its size. Its face is very wrinkly. But he looks mostly like a he... I ask him if he is a leprechaun. He nods. He has a wicked smile at all times as if I am the punchline in a joke. Now I don't doubt that he is a leprechaun so I consider the possibilities of the situation I face. I look to the sky, but there is no rainbow, and if there's a pot of gold it's not in sight. Perhaps there's gold hidden in the wood-cave, which could very well be a snakepit. If it hides gold, I am not interested in searching for it... But htis tiny creature must have something magical to offer me, even if I have to steal it. The leprechaun begins to act nervous, but smiles still.

I decide to bluff him. 'I know where your gold is kept,' I boast. 'You will give me my three wishes in exchange for your freedom and my forgetfulness...' The leprechaun tells me he has the power to grant only one wish, which can never be undone, yet he does not protest the situation, this blackmail, in the least... I don't even hesitate. I know what to wish for. I wish for the leprechaun to give me the powers of Superman... flight, xray vision, strength and invulnerability. I could have the powers of a god. The small man agreed. There's a spark of some sort, and almost instantly I begin to float. Simultaneously I can feel my body grow larger and stronger.

And then the world goes fuzzy as I fall back to the ground. There are alarms going off in my head, and my entire body feels sick. I beg for the leprechaun to explain, but he laughs and bounds away. He is gone, and even the wooded hole has vanished. I feel stupid. I feel like I'm dying. I remember that I have the power of flight, so I pull myself from the ground into the air, so weak, moving higher and higher. The world is awash in the color green and everything is wavy. Light and sound echo. I only wish now to get away... away from the green air... I see the blackness of space above me and I reach for it.

There I float alone in orbit above the Earth. The pain has subsided and I know that I will live, but I realize what I have done wrong now. When the leprechaun granted me the powers of Superman, he also gave me his weakness, and the only thing that can destroy Superman is fragments of his home planet.... And now I have the same curse. My planet is a poison to me. A wish that can never be undone... I suddenly know that I will never return and that my destiny is alone among the stars... these strange powers, useful only in keeping me alive forever. I turn and fly away in no particular direction... Just away.

My Den in Photosynth

Today I woke up, had a breakfast of BBQ on toast and beans, then I rode to the health department downtown to renew my tattooing liscense. I picked up some fruit and then I came back here and took photos of my den and arranged them into a photosynth. If you haven't downloaded photosynth yet, you should (it's free). It uses common visual cues in photos to link them all into a 3-d navigable space... in this case, an accurate exploration of my den and workspace... Tomorrow, I might do my studio at the shop.

But I highly suggest you download photosynth and then scope out my own synth to see how badass this program truly is.

Check it out!

~~~~ TmONeY MAX

Artrage

I've been so busy the past week, I've had zero time to sit and write. Today I got to work to discover that I had booked two large backpieces for the same day. Both ladies had already paid in full, so I took the first appointment, the start of an Egyptian full backpiece, and the second I had to move to the next available spot, a week away. I hate doing that. I'm sure she was quite excited to get that peacock tattooed and now she has to wait a week longer.

Having to wait for anything you're excited about is horrible. All week, I've been anxiously awaiting the chance to paint, to finish some other projects. I've got a band logo to design, some submissions to a couple of digi-zines, storyboarding for this comic I can never find time for. And then I'm going to take a couple hundred photos around my studio and try to make a photosynth.

Since I have no new art, here's a few of my Artrage paintings... done with Artrage 2.5

Charmed

... I'm sure.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

And I feel fine.

Through a Looking Glass...

"Be what you would seem to be, or if you'd like it put more simply: Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."
~~~ sage advice from the Duchess of Wonderland

the Lamplighter

Homo qui erranti comiter monstrat viam, Quasi lumen de suo lumine accendit, facit: Nihilominus ipsi luceat, cum illi accenderit.

"He who kindly shows the way to one who has missed it, is as one who has lighted another's lamp from his own lamp; it none the less gives light to himself when it burns for the other."

~Quintus Ennius, quoted by Cicero in De Officiis.

Lifting the Brazen Serpent

It was exactly one hundred years ago when Reverend "Little George" Went Hensley, a reformed backwoods bootlegger, walked into the one room chapel of the Church of God of Grasshopper Valley, Tennessee, carrying a wooden box. He strode up to the pulpit, sat down the box and pulled out his bible. He turned to Mark 16:17 and to his flock, he read the following:

"And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

Then Little George surprised everyone in the chapel. He opened the wooden box and retrieved a large black rattlesnake. He challenged his shocked audience that if the Holy Spirit was truly residing within them that they should be able to handle a venomous serpent and suffer no harm. He told them that the rattler was a symbol of the deviant Satan and that they must prove their mastery over the devil. One by one, the anointed of his flock stepped forward and raised aloft the rattlesnake as the congregation broke out in a cacaphonous roar of strange languages. The sermon was a sensational hit.

The word spread like a wild fire from one church community to the next, and soon true believers were visiting from every southern state. Little George took his sermon-- and his snakeboxes-- on the road, and soon the ranks of the Church of God swelled. For ten years he was the king of the revival circuit with the full support of the Church of God.

Then the inevitable occurred. A devotee was bitten by a rattler and swiftly died. The church community was divided. The church elders condemned snakehandling as a sermon gimmick. But a large portion of the church, mostly younger, made excuses for the bite. The handler was obviously too sinful to pick up a snake, and thus god smote him. The elders made it clear. They banned the practice. And Little George Hensley and a few followers packed up and moved to Harlan, Kentucky where he settled down and was ordained into a Pentecostal order called the Church of God of Prophecy. He preached successfully for ten years, free to demonstrate the virtues of the gospel of Mark. Then, one day he returned home from a preaching tour to discover that his wife and neighbor were having an affair. Hensley stabbed the man.

He turned his back on his faith and hid in the Kentucky Hills, where he rebuilt his still and began to bootleg liquor. Eventually his reputation spread, and the authorities soon tracked him down. He was sent to work on a chain gang.

George managed to escape one day (by the grace of God, in Little George's eyes) while he was unchained and hid in a Pentecostal community in Cleveland, Ohio. He returned to the revival circuit and eventually back to Kentucky. He married 4 times. On June 24th, 1955 George was bitten by his rattlesnake. He maintained that God was on his side and would heal him. He refused any medical treatment. The venom spread through his veins and he died that day.

Today, that spot in Grasshopper Valley, a few miles outside Cleveland, Tennessee, is revered by modern snakehandling churches and considered holy ground, where one of Hensley's converts founded the Dolly Pond Church of God with Signs Following. At least 71 people have died in the US from handling snakes in a church. The Reverend "Little George" Hensley himself was bitten over 400 times during his career.

Snake handling is still legal in West Virginia.

Spellbound

Dalí designed this dream montage for the Hitchcock film Spellbound. Here, Ingrid Bergman psychoanalyzes the dreams of her boss, Gregory Peck, who is also a murder suspect.

There can be only one

Life is a struggle, it's true.

This week will be a struggle for me. If I want to make it out alive and with a fist full of dollars, I can't waste any time blogging... I have just tomorrow to complete a black and grey half-sleeve, color 4 hours on a shoulder dragon, then draw out a sleeve of angelic architecture and a full back to hip piece with egyptian gods. These 2 days of work alone can pay all my bills for the month, so I'm riding the gravy train til my days off.

Crawling Chaos

"Many and multiform are the dim horrors of Earth, infesting her ways from the prime. They sleep beneath the unturned stone they rise with the tree from its roots they move beneath the sea and in subterranean places they dwell in the inmost adyta they emerge betimes from the shutten sepulcher of haughty bronze and the low grave that is sealed with clay. There be some that are long known to man, and others as yet unknown that abide the terrible latter days of their revealing. Those which are the most dreadful and the loathliest of all are haply still to be declared. But among those that have revealed themselves aforetime and have made manifest their veritable presence, there is one which may not openly be named for its exceeding foulness. It is that spawn which the hidden dweller in the vaults has begotten upon mortality. "

~~from The Nameless Offspring, by Clark Ashton Smith

Giraffe

Acrylics over shitty scrapbooking paper.

Perhaps NOT a giraffe.

Ariadne auf Naxos

Acrylic and stray cigarette ash on canvas.

She is all the red leaves

She is all the red leaves

that set my forest on fire,

dripping from my branches

falling to earth like flames.

Her color burns brighter

than any other

even as she disintegrates,

destroying me.

This place is mine.

Noone else can enter my frame.

This place is hers.

..................................................

just one of many poems my good friend Teresa penned for me ages ago. I wish she would relent and do a book with me. She is the reason I paint red. Before I met her, everything was blue.

Kwanokasha

Behind this painting, there's a very old story from local history. This one is set in Mississippi... before the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations split and before European contact (although there are Norse and African legends with an alarming similarity).

Long ago, the Choctaw believed that their settlements were protected, watched at all times, by child-sized forest spirts. They called these people "Kwanokasha", from the words "Kowi" meaning forest and "Anukasha" meaning dweller. These small people travelled with a bright light, and they lived in hidden caves.

The Kwanokasha could only be seen by the enlightened medicine men of the tribe, yet within each generation they were known to make contact. If any boy child aged 2 or 3 were to wander into the forest, the Kwanokasha would appear and seize the child, taking him far away to the Kwanokasha caves. There the child is placed before 3 of the Kowi spirits. Each of the spirits presents a gift before the child: the first offers a knife, the second one offers good herbs, the third offers poisonous herbs.

If this child accepts the knife, he will be destined to become a violent man, perhaps a murderer. If this child accepts the bad herbs, he will never be of any true help to his people. If however the child chooses the good herbs, his destiny is to be a great herb doctor, a leader and sage of his people. This child would stay for 3 days with Anukasha and, under an oath of secrecy, learn the secrets behind the curative powers of medicine.

For a very long time, this was the way all Choctaw medicine men were chosen.

This painting was done in acrylics, per usual. The little trumpet flowers are a strange flower I once found in Mississippi. When I picked it, it's juices stained my fingertips and made them tingle. I kept it frozen for a while to try and figure out what the odd flower was, but never did... Knowing my luck, it was probably the bad herbs.

Desol8shun

My car is still comatose, so I got my motorcycle tuned up. This next week is supposed to be unseasonably warm, so I could not in good conscience leave my Black Betty locked in a garage... It was a nice cruise from Mud Island back to Midtown, with my visor lifted the entire ride, so I could feel the wind in my eyes. The only other sensation I can compare the ratrod to would be skydiving, which is fun, but the wind against your face as you plummet to the Earth at 200 mph is not exactly comfortable.... to me, at least. But it's speed, and then when you're back on your feet, that feeling of having cheated the grim Reaper. Motorcycling is a fraction of that, but with the luxury of relaxing.

But even if the Reaper were on my tail, I'm pretty confident that my Betty could outrun him.

Kamikaze

'The sleek new heavy bomber had been transmutated into something grotesque. There was a long steel pole (detonation switch) that protruded from the nose, but at that time I was not sure what it was for. All the glass had been removed from the nose and the tail and covered with plywood. Most onboard equipment including bombing equipment, radio, co-pilot's seat, had been removed. There was no defensive armament. "So I'm going to fly into battle on this...." an empty feeling spread within my heart.'

Seiji Moriyama, Fugaku Special Attack Unit, upon seeing the Ki-67 Hiryu bomber converted into To-Go suicide plane with two 800kg bombs.

Cannibal TV

I'm addicted to watching House, MD. Do I know why I'm addicted to House, MD? I know I like the idea of a crude asshole in the role of protagonist. I know I like Brian Singer's directing, and I like to see things like eyeballs and testicles and Cuddy's cleavage exploding. But is there another reason? Could it be that my subconscious mind believes it is real? Do I really think Dr. Cuddy can pole dance? Should House perform the risky diagnostic procedure that could potentially kill the patient??

...

When we glue our eyes to the idiot box for any longer than thirty seconds, the left side of our brains, responsible for critical analysis and logic, relinquish power to the right side. The creative and chaotic right side of our brains does not use critical thinking to judge its input, but instead relies upon emotion. The longer you watch, the bright calming light of the cathode ray tube lulls your nervous system to sleep, pulsing alpha waves through your dreaming but awake mind. Your noodle floods with endorphins, a heroin like sedative. The longer you watch, the more mesmerized the subconscious becomes, having no defense against the visual imagery, until the violin soundtrack comes on during the sad part, and your brain wrings a tear from your eye.

Because House, MD is ultimately a sad show.

No... The truth is because the light of the cathode ray tube tricks your mind into thinking it is staring at a blank white wall. After so long of staring at such brightness, the mind interprets it as sleep/coma/paralysis and begins to ready your mind for the dreaming state. And in the dream state, there is no objective reality, no truth other than visual and aural information. Any story can be sold... So, the question I ask myself, if this can be accomplished with cable tv, then why not art... Is it possible to paint something more luminous than a cathode screen, but still retain the art of storytelling?

I am trying.

Kill your tv. Watch online, there's no commercials.

Cracking the Necronomicon

Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension. Gilman came from Haverhill, but it was only after he entered college in Arkham that he began to connect his mathematics with the fantastic legends of elder magic. Something in the air of the hoary town worked obscurely on his imagination. The professors at Miskatonic had urged him to slacken up, and had voluntarily cut down his course at several points. Moreover, they had stopped him from consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a vault at the university library. But all these precautions came late in the day, so that Gilman had some terrible hints from the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, the fragmentary Book of Eibon, and the suppressed Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt to correlate with his abstract formulae on the properties of space and the linkage of dimensions known and unknown.

~~ H.P. Lovecraft (“The Dreams in the Witch House,” p. 263)

The Owl Spirit

A wise old owl sat on an oak, The more he saw the less he spoke, The less he spoke the more he heard, Why aren't we like that wise old bird?


I'm nearly finished with this. Just a few finishing touches, some sequin black, then the next step is to apply a ton of gloss varnish. The gloss will trap in light and make the color appear more brilliant. The gloss layer over the ghostly translucent parts of the painting make it look sort of stereoscopic. I'm content with this one... Acrylics on canvas. Total time: about 6 hours.

the Sacrifice of Odin

"I know I hung on that windy Tree

nine whole days and nights,

stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,

myself to mine own self given,

high on that Tree of which none hath heard

from what roots it rises to heaven.

None refreshed me ever with food or drink,

I peered right down in the deep;

crying aloud I lifted the Runes

then back I fell from thence.

Nine mighty songs I learned from the great

son of Bale-thorn, Bestla's sire;

I drank a measure of the wondrous Mead,

with the Soulstirrer's drops I was showered.

Ere long I bare fruit, and throve full well,

I grew and waxed in wisdom;

word following word, I found me words,

deed following deed, I wrought deeds.

Hidden Runes shalt thou seek and interpreted signs,

many symbols of might and power,

by the great Singer painted, by the high Powers fashioned,

graved by the Utterer of gods.

For gods graved Odin, for elves graved Daïn,

Dvalin the Dallier for dwarfs,

All-wise for Jötuns, and I, of myself,

graved some for the sons of men.

Dost know how to write, dost know how to read,

dost know how to paint, dost know how to prove,

dost know how to ask, dost know how to offer,

dost know how to send, dost know how to spend?

Better ask for too little than offer too much,

like the gift should be the boon;

better not to send than to overspend.........

Thus Odin graved ere the world began;Then he rose from the deep, and came again."

~~~ from stanza 34 of the Hávamál

I was just reading a Reuters article that posits that the Norse deity Odin may have actually existed. In Thor Heyerdahl's new book "The Hunt for Odin", he claims that evidence from his archeological digs by the Russian Sea of Azov point to the god being more than a myth. At the mouth of the Don River, his team found jewelry, armbands and belt buckles dating between 1st and 2nd century AD which were almost identical to Viking counterparts found in Sweden 800 years later. It is Heyerdahl's contention that Snorre Sturlason's 13th century norse sagas tell the true story of a god-king's exodus from Azov to Sweden after being driven out by Roman conquerors. While the saga Thor is mystical in nature, the tale of Odin is one of realistic battles and heroism set in real cities.

If Thor Heyerdahl's name sounds familiar, it should. He's the one who built the 'Kon-Tiki' raft from reeds and balsa and crossed the Pacific in 1947 to prove that South Americans travelled to Oceania.

The Tale of Melusina

Emmerick, count of Poitou, was a nobleman of great wealth and eminent for his virtues. He had two children, a son named Bertram and a daughter Blaniferte. In the great forest which stretched away in all directions around the knoll on which stood the town and castle of Poictiers lived a count de la Forêt, related to Emmerick but poor and with a large family. Out of compassion for his kinsman, the Count of Poitou adopted his youngest son Raymond, a beautiful and amiable youth, and made him his constant companion in hall and in the chase.
One day the Count and his retinue hunted a boar in the forest of Colombiers, and, distancing his servants, Emmerick found himself alone in the depths of the wood with Raymond. The boar had escaped. Night came on, and the two huntsmen lost their way. They succeeded in lighting a fire, and were warming themselves over the blaze when suddenly the boar plunged out of the forest upon the Count. Raymond snatched a sword and struck at the beast, but the blow glanced off and slew the Count. A second blow lay the boar at his side. Raymond then perceived with horror that his friend and master was dead. In despair he mounted his horse and fled, not knowing whither he went.
Presently the boughs of the trees became less interlaced and the trunks fewer, and, next moment, his horse crashed through the shrubs and brought him out on a pleasant glade, white with rime and illumined by the new moon. In the midst bubbled up a limpid fountain and flowed away over a pebbly floor with a soothing murmur. Near the fountainhead sat three maidens in glimmering white dress, with long waving golden hair and faces of inexpressible beauty.
Raymond was riveted to the spot with astonishment. He believed that he saw a vision of angels and would have prostrated himself at their feet had not one of them advanced and stayed him. The lady inquired the cause of his manifest terror, and the young man after a slight hesitation told her of his dreadful misfortune. She listened with attention, and at the conclusion of the story recommended him to remount his horse and gallop out of the forest and return to Poictiers as though unconscious of what had taken place.
All the huntsmen had lost themselves in the wood that day, and were returning singly at intervals to the castle, so no suspicion would attach to him. The body of the count would be found, and from the proximity of the dead boar it would be concluded that he had fallen before the tusk of the animal to which he had given its deathblow.
Relieved of his anxiety, Raymond was able to devote his attention exclusively to the beauty of the lady who addressed him, and found means to prolong the conversation till daybreak. He had never beheld charms equal to hers, and the susceptible heart of the youth was completely captivated by the fair unknown. Before he left her he obtained from her a promise to be his. She then told him to ask of his kinsman Bertram, as a gift, so much ground around the fountain where they had met as could be covered by a stag’s hide. Upon this ground she undertook to erect a magnificent place. Her name, she told him, was Melusina. She was a water-fay of great power and wealth. She consented to be his, but on one condition: that her Saturdays might be spent in complete seclusion upon which he should ever venture to intrude.
Raymond then left and followed her advice to the letter. Bertram, who succeeded his father, readily granted the land he asked for, but was not a little vexed when he found that, by cutting the hide into threads, Raymond had succeeded in making it into a considerable area.
Raymond then invited the young count to his wedding, and the marriage festivities took place with unusual splendor, in the magnificent castle erected by Melusina. On the evening of the marriage the bride, with tears in her eyes, implored her husband on no account to attempt an intrusion on her privacy upon Saturdays, for such an intrusion must infallibly separate them forever. The enamoured Raymond readily swore to observe her wishes strictly in this matter.
Melusina continued to extend the castle and strengthen its fortifications, till the like was not to be seen in all the country round. On its completion she named it after herself, Lusina, a name which has been corrupted to Lusignan, which it bears to this day. [The castle was destroyed in 1574 as a Huguenot retreat]
In course of time the Lady of Lusignan gave birth to a son who was baptized Urian. He was a strangely shaped child. His mouth was large, his ears pendulous. One of his eyes was red, the other green. A twelvemonth later she gave birth to another son whom she called Gedes. He had a face that was scarlet. In thank-offering for his birth she erected and endowed the convent of Malliers, and as a place of residence for her child built the strong castle of Favent.
Melusina the bore a third son who was christened Gyot. He was a fine handsome child, but one of his eyes was higher up in his face than the other. For him his mother built La Rochelle. Her next son, Anthony, had long claws on his finger and was covered with hair. The next again had but a single eye. The sixth was Geoffrey with the Tooth, so called from a boar’s tusk that protruded from his jaw. Other children she had, but all were in some way disfigured and monstrous.
Year passed, and the love of Raymond for his beautiful wife never diminished. Every Saturday she left she left him and spent the twenty-four hours in the strictest seclusion, without her husband thinking of intruding on her privacy. The children grow up to be great heroes and illustrious warriors. One, Freimund, entered the Church and became a pious monk in the abbey of Malliers. The aged Count de la Forêt and the brothers of Raymond shared in his good fortune, and the old man spent his last years in the castle with his son, whilst the brothers were furnished with money and servants suitable to their rank.
One Saturday the old father inquired at dinner after his daughter-in-law. Raymond replied that she was not visible on Saturdays. Thereupon one of his brothers, drawing him aside, whispered that strange gossiping tales were about relative to this Sabbath seclusion, and that it behooved him to inquire into it and set the minds of the people at rest. Full of wrath and anxiety, the count rushed off the private apartments of the countess, but found them empty. One door alone was locked, and that opened into a bath. He looked through the keyhole and to his dismay beheld her in the water, her lower extremities changed into the tail of a monstrous fish or serpent.
Silently he withdrew. No word of what he had seen passed his lips. It was not loathing that filled his heart, but anguish at the thought that by his fault he must lose the beautiful wife who had been the charm and glory of his life. Some time passed by, however, and Melusina gave no token of consciousness that she had been observed during the period of her transformation. But one day news reached the castle that Geoffrey with the Tooth had attacked the monastery of Malliers and burned it, and that in the flames had perished Freimund with the abbot and a hundred monks. On hearing of this disaster, the poor father, in a paroxysm of misery, exclaimed as Melusina approached to comfort him: "Away, odious serpent, contaminator of my honourable race!"
At these words she fainted, and Raymond full of sorrow for having spoken thus intemperately, strove to revive her. When she came to herself again, with streaming tears she kissed and embraced him for the last time. " O husband! She said tenderly, "I leave two little ones in the cradle. Look tenderly after them, bereaved of their mother. And now farewell forever! Yet know that thou, and those that succeed thee, shall see me hover over this castle of Lusignan whenever a new lord is to come". And with a long wail of agony she swept from the window, leaving the impression of her foot on the stone she last touched.
The children in arms she had left were Dietrich and Raymond. At night the nurses beheld a glimmering figure appear near the cradle of the babes, most like vanished countess, but from heir waist downwards terminating in a scaly fish-tail enameled blue and white. At her approach the little ones extended their arms and smiled, and she took them to her breast and sucked them. But as the grey dawn stole in at the casement she vanished, and the children’s cries told the nurses that their mother was gone.
Long was it believed in France that the unfortunate Melusina appeared in the air, wailing over the ramparts of Lusignan before the death of one of its lords; and that on the extinction of the family she was seen whenever a king of France was to depart this life.
The story of the love of a man for a water-sprite and of her longing for normal life is an old root-tale of Aryan folklore with many parallels, from Undine to Hans Christian Andersen. The tale of Melusina became immensely popular in France and Germany and Spain, appearing in a score of books during the century 1478-1577, and this pretty account is perhaps best left to make its own effect, without a superfluity of comment.

(Hardy E. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Oxford University Press, New York 1978, pp.129-133.)

The Ferryman

"Here lamentation, groans, and wailings deep Reverberated through the starless air, So that it made me at the beginning weep. Uncouth tongues, horrible shriekings of despair, Shrill and faint voices, cries of pain and rage,"

"And look! coming toward us in a boat, An old man, his hair hoary with age, rose Yelling, 'Woe to you, you wicked souls! Have no hope of ever seeing heaven! I come to take you to the other shore, To endless darkness, to fire, and to ice.' "

Someone once said whenever you can't think of something to say, quote Dante... and nothing says it better than Inferno, Canto III. Bleak landscapes festered with the wretched apathetic souls and spirits that had never been alive. I always picture Charon in a soundscape of constant wailing, him clutching a pike instead of an oar, to beat away the wicked leviathans that roil beneath the surface of the Archeron... I think it just reminds me of the banks of the Mississippi.

"When I was slaine, my soule descended straight To passe the flowing streame of Archeron; But churlish Charon, only boatman there, Said that, my rites of buriall not performde, I might not sit amongst his passengers. Ere Sol had slept three nights in Thetis lap, And slakte his smoaking charriot in her floud, By Don Horatio, our knight-marshals sonne, My funerals and obsequies were done. Then was the fariman of hell content To passe me ouer to the slimie strond That leades to fell Auernus ougly waues."
---- excerpt from the Spanish Tragedie, by Thomas Kyd 1587

Charcoal

I found a box of old charcoal that I must have bought years ago, and I immediately set to work experimenting. I decided it was a good time to try combining charcoal and acrylics, which is something I'd seen but never done. I started each piece by blackening the page and then using my fingers to sketch the figures. Once I secured that dusty charcoal sketch with some spray varnish, I painted in blacks and then whites with the brushes. In two days, I made about ten of these, and was happy with at least half of them.

I tinted a few of them warmer on the computer so they didn't look so bleak. I call these two: "The Walker" and "Betty"

Dream no.2

I painted this on the other half of the cardstock of my last painting, so I used the same color scheme, but incorporated a paint marker. I call it 'Tattooed Man Hand Magik'... and if it looks hideous, it's because i only spent a bit over an hour on it.

Dream no.1

I've toyed with the idea of one of those painting-a-day blogs, but I'm not positive I could keep up. I mean, I do tend to crank them out about three or four a week, and if you count my job as a tattoo artist, I make several illustrations in skin each day. Call me a workaholic, or call me obsessed, don't call me lazy. I put out volumes of work. It was my years as a tattoo artist that taught me I could create at a steady pace. I learned to plan quickly, to create on demand, and eventually it became second nature for me to work that rapidly. Early in my career I did quite alot of repetative flash art, almost nothing but traditional themes in a forced style. Back then, a tattoo had to look like a tattoo... Eventually the minutia of creating quick cookie-cutter cliched designs for cold cash began to wear on me. I realized my life had no balance, constantly creating for other people's imaginations while neglecting my own artistic desires. After a few years of not picking up a brush, I resumed my painting and immediately found it was therapeutic. I began painting almost every night, only in the late hours when I was exhausted. I have always found sleep deprivation conducive to my painting techniques. It's those hours you force yourself to stay awake and alert that push you into the hypnogogic state where your mind shuts off and lets your eye and hand do the work. In the best of times, that dreaming mind will take over, that part of your brain that never sleeps, even when you do. At that point I'm practically dreaming onto my canvas, listening to my own subconscious encyclopedia ramble on with a paintbrush. And I love the rush. Unlike tattooing, my canvas has no limits to the imagery or styles I use. I don't have to be nearly as exacting and precise. In fact, I don't even have to paint a subject at all. I just do what that part of my mind orders me to. For me, it's hazy when I try to remember, I experience it like a dream. I just create. I create for me. And of course, for you.

Can I do one a day? We'll see. And if not, well I have hundreds more lying around to show off. I'll go ahead and kick this off with a few of my most recent pieces. This one I call 'The Drunken Revelers', done on paper with acrylics and colored inks. Almost all my work is done in acrylics, though I am fond of charcoal, and the program Artrage 2.5, a virtual art studio. Very fun to use.