Guillermo Portabales, song-writer, performer

The birthdate of this Cuban singer seems to be more certain than his date of death.  Debate about it has been strong.  The two dates are 1911 and 1970.  He dedicated himself to songwriting from the earliest years and continued after he had left Cuba for Puerto Rico in 1953.  He was a guitarist of note.

From his early career he sang in the various styles of traditional local music, soon discovering that guajira was most popular.  The word refers to the peasant and his world, the joys, the sorrows.  In view of this I find it strange that Portabales was considered “an enemy of the state” after the 1959 revolution which had had pretensions to socialism.  By this time he had, of course, toured the Americas extensively and was greatly loved.

Here and there we find endearing love songs.  His lyrics also celebrate the landscape of Cuba as well as that of Puerto Rico.

The murmuring stream

Parted by the moon

When the silver rays

Go to its depths

• From El Arroyo que murmura

Try, if you will, to stand still when you hear a Portabales song in full swing, especially the title song Le Carratera.

 

Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2019

 

Source

Wikipedia Guillermo Portabales

Sleeve notes on “Le Carratera”

 

Images

From the sleeve “Le Carratera”

The Studio of the Midi

From the grey, overcast world of northern Europe the modernists came in their numbers with their colour revolution.  For them it was the glow of the southern sun which they sought.  And they spoke about it.  Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother:  The only heathen is the one who does not believe in this sun.  And Matisse:  When I grasp that, each morning, I wonder at this light, I cannot believe my good fortune. And Keats: Oh, for a beaker full of the warm South…

Van Gogh  La Meridienne 1889-1890

 

Matisse  Luxe, calme et volupte 1904

Here is Matisse with his shortlived foray into pointilism.

Paul Signac  Femmes au puits 1892

Signac achieved much in the coastal town of St Tropez and his pointilism is particularly fine work.

Henri-Charles Manguin Jeanne à l’ombrelle, Cavaliere 1906

It is glowing, the light, for Manguin and for his model with her umbrella.

Henri-Edmund Cross  Côte provençale, le Four des Maures

It is a heartier pointilism, but for Cross the glimmer comes through.

Georges Braque  La viaduc à L’Estaque 1907

It is early in his career, but we can see Braque’s cubism emerging.

Pierre Bonnard L’Atelier au mimosa  1939

It was my privilege to stand in the warm glow of this painting.  Bonnard established himself in Le Cannet, a suburb of Cannes and during the Second World War he painted this work.

 

Will v d Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Bridgewater, Somerset West

December, 2019

 

Source and images

Le Grand Atelier du Midi.  Telérama.

 

Raoul Dufy L’Aperitif 1908

 “Oh, for a beaker full of the warm South…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Survivor Day 2013 2017

In the reception area at the Clinic there are two works created by cancer survivors.

 

The Tree was organised and painted by Herman Groenewald who created spaces for the survivors to comment and leave their names.

The second is a communal mosaic done under the planning of Riana Breebaard (“Drawn to Life”) who organised the plaster of paris setting for each of the mosaics.  There are 74 individual mosaics done with a wide range of colours.

It is a moving experience to view each one and ponder what their message was, to themselves and to others.

Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com 

Bridgewater, Somerset West

November, 2019

 

Images

With thanks to the staff at Cancercare, Arun Place, Vergelegen Clinic, Somerset West.

My photographs

 

Architecture – The National Cultural History Museum, Seoul

From 1945 the South Koreans, after 35 years of Japanese colonialism, sought to re-establish their identity by means of their patrimony.  The result has been the mushrooming of museums in Seoul.  From the Museum of the history of Seoul to the Museum of Contemporary Art, where I saw an exhibition of 30 Van Gogh originals, the range is wide.  The pinnacle of this process has been the National Cultural History Museum in Yangson, Seoul, which Koreans proudly regard as the centre point of their culture.  The building itself was a revelation to me.

I researched but could not find the name of the architect(s) of this building.  What I did find was that it was a Korean designer who was strongly influenced by Renaissance architecture, especially too, the principles of Vitruvius who saw the line and the circle as the basics of design.  (Leonardo de Vinci applied this to the human body with his famed drawing of the Vitruvian Man.)

The contrast between this building and the curl roof tradition of the East is most striking.  Here is the Entrance which links the two sections of the Museum:  one part for the cultural artefacts, and the other, a theatre.

The glass cladding of this space is impressive.  The rounded shape is probably the only round part of the entire building!

The sky-light, as always, brings light down to the beige-grey of the interior.

Here we see a fine arched line which almost disappears in the strak lines of the various parts of the Museum.

I came on this three-storey pagoda, the greatest architectural contrast in the building.

This Museum is the starkest statement of modernism that I have yet seen.  Elsewhere in Seoul, there are many more playful post-modern designs.  This building though remains remarkable, together with its many cultural treasures.  It was opened in 2005.

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2019

 

My photographs

A theatre post for Hamlet in the theatre section of the Museum.

 

 

 Street lights in the gradens of the Museum 

 

 

 

Louis Aragon – Canticle for Elsa

He was a poet.  She wrote novels.  He was French.  She was Russian.  They met in 1928.  His poems were unconventional.  He was placed on a black list during the German occupation of France.  Her novels were suppressed by Stalin.  His work was banned.  They were lovers.  They married in 1939.  He joined the Resistance.  She hid from the Germans.  He wrote for the underground newspapers from Provence.  Thirteen years after 1928 Louis Aragon wrote for Elsa Triolet the Canticle for Elsa, words of ecstasy woven into the complexity of emotions.

 

I touch you and I see your body and you breathe

It is no longer the days of separate living

It’s you, you’re on your way, and I’m your empire

     For better and for worse

and never have you been so distant at my pleasure

 

Together we find in Wonderland

the serious pleasure, color of the absolute,

but when I come back to us I wake up

     sighing in your ear like words of goodbye,

you do not hear them anymore

  

She sleeps for a long time, I listen to her

She’s in my arms here and there

more absent to be there and me more lonely

     To be closer to this mystery

as a player who senses losing

 

The day that will seem to tear me away from the absence

makes her more touching and beautiful

from the shadow, she kept the perfume essences

    she is like a dream of the senses

the day that brings her back is still a night

 

Daily, bushes scratch us

life will have passed like a stubborn tune

I’m never satisfied with those eyes that afflict me

   my heaven my despair my wife

thirteen years on I will have watched your singing of silence

  

as the seashell saves the sea

So my heart is exhilarated, thirteen years, thirteen winters, thirteen summers

I will have trembled, thirteen years on the threshold of the chimeras

     thirteen years of a bitter-sweet fear

and thirteen-year-old conspiracies of the invented perils

 

O, my child, time does not match us

A thousand and one nights are few for lovers

thirteen is like a day and it’s a fire of straw

     that burns at our feet, knitting, meshing

the magic carpet of our isolation

 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2019

 

Sources

Aragon Les Yeux d’Elsa.  Seghers, first ed. 1942, Paris.  My translation of poem.

Wikipedia – Aragon, Triolet

 

Beelde

Aragon – lyricstranslate.com

Triolet – wikipedia

My drawing