To the Unknown Helper #13: Chiaroscuro (reflections on Mahler)

Pencil, ink and wash with fuser on green tone paper: retouch and recolor using Gimp 4.6. Enhanced using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Kit and kaboodle assembled using Paint.

To Annapurna.

To the Unknown Helper #12: Diptych (Reflections on Mahler)

Listen! to Glenn Gould play the Sarabande from Bach’s English Suite #1. The music will open in a separate You Tube window and you can come back if you want.

Glenn Gould Plays English Suite #1 Sarabande

Before I got my Eye put out-
I liked as well to See-

If bone could speak, if skin could sing
What would bone say, what is the song of skin?
I remember that old hymn, as round as a ring
We sang in church, “the very stones would sing a hymn”.
The Protestants sing better than we the Romish men
But the images in Catholic churches are better
Six of one and a half dozen of egg and butter
And God on high, does he care one way or t’other.
We can see in black and white, we can dream in words
Would not miss a thing we so fear to lose
See things in themselves in the abyss of birds
Relieved of freedom nothing more to choose.
The gracile bone sings this to me:
It is far, far more important that paint or poetry.

“Diptych for the Unknown Helper”, 9 July 2010, Edward Nilges. Pencil, pen, ink wash, color added using Gimp4.6, enhanced using Microsoft Office Picture Manager, assembled using Paint.

This is just a plan for the actual painting which will use “real” colors.

The “sonnet” (if it is one) is original.

Now go (go, said the bird) listen to Glenn Gould playing Bach’s English Suite #1. You can listen to a rehearsal on You Tube, with Glenn being geeky, or you can buy the magnificent recording on Amazon.

To the Unknown Helper #11: Reflections on Mahler

“Study for To The Unknown Helper 8 July 2010”, Edward Nilges: Pencil, pen, ink wash, enhanced with Gimp and Windows Picture Manager: assembled with Paint.

Before I got my eye put out,
I liked as well to see
As other creatures that have eyes,
And know no other way.

But were it told to me, to-day,
That I might have the sky
For mine, I tell you that my heart
Would split, for size of me.

The meadows mine, the mountains mine, —
All forests, stintless stars,
As much of noon as I could take
Between my finite eyes.

The motions of the dipping birds,
The lightning’s jointed road,
For mine to look at when I liked, —
The news would strike me dead!

So safer, guess, with just my soul
Upon the window-pane
Where other creatures put their eyes,
Incautious of the sun.

Emily Dickinson

To the Unknown Helper #10: Reflections on Mahler

The only philosophy which would still be accountable in the face of despair, would be the attempt to consider all things, as they would be portrayed from the standpoint of redemption.

TW Adorno

Edward G. Nilges, “Study for the Unknown Helper”. Pencil and pen, enhanced using Windows Picture Manager and Gimp.

Plan for a History Painting: The Unknown Helper and Dat Burp

Assemblage 4 July 2010 EGN. “Where Dat Burp”, EGN, 2005, pen ink and wash. “Study for ‘To the Unknown Helper'” 4 July 2010 EGN, enhanced using Windows Picture Manager. “Study for ‘To the Unknown Helper'” 4 July 2010 EGN, enhanced using Windows Picture Manager, colorized using Gimp. Kit and kaboodle assembled using Paint and Gimp.

To the Unknown Helper #6 (reflections on Mahler)

During the night before the decisive quarrel with Charlotte, I had a dream. When I awoke, I temembered her final words: “I am the martyr of happiness”.

T. W. Adorno

Adorno felt the self same childish shock
I felt on the Vomit Comet, a train.
It rumbl’d through the ghetto of the south side
“Why do poor people have to take the rain?”
My happiness conditional upon yours,
So you took a sour pleasure in your moods
Accused you I of opening old wounds, old sores
And so like Hansel and Gretel we got lost in the woods.
However the helper has been ransom’d two ways
A paycheck ransomed her at the Bank
And then of course the prayers that she says
And for his blessings her God that she does thank.
Take away the pain of recreating a story that’s old
And live now in the tropics, forget the winter’s cold.

Image: “To the Unknown Helper”, EG Nilges 1 July 2010. Conte crayon, charcoal, Windows Picture Manager enhanced reproduction.

To the Unknown Helper #5 (reflections on Mahler)

How the individual element, emancipated in novel-like fashion from fixed schemata, takes on form and inaugurates autonomous connections within itself becomes a specific problem of Mahler’s technique.

T. W. Adorno, Reflections on Mahler

To the Unknown Helper #4 (reflections on Mahler)

Add your light to the sum of light today
We know that you have sorrow within you
But do it for free or do it for pay
This is your ransom, to try to stay true.
I know it is hard as the evening raga comes
That is, to be precise, I’ve heard rumors,
And whispers on the wind, I’ve done the sums
And the news is bad, it’s of malignant tumors,
They grow in me, and their names are antic,
The seven most grievous sins reinvented,
It’s enough to make me old and frantic
Unredeem’d, tectonic, a blind thing, sedimented.
But I shall join my voice to the voice of the Earth
Earth’s sorrow at sunrise, tears that salt mirth.

Immortality, another Sonnet

I met a man who said these words to me
About “immortality”: it is not what
You would expect, and it is not, you see,
A thing that starts here or there like that.
How many times could you seriously endure
A single marriage in all its complexity
What children become, the pain that is pure
The uncertain hours of waiting, perplexity?
What you say you want is a trick of memory;
Von Neumann said off the top of his head,
The brain forgets nothing in its treasury
The brain retains the bread and pain for the dead.
And then we go on, carrying this weight
Up the side of the mountain. We love what we hate.