Ode To Those Who've Heard The Barmaids Singing*

Fig. 1. Édouard Manet - Un bar aux Folies Bergère, 1881-2

Fig. 2. John Brack - The Bar, 1954

Fig. 3. Yasumasa Morimura - Daughter of Art History: Theatre B, 1998

'An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.'

Dylan Thomas

* 'I have heard the mermaids singing each to each / I do not think that they will sing to me.' The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917) by T.S. Eliot

Addendum:

Leonard Cohen - Closing Time (click image to access clip on YouTube)

Obituary: Lost in Space actor Bob May dies at 69 in California (CDT, 18.01.2009)

Fig. 2. The Lost in Space (1965-68) cast: Mark Goddard, June Lockhart, Guy Williams, Billy Mumy, Angela Cartwright, Jonathan Harris, Marta Kristen and Bob May (as "The Robot").

Hey Bacchus, Old Buddy - Peel Me A Grape, Will Ya?

The Sunday Six #9: Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me*

Fig. 1. Jacopo Amigoni - Bacchus and Ariadne, n.d.

Fig. 2. Annibale Carracci - Bacchus and Ariadne, 1595

Fig. 3. Peter Paul Rubens - Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres, 1613

Fig. 4. Nicolas Poussin - The Nurture of Bacchus, c. 1630-35

Fig. 5. Charles Joseph Natoire - The Triumph of Bacchus, 1747

Fig. 6. Jean Leon Gerome - Anacréon, Bacchus and Cupid, 1848


'A vine bears three grapes: the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance.'

Anacharsis

* Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me (lyrics by Dean Martin)

Addendum: Two Ladies Who No Longer Need A Special Introduction

Katie and ESVM have penned a few words for us and sent them posthaste all the way from chilly San Francisco. Many thanks to you both. Katie says:

Interesting all these different interpretations of partying with Bacchus. None of these paintings look excessively ribald, which is nice. I can't decide if I want to join in on the fun à la Rubens or Poussin though.

Yesterday I was at the Treasures from Afghanistan [Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul] exhibit in SF (I'll toss up some postcards soon at KF) and one of my favorite pieces was the bronze handle of a bowl with busts of female followers of Bacchus. Plus there were some amazing glass cups and goblets that would have been perfect vessels for wine.

And yes, ESVM had a little something to say on this topic:

Feast

I drank at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.

I gnawed at every root.
I ate of every plant.
I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.

Feed the grape and bean
To the vintner and monger;
I will lie down lean
With my thirst and my hunger.

E.S.V. Millay

Nectar From The Most Beautiful Bottle In The World

Fig. 1. Lemercier & Duval Absinthe Label


'I remember in rehab someone saying that nine months was a turning point. It's like the seven-year itch. I think this must be because we have nine months programmed into us from our time in the womb. After nine months we are ready to make a dramatic change. Be born, or go get drunk.'

Augusten Burroughs (from Dry)*

* Click here for a downloadable PDF copy of the chapter entitled 'Alcoholism For Beginners' from Augusten Burroughs' Dry.

Your Ears Will Orgasm #27: Born Drunk (MixPod Player)

1. I Monster - French Mods Can't Drink
2. Nouvelle Vague - Too Drunk Too Fuck
3. Amy Winehouse - Rehab (Hot Chip Remix)
4. Drive-By Truckers - Daddy Needs A Drink
5. Drag The River - Booze 'n' Pills
6. Carlos & The Bandidos - Jockey Full Of Bourbon

Addendum:

Ray Milland ("Don Birnam") in The Lost Weekend, 1945 - d. Billy Wilder

Obituary: Wyeth's Last Winter

Fig. 2. Andrew Wyeth - Winter, 1946

Link: 'Andrew Wyeth, Realist and Lightning Rod, Dies at 91' (The New York Times, 16.01.2009)

The Aging Art Of Gazing Into The Simulacra Of Time

Fig. 1. René Magritte - The Eye, 1935


'Painting is there all at once. When I read a book, listen to music, or go to a movie, I experience these works over time. A novel, a symphony, a film, are meaningful only as a sequence of words, notes, and frames. Hours may pass but a painting will not gain or lose any part of itself. It has no beginning, no middle, and no end. I love painting because in its immutable stillness it seems to exist outside time in a way no other art can. The longer I live the more I would like to put the world in suspension and grip the present before it's eaten by the next second and becomes the past. A painting creates an illusion of an eternal present, a place where my eyes can rest as if the clock has magically stopped ticking.'

Siri Hustvedt (from Mysteries of the Rectangle)*

* This link will take you to a downloadable PDF version of the introductory chapter of Siri Hustvedt's Mysteries of the Rectangle.

You Will Know Her By Her Song, Not By Her Plumage

Fig. 1. Joan Miró - Le chant du rossignol a minuit et la pluie matinale, 1959

'Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.'

T. S. Eliot

Why I Still Forage For You - Even When You Are Here

Fig. 1. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - L'abandon (Les deux amies), n.d.

'And I realised the impossibility which love comes up against. We imagine that it has as its object a being that can be laid down in front of us, enclosed in a body. Alas, it is the extension of that being to all the points in space and time that it has occupied and will occupy. If we do not possess its contact with this or that place, this or that hour, we do not possess that being. But we cannot touch all those points. If only they were indicated to us, we might contrive perhaps to reach out to them. But we grope for them without finding them. Hence mistrust, jealousy, persecutions. We waste precious time on absurd clues and pass by the truth without suspecting it.'

Marcel Proust (from A la recherche du temps perdu: La prisonnière)

Addendum:

Katie and ESVM (aka PFAO) have come to visit us again, and this - with heartfelt thanks - is their contribution:

Poor old Proust - such amazing insight, but he was sick in bed most of the time. I do think I've found him an ESVM companion though.

Departure

It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care;
But out of this house, lest my heart break,
I must go, and off somewhere.

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

I wish I could walk for a day and a night,
And find me at dawn in a desolate place
With never the rut of a road in sight,
Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face.

I wish I could walk till my blood should spout,
And drop me, never to stir again,
On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out,
And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain.

But dump or dock, where the path I take
Brings up, it's little enough I care;
And it's little I'd mind the fuss they'll make,
Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere.

"Is something the matter, dear," she said,
"That you sit at your work so silently?"
"No, mother no, 'twas a knot in my thread.
There goes the kettle, I'll make the tea."

The Shimmering Enchantment Of Impossible Dreams

Fig. 1. Peter Keetman - Spiegelnde Tropfen, 1950


'I have sought, I am searching, and I will search for what I call the Total Phenomenon, that is, the Totality of conscience, relations, conditions, possibilities, and impossibilities.'

Paul Valéry