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4/28/09 09:23 pm
...back from London, got off the plane no more than 3 hours ago, bad weather hard flight back through a heavy clouded sky, under
a very strong seastorm - but I sincerely didn't notice much: still in excellent mood, keeping in my mind all the pleasant moments
I had at this SSI's "Lay Members' Day 2009"...so warm the welcome by friends and colleagues, and so nice to feel around such a
peculiar happening, not to mention the big honor of meeting again some of the most important names in today's calligraphy world
such as the exquisite Mrs. Sylvie Gokulsing, the sweetest Mrs Carol Huff, and the unique Mr. Denis Brown (whom to you can see
me speaking in one of the photographs linked below)...what I really needed, I'd say, in a moment of excessive "relax and laziness",
my recent after-depression status I was getting to be involved in too much...oh well, once again too many words, I will let images
speak - I need to apologize, the pics of calligraphers' works are really a few, but they were too many to report them all...and too
beautiful to make a serious selection, splendid HANDS and incredible pages of perfect letterings - so, here's the link to part of
the whole amount of pics I took (more than 2000!): http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d44/yokosan/?start=0 ...I hope you all
friends will type me two lines of your hyperappreciated comments, you all know how much I value your sensible opinions and
your sincere and "elegant eye": for once you will be able to compare my poor, too hypervalued work with so many SERIOUS
ones...be the welcome to King's College and enjoy the talents on show - such pièces deserve far more than my words!
4/12/09 05:45 pm
I'm being a very bad LJer lately, I know - been through some troubles because of several things goin'on,
so that I'm so very late in posting my Easter wishes...well, I happened to look again at this photo I had
recently posted on a ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) b_oki 's page and realized that the lucky capture of that first sunray was even
luckier, as it softly ends EXACTLY on my house: what better image, to send you all my warmest thoughts of
a nice sunny spring arising from this easter time, and walking towards your hearts along that golden path?...
...so here you are, my dearest folks: may you walk that path back to reach my house in Persons, I can't wait!
御友達皆様に賛成して良い復活祭を祈ります。 明白で、暖かしくて、新しい春を楽しんでね！
夜かもめ ・ gabbiano ・ 鴎庵
3/31/09 07:44 pm
oh, well...for once in his mouthy speechy chatty gossipy life, I'm surprised by seeing how my logorrheic self surrenders, right
when I was sure he'd have so much to say - and, for once in my life, I do totally agree: no words left, and Words would sound
too much "resonant"...just a couple of photographs then, which I will leave you to comment and say about: my dearest Friends,
let me introduce you my newborn granddaughter Demetra - Aries/Virgo, born on thursday, march 26th, 2009, at 16.08 :
...here with her mother (WOW, how funny it sounds, how Leonardo da Vinci's it looks like!) my daughter Gaia...:
3/18/09 11:09 pm
so, here it is...bad the work, bad the photo, bad the mood - I've never worked in such a
negative hurry, under such a total pressure...and I still am in, my granddaughter seems
to be for true lazier than her granddad! thanks the kami, at least my work at school is
seeing a momentary pause, which allowed me to try and be on useful time to achieve and
send the folio...and now the worst fear - will Poste Italiane do what I barely avoided?
- VELLUM: Cowley's calfskin, cms 22.09 x 38.02;
- GILDING: 925% burnished silver leaf on raised gesso (armenian bole red);
- COLOURS: ultramarine blue, lapislazzuli, lead white;
- INKS: "ferro/gallico" ("nerofumo" from burnt pinewood); metallic (bronze/gold powders);
- QUILLS: hawk, medium left rower; metallic round nibs;
- GRAPHIAÆ "insularis maiuscula", approximately IX century; "italica free hand".
…and, last not least, as every year we have a parallel project on display, usually called “the calligraphy wall”:
all our “bricks”, same sized and according to a proposed theme, are shown together in a nice multicoloured
puzzle – it is so very interesting to see how different people do “photograph & describe” an idea through their
skills and art!...by the way, the theme for this year is “a thought for the day”, but the only Word that suddenly
knocked to the door of my mind was perhaps the simplest one to say what I feel……”ÉLÉGANCE”:
- INK & GOLD POWDER ON HANDMADE PAPERS, cms 11.00 x 22.00.
PS:...later – I’ve just added the smallest but most important “touch” that I had stupidly forgotten – the bucket’s rope!...:
3/16/09 11:22 pm
I’m so very late with this poor folio, damn’!...thanks the Kami, the expiring date for this entry to be admitted
to the LMD has wisely been moved to a couple of weeks later – although I’m still doubting that I’ll be able to
achieve this endless page…ok, I have endless things “in progress” at the moment, as many among you friends
know well – the “granddadness” keeping me some very anxious right now (and it seems I’m going to have a
granddaughter even lazier than I am!), we all here are getting very nervous about…that’s why I’m posting this
bad looking partial step of my slowgrowing folio: I also hate being missing on our LJ for too a long time, so I
thought that a poor “shortcut” of the vellum in its evolution would be at least of some interest for those who
have been more and more asking me “hey, are you still somewhere out there?”….:
3/1/09 07:43 pm
so, our dearest wicapis said "gab, why don’t you show on LJ the proceeds of your scribe/illuminator’s work?", and my reply was like
"ehr...uhumm...well...oooh I don’t know..." - obviously, NOT because of any "secretness" or whatever – I’m just very shy about it, mostly
because I don’t think to be such an excellent gilder, I wish I could get to those SPLENDID results that you all can see if you surf a little
around the web – but I’m on LJ to make of it my "virtual desk", like many of us, and to collect my friends’ suggestions/comments – so I took
some (very bad, my fault, the camera had a collapse in my hands) photographs "along the path", from the dry gesso stage until the very final
burnishing, done this time first with the stone, then with one of my Japanese brushes (swan’s neck feathers, the most delicate one I have)
to give the final shine – I must say, silver is not gold, so that most of the times the final result can be far rougher and rather UGLY, but as I’ve
just repeated I’m a very poor gilder – anyway, here you are the pics/phases and a short colophon/comment...ah, by the way, this "first step"
is what I call the PARALLEL ESSAY, a different folio made with the SAME items, in order to realize my faults and not make the same on
the "important work"...which, this year, because of many reasons taking my attention far from my SCRIPTORIUM, runs the serious risk of
not getting to be my best folio ever...:
vellum XVIII century, ram’s shoulder, binding parchment from a Bible - “W”(ill be one of Shakespeare’s sonnets);
first step, the raised gesso at its dry stage (this vellum being one of Cowley's beauties instead) – and a shortcut
(yes, such a horrid pic!) of the first gilding passage, made with a "warm" agathe on the dry gesso surface;
my favourite burnishers – just smoothest small stones of agata and ematite – and the same with one booklet of 925% gilding silver leaf;
what the work looked like after being burnished with the “cold” ematite;
a shortcut of the latest work (one more horrid pic) after my “all-personal” feather burnishing finish.
2/21/09 09:38 pm
...and, in the meanwhile, the apparently laziest monk I seem to have become lately is producing instead - endless attempt
to get back to a better (and younger, alas!) HAND, a sincere effort to get to the same instinctive attitude I had back in the
years: to visualize since the very first pen stroke a final quasi-material quasi tactile mental image of the folio I was goin'
ploughing along with my slow goof ox-fingers...I must admit I find it some truly harder today, must be after my stubborn
essay to get to sort of a "historical perfection", which always leads me to plough the new field with the same mood that
I've ever supposed a MiddleAges' true scribe to feel in when he was about to begin a "command" by some important
Bishop, some Queen or an Earl or alike...I'm a funny one, I know - but sometimes the miracle seems to happen, my oxes
obey quietly as quiet is an early spring dawn awaiting for the new sun: brief, here you are one new page, an italian song
dedicated by the singer to his son, by my friend to his own one on the day he gets his Degree - I hope they will like it...:
...and a shortcut of the capital LETTRINE: unfortunately, taking photographs of a gilding is always such a hopeless task...
...more than that - as I said above, I also feel in the serious need to get back (or forward, not to me to judge) to what I use
to call FLUID HAND...so, what better exercise than "measure" myself with the most difficult among all shodou styles, the
so-called "grass leave" soushou? the hardest task, although unexpert eyes may find it no more than incomprehensible
unreadable funny childish vertical lines - well, I brushed one of my old "simplest" haiku, already posted herein:
http://yorukamome.livejournal.com/43604.html
たんぽぽは
私の夢の
翼哉
「tanpopo ha ・ watashi no yume no ・ tsubasa kana」
dandelion, amazing wings to my dreams
2/13/09 10:47 pm
....my "wishing well" is under construction, the milkwhite sophisticated vellum sheet lays stretched by light gummed paper on a hard
cardboard on my desk, inks and pens and colours, all sort of strange funny objects around - I'm giving fire to my last cigarette and
to my tiredness, it must be about half past midnight, my eyes are closed my head wrecks in a cloud of divine azure smoke,
but something comes floating to the surface of this floating bluewinter cold night of february - a souvenir, a thought, a suddden
intense soul pain, I stand up and run to my computer, search for this old page, unreasonably decide to post it on my LJ...here's
to you Friends, old text old image found don't konw how on the same mental path, and still don't know why, this unreasonable impulse
seems not to have meaning nor reasons...:
...because we don’t get old by simply reading the hour on merciless clocks, by lazily ripping the sheets of unforgiving calendars - no, sure…& now you’ll start speaking of the body of the mirror - aren’t you? - to tell me all those words already heard, serious heavy bitter sentences...do you perhaps think I can’t say, see, figure out all this by myself? right, we do suffer continuous attacks, gratuitous assaults, as our little Reason says they are - and the claws of Time are called Anxiety, Body, Fears Limits Illnesses, and Fatigue, and more, Weepings, and Solitudes... ...no. let me tell you, my heart, that these ridiculous weapons of a false time are harmless, they will blunt without even scratching the diamond glass of your Being - I, my dear, I assert that the nightblue sapphire of your pure Mind doesn’t even know what to do with such a biological, moldy, such a simple and crude, imperfect, a so severe but so unuseful stuff... ...I must tell you, my sweetest, that this is only pain. serious, yes - oh I know, raw true hard, often unbearable - but no more than pain, in lower case letters, in minuscule breathings...the biology of a head too tied to her body, and maybe to the one of someone else, just diseased cells, nothing but restless neurons gone crazy - oh that bad!, what d’ya say?, this stuff is too salty, my God help me, where are my glasses?, if I were twenty years’ younger!, your skin is too wrinkly to be loved, uuuh that horrible smell of dirty of locked room... ...no. yet no, my sweetie, no - it’s not this, getting old, that would be too a foolish natural unfair injustice, this is not enough - and the Death, then!, the great illusion...oh no, my honey, if one simplest Love defeats even the most rotting putrefaction, will you still believe to such a...a garbage bucket filled with our ghosts? ah, my dearest…we grow old, really definitely seriously, without any hope without any salvation - only if we become unable to see, to understand, to live the Beauty.
1/22/09 12:30 am
...would you ever imagine THIS?!?...I'm sincerely curious to read your comments!...
...and more...
...and more...
1/11/09 07:01 pm
ok, ok…I know it’s hardly “legible” and bad done – but for once I’m asking you all to give your advice about my “most important folio of the year”: time has come to get ready for London exhibition, and I must say I had no idea at all of what to do this time…I was walking on the seashore this early afternoon, and – I can’t say why nor how – a sudden thought stroke my mind, that all our ”Words deeply felt, well said, accurately measured, truly saying our love and heart, our richness and poorness are the most precious gift we could ever get from and offer to the Persons we love most in our life”…so I ran back home and made this layout: now, "out of the teeth", what do you think about it?
 …obviously, still don’t know the final size: I just can say that the two WISHING WELL / INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE "edge" lines will be written in a navy-blue/turquoised deep colour, the inner I Ching’s text for the well in a very lighter gray-blue, the background text in a deep night-blue, simple quasi-childish “hand”…and that I want to gild with pure 24 kt. gold the hexagram, the 2points in cadence along the two main script lines and the well’s arch - all this on a Cowley's "manuscript finest" vellum, possibly (but I have never tried to craft that) lightestly dyed in some heavenly cilestrian/green, or a breathlike light turquoise …oh, too many words as always!, here you are the text: first of all put three pure silver coins in a blue velvet bag & keep it under your pillow till the third night of full moon: then wear pure white clothes & climb the hill facing the sea to the well in the deep middle of the pinewood : walk thrice clockwise around the well praising aloud the mother moon to make your wish come true & throw into one coin at each turn: then step down to the seashore to wash your hands & your face with pure seawater & ask again the moon thrice : you’ll know then if your heart is true : for if your wish has been fulfilled you’ll see your words arise from the well far on the hill & fly like a silver rainbow to the light waves by your feet : so that you can respectfully & carefully harvest them: pour now the silvery words into the velvet bag & bring them to the persons you love the best : no wish can be worthier than being heard & valued & fulfilled for the simple reason of love: the related inner text that frames the well's image comes from the hyperknown and IMMENSE wiseness of the I CHING...it was probably the first "mental step" of all this, down that beach - so I will post here again for all those who know and love THE BOOK, as well as for all those who might become "neophites" after this poor introduction: I CHING
hexagram 48
CHING – THE WELL ▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄ the town may be changed but the well cannot be changed: it neither decreases nor increases: they come and go and draw from the well: if one gets down almost to the water and the rope won't go all the way or the jug breaks this brings misfortune: perseverance furthers: I’d also love lots to be able and get an idea to “present” the folio within the image of a real full moony night with sea and shore and pinetrees…well, here’s also a proposition, a first attempt – I've just checked around my personal “image bank” about…anyway, as I said below to a friend, the photo (both the previous one and this latter attempt) is not such a meaningful addition, I just was meant to better RENDER the idea of such a magic...
1/9/09 10:25 pm
wanna laugh, folks?...times are growing too grumpy to everybody it seems, time for a lil' fun and maybe 10 mins' relax - so, for you all to
smile and mock a little this funny fool, here you are one more "pearl" of mine: the essays for a cartoon I began to draw back in the years
(oh, 'twas the far 1999!)...in my mind - for it has never gone further, just a couple of pages - the story, named "GULL & THE TOWN", was
about a strange man ("Gull", obviously and visibly me) who moved to a Big Town he seemed to know perfectly, and to be at total ease in:
he went wandering around there day and night, discovering the reader all its secrets and mysteries, step by step along his lonely walker's
selfspeech/mumbles/moods/meeting many other odd peoples and characters...well, I felt like I had to share THIS, 'cause it sounded in
my mind (just in my imagination? well, I don't mind!) so very actual - LJ being the Town, we all folks the odds...hope you'll enjoy, and smile!
(the above TROUVAILLE comes from a large blue cardboard folder kept 'til now on the back of a wardrobe, hidden by clothes: don't know why,
I've just spent a whole evening "IndianaJones-ing" among the souvenirs I'm still stubbornly keeping and saving, my old odd rotten unuseful stuff...
12/23/08 05:44 pm
I poorly dared "measure" myself with an Art requiring far better skills than those few, little ones I'm actually supposed
to "master"...I spent last week trying to craft myself some of these ceramic pieces (japanese-like teacups, rice bowls,
small boxes and so on) to send them as Christmas' gifts to my dearest LJ friends: I know, I shouldn't even consider
such bad works a fine present, neither can they be as relevant a masterpiece as to pretend a place on our "vetrina"...
but I like to think that this is the best way I have to virtually send my Christmas wishes to all my LJ friends whose real
names, addresses, lives and "entities" aren't as known to me as those few whom I seem to "share more" with - and
that my "logo" and name「鴎・seagull」will be flying in their eyes as their names and images always fly in my heart,
gabbiano ・ 夜かもめ ・ 鴎庵
ceramic, "cotto e smalto" (natural red clay white-enameled and glazed with a transparent gloss),
Ø 10.00 x height 04.05 cms total; "scratching" technique for the logo and the「鴎・"ou"」kanji.
(with lots thanks to Maestro Vittorio Ruocco, whose laboratory I changed to a real mess!)
12/14/08 11:17 pm
such an old photograph...it was 1983, around christmas - our old house over Amalfi hills, I was sitting on my favourite
corner of the couch, enjoying a calm night at home with my always over-loved Selvaggia, thinking of our daughter who
would be born on next july 1984, trying to create my own all-personal version of Irving Berlin's "white Xmas"...
...what I was in the meanwhile (must be 2002 or around) in my old house - some tunes for a couple of english friends
on their first journey to southern Italy...lots hair more than now, poor me, and maybe lots dreams - oh, never come true
after then! - but the Old Lady always being with me, making happier my good times, soothing me in my worst moments
when only music seemed to be the magical elisir, the fairy medication for a too selfpunishing mind feeling guiltier than
it would be necessary - how far those strange times seem today!...
...what I am now, 2008, sitting on my couch on a seastormy rainy december night, fighting with my fingers in the attempt
to make them remember that sequence, while I try to remember myself and my past life...but this ugly image of old man
looking concerned, confused (scared?...well, Selvaggia is still with me) is all what I am able to concentrate on tonight...
...I needed you to forgive the poorness of my Christmas wishes - I checked YouTube, where I found this softly simple,
sweetly humble arrangement by the excellent Peo Kindgren...it surely will express way better than I could all the love
I want to say to you all Friends - beloved sisters and brothers whose beautiful paths of life I had the fortune to cross,
treasures of Art and Heart who give light and warmth and happiness to my own path...please, never allow bad times
to erase your own memories of yourselves, you are PRECIOUS to the world - you deserve the merriest Christmas
and the nicest of new years, LJ folks - my Friends.
12/5/08 12:55 am
an old folio, which I was asked for by a good Friend (who teased me saying it was for a common
third friend) and then I myself gifted of, by that same Person...funny story, isn’t it? she brought me
the text she had written, carefully followed all the phases of my work sitting beside me at my desk,
added some good comment here and there along my writing, paid me as if it was a true commission,
asked me what frame she should buy and how to frame the page...then, on Christmas’ morn, she rang
at my doorbell with flowers, sweets and a glittering flat package under her arm – it was 2004, and I’m
re-framing the folio right in these Christmas’ days...let me now share "my gift" with you all Friends:
“I love you not just for what you are
but for what I am when I think of you
I love you not only for what you have done of yourself
but for what you are doing of me
I love you because you were more than every Faith
to help my growing better
more than every Destiny to help my being happy
you did it without a word nor a sign nor a touch
you did it just being yourself
even when you weren’t due to
maybe, beyond everything,
this is for real to be a friend”
I apologize for the horrible quality of my photograph, as well as for the accurateless presentation:
no size, no materials and items’ list…I’m posting it under one of those uncontrollable impulses
that always make our life better, if we dare follow them shamelessly, without any hesitation...
12/3/08 09:35 pm
...in order to reply to a nice recent sakuo3903‘s post, I went surfin' around the hyperuseful YouTube,
in search of some good, touching 「尺八」・ shakuhachi solo...and I was completely captured, when I
first watched this short movie: an unbelievable Robinson Crusoe who willingly sails back to “his” island
only to help his ageing with the magical soundtrack of a Japanese flute’s tunes and vibrations - the thing
itself was already so amazing...but I was suddenly and definitely hypnotized when my brother the gull flew
across the sky over Robinson’s head, mesmerized as well like his “half-human brother” (ME, I mean) by
that irresistible fascination, an old solitary man and his softest sweetest over-musical over-natural fluted
songs...I could see myself sitting there to play that flute, waiting for my further “old days” to come – so, I
said myself “kamome, let’s share this with friends, and wait for their voices and hearts and thoughts...ね?”
“when I get older losing my hair,
many years from now,
will you still be sending me a valentine,
birthday greeting, bottle of wine?...
.........................................
...will you still need me,
will you still feed me,
when I'm sixty-four?”
(and, for all the irreducible incorrigible lovers of western sounds, a nicely played JapanoBritish version:)
Current Music: Lennon-McCartney, WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR, 1967
11/30/08 10:52 pm
...we had a seastorm back in the years (1987, jan. 11th if my memory isn't betraying me) that we all here still consider "mythical":
highest waves, the strongest wind ever, days and nights of howling nature's voices, countless damages to everything...well, last
night we were about to see a bad REMAKE of all that, which was sincerely scary - everyone of you knowing but a little the power
of rough sea will understand that "electric", nervous, uneasy feeling, just like waiting for the end of the world: absolute, total, final
sensation of impotence while facing the strokes of a mean destiny goin' completely mad by the hours...this is only "the day after",
you know, when bad trembling childish moods seem to disappear under the first poor ray of a pale sun - but winter is here, and he
won't leave for months, his kingdom made stronger by our shuddering thoughts, by our deep fears when his nights hide the stars...
大しけや
我の目前に
冬生まれ
「ooshike ya ・ ware no me mae ni ・ fuyu umare」
seastorm
under my eyes
winter is born
嵐後
落下の幹や
冬哀れ
「arashi ato ・ rakka no miki ya ・ fuyu aware」
after the seastorm
a fallen trunk
winter mood
(also posted on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) fridayhaiku
11/19/08 05:43 pm
because I’m very “tango-mooded” lately…that’s why I’m re-posting this old work, a small folio
that I recently had to “restore”, as it was beginning to show bad deformations and stains due to
direct light and environmental dampness: stupid me, I forget too often that folia were made for
keeping their beauty through the ages INTO a book, not hanging on a wall and “jailed” in some
absolutely insufficient, unsheltering picture frame…
"THE DAY WHEN YOU KEEP LOVING ME ・ NOTHING WILL BE LEFT BUT HARMONY"
- VELLUM: irregular, ca.cms 08.07 x 09.09, last quarter of XVI century;
- GILDING: 23.1/3 kt burnished gold leaf on gesso (armenian bole black);
- COLOURS: ultramarine blue, lead white, carmine red, naples yellow;
- INK: "ferro/gallico" ("nerofumo" from burnished olive wood);
- QUILLS: swan, medium/minor left rowers;
- GRAPHIA: "rotunda secunda", approximately end of XIII century;
- LETTRINE: "capitalis longobarda".
(Gardel/Le Pera, "el día que me quieras" - tango, 1922 ・ thanks to Naudo for his great video)
10/25/08 09:44 pm
秋正午
娘二人の
お喋りや
「aki shôgo ・ musume futari no ・ oshaberi ya」
autumn noon
the chattering hearsay
of two gossipy girls
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