KUSP 88.9 fm kusp.org

Re-Vision Radio's TOWER OF SONG
Weekly Program Guide

with your host

The Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist

a.k.a. "Radio Master of Ceremonies"

Here, you will find the current week's

Manifesto & Visionary Recital
Thematic Images
Music Playlists

Program airs Mondays 2 to 5 a.m.

The Tower of Song

is located on the banks of

the River of Dreams
in the Middle of the Night

This is the way the Gypsy Scholar introduces the program each week. You can follow along as he reads his "Manifesto & Visionary Recital" in between the program's two opening theme songs.

I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night

--the TOWER OF SONG

River of Dreams

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To a river so deep
I must be looking for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross

And even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and I stand on the shore
And try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find out what I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
And I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I would never lose
Something somebody stole

I don't know why I go walking at night
But now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is that I've been looking for

In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To a river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night

I'm not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That runs to the promised land
In the middle of the night

(Billy Joel, 'River of Dreams')

High Philosophy

Re-Vision Radio TOWER OF SONG

Manifesto & Visionary Recital

"Our High Romantic Argument"

Deep Song

RE-VISION RADIO is a Philosophical & Musical program broadcast from an imaginal window at 88.9 on your radio dial from the Tower of Song. Its hosted by the Gypsy Scholar and Bohemian Essayist, with a flower in one hand (or name) and a sword in the other. RE-VISION RADIO is a Soul-making program, because its essentially an underworld perspectivea seeing below surface appearances to the occult or symbolic truth of things. Thus, RE-VISION RADIO is truly Underground Radio.

The experimental format of RE-VISION RADIO is a seamless mixing of argument & song, dialectics & music, or logos & mythos; in other words, philosophical essays are put to music, producing the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack. Thus Everybody Knows, since theres a song hermetically hidden in an essay and, conversely, an essay waiting to be revealed in a song, that RE-VISION RADIO puts its philosophy best in songas the lyric goes: Thats why Im telling you in song. In mixing the noetic texts of Philosophy with the poetic texts of Song, RE-VISION RADIO offers its listeners an Orphic soundscape; a medley of the esoteric and the popular, high academic culture and low pop-culturehigh argument & deep songnot from the Ivory Tower, but from that tower down the track: the Tower of Song. Because Everybody Knows that to really grok the meaning of a song context is everything, RE-VISION RADIOs essays contextualize its songs, and, conversely, its songs compose its essay. In the same way, this dialectical relationship between argument & song means that the prose essay contributes gravitas to popular song and, alternatively, popular song gives wings to the essay, composing a Musekal Philosophy. Thus, the fusion of song & argument is the rhyme and reason for the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, which, juxtaposing argument with song, makes for melodious (aesthetic) ideas and discursive notesa kind of Philosophical Concert and, conversely, a kind of Musical Essay. This dialectical inter-textuality creates a novel radio art-form: scholarship as performance art (William Blake's "Mental Studies & Performances"), which is a Romantic way to associate ideas in a state of excitement and to rave on words on printed page. RE-VISION RADIOS musical inter-textuality, because it reads metaphorically between the lines of Philosophy & Song, becomes the imaginal hyper-textuality of a Soul-text. Thus, Everybody Knows that this imaginal kind of Radio-text, haunted by song, is inspired by the legendary Orpheus, master rhetorician and singer of love songs. Questing backway, way backin search of the magical power of music, with the archetype of Orpheus as its guide, RE-VISION RADIO broadcasts a Musekal Philosophy (by way of the ancient Sicilian Muse), which is the perfect union of words and music broadcast through the Essay-with- Soundtrackthe Orphic synthesis of what has been called the Infinite Conversation and the Endless Melody. This perfect union of argument & song is the Romantic ideal of the synthesis of poetry and thought, a union of fact and imagination; not Poetry, but rather a sort of middle thing between Poetry and Oratory. With this Romantic union of poetic furor and reason, the Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack becomes our high argument, or elevated discourseReason in its most exalted mood. Thus, with the 19th-century Romantic Essay as its model, RE-VISION RADIOs Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is a novel revival of the lost Art of the Personal Essay where Soliloquy bridges the gap between high art and popular song. The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack is designed to communicate a musical sense of philosophy, one that can be understood as Speculative Music, from one point of view and, from another, Philosophy in a New Key. Thus, Everybody Knows that the Essay-with-Soundtracks musekal philosophy is also a (Romantic) philosophy of music;" a musekal philosophy that issues not in a discursive but in a lyrical knowledge. And, in seamlessly mixing argument & song through Mental Studies & Performances (Blake), Everybody Knows, too, that RE-VISION RADIOs scholarship as performance art makes philosophy sound more musical and, conversely, music sound more philosophical. Thus, in the TOWER OF SONG, philosophical essays aspire to the condition of music; to the condition of music translated into words: The Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack, which approximates what the Romantics envisionedthe end of philosophy as poetry, or song.

The TOWER OF SONG programnot for everyone, but for madmen onlyis underwritten by its ancestral tutelary deities: Hermes-MercuryTrickster-god of those Wednesday communications and connecting synchronicitiesand Sophia-Magdalene, Our Dark Lady of the Romantic Tower of SongGoddess-Muse of Eternal Wisdom & Wit and ancient lonely-tower libraries. RE-VISION RADIO is co-hosted by the Angel of Imagination & Music, along with its twenty-seven angels from the great beyond in hyperspace, where Ushahina, angel of the hours between midnight and the dawn, gets you on her wavelength.

The purpose of the RE-VISION RADIO program is to help guide its listeners--"in the middle of the night"--in searching for, by following the song, and entering into that long-abandoned Romantic Lonely Tower, situated in that alternative mental dimensionthe invisible landscape. Oh let my Lamp at midnight hour / Be seen in some high Lonely Towr, / Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, / With thrice great Hermes. [Milton] Because RE-VISION RADIO is broadcast from this ancient Tower of the Visionary Company, where the poetic champions compose, in the midnight hour those funny voices whisper: You can call my love Sophia, / I call my love Philosophy. And, since the beginning of real Philosophy is the sense of wonder, Everybody Knows that the sense of wonder with radio is all in the mind's eyeradio as Theater of the Imagination, making RE-VISION RADIO the alternative radio concept that lets you see what it means. And what it means, by way of the Romantic Arts & Sciences of Imagination, is that Golgonoozan artifice of eternity The TOWER OF SONG.

To read entire "Manifesto & Visionary Recital," click link which takes you to my Re-Vision Radio, page (#6, halfway down page): Manifesto

Tower of Song

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all
I'm standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don't let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song

Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
There moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song

(Leonard Cohen)

"The Lonely Tower" (Palmer, 1879)

Oh let my Lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high Lonely Towr,
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear,
With thrice great Hermes.

Milton, 'Il Penseroso' (1633)

Hermes-Mercury Staff

Mercurial (Wednesday) Communications

Mercurius

In The Midnight

In the lonely, dead of midnight
In the dimness, of the twilight
By the streetlight, by the lamplight ...
In the sunlight, in the daylight
And I'm workin', on the insight ...

Rave on words on printed page
Rave on, rave on, rave on ...

--Van Morrison

Rave On John Donne

In "the middle of the night"--"the Daring Night," when the "Great Goddess of the Eternal Wisdom" [Sophia] dances with the "Lord of the Dance"--you can hear "those funny voices" whisper in the Tower of Song: You can call my love Sophia, / I call my love Philosophy.

A Sense of Wonder--"Sophia ... PhiloSophy"

"My love Philosophy"-the Mystic Sophia

The Gypsy Scholar & Bohemian Essayist (a.k.a. "Radio Master of Ceremonies")--with a flower in one hand (or name) and a sword in the other--broadcasts (in his capacity of "Minister of Information & Culture" for the "Visionary Company") in exile, where "They tied me to this table" (of the radio board) and "I'm paying my rent every day / In the Tower of Song."

And twenty-seven angels
From the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table
In the Tower of Song . . .
And I'm paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song

Thematic Images & Playlists

"And twenty-seven angels / from the Great Beyond, / They tied me to this table / In the Tower of Song."

IMPOSSIBLE LOVE:
TRISTAN & ISOLDE

Tristan & Isolde Sharing the Love Potion

Tristan Slays Dragon

Tristan Delivering Elias

Tristan Mortally Wounded in Boat with Harp

Iseult

Isolde

Yseult

Love Potion

The Loving Cup

Tristram & La belle Isoude Drink Love Potion

Tristan & Isolde Sharing Love Potion

Tristan & Isolde (S. Dali)

The Kiss

Tristan & Isolde (15th c. Illumination)

Sir Tristam & la Belle Isaul

Tristan & Iseult

Tristan & Isolde

Mad Tristan (S. Dali)

The Madness of Sir Tristan

The Death of Tristam

La Muerte de Tristan e Isolda

They Went to Their Country of Benoye & Lived There In Great Joy

Tristan & Isolde

The Historical Background to the Tristan & Isolde Story

The tale of Tristan and Isolde was one of the most influential romances in the medieval period. It predated and influenced the Arthurian romance of Lancelot and Guinevere. Originally, the Tristan legend had nothing to do with King Arthur, but shortly after the Vulgate Cycle (or Lancelot-Grail cycle) in c. 1235-40, The Prose Tristan, the hero had joined the fellowship of the Round Table.

The story of the Tristans and Iseults tragic love has been the subject of numerous medieval and modern retellings. There are two main traditions of the Tristan legend: the early tradition comprised of the romances from two French poets from the second half of the twelfth centuryThomas and Beroul. Their sources could be trace back to the original, archetype Celtic romance. (There was an earlier and perhaps the original work of Tristan, which both authors may have relied on, since many of the plots were similar, and yet there was enough difference between these two versions. However the original Tristan story is now lost.) The medieval versions of the story are called the courtly and the common versions. The former is represented by the Tristan of the Anglo-Norman poet Thomas, which was written in the latter part of the twelfth century. Thomas more courtly version of the romance is more interested in the inner thoughts of the characters. (Though the theme and plot were still the same as those of Beroul, his style and some of the scenes were different from that of Beroul.) His version in turn influenced Gottfried von Strassburg, whose Tristan, written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, is one of the great romances of the Middle Ages, and the Old Norse Tristrams saga (1226). In this version, love is loftier and more courtly than in the common version. The love potion is of unlimited duration and Tristan's courtly skills are emphasized. The common version, represented by Béroul's late-twelfth-century Roman de Tristran was considered to be the uncourtly version, because it was less refined. (Beroul may be closer to the original source, since he may have relied on oral tradition.) Neither romance had survived completely. Both were fragmented, however Thomas' version survived in several different manuscripts. Beroul's text can be only found in one manuscript. Beroul's work was missing the beginning ( the birth and childhood of Tristan up to the time a knight taken Isolde from Mark by playing the harp) and the ending (Tristan exiled to Brittany to the lovers' death). While a great deal of the middle parts was missing in Thomas' romance. Most scholars used Eilhart von Oberge, a German writer who wrote "Tristrant und Isalde" (c. 1170), to supplement the lost Beroul's fragmented romance. However, Eilhart's poem is now lost, but there were redaction of his work in the 13th century. Another German writer, Gottfried von Strassburg, wrote "Tristan und Isold" (c. 1210), and had based his poem on Thomas' romance. Other works based on Thomas' romance, included the Scandinavian "Tristams Saga og Isonde" (13th century), and the English "Sir Tristrem" (c. 14th century). Chretien de Troyes may have also written his own version of the Tristan legend, which was probably titled "Mark and Iseut la Blonde". If this is the case, then his work is now lost. It is clear Chretien knew of and understood the original work.

There were many other medieval versions of the tale, including a long French prose romance, the Middle English poem Sir Tristrem, which was edited by Sir Walter Scott in 1804. These later versions come from The Prose Tristan (c. 1240), which was markedly different from the earlier tales written by Thomas and Beroul. The Prose Tristan became the official medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde that would eventually provide the materials for Sir Thomas Malorys Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469), where the Tristan-Isolt-Mark triangle is a foil for the Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur triangle.

The story has been equally popular in the Victorian period. Matthew Arnold, the first of the Victorians to treat the story, wrote his Tristram and Iseult in 1852. Tennyson's moralistic and condemnatory account of the lovers in the idyll "The Last Tournament" inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne to write Tristram of Lyonesse (1882), which he considered to be more medieval in tone because more sympathetic to the lovers. Of course, there is Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1857), which was inspired by Gottfried's Tristan. Numerous twentieth-century poets, playwrights and novelists have taken up the theme, including Thomas Hardy, John Masefield, Martha Kinross, Don Marquis, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, John Erskine, John Updike, and many others. Thus modern literature is rife with examples of Tristan and Isolde works, most of them focusing on the forbidden romance, rather than the chivalry of Tristan. John Erskine, Rosalind Miles, Anna Taylor, Rosmary Surcliff , Hannah Closs and Nancy McKenzie are just a few examples of authors of modern Tristan and Isolde tales.

Scholars generally agree that the tale of Tristan and Isolde is essentially Brythonic (a southern group of Celtic languages) in origin, with incorporated details from other (later) sources. The original story is thought to have been an archetypal trickster tale (common to Celtic tales), which evolved through early Celtic forms. The strict taboo enforced by a Druidic culture against written works means there is little definite literature from these early ages. The titles of the Welsh Triad form have afforded clues to possible early Tristan and Isolde works, the Triad of Drystan, Essyllt and March obviously being the most probable but there is no certainty. The earliest works that are definitely known of (or indeed still survive) originate from the 12th century and their comparative similarity suggests an original (either oral or written) story existed prior to then.

The earliest extant version, Tristram (although incomplete), was written (c.1165-1185) by Thomas of Britain in Anglo-Norman French verse. At a similar time The Romance of Tristan was written by the French poet Beroul (1160-1190). Eilhart von Oberge, Marie de France, and Chretien de Troyes, all wrote their own works on Tristan and Isolde soon after (their derivation from an original story or that of Beroul or Thomas is evident to scholars from their style of writing). Gottfried von Strassburg of Germany wrote "Tristan und Isold" (c. 1210), and based his poem on Thomas' romance. His poem is acknowledged to be the father of modern variations of the original myth. The association with the Court of King Arthur appeared first in Chretien de Troyes work but was overshadowed by The Prose Tristan (c. 1240). The Prose Tristan became the standard version of Tristan and Isolde, and even influenced Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote the Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1470).

It is important to understand that the myth of Tristan and Isolde was not represented by one unified story with an established sequence of events. Rather, there were multiple versions from across Europe. The existing stories are episodic rather than presenting one continuous and complete narrative. Different works recount different incidents in which the enemies of the lovers plot against them, the lovers contrive to meet, get caught together, and manage to extract themselves. Nevertheless, the fundamental, basic premise of all the stories can be seen as the same.

________________________________

Tristan & Isolde: A Synopsis of the Story

Tristan is son of Blanchefleur and Rivalen, King of Lyonesse. He is given his name "Tristan" because of the sadness surrounding his birth, which caused the death of his mother. Tristan is trained by Governal in France, and then becomes at the service of his uncle King Mark of Cornwall. Tristan saves Cornwall from the giant Knight, named Morholt, whose sister is the sorceress Queen of Ireland. Tristan is wounded with poison, and sails to Morholts native Ireland to seek a cure. There he meets a jongleur (a wandering minstrel, or poet), who teaches him the art of singing poetry. He is eventually cured by Isolde, the fair daughter of the Queen of Ireland. He returns shortly to Cornwall. King Mark finds himself under pressure by his barons to marry. Eventually he decides he wants the lady who possesses the blonde hair brought miraculously to Cornwall by a swallow. Tristan seeks that woman, whom he identifies as Princess Isolde. Both sail back to Cornwall, accompanied by Brangain, Isolde's lady-in-waiting. Brangain carries a secret love potion prepared by the Queen of Ireland for King Mark. Tristan and Isolde accidently drink it and are bound in unbreakable love. Isolde is married to Mark but Brangain is substituted for Isolde on the wedding night. When the couples secret love is denounced by Mark's barons, Tristan is banished from court, yet the illicit lovers manage further secret rendezvous. Finally they are discovered and denounced by an evil dwarf and sentenced to death. Tristan escapes, and rescues Isolde. The lovers live in forest of Morrois in bliss. Eventually, they are discovered by Mark's forester. Mark goes into forest alone and finds their secret sunlit hut, but the sight of the sleeping lovers with a naked sword between them causes Mark to have pity and spare them, since he takes the sword to be a sign of chastity. Mark replaces Tristan's sword with his, after forgiving them. It is this clemency that inspires Isolde to return to Mark (in Béroul: because effect of love potion disappears after three years). Tristan leaves Britain and offers his service to Hoel of Brittany. He later marries Hoel's daughter, Isolde au Blanches Mains, but cannot forget Isolde the Fair and thus does not consummate his marriage. Isolde au Blanches Mains tells her brother Kaherdin that she still a virgin. Tristan convinces Kaherdin of his love for Isolde the Fair. Kaherdin and Tristan go to her and arrange secret meetings, where Tristan is disguised as leper, penitent, and madman. Back in Brittany, after fighting great battles Tristan is fatally wounded in combat and only Isolde the Fair can save him. He sends a messenge to her, instructing Kaherdin to raise a white sail she if she is on the boatif not, black. His jealous wife lies to him and tells him it is black. Tristan dies of grief. Isolde arrives only to find her lover dead and dies at his side. The two are buried side by side with the two trees that grow on their grave entwined together.

__________________________

I will be broadcasting the Joseph Bedier version of the story: The Romance of Tristan & Iseult. (My text is also The Romance of Tristan & Iseult, Retold by J. Bedier (trs. Hilaire Belloc), 1913.

Joseph Bédier was born in 1864 and died in 1938. Bédier was a French authority on medieval literature. He was of Breton origin and spent his childhood in Réunion. He was a renowned professor at the Collège de France and a member of the Académie française ( French Academy) from 1920 until death. His reconstruction of The Romance of Tristan (Tristan et Iseult), 1900, brought him fame for its scholarship and beauty.

For upcoming program--

IMPOSSIBLE LOVE:

***Heloise &* *Abelard***

The story of the love affair between Abelard and Heloise is one of the most famous of the Middle Ages, serving as the real-life model for later romances (e.g., The Romance of the Rose; Lancelot and Guinevere). It is told in the pages of Peter Abelards autobiography, The History of My Calamities, and in the letters which passed between the two lovers. Abelard (c.10791142) was one of the most brilliant scholars of the renaissance of learning that flourished in Paris in the early twelfth century. He was the first to want to reconcile faith with reason (i.e., to use logic --dialectica-- based upon the works of Aristotle in order to explain religious text and doctrine): "In doubting, we come to seek, and in seeking, we perceive the truth." For this he was tried twice tried for "heresy," resulting in some of his work burned. However, Abelard's prowess in agrumentation, which gained him many enemies, was not the only one of his gifts. He also excelled in music! In fact, it was precisely this--writing love songs--that Heloise claims made her fall in love with him. (These love songs did not survive, but we have some of the later liturgical hymns he wrote for Heloise's Paraclete.) Heloise (c.1090c.1164) was his young student, and the niece of Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame in Paris. She became known as one of the most learned women of her time, trained in the classics. (She was also a skilled writer.) They were married (an act that Heloise herself was at first against, thinking it would hurt Abelard's religious career), but that didn't prevent her uncle his revenge. Incensed by Abelards seduction of Heloise, Fulbert ordered an attack on Abelard and had him castrated in punishment for the scandal and insult he had caused. Abelard fled Paris, entered a monastery and forced Heloise to become a nun. Their relationship continued through their letters (and perhaps through later meetings, when Abelard took over the responsibilties of becoming the spiritual director of the nunnery, the La Paraclet, which he himself had earlier founded as a monastery). By the time of Abelard's death, Heloise (who lived for over twenty more years) had become known as the wise abbess of The Paraclete--but only out of her sense of duty to Abelard. She never, in all her long years as a nun, forgot her true love.

"The name of wife may seem more sacred or more binding, but sweeter for me will always be the word mistress, or, if you will permit me, that of concubine or whore." (Heloise)

The story of Abelard and Heloise is one of passion, pride, devotion, grief over lost love, faith, heresy, brutality, exile, and intellectual brilliance. Through it we can question medieval attitudes to sex and marriage, faith and learning, sacred profane love. They lived at a time of great intellectual and social change, not to mention the political flux and anxiety about the crusade. It was a time, then, of intense creative energy that made Paris one of the centres of the Twelfth-century Renaissance.

Therefore, the story of Heloise and Abelard serves as the best example of what the Tower of Song program is all about: Argument & Song; Philosophy & Love.

"If I am remembered, it will be for this: that I was loved by Heloise." (Abelard)

The topic for this night's reading--the Essay-with-Soundtrack--,
as the Lady of the painting reads . . . in the TOWER OF SONG

"Lady Reading the Letters of Heloise & Abelard" (1780)

Abbess Heloise, Matron Saint of Holy Romantic Love

Heloise (sketch)

Abelard (sketch)

Abelard & Heloise

Letters of Abelard & Heloise

Heloise & Abelard

Heloise at Abbey Paraclet

Abelard & Heloise At Convent

Abelard & Heloise

Les Amours d'Heloise ed d'Abeilard

Abaelard & Heloisa

Abelard & Heloise

Programs: December 7-21, 2005.

For series of Essay-with-Soundtrack entitled:

The Dark Night of the Outsider Soul; On the Road with Today's Traveling Troubadours: Mythopoetic Songbirds, Archetypal Lovers, & the Hotel at the End of the Road

Below are illustrations of The Divine Comedy by Botticelli, Dore, Blake, Rossetti, Hieronymus Bosch and others.
Click on thumbnails

Dante & His Poem

Dante falls in love

Love (Eros) Smiteth Dante

Dante's Dream at Beatrice's Death

"Love's Pallor": Dante weeps & scribes

The Salutation of Beatrice

Beatrice, Queen of All Good

Meeting of Beatrice & Dante in Paradise

Beatrice

Dante & Divine Comedy

Dante & Virgil at Gate of Hell

The Mission of Virgil

Cicle of Lustful: Francesca & Paolo

Souls in Hell

Angel Inviting Dante Into Fires of Purgatory

Dante Entering Fires of Purgatory

Ascent of Mount Purgatory

Beatrice Addressing Dante

Recording Angel of History

Vision of Deity

Dante in Dark Wood

Lucifer in lake of ice

"By that hidden way /My guide and I did enter, to return / To the fair world"

"Thence issuing we again beheld the stars"

Dante & Eagle

Vision of Beatrice

"And I beheld myself / Sole with my lady, to more lofty bliss / Translated"

"Again mine eyes were fixd on Beatrice"

Steps of Paradise

White Rose of Paradise

Dante, Paolo & Francesca

Paolo & Francesca

Cicle of Lustful: Francesca & Paolo

Dante & Virgil in Hell

Satan's Treasures

Hell

Paradise & Hell

Terrestrial Paradise

Garden of Earthly Delights

Beatrice

Ascent to Empyrean

Circle of Hell Map

Chart of Hell

Dante dejected

Alcazar of Toledo

The Alhambra

Great Mosque of Cordoba

El Greco's Toledo

Andalusia countryside

El Calvario Monastery, Andalusia

Guadalquivir River

Temple Ruins, Sicily

Sailing to Byzantium (W. B. Yeats)

Hotel Portmeirion-"The Village"

A Gallery of Outsiders:

Exiles and Prisoners; from Abelard to Blake, from Woolf to the Steppenwolf, from The Phantom to The Prisoner

Dante

St. John of the Cross

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Donne as Melancholy Young Lover

Cyrano de Bergerac

Phantom of the Opera

Phantom of the Opera / Angel of Music

Emilie Du Chatelet

Friedrich Holderlin

Friedrich Schiller

William Blake

Tom Paine

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Margaret Fuller

Mark Twain

Rainer Maria Rilke

Emma Goldman

Virginia Woolf

Hesse-Steppenwolf

The (Romantic) Wanderer . . .

Lorca

Malcolm X

John Lennon

The Writer as Outsider

The Phantom Orphic Troubadour

The Prisoner, No. 6

The Prisoner No. 6

"Then fire, make your body cold,

I'm going to give you mine to hold,"
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

--Leonard Cohen, 'Joan of Arc'

Soul in Fire / Joan of Arc

Mythopoetic Songbirds, Archetypal Lovers,

& the Hotel at the End of the Road:

Visions of Heaven and Hell, or The Marriage of Heaven & Hell

"As I was walking in the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity." "Energy is Eternal Delight." (Blake)

"Oh! Flames of Furious Desires"

"Energy is Eternal Delight"

The idea and inspiration for this Essay-with-Soundtrack came to me during a recent one-night stay in an historic hotel in Northern California. The next day, I ended up watching a sunset at a deserted, wind-swept beach with a vast horizon. ["Hotel Vast Horizon"] The entire experience provided the creative seed for my next series of essays concerning Andalusia, and I began writing about the journey between two archetypal hotels and their respective visions of hell and heaven. It later occurred to me that it was, in another way (the way of the connection that I had previously made between the multicultures two mythic lands, then and now), about two symbolic hotels in timethe Hotel Andalusia and the Hotel California.

Songs from the dark side . . . . [The song] is like that. We take this guy and make him like a character in The Magus, where every time he walks through a door theres a new version of reality. . . . This guy is driving across the desert. Hes tired. Hes smokin. Comes up over a hill, sees some lights, pulls in. First thing he sees is a really strange guy at the front door, welcoming him: Come on in. Walks in, and then it becomes Fellini-esque . . . . So, for us, [the song] was about thinking and writing outside the box. We were enamored with hotels. Hotels were a big part of our lives. The Beverly Hills Hotel has become something of a focal pointliterary and symbolically. . . . We were just on the quest. --Eagles

I understand the archetypal role that the road plays in our understanding of mans journey and its ultimate destination. To simply be put back in the Garden of Eden is impossible. The cat is out of the bag. Pandoras box has been opened and we have seen the shimmering lights of the Hotel California - I mean the Emerald City. Or maybe I do mean the Hotel California. How does the line go? And I was thinking to myself this could be heaven or this could be hell Indeed it could be. Remember that the traveler in that song starts on a road, on a dark desert highway. In fact the more Dante I studied the more I found the imagery that he uses in his great poem is still all pervasive in popular culture. Mary Watt, "Dante & The Yellow Brick Road" (2005)