thoughts on june and july

For whatever reason, I don't seem to get around blogging these days. Neither am I getting a lot of beading done... still working on my may-piece. The theme of which will be black&white. More on that on a later date, because if I don't put some thoughts on june or july in black and white, I won't know what to bead for these months once I get the time.

For starters I definitely need to make my june piece less elaborate: fully covering a 14x14 cm square of felt with beads and trinkets is a tedious job. Not that I don't love it, but some flow does make it easier on me I discovered. And flow is what is lacking at the moment. In addition I think I will not bead the inside of me for a change... I need some vacation from me. Well, I need a little time off of all the therapeutic issues I have been dealing (and beading) with. The past few months have flown by and at the same time feel like I have lived them a dozen times. So with these things in mind, what does june mean to me?

June means bright red poppies in a field of green grass bathing in sunshine on a bright summersday, something like this:

Every year I can stand in awe looking at the meadows filled with flowers of the field and feel like a little girl again, wanting to braid a wreath of flowers to put in my hair. (If not the stems of poppies were to thin to do so.) I don't know wheather it is the fact that I am a child of summer, or that the sunshine softens my often painfully present symptoms of depression during winter and early spring... Fact is, I long for these days every year and love the colours, the happiness, the light-footed quality of things that I am searching for in my own being.

And then july... It is the month in which I celebrate the birthday of my youngest (he is 6 already!) and my own too (for the 41st time this upcoming week). The month in which we went on a short vacation to France to spend a little time with my parents in law who own a house in the Poitou-Charentes. I guess I will just need some memorabilia from my vacation and try to use them in my beading. It will be a warm reminder of a nice time spend with loved ones.

So far, so good I guess. Now I will have to return to ordinary life in which I am still struggling with my depression. But there is some good news about that too: I am fighting it without any type of medication now! After 9 years of pills, I am now on my own. It is scary, it does come with anxiety and fear, but I am still standing and feeling more then before everything that is within and around me and girl... I can tell you it is as overwhelming as the first landing on the moon must have been the year I was born.

BJP for april 2010

It's been a long time since I've posted, a hazardous journey has begun but I am still here to tell about it.

OK, now is time for a confession: aside from being genetically endowed with genes that make depression run in our family, I also suffer from what is called a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). It is hard for me to say this, as for a long time I felt that being diagnosed with BPD meant that one was the kind of person no one would want to be around. Deciding to accept my diagnosis and open myself up to deal with it and start healing was a giant leap. That's why I choose the rabbithole from Alice in Wonderland as my theme for april. Seeing Alice in 3D on the brink of my great adventure seemed like more than a coincidence.

As it is in myth and fairy-tales, the heroine often sets out on a bad start. And so did I on my april piece. I wrote all about that in my previous post. Work on this piece was quite labourious. I got stuck numerous times, started over, got set back, picked it up again... I surrounded the hole by fresh green grass, beaded some pahtways alongside of it, added a few of the beaded flowers that I had made in advance... and now I have something to show for all my effort.

For the first 3 months I divided my pieces in seperate sections and wrote about them, naming them. Not so this time. That's a first for me: I usually need to stick to something once I have started a routine. For me to break that rule feels quite scary. But this is an adventure that is (among others) about breaking the rules of my inner critic! What is most visible in this piece is that the surroundings of my rabbithole are you could say chaotic, but more lovingly I would say variegated. It is, what it is and it is one piece.

I love that the tiny green and red flowerbeads date back from my early teens, when I first picked up making jewelry. The medal dates back even further and is mine from an event called de avondvierdaagse. This is a very Dutch event, where schoolchildren walk a distance varying from 5 to 15 km on 4 consecutive nights. When you have finished your first time around you get a medal, and in later years a small pin to go on the ribbon. I have walked it a couple of times, but only have this medal and no pins. I used it for 2 reasons: I needed me to be in this piece and I deserved some encouragement for having the guts to start this endeavor.

I have chosen Chopin's Etude opus10 nr. 1 to go with my piece. It reflects the ultimate chaos I experienced just before I started my treatment, yet it is one of the most brilliant pieces of pianomusic I know. I hope that's how this all will work out in the end: that I have learned to hear and appreciate all the different tunes in me, that in the end make... ME. So you could say I have landed on the bottom of the hole, and now am out to find my jabberwocky. I have met the red queen, seen glimpses of the white queen... This tale is not over yet.

April-Fool in May

Got all of us (including myself) fooled last month in thinking I had my plan for my april BJP-piece all conjured up. I had cut up my pieces of white and blue felt, sorted out all my shades of white and blue beads.... and then suddenly realized I was not going to make a Delfts Blauw piece all together. I have made myself one promiss when starting out on this journey, and that was making each piece a journal of that particular month. The thoughts I had on the Delftware piece are still very nice, and I did celebrate Koninginnedag but still that doesn't resemble in any way what I have been through in april. So here I am again for something completely different.

As some of you may know, I started an intensive therapy programm april 19th in hope of finding a way to deal with my recurrent and very severe depression(s). A couple of days before I started, I saw the movie Alice with a dear friend, and realized that the beginning of the film - where Alice looks into the rabbithole before falling in - was exactly depicting how I felt. I was sitting an the rim of the hole and knew I had to jump in on monday. It was terrifying! Mostly because I had hardly any idea of what was going to happen after I had taken that giant leap into the unknown. Now I have shrunk and grown and shrunk again a couple of times, I ran through the forest of Underland and am still waiting for the day I will have to slay my own jabberwocky. That is when I decided to bead my own Rabbithole.

So I went to my attic and was very pleased to find some green felt and then it began: the making of the rabbithole was an adventure in itself. I first set out to make a sleeve of plain, black cotton cloth to fit the hole I had cut into the felt. It took a while untill I thought I had succeeded, but the sleeve was to long so I tore off  a just a small part. Ha! It didn't tear straight, because I had sewn the sleeve on leaving the direction of the weave in my cotton slightly slanting (if that is the correct phrase to use). Then I thought that if I would tear in the other direction I would make it straight again... All I did was shorten the sleeve on both occasions, leaving me with just a trim of black cloth around my rabbithole. Feeling very frustrated I took the whole thing off and decided to bead the thing!

You know what was so marvelous in what happenend next? As soon as I started beading around the hole, I knew I was on the right track just because I couldn't stop beading! It started to emerge under my hands as I was picking up the beads. After I had beaded a nice, wobbly edge to my rabbithole I realized I needed it filled up with "dirt". My attic was good to me in providing a good piece of brown felt and I soon was beading away again. Now the rabbitle is done for the time being at least. I had already beaded some flowers to fill up the green. Now on to the next stage... beading a lawn and finding a way to fit me in it.

BJP for march 2010

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my march-piece in my post Growing Strong. Little did I know it would grow out to the extend that it has! It all started with doodling while at work in late january, early february. (For those who have not  followed me here or on Facebook: I have been on sickleave since february 9th.) I doodled a simple tree with just a few leaves, which is exactly what I started out with on this piece.

Soon I added the heart at the centre of my tree and the fringes that most, who saw this beginning, named roots. They were not intended to represent roots, but maybe they have become roots in the process. I wanted to make the trees connection to the soil visible and the nutrients it gets from it. I thought of those tree-foods as the fuel for the tree to be able to live, the "fire within" or Chi, hence the red/orange/yellow beads.

And then all of a sudden, I released myself from hospital and tumbled into turmoil. Because I have the intention to make my pieces real journals, in the sense that I want them to tell my story of that month, the turmoil has become very visible in the end. This is the landscape the tree grew into:

As I did with my other pieces, I want to tell you in more detail what all the parts mean. So I have once againg devided it into sections:

1. I stand strong
I could also call this piece: I will survive. That is exactly what this sturdy tree is meant to be: the confirmation that through all turmoil I will straighten my back and will stand. My feet connected to Mother Earth, growing and nourishing the fire that is crackling in my veins.

2. I'm working in my garden
The garden has, now that I write this down, become my metaphor for the rough times I am working through. In my february-piece I took a piece of my heart and replaced it in a little garden to heal and grow again. In this piece, the righthand corner is the most peacefull and restfull. I loved to play with colors in the beads as well as the thread, and that did make me feel comfortable. Although being in admitted wasn't easy, I found rest and a little distraction in beading which is visible in this part.


3. where I can bloom and lay back
The grass on the bottom is the last part of the piece that I embroidered while still in the hospital, before the turmoil began. Not that my moods weren't swinging from the highest highs to the lowest lows at that time, but I found some ways to still be able to tune in to my inner needs and wishes: to lay back, rest and bloom again. The first few days at home I could tap into that stream although it became harder by the hour. So when I beaded the bright (white) air and the flowers, I stopped working on this corner and moved up.

4. dark clouds are gathering
After a few days it was obvious that my stay in hospital didn't bring me any good. On the contrary, the events of the last days of my stay made it clear that my depression had gotten worse and I was far from laying back and blooming. In fact, I could feel the tension aching in all the fibres of my body. I felt as though a giant thunderstorm was going to overcome me and would wash me away. There was no movement, no going with the flow, just straight lines of fear, anger and sadness, the absence of colour.

5. growing leafs
Then I returned to the heart of my tree, to the fire within, and realized that I had to grow a lot more leafs to reach out to the world, to get in touch with the Earth and myself. So for a couple of nights I franticly beaded leafs.... first in the color of fire, but as they grew more and more to the outer limits of the tree in pale but promissing green. I call them my "ghost-leaves" meaning that they will grow eventually, although now there may still only be a promiss. Then I refound some peace and the skies turned blue again. With white clouds, but blue, meaning the heaviest part of the storm was over... the sun was going to shine again.

March was quite a month, quite a story... but in the end I have learned that somehow, somewhere there must be a way that I can stand up and say: Hey, I am growing strong!

I won't leave you without a proper piece of music to accompany this piece. To be honest it took me quite a while before I found a piece that illustrated my feelings. I think I have found it in this "Little Fugue" in G-minor, BWV 578 by Johann Sebastian Bach (one of my favorite composers). Originally the piece was composed for the organ, but here it is performed on the piano.The sound in this video is not perfect, but the visualization shows how the simple line (doodle) at the start is accompanied by other melodies into quite a sound and then to return to a more peacefull ending.

Here I am

So here I am, working steadily on my march-piece that is branching out to a level I hadn't expected and hesitantly starting thinking on my april piece, while april is already halfway gone! While pondering about what april means to me immediately our national holiday Koninginnedag came to mind. A tradition that started when our late Queen Juliana was crowned, for her birthday was april 30th. After she resigned and our current Queen Beatrix took over her reign she pronounced that april 30th would stay a national holiday in honor of her mother. So for as long as I have lived, april 30th was a very festive day.

The Dutch national color is orange, because our royal family is of the House of Orange-Nassau. Personally I don't care at all for the color orange, so I decided to find a way around using this color. (Note that my april piece has not one bead on it yet!) Staying in line with my wanting to make a Dutch piece, I thought of another well know Dutch thing: Delfts Blauw. Anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands will have seen the little blue and white souvenirs of windmills, clogs, and a sweet girl&boy kissing. I do like this color-combination because of it's simplicity and it's great variation in hues.

Next I also realized that I did not want to make another solidly bead beaded piece, as my march piece is turning out. Not that I don't like it, but is more work then I ever phantomed. I wanted to do something with two layers of felt and realized that I have a handwork encyclopedia with a vast amount of crafts explained in detail. While just browsing the pages I stumbled upon a Hungarian technique of sewing two layers of felt togehter and then cutting out shapes that were outlined in the sewing. I have tried to find an online example of this technique, but haven't been able to.

So here I am, with my april piece taking shape in my mind, and nothing to show for it. It is growing in the shade of my march tree waiting to get a chance...

Climb a tree - it gets you closer to heaven.
Author Unknown

BJP for febuary 2010

March is well on its way to hand over to april and here I am, posting on my febuary BJP page. Time is flying when your beading! I did the same to this page, as I did to my january page. But before I start my own story, I want to thank all of you who took the effort to really look and listen to my piece and left a comment on what it told them. I was moved by all of your reactions and didn't expect so many of them to be right on the mark!

Most of you saw the breaks in my heart, the mends (there was even a zipper conceived) and the growth. There were thunderclouds, butterfly-souls, scars, light and darkness but all ended well so I lived happily ever after. However silly this last sentence may sound, I must admit that I hadn't expected so many honest, warm comments and so much love expressed through them. It has really lifted me up in the very hard times I am going through right now. So before I start telling you my own story, I want to express a heartfelt:

Thank you !!

1. what is (in) my heart?

It all started with a piece of off-white felt, and a whole, red felt heart. I don't know exactly what brought me to cut it into pieces, but somehow after I had cut out the heart I felt the need to divide it. Thing is that probably as a side-effect of my depression I often feel like I am shattered to pieces: dark&light, sad&bright, black&white. I often struggle to unite these pieces and have a feeling of  "me". More often then not I don't have this feeling of being whole, I usually feel torn and tossed between all the extremes that my emotions and thoughts show me.

The top right-parts that were "zipped" together have a little secret behind them. On my first day in hospital I found a € 0.05 coin on the floor of my room. It struck me like a lucky-penny and that's why I wanted it in my piece. Somewhere in my heart, there is some luck hidden. Locked up for now, but there for when time is right.

2. hold on tight
The sun always shines behind the clouds is the English phrase, in Dutch we say: "after rain the sun comes out" (my translation). It is the darknes that dissolves to light, but with a heart at the center of the darkness. There always is something good to come out of hard times, though often we can hardly perceive it when we are in the middle of such turmoil. So I will have to hold on tightly and sit the ride out.

3. the garden of life

I first had my heart cut up in pieces, but pinned it to the backing in the right shape and order. While beading I realized that just part of me felt really dislocated right now, in need of mending. That's why I relocated this one piece, just outlining where it had been, and put it in my little garden where it can grow and heal again. Like in a real garden, a lot of work needs to be done and that is what I am looking at now.

4. missing parts&turmoil

So this missing part is just outlined, showing where it should be and was, but now it is threatened by dark clouds and and almost sucked into the dark whirlpool below. There is a steep path shearing right next to my heart and I must cling on to not fall into this darkness. But it is not pitchblack, there still is some light so I can try to stay on top and see a little of the beauty that is hidden in this darkness.

5. one day I'll fly away

The thought of the butterflies representing my soul is not farfetched at all. It was the last piece of the project that I beaded and I did indeed intend to represent my wish to sometime be able to fly away from the sorrow that is inside me. I wanted to ensure myself that one day, I will be able to put all this behind me and fly into the clouds, the sunlight... I used red thread with matte beads to connect the flight and air to the heart. It don't want to fly away from my heart, because no matter what, it still is mine.

So now branching of to march, but that is to come in another post. Those who have known me for some time now, also know I will not leave you emtyhanded. I found this beautifull music-video of Chinese classical Folk Music, interpreted by the Vanessa Mae. Very calming to listen to and a joy to watch.

BJP for january 2010

In my post "Do you remember?" I told you my sisters story, the link to why my BJP for january has grown the way it has. Still I owe you the story behind all the different stitches and cabochons I used.

I have borrowed a little trick from Sharon Bogon over at Pintangle, who explains blocks of her Crazy Quilts like I have done in the picture below.

1. a ribbon for life
In the center is a Danish coin with a hole in it: 25 ore. I glued it to the felt after I had already put the ribbon on. Then I  fastened it with a round of backstitch and then continued to bead with peyote stitch. Around the ribbon came a round of backstitch again and I worked that out into a snake-stitch, which looks quite intricate, but is in fact very easy. From the start on, this part of the piece resembled a medal of honor of some sort and I guess it is. If anyone has struggled through life and deserves to be honoured for that it is my sis.

2. there were 3 of us

As I wrote before I am the oldest of 3 girls and when I turned my little treasure chest upside down, I was surprised not only to find the Danish coin, but 3 Swedish coins as well. All are remnants of our family vacations to Scandinavia. There is no point in saying that when you are used to have a 3-some, all of a sudden becoming a 2-some will never be "normal". The most astounding thing is that 2 out of the 3 coins had a different design on the coin-side. (If you click-to-enlarge on the picture above you can see what I mean.) I felt like this even more emphasized the fact that our pact was broken. These coins I glued to the felt as well and embellished with backstitch. The darker blue, fake pearls are sewn to form a Triskelion, an ancient Celtic symbol of power.

 
3. out of her hair
I got my treasure chest out to find the blue hairpin in the first place. My sister had worn it and it was so delicate that it broke. I loved the two tiny doves, so I asked her if I could have it.... that was 25-some years ago. Seems like eons since we were kids. The piece of fur is from a bunny. I put in in there because at her second B-day my sister got a guinea-pig that unfortunately had to leave our home in shorter than a year because both she and our mom were very allergic to it. Aside from some birds and goldfish, it was the only pet we were ever allowed to my great distress. It took some time to decide that I had to not only sow the back of the pin to the felt, but had to somehow sow the doves stuck too...

4. peacefull, loving memories
It is often said of some items that you should get them and not buy them for yourself because that would mean bad luck. This is true for rosaries and Buddha's to my knowledge. So when my sister wanted a Buddha for Sinterklaas (at least I think it was for that occasion) I went out and bought her one. It was in a time that her peace of mind was far away and she deserved some quiet, happy time. I put the Buddha-bead in the middle of the hole in hope that where-ever she is right now, she will have peace of mind.

5. in the bloom of her life

My sister took her life in the bloom of it, she was too young to die but didn't see a way to continue living with so much pain in her heart and mind. Now that I am going through one of the worst depressions in my own life (I am struggling with severe, recurring depressions from when I was 15 up to now), I know how hard it must have been for her. I know her struggle, for I am battling that same urge to put an end to things every day. I feel her sorrow, for it is my sorrow too partially. I love her even more for it, that is maybe the most strange outcome of this.  The past years I have wished every day I could put my arms around her and tell her we would be all right, and today I know more then ever we could have been here together. Still, she left in the midst of her season... she loved the flowering bulbs in spring and when we drove to the funeral home it was an overpowering, sunny day with crocusses, daffodils and snowdrops everywhere. Because of her love for the color blue, I bought blue anemones to lay on the lid of the coffin. That's where the blue flower derives from. If you would like to give the flower a try yourself, visit Beading Arts. She has an excellent tutorial on how to make them.

So all this is behind just one piece of bead-embroidery and I haven't even started on what I learned about me from this... For now, I just want to leave you with the wise words of a Little Prince:

"You're lovely, but you're empty," he went on. "One couldn't die for you. Of course an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you altogether, since she's the one I've watered. Since she's the one I put under glass. Since she's the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she's the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except for two or three for butterflies). Since's she the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she's my rose."

the Little Prince by Anoine de Saint Exupery

I dare

A few months ago I posted on visualization based upon music. I promissed to share my images later, so here I am to try an give you a peak into my visual mind.

Those who have been with me so far know that I have a great love for music, especially classical music. One of my favorites being Modest Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an exhibition". I embedded video's of several variotions of one movement out of this bigger piece. On the right you see the facsimile of the drawing "The Hut of Baba Yaga on Hen’s Legs" by Viktor Hartmann depicting a clock in the Russian style. This is the sketch that inspired Modest Mussorgsky to compose the movement.
To be honest, this clock does not by far do justice to what I saw when I first heard the movement and understood de background of the Baba Yaga figure! To me, this is just an old fashioned cuckoo clock. Not scary at all, while Baba Yaga is a very, terrifying figure indeed. To me from the very start she was the kind of witch you were afraid of as a kid. The witch in European folklore that is featured in the Grimm-brother's story Hans & Grietje (Hansel und Gretl) with her house build out of cake and candy, who wants to eat little childeren ...

In fact, the Baba Yaga stories are very similar to the folklore thats was gathered by the Grimm brothers. The main Baba Yaga story is Vasilisa the beautifull and tells of a beautifull young maiden that gets sent into the woods by her evil stepmother to find the hut on chickens legs. The scene is very eary, cold and fearsome. When she finds the hut and Baba Yage, she has to fullfill some assignments before she can go home with the light she was sent for. So Baba Yaga is the personification of all fears that we have to conquer before we can become enlightened of be set free.

I feel these enourmous, yet utterly human fear when the movement that Mussorgsky composed starts. It's low, dark tones that approach rappidly out of nowhere, dissonant chords and a harmony that makes you feel out of balance. But then suddenly, the dark subsides a little, seems to become ligher... Then, the dark returns and masters the light that was shimmering through. After the victory of the dark, the movement seamlessly goes into the next one: the great gates of Kiev. Free, free at last! While listening I can let go with a great sigh, the dark has been overcome as I faced my fears and step through the gate into the light.

It is easy to see how the story fits into the music. It is also easy to see how many folklore and modern lore work around this same theme. Even in  my last post Challenges Ahead I referred to my inner critic as a trickster. But if I can face her and maybe even befriend her, I can take advantage of  her wisdom. In most fairytales witches are not pure evil. Often they present the hero or heroine with some unrealistic accomplishments they have to establish before they will have what they need to fullfill their quest. This mostly means they somehow have to conquer their utmost fear(s). Even the frightening Baba Yaga is sometimes said to offer guidance to lost soles.

Below I have embedded a video of yet another composition that was inspired upon the figure of Baba Yaga by Anatoly Liadov. As is the case with Mussorgsky's movement, I find this one equally disturbing and yet beautifull. I hope you will enjoy it and have some (new) visions of your own.

Because I don't want to leave you with disturbance, and have said that facing your fears can also bring good to ones life, I also want to share another video. It is sweet and lacks all the disquieting qualities that usually accompany Baba Yaga. Above all, it shows that your Baba Yaga can be found anywhere and sometimes had to overcome a little fear herself.

On dots again

One could state that I have become obsessed by dots, but while writing on my post  Dots rule I remembered art-class in High School (lucky me, because this way I wouldn't have to take a course in biology). When the modern artists were discussed also Pointillism was reviewed: a technique that uses dots instead of brushstrokes to create an image . One known contributor is Georges Seurat (1859 - 1891), of whom the  painting "Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte" (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte) is shown below.

In fact, Pointillism was derived from Impressionism. Impressionists wanted to catch the light of the moment in the painting as accurate as they perceived it at the exact moment. To achieve this goal, often colours were blended on the canvas itself instead of on the palette, the brushstrokes were harsh and black was hardly ever used. The reasoning behind this was that even a shadow holds all colours, only it is lacking enough light for our eyes to be able to perceive it. To use black would deny this fact and would deprive the image and experience its quality.

The Pointillist way of achieving the same goal was a bit more artificial:  they tried to replicate the perception itself, by not painting in colours that match as closely as possible the colour(s) perceived. By not physically blending different pigments, but merely placing them next to each other on the canvas, the viewer would in his or her mind automatically recreate the colour intended. The eyes would do the trick, so to speak. You could view this as a kind of optical illusion. To illustrate this, view the next image  for a while and try to distinguish the individual colours you perceive (detail from "La Parade" (The Parade)):

If you look very close (click to enlarge) you will find that in the face there are touches of blue, dark red and perhaps even a hint of green. Colours you wouldn't normally expect in the pink and fleshtones that would be used to paint a face "the old-fashioned" way. The darkness of the hair in the back of the neck is not achieved by black paint, but by dots of dark blues and greens lying very close to each other. Still, when you look, you don't see an alien but a human , in normal human hues.

I was thinking about this again when I was reading my copy of "Beaded Embellishment" by Robin Atkins and Amy C. Clarke. In the book is a high quality picture of a beaded piece by Amy, that when I viewed it with the book at a reading distance in my hands, didn't make much sense. It was named: Apple.

Then it came to me to hold the book at a greater distance and Lo and Behold ... two hands carefully holding an apple came forward, presenting me with its beauty. So vividly that I wanted to take a bite out of it and savour it all to the last piece.

This is exactly what the Impressionists in general and maybe the Pointillists more particularly aimed at: you, the viewer, wanting to be a part of the experience. Looking at a painting had to feel like you were there, at the waterside on a sunday afternoon:  feeling the breeze, the warmth of the sun on your cheeks, hearing children shout and laugh, dogs bark,  and maybe holding an apple and admiring it before eating.

I feel so delighted by the idea that painting and beading to me once again fall into place, though I have never held a brush in my hands for art-purposes since kindergarten. Painting is not my cup of tea, as much as I admire those who do have the gift. It does pose me however with the challenge to blend my beads for the BJP-pieces to come, in a way I feel like I honestly am journalling, beading the experience instead of the mere thought.

I also gained a new appreciation of how intricate our eyes work and work together with our minds in combining (the frequency and intensity of) light and prior expierence, to make sense of a whole that is truely composed of parts. This even to the extend that qualities that are in fact not there are added, like motion:

So I want to leave you with this thought:

"A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind."

Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994) Romanian-born French playwright.

Visualization reversed or do you dare?

I won't have to make it any clearer that there are hundreds of ways to visualize a thought, feeling, mood or anything else. There are at least as much roads to visualization as there are people setting their minds and hands to it. In my post Visualization fantastique I gave a couple of examples all based on one piece of music. Now I want to try to trigger your minds in doing exactly the opposite.

A very well known piece of music is "Pictures at an exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky (1839 - 1881). It was orignally composed for piano around 1874 in honour of the artist and architect Victor Hartman (1834 - 1873), a close friend of Mussorgsky, who had died at the age of only 39. In commemoration of Hartman about 400 pictures were exhibited in the Academy of fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky, still shaken by the sudden death of his good friend and an admirer of his art, then needed only about 6 weeks to compose his virtual tour through the museum.

The original piece consists of 15 movements:

• Promenade
• Gnomus The gnome
• Interlude (Promenade theme)
• Il vecchio castello The old castle
• Tuileries (Dispute d'enfants après jeux) Dispute between children at play
• Bydło Cattle
• Interlude (Promenade theme)
• Ballet Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
• Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle also known as 2 Jews, one rich the other poor
• Promenade
• Limoges, le marché (La grande nouvelle) The market at Limoges (The great News)
• Catacombæ (Sepulcrum romanum) and "Cum mortuis in lingua mortua" The Catacombs and With the Dead in a Dead Language
• Baba-Yaga The Hut on Fowl's Legs
• The great gates of Kiev The Bogatyr Gates

It is easy to see that Mussorgsky wanted to take his listener by the hand and walk with him through the halls of the Academy. He wanted to recreate in the minds of those who heard his music the pictures he had seen and loved so much. Maybe (but this is a wild guess on my side and not even an educated one at that) he even wanted to make us part of his loss and grief. Unfortunately, most of Hartmans paintings didn't survive today so we do not know what Mussorgsky saw and have little more than his music to testify for their existence.

Apart from the music being very inspirational in itself it has inspired others as well. For example, Maurice Ravel made an orchestration that has now become more known that the original version. But also Emerson, Lake and Palmer have made their own version, as did Isao Tomita. They all added a personal note to their own stroll through the museum and all evoke a different sensation. ELP even went so far as to add a few pieces of their own, thereby making their tour a very personal one.

Now my question to you is: when you listen to the music, what images come to your mind? Are they vivid? Colourful? Real or abstract? Does your imigination cling onto the title of the movement or are you able to let go and just drift away? Does it make a difference whether you listen to the original or to the orchestration?

In order not to give away to much, the pictures in this post are not of the music you can listen to below, nor will I tell you what movement is played except that all videos are of the same movement. Of course it is easy to cheat, as most video's will tel you what movement is played... But face the real challenge and just listen, eyes closed. Do you dare?

The original:


The orchestrated version:



The Emerson, Lake and Palmer version:


The version by Isao Tomita:


An unknown (to me at least) surprising version:


I would love to hear what you come up with and will later share my own visions. If you have any versions I didn't mention, please let me know!

Visualization Fantastique

In my previous post, I wrote about how powerfull visualization is and presented you with a couple of examples for visualizing data. Lately I have found some wonderful videos on YouTube. Among them were a couple of a lovely (piano) piece by the French composer Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918), called Claire de lune or Moonshine.  Debussy was one of the Impressionists and alongside with Maurice Ravel one of the most know composers of his time. The original sheet music looks like this: (Follow the link if you want to download the entire piece. It is free for non-commercial use.)

You have to be able to read the notes to let it speak to you. So it won't be appealing to a lot of people, unless they have had some education in reading musical notation. Of course anyone can listen to the music and let it come to them that way, but today I want to talk visual. That's what this blog is all about now I am officially on the road to the Bead Journal Project 2010.

When I saw the first video I found it astoundingly simple, and at the same time it shows the intricacy of the musical lines so beautifully. It all comes together, even if musical notation isn't your thing: you can litterally see what is going to happen next. The experience of listening and being able to see what you hear is an intriguing one. So please take the time, watch this video, listen to the music and let your imagination do the rest.



This visualization was made by MAM, the Music Animation Machine. Someone has spend years and years of time and effort to be able to convert music to animation. The same way we bead single beads onto cloth, he entered pieces of code after code to start encoding music.

Much earlier Walt Disney had similar ideas when he started his Silly Symphonies in the late 1920's. In 1940 the first full feature film was made with this idea and I think everyone will now know Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. The video below is of the same piece by Debussy, now orchestrated which makes the listening all together different, and with a less abstract visualization. Sadly enough it didn't make it into the full-lenght film, so I am very pleased for technical improvement and the blessings of YouTube.



So when Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-189, American author and poet) says:

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.

I would like to add:

Open your eyes for anything that you may find of beauty every day, and you will find that it is balm for your mind.