05-10-2021, 12:00 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-05-2021, 07:35 PM by Dekalb_Blues.)
Some Now-Catalytic Vintage Music For Mother's Day
Sometimes one cannot understand one's parents until one has walked enough
miles in their shoes -- covering the same kind of rough terrain in the same kind
of heavy weather, meeting the same kind of strange, scary wild creatures along
the way...
The million-mile-per-smile approach:
The thousand-baby-kisses approach
Al Jolson, was born Asa Yoelson on May 26, 1886 in Lithuania to an observant Jewish family, which left Russia for America when he was a child; this was during the massive late-19th/early 20th-century diaspora of Eastern European/Polish/Russian Jews to the New World, focussing on New York City. The son of a cantor, he first sang in a synagogue, and was expected by his family to pursue Hebraic divine studies into adulthood. Eschewing this, he ran away from home to join a circus; in 1906, following on his intense interest in American black cultural arts, he became a black-faced café and vaudeville entertainer. After he began working on the New York stage in 1909, he rose to stardom, and was considered by many to be the greatest entertaining talent of his time.
Part of his appeal was that he integrated American black musical memes (especially the then cutting-edge "jazz" ones) into the traditional framework of Old World Jewish dramatic stage/music hall performance memes; his career went from strength to strength as the popular mass-entertainment music/stage/cinema businesses and industries (centered first at New York and then at Hollywood) came to be financially controlled and thus aesthetically directed by the most powerful of his fellow Old World Jewish émigrés (who established themselves as among its major investors, magnates, and moguls). In 1923 Jolson was signed by famed Hollywood film producer D. W. Griffith to appear in Mammy's Boy, but the film was never made. Three years later he sang three songs in an experimental sound short, April Showers (1926). The following year Jolson became immortal when he starred in The Jazz Singer, the world's first talkie (though most of the sound was background music), in which he spoke several sentences including the famous line "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" He next appeared in the part-talkie The Singing Fool (1928), which grossed more money than any film until Gone with the Wind (1939). Through the mid-'30s he starred in a number of formula musicals, but changing public tastes led to a gradual decline in his popularity; his generation of diasporic émigrés had been superseded by its American-born offspring, who had different, more assimilated tastes. After Jolson received some attention for singing for troops in World War II, his life was the subject of the film The Jolson Story (1946), in which he dubbed the songs for star Larry Parks. The film was a great box office success, resulting in a sequel, Jolson Sings Again (1949). From 1928-39 he was married to actress Ruby Keeler, with whom he appeared in Go Into Your Dance (1935). He went on to entertain troops in Korea during that early-'50s semi-world-war, shortly after which he died of a heart attack.
His artistic legacy is now commonly viewed through a powerful currently-endemic cultural-critique lens which doubtlessly would seem quite alien, artificial, and mischievously tendentious to someone conditioned with his somewhat-more-innocent generation's now-quaint worldview.
Twin towers
Athanor (from Arabic التَنُّور (at-tannūr, "the baker’s oven”; falsely but poetically ascribed to Greek Θάνατος, "deathless")
In the secret guild-language of the medieval European alchemists' culture (derived from heavily-influential Arabic doctrinal sources), this refers symbolically to an evolutionary furnace of alchemical sublimation and transmutation via the occult fire of the spirit (which burns eternally of itself, inexstinguishable). It is the mysterious experiential furnace in which the mind, the body, and the soul of fragmentated unregenerate man are purified, transformed, and alloyed, enabling the now-refined, integrated, and strengthened man to choose the right Way to reach the Truth, so as to make his fate align with his destiny in synchronic unity with the unfolding Great Design of the Infinite Creator.
It was also called the "Philosophical furnace," "Furnace of Arcana," or popularly, the "Tower furnace."
'Cause when love is gone... there's always justice.
And when justice is gone... there's always force.
And when force is gone... there's always Mom.
Hi Mom!
This jewelry-work follows the labyrinthical line, freely inspired by the spiritual message left by the great Neapolitan alchemist Raimondo di Sangro inside his Sansevero Chapel. This particular line symbolizes the difficulty and importance of the path of awareness. The gammata crosses and concentric squares allude to the tetragon of elements, or the four forces of nature -- earth, fire, air, water -- essential for the survival of life.
Thanks for giving of yourself, Mom!
--- Horus
The eminent British Orientalist translator of Tantrik texts, Sir John Woodroffe, in his Garland of Letters (Madras & London, 1922) writes, "Kali is so called because She devours Kala (Time) and then resumes Her own dark formlessness."
O Maha [Great] Kali
Darkness like the night
Burning as a light
Have mercy on me
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Holder of the sword
Dancing on your lord
Have mercy on me
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Carry me across
This ocean of life and death
On the wings of your Name
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Dancing in my heart
Remember, play the part
Have mercy on me Ma
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Sometimes one cannot understand one's parents until one has walked enough
miles in their shoes -- covering the same kind of rough terrain in the same kind
of heavy weather, meeting the same kind of strange, scary wild creatures along
the way...
The million-mile-per-smile approach:
The thousand-baby-kisses approach
Al Jolson, was born Asa Yoelson on May 26, 1886 in Lithuania to an observant Jewish family, which left Russia for America when he was a child; this was during the massive late-19th/early 20th-century diaspora of Eastern European/Polish/Russian Jews to the New World, focussing on New York City. The son of a cantor, he first sang in a synagogue, and was expected by his family to pursue Hebraic divine studies into adulthood. Eschewing this, he ran away from home to join a circus; in 1906, following on his intense interest in American black cultural arts, he became a black-faced café and vaudeville entertainer. After he began working on the New York stage in 1909, he rose to stardom, and was considered by many to be the greatest entertaining talent of his time.
Part of his appeal was that he integrated American black musical memes (especially the then cutting-edge "jazz" ones) into the traditional framework of Old World Jewish dramatic stage/music hall performance memes; his career went from strength to strength as the popular mass-entertainment music/stage/cinema businesses and industries (centered first at New York and then at Hollywood) came to be financially controlled and thus aesthetically directed by the most powerful of his fellow Old World Jewish émigrés (who established themselves as among its major investors, magnates, and moguls). In 1923 Jolson was signed by famed Hollywood film producer D. W. Griffith to appear in Mammy's Boy, but the film was never made. Three years later he sang three songs in an experimental sound short, April Showers (1926). The following year Jolson became immortal when he starred in The Jazz Singer, the world's first talkie (though most of the sound was background music), in which he spoke several sentences including the famous line "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" He next appeared in the part-talkie The Singing Fool (1928), which grossed more money than any film until Gone with the Wind (1939). Through the mid-'30s he starred in a number of formula musicals, but changing public tastes led to a gradual decline in his popularity; his generation of diasporic émigrés had been superseded by its American-born offspring, who had different, more assimilated tastes. After Jolson received some attention for singing for troops in World War II, his life was the subject of the film The Jolson Story (1946), in which he dubbed the songs for star Larry Parks. The film was a great box office success, resulting in a sequel, Jolson Sings Again (1949). From 1928-39 he was married to actress Ruby Keeler, with whom he appeared in Go Into Your Dance (1935). He went on to entertain troops in Korea during that early-'50s semi-world-war, shortly after which he died of a heart attack.
His artistic legacy is now commonly viewed through a powerful currently-endemic cultural-critique lens which doubtlessly would seem quite alien, artificial, and mischievously tendentious to someone conditioned with his somewhat-more-innocent generation's now-quaint worldview.
Twin towers
Athanor (from Arabic التَنُّور (at-tannūr, "the baker’s oven”; falsely but poetically ascribed to Greek Θάνατος, "deathless")
In the secret guild-language of the medieval European alchemists' culture (derived from heavily-influential Arabic doctrinal sources), this refers symbolically to an evolutionary furnace of alchemical sublimation and transmutation via the occult fire of the spirit (which burns eternally of itself, inexstinguishable). It is the mysterious experiential furnace in which the mind, the body, and the soul of fragmentated unregenerate man are purified, transformed, and alloyed, enabling the now-refined, integrated, and strengthened man to choose the right Way to reach the Truth, so as to make his fate align with his destiny in synchronic unity with the unfolding Great Design of the Infinite Creator.
It was also called the "Philosophical furnace," "Furnace of Arcana," or popularly, the "Tower furnace."
'Cause when love is gone... there's always justice.
And when justice is gone... there's always force.
And when force is gone... there's always Mom.
Hi Mom!
This jewelry-work follows the labyrinthical line, freely inspired by the spiritual message left by the great Neapolitan alchemist Raimondo di Sangro inside his Sansevero Chapel. This particular line symbolizes the difficulty and importance of the path of awareness. The gammata crosses and concentric squares allude to the tetragon of elements, or the four forces of nature -- earth, fire, air, water -- essential for the survival of life.
Thanks for giving of yourself, Mom!
--- Horus
The eminent British Orientalist translator of Tantrik texts, Sir John Woodroffe, in his Garland of Letters (Madras & London, 1922) writes, "Kali is so called because She devours Kala (Time) and then resumes Her own dark formlessness."
O Maha [Great] Kali
Darkness like the night
Burning as a light
Have mercy on me
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Holder of the sword
Dancing on your lord
Have mercy on me
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Carry me across
This ocean of life and death
On the wings of your Name
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali
Dancing in my heart
Remember, play the part
Have mercy on me Ma
Take from me all that is not free
O Maha Kali