USE FLOWERS, THEY COVER EVERYTHING. EVEN GRAVES
GRAPIST STORY ON WHICH YET UNPUBLISHED SCREENPLAY FOR GRAPIST FILM SOLDAT PERDU IS BASED
Read ye all the full story about the original cowboy artist, where Mr. Farnham from New York meets the masked marauder and where Emily Farnham, his beloved daughter, becomes a lost soldier, a pitiless human machine fit for modern times.
Mr. Farnham, member of the Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee, desiring to inspect th' cattle growing region in the great far west, took his beautiful daughter Emily for a companion on the trip. Emily had dark, Titianesque eyes, her fair hair a mingling of the blonde and brunette. Mr. Farnham and his daughter were welcome at the ranch houses, with which th country was dotted, and spent the time riding over the country from one end to another. The father looked upon the region as one in which to raise food for the hungry millions. The daughter considered it very picturesque.
the slender cowboy , iderden 2006
One morning the visitors were riding when they met a cowboy. He was slender, and his face was handsome, with a dreamy expression. Instead of riding past them the young man bade them good morning. His eyes were riveted on Miss Emily. When the cowboy had passed out of hearing, she remarked to the Father: “Isn't it strange, papa, that we have come so far away from home to learn manners: If we had met a gentleman in the country about NY he would not have been so polite.” The disgruntled father answered:”H'm! I don't see what business he had to speak to us at all.” That evening at the ranch house after supper Mr. Farnham was notified that a man wished to see him at the porch. Mr. Farnham went out t find the cowboy he had passed in the morning sitting in his saddle, rolling a cigaret. “I've called”, he said, “to ask if you will allow me to paint the young lady who was with you.” “Paint my daughter! Certainly not.” The reply was given so curtly that before it was out the cowboy had put spurs to his horse and rode away. Mr. Farnham was later that evening informed he had met the COWBOY ARTIST, SINCE HE PUSHED CATTLE AND PAINTED PICTURES.
all the tired horses I (iderden)
The next day Mr.and Miss Farnham were out for their ride when at the crossroads they met a masked maurader who halted them, calling upon the father to throw up his hands. The order was obeyed but even the assurance that the father was not armed did not prevent the marauder shooting him dead. Then he took the irons of the crying girl's horse. Not far distant was a little shack that had not been used for years. Within was an easel which rested a canvas, while paints, palettes and brushes lay near. Assisting the young lady from her horse he posed her to suit his fancy. He unveiled his mask. Though still softly crying, she seemed not only willing, but pleased.
amazone (iderden)
The sitting lasted for more than an hour, and when it was finished the artist assisted his captive to mount. “I am curious,” said Emily Farnham “to see how the picture will turn out.” “I have only caught an Inspiration for a fancy,” said the young man. “If you wish the portrait to be yourself you must give me what you treasure most.” “I will give you my love,” replied the girl. “Well, I'll take care of your soul. Then you're a free girl now,” said the cowboy painter. ‘'Because without a soul, you're a lost soldier, who doesn't care if he's an animal or a goddess. Your love will be lethal.'' ,,Don't you see," said the cowboy, while he squinted against the sun that was by now halfway the horizon, ,,You are now an artist who won't look back. You will be devoid of judgment. Let others judge you, they cannot touch you.''
The taciturn woman drove away into the field, where she halted to pick corn flowers with which she covered her father, before she disappeared into the hollow night.
sunset in nevada (iderden)
soundtrack:
Fade in: one of those typical Mexicana instrumental songs by Calexico. Play a prewar/postwar Mariachi original if you have one. We're in the deep Southwest now. Our trip into the Northern plaines and the Deep South Appalachian country starts here. But first we'll fly the beautiful Concorde from Houston to Paris, and, since Jamie Reed constructed the the most sexually provocative cowboy in the seventies, we'll search for new cowboys in the old continent.
Some cowboys are small thin lean sad lonesome and a long way from happiness cowboys. The most dramatic of all was the 1940's Appalachian country singer Hank Williams (found dead in his car at age of 29, en route to the show). His Alone and Forsaken is so strong it makes you cry just thinking of it). Other cowboys are self confident tough and inexpugnable. No doubt, no confusion under their stetsons: Clint Eastwood!. Within this typology, the Antwerp based postmodern daan Stuyven is the most explicit post modern version of the Clint Eastwood cowboy, finding his cool in a slow motion Saturday Night Feversequence, and you can see all that in the videoclip of the whipping disco-techno song Swedish Designer’s Drugs (2002). There, he's shootin away on the flat roof of a modern building with a classic Danish Nilfisk vacuum cleaner for a gun, singing he was ,,shot in the back by Nilfisk addicted cowboys". Wearing a perfect white suit and big sunglasses, he's the metropolitan counterbalance for Hank. daan wears his obsession for design _ his voice is designed, his multilayered musical production is design, his (own) lay out is utterly designed, his performances are designed _ as a mask hiding his soul. Or does the mask hide the fact that he's got no more soul? sold his soul? Williams laid his soul bare, Daan sold his and since this Faustian pact, daan lives his modernist antiromantic life to the full and there's no way back: you’re an artist now, daan! The ideal copy, as Wire put it: daan searching back for his emotive 'costello sings alison' voice he had as a teenager in Leuven, and singing his heart out on Alone and Forsaken, before leaping into the first verses of Swedish Designer Drugs, finishing it all with the full radio edit of Housewife (2005).
ps. Meanwhile, Daan has released a new video clip, and it's all too obvious now: he's riding through town on a surrealist cowboy on a horse-bicycle. http://www.soundslike.be/
I'll Take Care of You (Bobby Bland, Two Steps from the Blues lp, 1960): Emily meets the cowboy for the first time, true romance is still in her heart.
Van Morrison's Friday's Child (first with Them in the 1960's, in 1971 recorded live and released on the legendary Van the Man 1974 bootleg lp) ,,while ya' built all, all of your castles in the sun, and I watched ya' knock 'em down, knock 'em down, each and every one";
Soldier of Love (as covered by Pearl Jam in 1999, from the No Boundaries cd). This soldier is a uniformed siren trying to lure the woman into his bed. If she can resist Eddy Vedder, it'll make her all the better;
Dylan's All the Tired Horses (Self Portrait 1970).
Marty Robbins' El Paso (45, 1959), for how dead can you be? This cowboy offers his soul to the Mexican girl Felina, 'wicked and evil while casting a spell'. ,,I see ,the white puff of smoke from the rifle / I feel the bullet go deep in my chest'', he sings. Then he describes his own death in the arms of Felina. Creepy. The relationship between the handsome cowboy and the masked marauder is a difficult one: it seems that something, some inner force that nurtures love, has been killed inside the cowboy after the father's rejection. That means the cowboy had to strangle his already existing love for the daughter, because he can't feed that emotion anymore. Soldat perdu. Like, you know, they shoot horses, don't they.
Dylan's She Belongs to Me (Bringing It All Back Home / Subterranean Homesick Blues lp 1965) for the thesis that the right attitude makes half the artist. He knows;
oh death part 1
The Doors' great The End would be out of place here, too oedipidal, the father is shot before the daughter loses her soul, anyway. But the American folk song Oh Death is a perfect match. And it's still part of the living folklore, even when its horror is all but ugly and atrocious,as this Kansas newspaper article about BTK _. 'Bind, Torture, Kill' killed at least ten people, children as well as adults in the 1970's _ proves: 'Oh, Death' was described by Wichita police on Friday as 'obscure', but it's well known to fans of American folk music. '"No one has the foggiest idea who wrote it," said Joe Wilson, director of the National Council for Traditional Arts in Washington, D.C. The song, from which the Wichita serial killer BTK ('Bind, Torture, Kill' killed at least ten people, children as well as adults in the 1970's) lifted lines for use in a grisly poem, was readily available on recordings throughout the 1960s and '70s. But the lyrics reach back to the Depression and beyond, into the early musical traditions of southern Appalachia. There are a lot of versions of that song scattered throughout the South. It's morbid as hell, but many of our ancestors had quite an interest in moribund subjects.’’ (Wichita Eagle on august 21, 2004). The next day, the Kansas newspaper wrote under the headline WHO WAS P.J. WYATT? There was no funeral for P.J. Wyatt when she died 13 years ago in Wichita. An only child who never married, she had no surviving family. ... She had been perhaps best known for teaching folklore at Wichita State University for 24 years. The English professor did not publicly surface in the BTK investigation until Friday, when police Lt. Ken Landwehr, head of the homicide division, held a news conference and appealed for help clarifying the links between Wyatt, a folk song and the Wichita serial killer. Wichita police think the song "Oh, Death," which Wyatt used in a class, was the basis for BTK's gruesome 1978 poem "Oh! Death to Nancy," a reference to victim Nancy Fox. . In a May 1969 article in The Wichita Eagle, Wyatt talked about the link between graffiti found in WSU rest rooms and folklore."Graffiti are written in private, secretly when no one is looking and written anonymously," Wyatt told The Eagle. "That's why they are folklore. No one ever knows who's responsible.’’ As It turned out later, the serial killer himself had attendend the classes of the university professor P.J. Wyatt. He was arrested in febr. 2005. In 2002, Ex New York Doll David Johansen, with his thick voice and backed by a group he named the Harry Smiths made a beautiful rendition of Oh Death, a song Country blues banjo player Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs (1898-1971) eternalized with a record in the late 1920s. 'No wealth, no ruin, no silver no gold / Nothing satisfies me but your soul. O, death O, death'. You may look for the devil at the crossroads, but chances are you'll meet Death and it's not sure which one has to be preferred when it comes to selling your soul. A recent reading of Oh, Death comes from Ralph Stanley featured in the movie "O, Brother Where Art Thou?" and its best-selling soundtrack, released in 2000. ,,O, death O, death'', sang bluegrass veteran Ralph Stanley in 2002, and the whole world listened to him, for it was the most stunning moment in the movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou. . ,,No wealth, no ruin, no silver no gold / Nothing satisfies me but your soul /O, death O, death''.
oh death part 2 (iderden)