T. Byron K.@ LiveJournal

Welcome to tbyronk @ LiveJournal
http://www.studioappalachia.com
http://www.spectralva.weebly.com
http://projectrainbowva.weebly.com
mailto:studioappal@gmail.com

Tolstoy creates a wide landscape of characters and in some
way challenges the notion of the traditional "story line" by presenting detailed
accounts of multiple characters simultaneously. It is clear from the length
of War & Peace that Tolstoy wanted us to live in that world for a while,
it was intended to be read slowly.

7/10/2017

I still believe that Jim Morrison was a poetic prodigy in his generation, much like Rimbaud, who wrote imagistic and visionary poems in a short period of his life before disappearing into Africa, Jim carried the ideas of the French symbolists into the 20th century. In fact when one of the first comprehensive Rimbaud anthologies was translated into English by Professor Wallace Fowlie of Duke University, Jim was one of the first to write him about the book. Jim got an early start in Florida reading at the Beaux Arts Coffee house where beat poet Jack Kerouac was known to have read and his challenge to traditonal music formats later on with the addition of his poetry was surely inspired by the beats. Jim was also inspired by the musical theater of Anton Artaud, which was also interactive with the audience, attempting to make it merge with the performance. I remember being almost lightning struck by listening to the End and later hearing The Celebration of The Lizard and it changed what I thought was possible for a musical performance. The poetry is captivating, haunted and transcedently beautiful, otherworldly and really life changing. Jim wanted to challenge the "limited ways the people see and feel" but he also understood the connection between poetry and the eternal.

"The entire piece was originally intended to be recorded and released as one full side of the band's third studio album, Waiting for the Sun, in 1968. However, record producer Paul A. Rothchild and the other members of the band thought that the extended poetic sections and overall length of the piece made a complete recording impossible."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebration_of_the_Lizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDbQ7zyEp2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcZFTDpT3Mg

I have lived on the borderlands of West Virginia for most of my life, it is a beautful region on the far Eastern edge of Appalachia in Montgomery County Virginia. I have wandered the Jefferson National Forests for decades now and more recently crossed over Pilot Mountian countless times to reach a 100 year old School House where I have a small art studio. I have often wondered about the fragmentation of the state of Virginia into West Virginia and recently found a book by a native West Virginian titled West Virginia, The Illegal State that I found to be most interesting. It does suggest the possibility of reunification with old Virginia, or East Virginia as I have called it, but I find that idea highly unlikely because the people in West Virginia are quite independent and resiliant on their own (despite years of political corruption and corporate abuses).  There were sentiments to remain united to Virginia during the Civil War as well, Monroe County supported the Confederate cause and there were soldiers that refused to fight for the North.
I spoke with Michael Abraham, the Author of "The Spine of The Virginias" at Solitude of Virginia Tech about the idea of a reunification as well a while back, he said he had written an article titled "Is West Virignia Necessary". My thinking is yes it is necessary to allow West Virignia to remain a soverign state because the people there voted it into being and continue to be proud to be from there and to remain there. I think it is because I have family from both Virignia and West Virginia that I have this perspective. I have been in favor of renaming Virginia to East Virginia out of respect for years now.


"During the Civil War, Monroe County favored the South. Ninety-five percent of men eligible for military service were in one of the 12 locally formed units that served the Confederate States. As a result of its Southern allegiance Monroe County was occupied by Union forces for three years after the war."
https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/2024

West Virginia: The Illegal State by Jeremy T.K. Farley https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692567429/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_3ApeEbK908932 via @amazon

I just came across a photo of Robert Bly on his farm in
2009 and thought about how important his poetry has been
to me over the years and his teaching as well. I was given an anthology
Bly had Edited and a video back around 1990-92 or so. The book was titled
"The Rag & Bone Shop of The Heart" and I recently purchased the hardback
version of it because I love it so much. The video was a tape of a Bill Moyer's PBS
special that featured Robert Bly and his work with the men's movement at the time.
It was called "A Gathering of Men" and in it Bly performs spoken word poems
with music and lectures gatherings of men. The poetry is transcendent and beautiful
and his reading of "The Wind One Brilliant Day" inspired me to perform it with my own
band later on. There is a healing component to Bly's work, but not without digging around
in the "mud" of everyday life and going through the grief that all of us face first. I always
thought of Robert Bly as one of my Spiritual Fathers, a Poet who cares about truth and Souls

From August 17th 2019
My family gave me a copy of a Robert Bly video back in 1989 that made a great impression on me. Robert Bly writes striking poems and is a truth bearer, a traveler downward through the grief, "making a hole in denial". Bly's reading of "The Wind One Brilliant Day" has stuck with me all of these years @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcwpu3qCZy4

"We learned to lie about life early. Alice Miller in Prisoners of Childhood and For Your Own Good notes how fiercely children who have suffered abuse from parents will resist the truth. The child does not want to confront. The child will defend the parent, insisting that it deserved beating, and the abuse was done for 'my own good.'
Goethe in his poem "The Invisible King" declares that there are ominous and dangerous forces in the other world, both female and male in tone. When the rationalist European father refuses to see the horrors that mythology has talked of for centuries, the children -in this case the son-dies.
The corporate deniers own television. We can forget about that.There's no hope in commercial television at all.The schools teach denial by not teaching, and the student's language is so poor that they can't do anything but deny."

I remember William Blake's notion that his poems were all written in Heaven before he was born.
When I listen to Hovhanness I also get this impression, it is the music of eternity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYaf1xx1BGM

The (Queen)
Witch from
the North
who filled the
lost vision was
lone-bright as the
evening star/
& forgotten
dreams begin [within]
beyond the spell
of mourning hours/
O soft blooms of the
muse returned
& whispered secrets
still/
As I have been
waiting.


12/30/2019

For Katelan F.

We will never solve an endless mystery, nature will not submit to "torture" or naive sorcery masquerading as "science". The vast universe we can see is really a symbolic picture of the magnitude of it's creator and this also becomes the meaning of it.
12/29/2019

"We are a great mystery to ourselves, much less God who is an even greater mystery."
-St Augustine

I first remember the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as a child,
driving into them from North Virginia with my family was inspirational
and awe inspiring. I began to wander through the Jefferson and George
Washington National Forests while I attended Virginia Tech and
in search of a poem, which I often found beside the New River, at the edge
of a cliff on Moutain Lake we called "the Rock" and in the deep woods beside
Caldwell Fields. Later on I discoverd an old School House at the
other side of Pilot Mountain and was inspired to have poetry shows there
and create a little library, it is the spirit mists and the open air of incline and sleepy blue
pine that still keep me wandering out there.

http://pilotschoolva.weebly.com
"The Cherokee Indians called the Blue Ridge Mountains 'the Great Blue Hills of God' "