Folk the Great

peter the great statue

– Somewhere in a park in St Petersburg, Russia

We are all sitting around

Peter the Great.

At his feet memorial flowers still

holding on to its faded glory.

Folk songs braid with bird song

up in the tree tops.

The children carousel the heavy bronze,

even the sailors loosen their upper buttons.

Peter still proudly commands the

heavy putty grey ships,

anchored in front of his metal gaze.

The fleet stares back at the commotion

and sigh for a job well done.

we sing without pretense

we play without inhibitions

we enjoy the sun without being vain

Later as the accordion notes and the collective voices

ebb and clash with birds, footsteps and breeze –

the soldiers return unwillingly to their bunks.

by Anja Marais

 

By |2017-05-02T12:57:05-04:00June 21st, 2013|

The white night’s ink

treeswater

the white night’s shadows

run like spilled ink down

the hills and drip its puddles

from pedestrians feet

the trees cypher light in broad strokes

of brushed sumi liquid over the earth

jumping puddle, river and streets

black mercury pools of shapes

and lines of gestalt fingerprints

a display on the absolute of gravity

and when the rain comes

the pools reflect the pedestrians shadows

back up like grounded butterflies

 

by Anja Marais

By |2017-05-02T12:57:06-04:00June 15th, 2013|

The end. The beginning.

babouska

She looks tired, her face sullen
her built is somewhat smaller than
the younger generation

She is clad in coarse wool and black
her shoulders broadened by years
of hard labor and her hands
contain mountains and rivers

She never sits down she is
somehow always going forward
forward, toward, toward

Her steps are now short but still plenty
her back that of a tortoise-shell
covering its soft contents

When she passes soldiers, they salute her
The priest gives her a silent nod
The youth offers her their train seats

For she melted the steel that became
the bridges, the car
For she crushed the rocks that became
the road, the city hall
For she planted and harvested so that
you can grow

Even in her weakened state and waning last days
her footsteps keep pounding past our front doors
forward, forward, toward, toward

by Anja Marais

By |2017-05-02T12:57:06-04:00June 13th, 2013|

Oh Russia…

From my notebook: Key West March 2013

Since being a young music student I was fascinated with Russian musicians, writers and poets. From the decibel bursts of Stravinsky and Mussorgsky to the emboldened words of Pushkin and Dostoevsky. Since then I abandoned the violin for being hopelessly mediocre at it but I could never abandoned the education it gave me. Once you have peeked into the soul of the Russian arts it seems to have permanently nested in the branches of you mind.

russian influence

Images in “Sculpting in Time” of scenes of Andrei Rublev

One of my biggest influences is that of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. If you are an artist that values the ethical and moral path of being a creative you only need to watch Andrei Rublev to obtain understanding what art should truly be about. Tarkovsky states: “An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn`t exist, for the artist doesn`t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn`t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrey Rublyov” (1969). This idea ties in with Leo Tolstoy’s’ believe in what is good art – that for the sincere artist art is a great matter, not a pleasure, not a solace or an amusement but that it should be respected as the organ of human life.

I will be visiting Russia next month and I can only hope for the art muse to await me…

Keep awake, keep awake, artist,
Do not give into sleep…
Your are eternity’s hostage
And prisoner of time.

~ Boris Pasternak

By |2017-05-02T12:59:54-04:00April 26th, 2013|
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