FOR THE BROTHAS: AN INTRODUCTION

It must have been about 20 years ago when I first began thinking about creating a "Cultural Salon" as a reaction to the mundane social circles In Washington D.C. The richness of intellectual and artistic interchange had died, college friends had moved, the internet had not yet become the phenomenon it now is... I romanticised about the Salons of the mid to late 1800's in Paris, London and Berlin and the cultural dynamo of the Harlem Rennaisance. I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman, an artist who lived and traveled with James Baldwin... Jimmy he affectionately called him, and he spoke often of their small cottage in southern France and of the many Artists, Poets and Luminaries that dropped in to chat and relax. Well, the impressionists, cubists, modernists, etc. all hung out together famously in those days and shared their ideas with one another creating a creative greenhouse in a world that was rapidly changing. I longed to have lived in those times, to have met Cassat, Rodin, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Baker, Balwin, well I did finally meet Baldwin and others purely for the joy of intellection upon the arts. This was in the late 1980's and by the mid 2000's I happened to run into a friend of mine from Hampton University who had been living in New York since he graduated in the early 90s. Well, I was surprised to hear him comment that in all of the wonder that is New York he never met anyone who ever really had anything interesting to say about art, literature, architecture, science, fashion or anything... I was so surprised to hear this since it had also been my experience. Well here I am in 2011 attempting the Virtual Salon...

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

En rétrospective ...





Love has been a conquest leaning heavily toward defeat,

Already having married off the men I meet,

A sullen confirmation, written into their eyes,

Turning it all into a mere diversion, we lust or fantasize,

To warm the plate of some other loves subsiding heat,

Love has left me with but morsels to eat.

















Life has been a struggle always hovering near its goal,

I have often challenged its enervating toll,

And paid in affirmation more than I should have done,

Taken a loss amidst decisive battles I should have won,

Holding the dice ere a reluctant roll,

Life has taken much but has left me whole,



History itself has no preference for the past,

It moves into the present out of the shadows it has cast,

That is why men dwell often in a future place,

To keep their dreams and fates running apace,



Histoire elle-même a pas de préférence pour le passé,
Il se déplace dans le présent hors de l'ombre qu'il a exprimés,
Voilà pourquoi les hommes habitent souvent dans un endroit avenir,
Pour garder leurs rêves et leurs destins en cours d'exécution au même rythme,



FIN



Écrit par David Vollin sur 15/08/12



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