A Return to Form - Methodology

It took a while, but everything has finally aligned I am once again working with Tengwar.  Having been away a number of years, it seemed illogical to try starting off where it all stopped.  Too much time has passed.  Instead I have stepped back, re-evaluated, and reformulated my approach to tengwar work. Before doing anything, I combed through the Tengwar Textbook Fourth Edition, v2.0, past notes, and past transcription methodologies.  This served two purposes. Firstly it reminded me of any transcription intricacies that I may have forgotten (read: I forgot a good bit) over the past few years. Secondly, this required me to really think through transcription rules, with a focus on standardization across all drafts. The transcription of English texts has a number of very grey and theoretical areas. In these areas, it is the responsibility of individuals to decide what is most "correct" or most "appropriate" for their circumstances.  Standardization on my part ensured that execution of those grey areas would not fluctuate from draft to draft. It also makes sure that I'm not re-ingraining bad transcription habit. When doing this, I purposefully forget everything I've ever done, revisit all of my source material, and work out things from there. This is something I've done previously, and found to be very useful. 

Standardization achieved, I was now allowed to begin focusing on the material and transcription itself.  After much internal debate, I made a very conscious decision to not revisit old material for fear that its ghosts would haunt my new efforts. Nothing quashes the creative process faster than imitating something that I've made before. In order to evade past work as much as possible, I needed to formulate a new approach to the material so that I wouldn't fall back into the familiar. A summary of the new process is below for those who are interested.

Source Text: William Butler Yeats poetry once again. I read and transcribed poems for three months (roughly 60 hours) before a poem jumped out at me - The Two Trees.  I had never read it before, but it just felt right. Boom. Source text had.

Ultimate Goal: TBD.  It is the material's responsibility to tell me what it wants to be.  This is true for each step of the way.  The project progresses when the material says it is time and makes the way clear. This particular poem may turn into something, or I may be sent back to square one.  Either way it will be interesting.

Process Reflections: In many ways this is a very unusual process for me.  Usually I'll lay out materials  or buy new materials so that a piece can be planned about this.  This time, nothing has been prepared or pre-bought from the get-go.  The text transcribed, the book it's transcribed into, the pens and ink used, and even the bag it's toted in have been acquired as they've been needed.  The entire process so far has been incredibly organic - more like researching a paper than planning a project. When researching, I go in with a vague subject, review all the materials, and then let the materials available help dictate where the final product goes.  Even after the writing process begins, that flexibility still isn't gone as entire sections of the paper can be thrown out and replaced at the eleventh hour.  This particular project, such as it is, has begun much the same.  There is a vague idea (Yeats + tengwar) and not much else.  For once I look forward to enjoying the ride as opposed to anticipating the final destination.

hiatus update

TTP is  unfortunately on hold for the foreseeable future.

update: on hiatus

This is just a note to let everyone know that I still, unfortunately, have not had a chance to continue work on TTP. It, however, has not been dropped! I have all my notes, drawings, transcriptions, etc on file and daily wish that I was pulling them out to work on.

Of the many thing currently going on, I am still working my way through graduate school and am in the middle of a research project focused on post-mortem/bereavement photography. I have also taken over the Editor-in-Chief's position at the peer reviewed journal The Tuckasegee Valley Historical Review .

This project is still very near and dear to my heart, and will be completed if it is the last thing I do. One thing that I have been working on behind the scenes, is trying to figure out how this book (which I originally planned on being a one-off) might be eventually replicated/re-printed. Most of my ideas at the moment involve Adobe In-Design, Adobe Photoshop, and a lot of hand-touching up of high quality scans. I have very little knowledge in this area, however, and would love to hear ideas you may have. Feel free to send them via e-mail if you do not wish to post below. My e-mail is located in the "About Me" section on the right hand bar.

I hope to see everyone soon!

brainstorming for "talked with by fire" title page

It has taken a lot longer to get this out to you than I had previously anticipated, but today I present you with the proposed title page image for To Some I Have Talked with by the Fire. The first initial I drafted up back in November was centered around a flock of birds(presumably they will be ravens, but at the moment they are a nice generic animal of the avian variety.) That initial turned out so well that it was decided to carry that theme over into the title page. This title page breaks the continuity of figure centered imagery which has been used for all the other poems to date. However, between the up sweeping flames, the rising bird, and the smoke swirls, I feel that the visual plane is being used roughly in the same manner of that in previous images. Therefore, I do not believe that the lack of a human figure in this image will be a problem.

Elements:
fire and raven - And of the embattled flaming multitude/ who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame
bats - Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees
knife/dagger/etc - and with the clashing of their sword-blades make/ a rapturous music, will the morning break

As you can see in the image above I am playing with the idea of writing the poem's title in the smoke, however, I'm not certain how this will work. Unless I can find a way to work the titles into all the title page images themselves, then I will not be doing that.

My apologies that this is so short, but there will be more to come next Monday or later in the weekend.

brainstorming and analyzation for "elemental powers" title page

Greetings all! I am thrilled to death with what I have to post today. Drafted up over a chicken sandwich at chili's, the end sketch/idea is nigh perfect. The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers has always been an interesting problem for me because there are so many elements that are obviously important but I've had no idea how to include them all and yet make anything feel cohesive. Last November I drafted up a first intial for this piece that represented the polar dragon mentioned and my notations from that same day focused on pulling out all the seemingly important poetic elements. Today something just seemed to click and below is what resulted which (I repeat) I'm very happy with. Instead of explaining it all here like usual, I'll explain in between images. Here we go.

Complete Image:

Like I discussed last week, it was pretty clear off the bat that the title page needed to feature a human figure. The purpose of said woman in this particular title page is three fold. 1- She is the embodiment of her whoever her may be (encircle her, love and sing her into peace; whither her footseptes go) 2- She is representative of rose/Immortal Rose. Rose appears in many of Yeats' poems, and more often than not rose is a stand in for the woman Yeats was madly in love with. Notice the actual rose drawn in this woman's hair. 3- She is the embodiment of the elemental powers/ The Powers. The Powers are clearly important to the poem since they are mentiong repeatedly, and find thier way into the poem's title. For the life of me though, I could not think of a way to picture them. An ethereal type woman is always a good path to go when representing mythical figures so that is that path I chose - that of least resistance. To emphasize the elemental part of it, notice the four part wheel that floats between her hands. There is a close up of this below, but this is essentially a wheel that holds the four elements - earth, air, fire & water. I will discuss the sun and moon further down.
The Elemental Wheel/ Sun/ Moon:

See individual images for details

The Elemental Wheel:

This wheel floats between the woman's hands (see top picture) and portrays said elements in the manner that they appear Elemental Powers. 1- water = waves (Great Powers of falling wave; Like the pale cup of sea) 2- fire = flames (unfold your flaming wings; falling wave and wind and windy fire) 3- wind = gusts of wind (windy fire; when winds have gathered) 4- earth = brown darkness with flecks of gold (uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep). The earth bit is perhaps a bit of a stretch, but all the other elements were so clearly present in the poem that I knew earth had to be there somewhere as well. Since it is not uncommon for places below the earth to be poetically referred to as the deep that is what I went with.

The Moon and Sun:

Hello alchemical imagery, how you have been missed! This poem says both the nets of day and night and when winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim. The sun and moon can clearly be seen as merely a literal portrayal of night and day. However, we both know that Yeats was very fond of slipping alchemical references into his work, and nothing is so glaringly iconographicaly alchemical as these two (explained in a second). Also, from a practical perspective, Yeats mentioned sun and moon turned dim. Does that mean that they were both fading out? In life the sun fades out and is replaced by the moon, likewise the moon gives way to the sun. Not even during a eclipse are both completely gone. this logic leads me to belive that f so than Yeats could not have literally meant sun and moon to mean "sun and moon". They must be standing in for something as symbols.

The Moon:

In alchemy, the moon (also Luna and Diana) is the female aspect of the opus (the continual distillation process necessary to create the Philosopher's Stone). Essentially it is silver (literal or philosophical). It gets complicated, but for the purpose of simplicity, consider Luna to be the name of an elixir that was used to transmute a base metal into pure silver. Pure silver is considered to be only slightly more impure than gold. By combining this silver with pure gold in something called a chemical wedding it helped form the active component essential to creating the Philosopher's Stone. As you would remember if I had posted notes about this (I swear I did but I can't find it now) the Philosopher's Stone was not only a literal object that was able to turn base metals into gold. It was believed that the Stone had the power to make all imperfect things perfect, and would turn a normal man into an extremely illumined philosopher. It symbolized a light brought into darkness and embodied the merger of divine love & divine wisdom. Due to the symbollic weight placd on the Stone it has to be of some bearing here. I'm not quite sure yet how that plays into this poem, but I promise I'm working on it. As for the position of the moon, I visually prefer the waning crescent because its opening faces the female figure. Since the root of this image is iconography/symbolism though, I need to find out what connotations (preferably of Celtic origin) are tied to the waxing and waning moon. More on this eventually as well.

The Sun:

Just as the moon (Luna/Diana) was the female aspect of the chemical wedding, the sun (Sol) is the wedding's male aspect. The sun is representative of gold as prepared via the art of alchemy. There was no other element equal to the sun's inherent symbolism, which philosophically represented divine light. Alchemist Jean de la Fontaine wrote Gold is the sun; to make gold, is to become God. The Philosopher's Stone (see The Moon) was born through the marriage of Sol and Luna. Visually the presence of both Sol and Luna together would then probably suggest the possibility of perfection, philosophical illumination, etc without its actual achievement. Again I need to think about this, but that is off the top of my head. Along this vein though, you will note that I have placed the sun and moon on opposite sides of the central figure. The possibility of their merging exists, but her presence prevents this from happening.

You will notice seven circles nestled within the rays of the sun. These represent the Seven Lights (and though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept). I'm not certain why Lights is capitalized, but there must be a reason to turn it into a proper noun. The number seven holds spiritual connotations as well as magical ones, but I am not well versed enough in this to comment at the moment. We know that Yeats was an active member of the Order of the Golden Dawn so I'd say that some magical connotation is very very likely. Why that makes Lights a proper noun though still remains a personal mystery.

Whew! This ended up being far longer than I had anticipated. It certainly looks like I have my research work cut out for me, but yay for the image! This is the most excited I've been in days so the pending research seems more like an exciting adventure into unknown lands, as opposed to a chore or other undesirable activity. I look forward to seeing you all next week. Who knows what lies in store for then.

mythology alert - brigid and fire

Ok ok ok so I know that I have run this figure in the ground, but I'm about to move on so indulge me one last time. This past weekend I mentioned something about Brigid being the goddess of fire. This has only been mentioned specifically once in all the reading I have been doing and it was in a rather new agey reference so I've been lead to conclude that this is a more recent attribution to her as opposed to a historically authentic connection. After all, even Oxford reference materials don't mention it. However, I am going to be keeping any visual references to fire in this piece fro two reasons. One is not a soundly based academic reason, and pretty much consists of the fact that I really like fire and think that it will be cool. The second reason though is academically based. Both Brigid the goddess and Brigid the saint are patronesses of smiths/blacksmiths. (As a quick aside, Oxford's Dictionary of Irish Mythology [Ellis 50] also connects these two Brigids so I think at this point there really is no question that they are tied together.) While they might not historically have been connected directly to fire; what is a blacksmith without that element? A smith can pound in metal all day but without fire and coals to heat the metal, he'll not have anything but a chunk of cold unharmed metal and bent up tools. so if you want to play connect the dots, fire and Brigid are at least historically indirectly connected. Therefore, the fire stays.

brainstorming for "host of the air" first initial

Today's motto was keep it simple, and that is exactly what happened here. The swoosh of fabric has no discernable iconographic purpose, but it looks cool and solves the question of what to do with the letter d's tail. To give this illumination relevance to Air, Brigid's Cross hangs off the tengwa. Color differentiation will highlight the letter o (the actual capital letter). The fun things about theta (the vowel ... in this case the right hook that is separate) is that when they are the first letter in a piece, the tengwa (the consonant ... in this case the letter that looks like an m with a long tail) has to be illuminated as well. You can't very well write a theta without it's carrier, and a 48pt theta written over a 22pt carrier might be somewhat amiss. Thus, in cases like this, efforts must be taken to emphasize the letter that is really being capitalized whilst illuminating them both.

The misc. grapes and chalice illustrations are ideas for various accent images to be strategically placed around/beside/near the text body. Not so much obscure symbolism, these objects are pulled from/derived directly from the text itself. Known exceptions are the possible fire in the chalice (Too Harry Potter? Darn you Rowling.) and the sheaf of oats (direct symbolism tied to Brigid the goddess and Imbolc).