#poem, «Round About Sunrise»

(Image property of Francisco Bravo Cabrera/All Rights Reserved)*

ROUND ABOUT SUNRISE

(While listening to the Overture of Die Zauberflöte by W. A. Mozart)

I like to whisper in a the doorway,
play with shadows at the bar,
turn the clocks back one long hour
drive a fancy blue sports car.

I’m an atom torn from silence,
causing ripples on a stream,
like a face half-torn from memory
that returns like a disease.

Like a key that fits no doorway,
like a word you cannot find,
like a letter left unopened
in the chambers of my mind.

Like a road that leads to nowhere,
yet you walk it all the same,
seeking answers in the lyrics,
while you mumble the refrain.

Like a circle drawn in water,
like a wheel that spins in sand,
like a heartbeat that remembers
what the soul cannot command.

Round and round the silence carries
every thought you’ve left behind,
and the turning never tarries
runs big circles round your mind.

NOTA BENE

This poem, “Round About Sunrise” is from my upcoming book Jazz Poetry (more about that later). It was written in the free jazz style where the verses flow with rhythm and a sort of string of consciousness attitude. However, each stanza was, in the original first draft, loosely created, allowing for the much needed “jazz” improvisations during the re-writing stages. The title is a play on the tile of Miles Davis’ Round About Midnight album of 1957. The song “Round About Midnight” was composed by Thelonious Munk probably between 1940 and 1941. Since then it has become a jazz standard. But the song was actually copyrighted in 1943 in C minor with the title «I Need You So«, and with lyrics byThelma Murray, a friend of Monk’s. And that is how my jazz poetry is, very similar to my jazz art drawings and paintings. They utilise the principles that guided and allowed for the creation of Jazz which are: Improvisation, the soloist as composer, and swing (rhythm).

* This image, «Let the Sun Shine In«, is available as a Fine Art Print from my gallery at Fine Art America

CHEERS

JaZzArt!

(C.2021, All Rights Resesrved, «Blue-Eye Jazz» by Francisco Bravo Cabrera, acrylic on canvas, 50x60cm)

Welcome to JaZzArt en València. This blog that posts daily articles on art (especially the paintings I make), on artists, music…and musicians…and the poetry that I write and that many of you do too. I will also post here many of the videos that I make for YouTube that comprise my Art History in One Minute (videos) series.

What is «Jazz-Art»? It is the approach to painting that I have been developing for more than twenty years. I believe that painting is the art of the search, and the search for art is eternal. A painting begins in the head then begins to travel down the arms to the fingers that hold the brush and apply colours, lines and ideas on a surface. After the thinking about the painting comes the actual work of putting it on a canvas, or on another surface. To do this I allow room for much improvisation…as would a jazz musician after studying the charts of the song…and in so doing I let the painting…sort of…paint itself, of course with rhythm, which is as essential to jazz as is improvisation.

All of this is contrived, well thought out, well researched and investigated. Art is not intuitive. A painter need not be original. I believe, as many artists throughout art history have stated, that we are all copyists and the original ones copied from nature. I, as an «artist», am researcher of all things social and psychological and create a painting which then becomes my philosophical statement. I am a lover God and I live by faith.

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Cheers…

Quote of the day…

(FBC or Bodo Vespaciano?/Actor portrayal)

“I once thought of being an artist, then I settled for being me sometimes and the artist at other times and things worked out.” (Francisco Bravo Cabrera)