The Pablos by Bob Elliott on The Pipeline at IndieMusicPeople

The Pablos
Neruda, Picasso

I wonder if they knew each other? I am interested in something they do. Free range across thought and time and emotion
sometimes there seems to be no other way

Here's Pablo Neruda:

To the Traveler

These stones aren't sad.
Within them lives gold,
they have the seeds of planets,
they have bells in their depths,
gloves of iron, marriages
of time with amethysts:
on the inside laughing with rubies,
nourishing themselves from lightning.

Because of this, traveler, pay attention
to the hardships of the road,
to mysteries on the walls.

I know this at great cost,
that all life is not outward
nor all death within,
and that age writes letters
with water and stone for no one,
so that no one knows,
so that no one understands anything.

Pablo Neruda translated by Dennis Maloney

WIthout some disconnect I can hardly be reached. I try to work in that area these days...

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Bob Elliott

4/27/2009 4:06:48 AM

I need someone with tech to post some Picasso here on this thread.

Blue Guitar or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, where you can see him change his thoughts on the work within the painting.

Or tons of creative mind expanding things he's done...

And more Neruda...

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Bob Elliott

4/28/2009 11:43:40 PM

Since this has proven to be such a riveting topic, I have more to say:

Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again

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Tom O'Brien

4/29/2009 1:37:11 AM

I feel you man. I love Neruda's words. I wonder if he, whom I perceive as humble, would clash with the titan of Picasso's huge ego. I think Picasso lived up to his own genius, just for the record. A conversation between the two makes me think of the Steve Martin play where Picasso meets Einstein. I haven't seen or read it, but it's great to think of lofty minds and spirits getting together. I can imagine the two Pablos being fans of each other, and honored to sit in each other's company. I know much about Picasso, and very little about Neruda, outside of his words. I don't think he ever wrote a poem I didn't like. Because he just wrote the truth. Come to think of it, even though there are some hideous looking Picassos, I don't think I can say I dislike any of them for the same reason. He painted the truth (and drew, and sculpted, and printed). Maybe not so much as an old man when we would accept anything he did as the state of the art. He never had to try once he was established. I heard a quote from him that went something like, "My mother used to tell me that when I grew up, if I were a priest, I would be the Pope, if I were a soldier, I would be a general, if I were a politician, I would be the president. But I grew up to be an artist, and I am Picasso.

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Bob Elliott

4/29/2009 4:59:51 AM

Jack Nevin used to read me his stuff in Spanish. Not that my SPanish is that great, but it sounds great...

Lately I'm reading Dante for the first time, and I have a translation that has it in Italian right next to the English.

The rhyme scheme is incredible. These alternating patterns of three lines rhyming, but it never stops because one ends while the other has two to go and so on so it is always carrying these rhymes (easier to do in Italian where every word rhymes with every other). I can't understand Italian much other than what little I know of Spanish, but it makes sense, the flow. I read the Italian part a lot just because I know it sounds better over there.

Anyway, the weirdness of the Divine Comedy seems so useful to me...

T.S. Eliot said the world is divided between Shakespeare and Dante...

Maybe I'm foolish since I work in songs, but I can't help what comes after me. Like you get driven by visions of a work, you know...

And I know I'm not heading on paths designed to increase popularity, but it's like this thing you sense you could go into, and so that's what you do.

And it's in there somewhere...

And I think you paint that way at times...

I guess I'm kinda abstract,

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Steve April

4/29/2009 5:20:50 AM

I love pablo neruda...here's a bit from "extravagaria..."

From having been born so often
I have salty experience
like creatures of the sea
with a passion for stars
and an earthy destination.
And so I move without knowing
to which world I'll be returning
or if I'll go on living.
While things are settling down,
here I've left my testament,
my shifting extravagaria,
so whoever goes on reading it
will never take in anything
except the constant moving
of a clear and bewildered man,
a man rainy and happy,
lively and autumn-minded...