Finished Journal Page - Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen

Alexandra Leaving by Leonard Cohen

At least iti s finished as far as right now.  I wrote all the words, because I couldn't cut any out and have it be what it is. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYcyKZOUsWs
is the song, as Leonard Cohen sings it, which is the only way it should be sung, I think, so I won't put them all here, I'll let you go over there and hear it and read it at the same time.  I'm sorry if you get the dog breath commercial that is running on Youtube at this time, it is a bit gross!  You can skip it after a few seconds.

The quick story of this one is that Plutarch wrote about the destruction of the city of Alexandria during which Antony heard the music of the procession as Bacchus, his protector, left the city and he thus knew he was lost.  Cavafy, a WW I era Greek poet  and translator wrote about it as God Forsakes Antony.  Cohen changed the city to a woman.... and this was the result.

After the point I left the page the last time, once I had written the lyrics, I brought the feathers back partway so they were not just inert shapes hiding behind the words.

better photo of the feathers pages

the last photo the other day looks too purple and the feathers look too distinct.  The page really looks more like this.

 

A real work in progress

I didn't take a Before picture, but there were some sort of faded feather shapes scattered on this page.  I always thought it was for "Alexandra Leaving" by Leonard Cohen but it never felt quite right so it was languishing.  Then I started working back into the feathers and the page ended up looking like this:

Not quite what I had in mind either, so I decided that some gesso could help, couldn't hurt:

After the gesso had dried thoroughly I sanded it back a bit:

I am liking this better and I can write on it with a dark pen, which will be different.  I am letting it set a while so I can have some distance from it before I do the words...

The latest Journal is done....

I wrote this up earlier, but I hadn't bound the book at that point.  Here it is all together and finished.  I started with the little green Daily Food book I found in my parents' apartment, and I embedded the cover in the cover of the journal.  The pages were already colored but not bound. I also aged the paper that I used to cover the journal a bit.  I just used walnut ink diluted with water, so it is not very even, but I like it better a bit darker. You can see how white it was here.

I inset the back of the little green book in the back cover and used the spine if the little one as the center piece of the spine for the new book.

I bound it using a khaki green waxed linen and some darker green silk cord that I found.

Some of the pages I had painted had holes from where they had been bound into a spiral notebook previously, but I mixed them in with non-holed pages that were just a little bit shorter.  Size discrepancies don't bother me much in journals like this.

I covered the inside of the covers with a collage of pages from the little book.

there it is, finished project!  Well, now I have to decide how to fill it.  I like themed journals, the music one is almost half filled now, but I'm not sure yet where to point this one...

The last page, like the first, from Leonard Cohen - Heart with No Companion

I use my own photos, this is an ages old polaroid that I sanded a little and hand colored a little...  I think if you embiggen the photo you can read it..

For a Dancer

This is a two page spread, but it was hard to photograph the whole thing, so I am showing you a detail first....



And then the whole page....It is a section of For a Dancer....

into a dancer you have grown. from a seed somebody else has sown, and somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go may be a reason you were alive but you'll never know.  Just do the steps that you've been shown by everyone you've ever known until the dance becomes your very own. No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown in the end there is one dance you'll do alone....

I reflexively typed Tiny Dancer, but it is Jackson Browne's For a Dancer  fingers move faster than the brain sometimes...

a new journal page

I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now......

I have declared that it is spring!

One of us has been looking like this.  I think this was right after the word "BATH" was mentioned in her presence.  Doesn't she look delighted in the prospect?  Unfortunately, she is cream colored.  However, if the word "BATH" is not mentioned very regularly in her presence she becomes greige and that color doesn't go with her eyes.  Besides, she sleeps in my bed and there are limits to what I will put up with.

Another of us looked like this.  BATH has not been mentioned in her hearing when this photo was taken.  Dirt is harder to see on her so it generally gets mentioned less often in her hearing.  She still sleeps in her crate, too, so the cleanliness limits are in a different place.  

After last Saturday, this is what we looked like.  

Clementine watched from close to the ceiling just in case water gets sprayed around.

On Sunday, this is what we all looked like.  Nobody laid a hand on Romeo, but he was determined to be included.

It is COLD out there today, and maybe tomorrow, but I am just telling them to move fast and keep warm. 

What to do with these?????

These pages were part of a baby photo album that I took apart and saved because of the paper.

From the closeup below you can see that the texture and the color etc. of the paper is great.  Only problem is that it cracks when folded... aarrrggghhh.

 I really want to use it in a journal, but it can't be coptic bound, as the cracks will not be strong enough.  I know I can just stab bind it, which is how it was bound originally, but that has never been my favorite way to go.

so here I am, still pondering what to do and meanwhile running my fingers over the paper.  It is really lovely paper... sigh.  Would love to hear other ideas of what could be done with it....

what I have been doing lately

I have been making yet another Journal.  I am crazy about making these and I had all these pages, so I decided to do another one. This is what the exposed spine will look like except it will be sewn together.
 

When I cleared out a lot of things from my parent's apartment, there were things I just added to the box and took along, having no idea what I was doing it for.  Now, several years later, the task has grown cool and I am looking through the boxes of things.  I ended up with an Important box, a Might Be Art Usable But Are Not Really Highly Familial box and a Use This Any Way You Want To box.  If you tend toward hoarding, like me, you will note with relief there was not a Toss This box.  As far as photos go I did decide that 300 photos of me lying on my back at age 3 months were probably 298 pictures too many, so I have created/am in the process of creating one journal with photos of everyone I can identify and only one or two of me at the early stages.

That is, however, not this journal.

The second box is probably going to be scanned and made into printing plates, stencils and transfers, they will remain "whole" for now. So I rummaged about in the third box and found a little book called Daily Food with a pretty cover and in reasonable shape, though the cover and the pages were no longer connected.  I separated them totally and just stared at the cover for a few days until it became, in my mind, part of the cover of my new journal.  So here it is, inset into the cover....

The back cover of the little book is inset into the back of the journal cover even though it is just a block of the nice green color.  I wanted to use the whole book.

I had some foamcore board that I used for the cover and cut the space for the journal out of it, then covered inside and outside and fitted the little green cover into the space.  The paper on the outside of the cover is some paper I brought back from Italy years ago.

The inside of the covers is a collage of some of the pages from inside the little book.  It was a book of daily devotions, so they are all ruminations on bible verses.

This is the first real journal page, though what is going into this journal is still a mystery to me. I am still working on the music of my mind journal  Actually I have done 2 pages there I have not yet posted, but that is another day also...

When I made/painted these pages, there were some that had holes where they were formerly attached to a spiral binding and I decided to use them holes and all, so some of the interior pages look like this.

The spine of the Daily Food book was gilded a little bit by me, though it looks like ocher paint here it really is gold, and I am going to use it as the central binding hinge, the other two hinges are dark green silk cord. 

The pages are punched already for sewing, so this week sometime maybe?  We shall see.... but at least you have an idea where I am going here.

Temple of Dendur at the Met

Went to see the Matisse before it closed and wandered through here.  This and the Scholar's Garden are always my faves