A fine art, film, history and literature site oriented to, but not exclusively for, the gay community. Please be aware that there is mature content on this blog. Information on images and links to sources will be provided if known. Enjoy your visit and please subscribe.
John Augustus Walker, “Science and Invention”, Mural, 1935
John Augustus Walker (1901-1967) was a well-known Alabama Gulf Coast artist of the Depression era who was commissioned to undertake several art projects for the Works Progress Administration. Walker’s preferred subject matter ranged from Mardi Gras, fantasy and historical themes to landscapes and portraiture.
The murals are on display in the History Museum of Mobile lobby located in Mobile, Alabama.
Photographer Unknown, (Santa’s Helper), Selfie
Don’t Just Leave Him Cookies and Milk- Entice Him In for the Night
In Norse mythology, the Norse god Odin rode an eight-legged horse named Sleipner. He visited children during the Yule period, so the families left snacks out to entice him to visit their home.
Felix de Leon, “El Fauno y las Hadas”
“All things belonging to the earth will never change-the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth-all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth-these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.”
-Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again
Mads Langer, “The Beauty of the Dark”
Mads Langer (born 1984) is a Danish singer-songwriter, who became internationally known for his cover of “You’re Not Alone” by the British band Olive. While the song is cheerful, his own songs are frequently typified as emotional guitar ballads, because many of them are in a minor scale and have a melancholic feel to them.
Montserrat Caballé, “O Mio Babbino Caro” by Giacomo Puccini
December 22 is the birthday of Giacomo Puccini, in full Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, who was born on December 22, 1858, in Lucca,Tuscany, Italy, He died on November 29, 1924 in Brussels, Belgium. He has been called “the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi”.
Puccini’s early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera. Later, he successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.
Puccini’s most renowned works are La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904), all of which are among the important operas played as standards.
In 1923, Puccini complained of a recurring sore throat and sought medical advice. Though an initial consultation turned up nothing serious, during a subsequent examination he was diagnosed with throat cancer. As the cancer had by that point progressed beyond where it could be operated upon, Puccini traveled to Brussels in 1924 for an experimental radiation treatment. Too weak to endure the procedure, he died in the hospital seven days later, on November 29, 1924. At the time of his death, Puccini had become the most commercially successful opera composer of all time, worth the equivalent of an estimated $200 million.
After an initial burial in Milan, in 1926 his body was moved to his Torre del Lago estate, where a small chapel was constructed to hold his remains. An opera celebration called “Festival Puccini” is held in the town every year in honor of its most famous resident.
Mateo Armand, “Pierre C”, Photo Shoot
Photographer Unknown, (The Heat of the Desert)
Photographer Unknown, (The Color of Rust), Selfie
“But when oxidation nibbles more slowly – more delicately, like a tortoise – at the world around us, without a flame, we call it rust and we sometimes scarcely notice as it goes about its business consuming everything from hairpins to whole civilizations.”
―
Trey McIntyre, “Zach Williams”, Photo Shoot on Scaffolding for Homotography, October, 2016
“That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard — of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Stateless, “Bloodstream”, (Quartet Session), from the “I’m on Fire” EP
Photographer Unknown, (Wet Red Trunks), Selfie
“In the weeks we’d been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours. We looked the other way. We spoke of everything but. But we’ve always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more. We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
―
The Spiral and the Glass Bead Game
“His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
N.C. Wyeth, “The Battle at Glens Falls”, from “The Last of the Mohicans” by James Fenimore Cooper, NY: Scribner’s First Edition, 1919
“Each of the combatants threw all his energies into that effort, and the result was, that both tottered on the brink of the precipice.”
“The Last of the Mohicans” is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War, when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the more numerous British colonists.
The novel is primarily set in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo (known as Hawkeye), Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and his son Uncas. These characters are sometimes seen as a microcosm of the budding American society, particularly with regards to their racial composition.
Champloo, Computer Graphics, Anime Film Gifs
“A samurai chooses to serve a master and does it out of respect and love, not because they are forced. Service to them is not demeaning; service is an expression of their prowess and their pride; they serve because only they are strong enough to serve with such flawless perfection and such consummate ability. It is a source of pride to them.
Being a samurai is all about selfless service and if the lord abuses the servant, it is no longer a situation of service; it becomes the situation of a victim. It is never acceptable for a samurai to be a victim. It is never acceptable to allow a lord to abuse you or rob you of your dignity. In such a situation, it is acceptable to walk away.”
― Alexei Maxim Russell, Instruction Manual for the 21st Century Samurai
The Smashing Pumpkins, “The Fellowship”, from the Vampire Diaries Soundtrack