BenHeine's Newest Cartoons

Carrying Your Heart With Me

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I Carry Your Heart With Me

By e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

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--> The poem appeared on http://judithpordon.tripod.com/

From Babel to Esperanto

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Esperanto is a language introduced in 1887 by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof after years of development. He proposed Esperanto as a second language that would allow people who speak different native languages to communicate, yet at the same time retain their own languages and cultural identities. Esperanto doesn't replace anyone's language but simply serves as a common second language. Esperanto can be learned in much less time than any other language. (Some say that it is four times easier). Esperanto is politically unbiased.

Although there aren't a lot of people who speak Esperanto in any one place, there are some almost everywhere. There are over a hundred periodicals regularly published in Esperanto. There are thousands of books in Esperanto, both translated and original works. There are millions of webpages.

People who speak Esperanto are internationally minded, concerned about social justice and peace, and are helping to preserve linguistic diversity. Meetings and conventions in America, Europe, and Asia provide a fun opportunity to travel and meet new people from around the world. (Source: esperanto-usa.org)

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Let’s Erect a New Tower of Babel

Essay by an Information Scientist
(November 6, 1974)

The Tower of Babel has come to mean exactly the opposite of what it was. Babel was probably Babylon, a great metropolis where everyone spoke the same language. And at Babylon, man built the huge and towering ziggurats so beautifully pictured by Peter Breughel and others. To the writer of Genesis the technology of that great metropolis and its single language must have seemed like marvels indeed. The writer could imagine its destruction only as the result of divine wrath. How else could mankind have declined from such a lofty state?

The abandonment of the Tower of Babel and of the common language of its builders is attributed in Genesis to the wrath of an angry God. At Babel God observed that “the whole earth was of one language and one speech… and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do... Confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

Thus, the Tower of Babel was a great technological achievement whose construction was unhampered by linguistic difficulties. There was no translation problem for those early scientists and engineers. God’s curse has left us essentially incommunicado. 1would like to suggest that mankind has suffered enough since then. We should now complete a modern Tower of Babel through the universal adoption of English as the mandatory language of science. Considering how far we have progressed in molecular biology, this suggestion may seem superfluous. But surely the potential danger to all mankind in this new technology makes English as necessary as the metric system.

Communication by speech was a ‘divine’ gift to mankind alone. The ancients knew well the irony implicit in divine gifts. It is the theme of much classic Greek drama, where the audience knows what the hero and his fellows in the play do not know--that the divine gift, whatever it happens to be in the particular play, brings with it the seed and the moment of destruction. We are accustomed to say that science knows no boundaries and no lesser allegiances than knowledge and the search for truth. But of course we should know, from reading sociologists from Marx to Merton, that the notion of science unbounded is mostly utopian foolishness. Perhaps science ideally should know no boundaries, no restrictions, but in fact it knows many. National aspiration, cultural milieu, social philosophy, economic power, political wrangling, and language are but a few.

Language may be a divine gift, but the diversity of language must surely be the tragic irony implicit in this particular divine gift. Is it overly simplistic or even stupid to suggest --like the author of Genesis-- that we would be better off as human beings, and as scientists, if we did “understand one another’s speech, ” if we could more nearly approach one another’s thought ?

Linguistic diversity is the tip of a great mental iceberg. We have been blessed and cursed not only to speak differently but to think differently because of it. Is there any doubt that thought not only shapes speech but, as Whorf suggested that language shapes thought? What is easily expressed in one language may be beyond conceptualization in another. Whether this applies to molecular biology or any other branch of modern science is easily enough appreciated if one were to imagine an attempt to translate The Double Helix into Eskimo.

I don’t believe that English is the language most suited to science because it is the best language. It is simply the language that scientists as a whole now best understand. We must goon from that fact. English is by no means a simple language. It does not have that to recommend it. Even though it can claim the grandeur of Shakespeare and the glory of the King James Bible, it also carries the stigma of having been the oral and administrative instrument of unparalleled colonial exploitation. It may not be as lucid as French, as vigorous as German, as musical as Italian, as subtle as Russian, or as tender as Spanish. I am told it is not as deceptively concrete as Chinese, nor as heart-easing as Gaelic, but it is the language now best understood by scientists. The overwhelming superiority and recommendation of its being best understood should not be underestimated. The government of India seems to agree, whatever the compromises to which the national consciousness has forced it to pay lip service.

The chauvinists of particular languages would perhaps prefer French because it was the language of Racine. Others might prefer the German of Schnitzler, or the Italian of Dante, or the Russian of Pushkin, or the Spanish of Garcia Lmca. But I do not recommend English as the lingua fianca of science because it was the language of Shakespeare. Most of the world cannot read even in their own languages works of men that have enriched their cultures.

The urge to be once again’ ‘of one language and one speech,” in and outside of science, should not be dismissed as anti-cultural. It is a powerful urge that expresses itself in many forms, such as our delight in a “silent” movie by Charlie Chaplin, or the universal embracement of the modern television broadcast. The urge has also been powerful enough to spawn numerous “artificial” languages like Volapuk, Esperanto, lnterlingua, Novial, etc. In retrospect, it may seem remarkable that people of so many nations grasped so eagerly at the ‘linguistic’ monstrosities frankensteined by idealist inventors.

Looking today, for example, at a page of Volapuk, a once popular and now ‘dead’ artificial language, one finds it hard to believe that anyone could ever have taken such a WorldSpeak (the name Volapiik meant that) seriously. But in the l9th century a great many people did. On the other hand, artificial languages have not been solely the product of amateur utopians or entrepreneurial egotists, as was often the case. Distinguished linguistic scientists like Otto Jespersen tried their hand at it as well. Some rate Jespersen’s Novial the best of the lot. The time may come when English will be universally understood. I join with Professor Steiner (1) in expressing the hope that the universality of English will be accompanied by an increasing bilingualism or trilingualism. A world of bilingual nations will be better off for its ability to share the benefits of different linguistic cultures, as well as those of technology.

(1) Steiner, G. What is an educated man now? (JZOmion) ZYmes Higher Education Supplement 11 October, 1974, p. 13

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--> The essay appeared on http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/

Alvin Ailey - Choreographer

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Alvin Ailey was an American modern dancer and choreographer who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on 92nd Street in New York City. He died of AIDS, at the age of 58.

Alvin Ailey was born in Rogers, Texas on January 5, 1931 and moved to Los Angeles, California at the age of twelve. There, on a junior high school class trip to the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, he fell in love with concert dance. Inspired by performances of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and classes with Lester Horton, Mr Ailey began his formal dance training. It was with Mr. Horton, the founder of the first racially integrated dance company in this country, that Mr. Ailey embarked on his professional dance career. After Horton's death in 1953, Mr. Ailey became the director of the Lester Horton Dance Theater and began to choreograph his own works. In 1954, he and his friend Carmen de Lavallade were invited to New York to dance in the Broadway show, House of Flowers by Truman Capote. In New York, Mr. Ailey studied with many outstanding dance artists, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman and took acting classes with Stella Adler. The versatile Ailey won a number of acting roles, continued to choreograph and performed as a dancer.

In 1958, Mr. Ailey founded his own company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Mr. Ailey had a vision of creating a company dedicated to the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance heritage and the uniqueness of black cultural expression. In 1960, he choreographed Revelations, the classic masterpiece of American modern dance based on the religious heritage of his youth.

Throughout his lifetime, Mr. Ailey created some 79 ballets, many of which have appeared in the repertoire of major dance companies, including American Ballet Theatre, The Joffrey Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Paris Opera Ballet and La Scala Ballet.

Mr. Ailey died on December 1, 1989. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times wrote of Mr. Ailey, "You didn't need to have known Ailey personally to have been touched by his humanity, enthusiasm and exuberance and his courageous stand for multiracial brotherhood."

(Source : http://www.abt.org/education/archive/choreographers/ailey_a.html)

Also check out Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's website : http://www.alvinailey.org/

Floating Soul

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Don't Rock The Boat

By Bob Marley (Lyrics)

Huh, please don’t you rock my boat
’cause I don’t want my boat to be rockin’ anyhow
Please don’t you rock my boat, no
’cause I don’t want my boat to be rockin’

I’m tellin’ you that, oh, ooh-aah, I like it a-like a-this
Can you miss?
And you should know, ooh-aah, when I like it a-like a-this
Am I really it? ooh yeah
You satis- satis- satisfy my soul, morning time
Evening cold, -fy my soul
Yes, I’ve been a-tellin’ you, bake me the sweetest cakes
I’m happy inside all the time
Oh, can’t you see what you’ve done for me? yeah

You make me feel like when we bend them new corners
We feel like sweepstake winners, yeah
When we bend them new corners
We feel like sweepstake winners

And I said, oh, ooh-aah, I like it a-like a-this
Yes, I do
And you should know, ooh-aah,
when I like it a-like a-this
I’ve got it, just can’t miss, ooh
Satis- satisfy my soul, darlin’
Make me love you in the morning time, yeah
If ever I treated you bad, make it up to me one time
’cause I’m happy inside all the time
I want you beside me, yeah, to be mine

One thing you’ve got to do, is when a-we holding hands together
You’ve got to know that we love, a-love each other, yeah
And if every time you should walk away from me now
Uh, you’ll now I need your sympathy, yeah

Can you see? do you believe me?
Oh, darlin’, darlin’, I’m callin’, callin’
Satisfy my soul, satisfy my soul
Never, never, never give it up now

All in the same boat
Rockin’ on the same route
We gotta get together, join each other
And can’t you see what I’ve got for you? yeah

I’m happy, happy, happy, happy, happy,
and not you can turn me blue now
Come a little closer, satisfy my...

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--> Lyrics' source : http://www.metrolyrics.com/

Palestine Think Tank

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The New Palestine Think Tank

By DesertPeace

The mightiest weapon in the world today is the human mind. That, combined with the pen, can conquer all…. it will happen in Palestine.

The enemy is aware of this… hence the battle to stifle those minds… It won’t work… Palestine will be free!

Keep up to date with what’s going on in Palestine via the "Palestine Think Tank" website : http://palestinethinktank.com/ (updated daily).

The Dictator

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Dictatorship

By Franz L Kessler

Laws are made by the boss
To cater for the needs of a palaces day
Cemented and fully enforced by those
With hands to carry a gun

Lead drapes the future
And even the past
Bleak yesterday precedes
An even bleaker today

Where joy has dried up
Like sprinkles in hot desert sand
Unknown to the lucky few its called:
Planet Earths most common reality

When hope is lost  no choice
Its bitterness that abounds
Breeding aggression
Despair and Suicide

The destitute follow those
Who promise a drink of relief
Even so its source stems
From a poisoned heart

My wish is that one day
All egoism will die
Like a rotting tree is struck
By a blazing lightning

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Poem's source : http://www.authorsden.com

Yves Saint Laurent

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Yves Saint Laurent: The man who changed the way women dress forever

By Lisa Adams

He was the king of cutting-edge couture who, by rewriting the rules of fashion, changed forever the way women dress.

Talented, controversial but always cool, Yves Saint Laurent was the last great designer from a generation which made Paris the fashion capital of the world.

With 20th century gurus Christian Dior and Coco Chanel gone, fashionistas could still believe in the power of style through YSL.

His death on Sunday aged 71, following a year-long fight against brain cancer, marks the end of an era.

However, his legacy lives on - as the French president revealed in a glowing tribute yesterday.

Nicolas Sarkozy said: "One of the greatest names in fashion has disappeared.

"Yves Saint Laurent was the first to elevate haute couture to the rank of art, and that gave him global influence.

"He infused his label with his creative genius, elegant and refined personality - discrete and distinguished during a half-century of work in both luxury and ready-to-wear - because he was convinced beauty was a necessary luxury for all men and all women."

Pierre Berge described his former lover and business partner - the first designer to put women in trousers - as a "true creator" who had empowered women.

He said: "Chanel gave women freedom but Saint Laurent gave them power.

"He was a libertarian, anarchic, and he threw bombs at the legs of society."

It's a spark which brought us the ultra elegant tuxedo smoking jacket.

When that hit the catwalks in 1966, it transformed the way ordinary women dressed for the evening.

Worn together with sharply tailored trousers, it offered a modern alternative to the formal evening dress, rapidly becoming a wardrobe staple for women.

The tuxedo has been updated for every collection since then, with supermodel Kate Moss looking effortlessly cool in this season's Le Smoking jacket.

Saint Laurent's label was worth £45million when he sold it to Gucci in 1999 and the most beautiful women on the planet have long clamoured to wear his clothes.

He created Bianca Jagger's iconic white wedding suit as well as dressing stars including Catherine Deneuve, Paloma Picasso and Lauren Bacall.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell said she was blessed to be working for YSL while her colleagues Claudia Schiffer and Carla Bruni hailed him as the most influential designer of his time on his retirement in 2002.

He could only have dreamed about such recognition growing up as a shy boy with a passion for drawing, in Oran, Algeria.

Born the son of a shipping executive on August 1, 1936, the fiercely ambitious Saint Laurent shied away from his
conventional home life to dream of cocktail dresses.

Taunted for being gay, he took refuge in his fascination for clothes.

After escaping to the bright lights of Paris aged 17, Saint Laurent finally discovered people who truly believed in his talents.

He won his place at the prestigious Chambre Syndicale school of haute couture after monopolising a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat.

He had scooped three out of four of the categories - the fourth went to Karl Lagerfeld, now at Chanel.

Months later, in 1954, he was introduced to a man who would change his life, Christian Dior.

Dior was so impressed he hired him on the spot. Aged 21, when most designers are starting out, Saint Laurent was named head of the fashion house after Dior died suddenly.

But four years later, just as his career was really taking off, he was conscripted in to the French army during the Algerian War of Independence.

Already physically frail, his time in service was a horror which haunted the rest of his life.

He suffered a nervous breakdown and endured months of electroshock therapy in a psychiatric unit.

It cost him his chance at Dior but, as he slowly recovered, Saint Laurent bravely started his own label, YSL.

His Rive Gauche boutiques for women were established in 1966, and Le Smoking jacket secured his stardom.

His creation of sleek trouser suits for women perfectly captured the "equality of the sexes" spirit of the era.

His Beatnik chic - a black leather jacket, turtleneck and high boots - was also bang on trend.

Always striking, Saint Laurent saw it as vital to create clothes which women felt comfortable wearing.

His safari-style trouser suits in khaki cotton were instant hits in his Rive Gauche ready-to-wear boutiques in London and Paris.

The navy blue pea coat over white pants - debuted in 1962 - was also one of his hallmarks.

He said: "I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant.

"They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes."

Saint Laurent's strength lay in never being afraid to be different.

He was ahead of his time, the first designer to challenge the blue-eyed, blonde-haired idea of perfection by hiring black models for his shows.

The trouser suits he so fervently believed in quickly triggered controversy away from the catwalk.

Women wearing them were turned away from hotels and restaurants in London and New York.

His see-through blouses, which showed off women's breasts, were next to cause outrage.

But his vision for fashion stretched beyond the cut of the clothes.

He said: "Fashion is not only supposed to make women beautiful, but to reassure them, to give them confidence, to allow them to come to terms with themselves".

Saint Laurent was never afraid to shock the public.

He posed nude in the advertising campaign for Pour Homme, the first YSL men's fragrance.

Then his launch in the mid-Seventies of a perfume called Opium brought accusations that he was condoning drug use.

Drugs - as well as depression and intense loneliness - were a problem for him away from the bright lights and air kisses of the fashion world.

Saint Laurent said: "I've known fear and terrible solitude, tranquillisers and drugs - those phoney friends - the prison of depression and hospitals.

"I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."

Despite that loneliness, he created a timeless template for women's fashion.

One of today's hottest designers, Marc Jacobs, admits looking to YSL's Seventies glory years for inspiration.

And Dame of British fashion, Vivienne Westwood, yesterday described YSL as "one of the great couturiers, one of the few who have achieved perfection with everything they touched."

In today's brave new world of fast fashion, froth and window dressing, few achieve that.

He will be missed.

(--> This tribute appeared on http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk)

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Obituary: Yves Saint Laurent(BBC)

Yves Saint Laurent changed the face of the fashion industry when he became chief designer of the House of Dior at the age of 21.

His creations adorned some of the world's most famous women; he counted Catherine Deneuve, Paloma Picasso and Princess Grace of Monaco among his most ardent admirers.

But so much too of what ordinary women wear today has been influenced by Saint Laurent.

He designed clothes that reflected women's changing role in society; more confident personally, sexually and in the work-place.

Yves Saint Laurent was born in Algeria, on 1st August 1936. Although his parents were wealthy (his father owned a chain of cinemas), French Algerians were often looked down upon by people in mainland France.

The young Yves had an unhappy childhood. Because of his homosexuality, he said, he was bullied and generally ill-treated at school.

His mother brought him to Paris and he joined the House of Dior in 1954, and such was his impact that he became chief designer when Christian Dior died three years later.

There followed a period of unremitting success. He was credited with introducing short skirts and leather jackets to the world of haute couture in 1960.

But later that same year his world and career collapsed. He was conscripted into the French Army at the height of the Algerian war, and suffered a nervous breakdown.

After three months in hospital he was discharged from the Army as medically unfit. But his return to the House of Dior was short-lived - he left almost immediately amid rumours that he had been dismissed.

He denied this, and claimed that he had resigned because the fashion house wanted him to work in London.

A lean period followed, but he made a comeback designing costumes for Zizi Jeanmaire, the French cabaret artiste. His love of the theatre led to many more triumphs as a set and costume designer.

Razia Iqbal looks back at the life of Yves Saint Laurent
In 1962, with his business and personal partner, Pierre Berge, he founded what was to become the multi-million-pound Saint Laurent fashion and perfume empire.

His flair re-established him as one of the world's top designers, dictating couture and ready-to-wear fashions. He brought in the safari jacket, the cape, peasant flounces and military blousons.

Trouser suits were almost unheard of before Yves Saint Laurent. Biker jackets, blazers and turtleneck sweaters came courtesy of him. He made women's clothes both more sexy and elegant.

But his personal life was less successful. The depression that ended his military career persisted - his partner, Pierre Berge, once said Saint Laurent had been born with a nervous breakdown. His ego was famously fragile.

In the 1970s and '80s, he retreated into excess, becoming addicted to drink and drugs. He also indulged in what he himself called "an extraordinary sex life".

He and Berge split romantically but remained business partners. Reclusive, Saint Laurent rarely left his Paris flat, where he lived surrounded by a massive art collection.

In 1999, he and Berge, having failed to find a suitable successor of their choice, sold their ready-to-wear company Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche to Gucci for $1bn after it had run into financial difficulties.

(--> This obituary appeared on http://news.bbc.co.uk)

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Official Yves Saint Laurent Web Site : http://www.ysl.com/

Thought Explosion

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The Big Bang

By Doug Holder

It's not the bang

so much

as the anticipation

the sensitive hairs

in each of your

expectant drums

your body

retreating into

its seminal

fetal curl

the hands'

feral clawing

and it all

boils

down to

some histrionic

exploding sun,

and then

quite simply

you're done.

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-->The poem appeared on http://www.authorsden.com/

...And Man Became A Living Soul

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The Brain is Wider than the Sky

By Emily Dickinson

The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.

The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

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The poem appeared on http://www.bartleby.com

The Blessing of Communication

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The Tamed Lion

By John Newton

A Lion, though by nature wild,
The art of man can tame;
He stands before his keeper, mild,
And gentle as a lamb.

He watches, with submissive eye,
The hand that gives him food,
As if he meant to testify
A sense of gratitude.

But man himself, who thus subdues
The fiercest beast of prey,
A nature more unfeeling shows,
And far more fierce than they.

Though by the Lord preserv'd and fed,
He proves rebellious still;
And while he eats his Maker's bread,
Resists his holy will.

Alike in vain, of grace that saves,
Or threat'ning law, he hears;
The savage scorns, blasphemes, and raves,
But neither loves nor fears.

O Saviour! how thy wondrous pow'r
By angels is proclaim'd,
When in thine own appointed hour,
They see this lion tam'd.

The love thy bleeding cross displays,
The hardest heart subdues;
Here furious lions while they gaze,
Their rage and fierceness lose.

Yet we are but renew'd in part,
The lion still remains;
Lord, drive him wholly from my heart,
Or keep him fast in chains.

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The poem appeared on http://www.puritansermons.com/

PS : The man I drew on the right is Marcin Bondarowicz (http://www.bondarowiczart.republika.pl)

Danger of Love

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Love is a Sickness

By Samuel Daniel (*)

Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries--
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries--
Heigh ho!

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(*) Samuel Daniel (1562 – October 14, 1619) was an English poet and historian. Daniel was born near Taunton in Somerset, the son of a music-master. He was the brother of John Daniel. Their sister Rosa was Edmund Spenser's model for Rosalind in his The Shepherd's Calendar; she eventually married John Florio. In 1579, Daniel was admitted to Magdalen Hall (now known as Hertford College) at Oxford University, where he remained for about three years and afterwards devoted himself to the study of poetry and philosophy. A "Samuel Daniel" is recorded in 1586 as being the servant of Edward Stafford, the Baron of Stafford and the English ambassador in France. This is probably the same person as the poet. More : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Daniel

--> The poem appeared on http://www.poetry.com/

Sleeping Forever

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Sleeping at Last

By Christina Georgina Rossetti

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last.

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--> The poem appeared on classiclit.about.com

Bob Vincke and Ben Heine

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Bob Vincke is the founder and President of the Belgium Cartoonist Association, Kever and cofounder of the European Cartoonist Union. I met him in May 2008 at the European Cartoon Center in Kruishoutem, Belgium.

Sebastian Kruger and Ben Heine

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Sebastian Kruger (German master painter) and I holding each other's portrait. I met the great Sebastian in Germany at his International Workshop in 2006 http://www.benjaminheine.blogspot.com/2006/10/krger-workshop-2006-montage-ben-heine.html

Sebastian's blog : http://sebastian-kruger-news.blogspot.com/

Ben Heine and Marcin Bondarowicz

uploaders comment:
This picture was taken in the Polish town Krakow, when I met my good friend Marcin Bondarowicz : http://www.bondarowicz.republika.pl/

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THE YOUNG FOOLS

By Paul Verlaine

High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress
So that, between the wind and the terrain,
At times a shining stocking would be seen,
And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.

Also, at times a jealous insect's dart
Bothered out beauties. Suddenly a white
Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight
Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.

Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,
The women who hung dreaming on our arms
Spoke in low voices, words that had such charms
That ever since our stunned soul has been trembling.

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--> The poem appeared on http://www.poemhunter.com

Ben Heine and Rudy Gheysens

uploaders comment:
Rudy Gheysens is the current President of the European Cartoon Center (ECC)based in Kruishoutem, Belgium. I met him in May 2008. (ECC : http://www.ecc-kruishoutem.be)

Rohan Voigt and Ben Heine

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Rohan Voigt is an Australian artist I met at the International Sebastian Kruger Workshop in 2006. His site will soon be available : http://voigtex.com/

Glenn Ferguson and Ben Heine

uploaders comment:
Glenn Ferguson at work... I met Glenn at the International Sebastian Kruger Workshop in 2006. He is currently the Vice President of the National Caricaturist Network, NCN : http://www.caricature.org/). Glenn's website : http://www.glennfergusonarts.com/

Marilyn Manson - 1 -

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Biography

Brian Hugh Warner (born January 5, 1969), better known by his stage name Marilyn Manson, is a professional musician. He is the lead singer of the industrial metal band that bears the same name. His stage name is formed from the names Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson.

Brian Hugh Warner was born on January 5th 1969 in Canton, Ohio. He attended Heritage Christian School. After transferring to and later graduating from Canton's GlenOak High School, Warner moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his family. While living in Fort Lauderdale, he studied journalism and theater at Broward Community College, and became the assistant entertainment editor of BCC's student newspaper, the Observer.

In music

Jessicka of the band Jack Off Jill was an early friend of Manson's, her band opened most of his South Florida shows. He not only produced most of the band's early recordings but also played guitar on the song "My Cat" and helped name the band. Manson later wrote the liner notes for the band's album Humid Teenage Mediocrity, a collection of early Jack Off Jill recordings.

In early 1993, after being instructed by his new label, Interscope Records, not to play any local shows, Manson formed Mrs. Scabtree. Mrs. Scabtree was a side project between he and newly hired Jeordie White. Manson played drums, while White (dressed as a black woman) shared vocal duties with then girlfriend Jessicka from Jack Off Jill who wore a blonde wig. Mrs. Scabtree only played two shows in South Florida.

Manson has helped or provided full scores for several major motion pictures, although several of his pieces have been cut, and his name dropped from the credits. Some of his more notable soundtrack score contributions include The Matrix, From Hell and Resident Evil.

Manson appeared as a guest on rapper DMX's album Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood for the track "The Omen", produced by Swizz Beats, and has performed (with the rest of the band) on stage with Eminem as background music in the song "The Way I Am".

Manson sang vocals on "Break You Down" off of the Washington, DC-based industrial rock band gODHEAD's 2000 Years of Human Error album. This album is distinguished for being the only one released on Manson's vanity label Posthuman Records.

In film and television

Manson made a cameo appearance as a doctor in the Murderdolls' music video "Dead in Hollywood", and also appears in the Nine Inch Nails music video "Starfuckers, Inc.", as well as "Gave Up", and Eminem's "The Way I Am" music video.

His first appearance in a film was in the role of a pornographic actor in David Lynch's Lost Highway, in 1997. He also had a minor role in former love interest Rose McGowan's 1998 film Jawbreaker and a supporting role in 2003's Party Monster, which is based on the events leading up to and the murder of Angel Melendez by the infamous Michael Alig of club kid fame, where Manson portrayed a psychotic drag queen named Christina . Manson made a cameo appearance in The Hire: Beat the Devil, a short film in the BMW films series (starring Clive Owen as the Driver), which featured James Brown as himself, and Gary Oldman as Satan. His most talked-about film cameo was in the Michael Moore political documentary Bowling for Columbine discussing the motivations of the perpetrators and allegations that his music was somehow a factor. He played himself, in animated form, on an episode of the television series Clone High, in which he sang a song about nutrition and the food pyramid. He is featured prominently throughout Not Another Teen Movie, and covered the song "Tainted Love" for its soundtrack.

His music is frequently featured on the show C.S.I.. The character on the show, Greg Sanders, is a big fan of Manson and the actor who plays him, Eric Szmanda, is a personal friend of Manson's.

Manson was featured in the 2004 film The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and was set to appear in Abelcain, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Living Neon Dreams in 2005, although both of these projects are still unreleased as of 2007. He will also be seen as a bartender in an upcoming vampire movie starring Lucy Liu called Rise and possibly has pending roles in Abelcain, RISE and other projects.

Manson has produced 23 music videos, most of which have gone beyond the scope of a normal performance video and been well received by critics for their imagery and direction. Manson’s three most recent released videos – Personal Jesus, (s)AINT and Heart-Shaped Glasses – were voluntarily funded with his own money (to a sum of $1,500,000) and largely not that of the record company. Manson stated in June 2006 that he saw himself "as more a student of film than of music".

In July 2005, Manson told Rolling Stone that he was shifting his focus from music to filmmaking - "I just don't think the world is worth putting music into right now. I no longer want to make art that other people--particularly record companies--are turning into a product. I just want to make art."

By 2006 Manson was working on his directorial debut, Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, but has since put the project off until November 2007 to focus on recording Marilyn Manson's sixth studio album, Eat Me, Drink Me, followed by a world tour. The film is said to feature special effects using a magician rather than computer-generated imagery.

In graphic art

From the beginning Manson has been a recreational painter, the oldest of his surviving pieces dating back to 1995-1996, but it was after his 1998 Grey period that Manson began his career as a watercolour painter. In 1999 he made five-minute concept pieces and sold them to drug dealers with their knowledge that they would accumulate in value over time. Gradually Manson became more drawn to watercolors as an art form in itself, and instead of trading them, kept them and continued to paint at a proficient rate.

This manic creativity resulted in an exhibit for his art, The Golden Age of Grotesque, held at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Centre on between September 13 and 14, 2002. The reaction to his paintings was largely positive with one critic comparing them to Egon Schele's pieces and describing them as heartfelt and sincerely painted, and Art in America went as far as to liken them to the works of a " psychiatric patient given materials to use as therapy ". Others however saw less merit in the works stating that the value was in the celebrity.

Two years later almost to the day, during September 14 and 15, 2004, Manson held his second exhibit on the first night in Paris and the second in Berlin, Trismegistus, which was also the title of the center piece of the exhibit – a large three headed Christ painted onto an antique wood panel. Again the reception to the works could be described as mixed but was largely in favour of the artist.

Manson opened his own an art gallery, The Celebritarian Corporation Gallery of Fine Art, on October 31, 2006 in Los Angeles for which his third exhibition (by invitation or appointment only after the opening night) was the inaugural show. From April 2 until April 17, 2007 Manson's recent works were be on show at the Space 39 Modern & Contemporary in Florida.

A coffee table art book is in the works, initially titled The Death of Art. The last given title was Quintif. It will be published by the makers of Flaunt magazine.

40 pieces from this show were ported to the Gallery Brigitte Schenk in Cologne, Germany to be publicly exhibited from June 28 until July 28, 2007. After this they will return to the Space39 Modern & Contemporary Gallery thus leaving Manson's own gallery in Los Angeles temporarily without his own work until 2008.

The price of Manson's works has been a somewhat controversial point for fans and critics alike, with most fans realistically unable to afford the paintings save for fine art editions and lithographs. Manson's prices though are realistic and reasonable considering the long-term value at a time when prices for contemporary art have never been higher.

During his European tour 2007 Manson has exhibited his paintings in Germany, Russia and Switzerland.

Read the full biography on Manson Wiki : http://www.mansonwiki.com

Beijing 2008

uploaders comment:
2008 Olympic Games in China, Find the solution...

Marilyn Manson - 2 -

Sensual

uploaders comment:
Sensual Lines

By T.L.Finch

Loving lines that interlace
blending shapes and form
sensual lines in recline
soft moments in a storm.

Melting shapes of gracefulness
mesh inseparably
molten one into the other
writhing relentlessly.

Scented fragrance in the air
hardness from a softness
fluid shape opens wantonly
in the purest promise.

Languid, liquid shapes and forms
radiant rays of sun
evolving pictures in the mind
creation has begun.

One shape into the other
sexual forms of fun
vulnerable, sensual lovers
eclectic lines of one.

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--> The poem appeared on http://www.writing.com/

PS : This is a watercolour study (life drawing) made at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts de Bruxelles

Mona

uploaders comment:
(Note : This is a portrait of Mona, a good friend. She is a painter and sculptor, some of her works can be seen here : http://www.house-arts-design.lu/art/fallahzadeh.htm
The nine-pointed star is a symbol used by Bahá'í worshippers as a symbol of their Faith. More on the Bahá'í Faith : http://www.bahai.org/)

I Will Greet The Sun Again

By Forugh Farrokhzad (*)

I will greet the sun again;
I will greet the streams which flowed in me;
I will greet the clouds which were
my lengthy thoughts;
I will greet the painful growth of poplars
Which pass through the dry seasons;
I will greet the flocks of crows
Which brought me, as presents,
The sweet smells of the fields at night;
I will greet my mother who lived in the mirror
And was the image of my old age;
And I will also greet the earth whose burning womb
Is filled with, green seeds by the passion she has
for reproducing me.

I will come, I will come,
I will come with my hair,
As the continuation of the smells of the soil;
With my eyes, as the dense experiences of darkness,
Carrying the bushes I have picked in the woodlands
beyond the wall.

I will come, I will come,
I will come and the entrance will be filled with love;
And at the entrance I will greet again
those who are in love,
And also the girl who is still standing
At the entrance in diffusion of love.

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(*) Forugh Farrokhzad (1935 - 1967) was an Iranian poetess and film director. Forugh Farrokhzad, Parvin E'tesami and Simin Behbahani are usually considered the most famous modern female poets of Iran. Forugh Farrokhzad was mainly under the influence of Ebrahim Golestan, a notable Iranian scholar.

--> Poem's source : http://www.artarena.force9.co.uk/

The Terrible fish

uploaders comment:
Mirror

By Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

-----------------------

--> The poem appeared on http://vmlinux.org/

Aime Cesaire

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(Note : I made this portrait in the subway very quickly, so it's not that accurate, let's call it a caricature...)

Martinican politician, intellectual and poet who was a founding father of the négritude movement

By James Ferguson

Aimé Césaire, the Martinican intellectual and politician who has died aged 94, left his mark in two separate, seemingly contradictory, fields. As a poet, dramatist and essayist, he coined the term "négritude" to define the revolutionary black aesthetic that rallied French-speaking intellectuals in the Caribbean and Africa in the 1930s. His Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land), first published in 1939, is considered the undisputed masterpiece of négritude and a poetic milestone of militant anti-colonialism and metaphorical inventiveness.

At the same time, Césaire was a leading architect of departmentalisation, the process that transformed four French colonies - Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane (French Guiana) and Réunion - into fully fledged departments of France. While Césaire the poet inveighed against the cultural arrogance of Europe and celebrated a mythic African identity, Césaire the politician tied the mostly African-descended people of Martinique to the assimilationist structure of the French republic.

Césaire was born at Basse-Pointe, a small town on Martinique's north coast. Although in his Cahier he evoked his childhood as poverty-stricken and squalid, his family was part of the island's small, black middle class, with his father employed as a tax inspector. The family moved to the capital, Fort-de-France, where Césaire went to the Lycée Schoelcher. He was a prize-winning student, easily adapting to the elitist French education system which was entirely alien to the great majority of Creole-speaking rural Martinicans. In 1931 he won a place at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Four years later, he was admitted to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure, where he studied literature and philosophy.

Amid the ideological and cultural ferment of 1930s Paris, Césaire discovered a wide range of influences. In the company of African students such as Léopold Senghor (later president of Senegal), he familiarised himself with African culture and the continent's anti-colonialist movement.

He became interested in Marxism (although he was never an orthodox Marxist), read Harlem renaissance writers such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and immersed himself in the various ephemeral journals and movements which proliferated during the inter-war years. In one such journal, L'Étudiant noir, he wrote an article attacking the cultural assimilation of blacks and counterposing négritude as a positive revaluation of African aesthetic values. Yet while Césaire was championing what he saw as a primitivist antidote to stultifying western rationalism, he was also on the treadmill of France's most elite academic institution, studying the classics of the official culture.

After eight years in Paris, Césaire returned to Martinique in August 1939, married to Suzanne Roussi, a fellow Martinican student and enthusiastic exponent of négritude. That same month, the first version of the Cahier appeared in an obscure Parisian journal, Volontés, eliciting no reaction whatsoever. For five years Césaire taught at the Lycée Schoelcher, inspiring a generation of students, among them the revolutionary psychiatrist and writer Frantz Fanon. He also edited a literary review, Tropiques, which popularised négritude themes of African culture and anti-colonialism among the island's intellectuals.

When André Breton, the high priest of the French surrealist movement, visited Martinique in 1941, he was impressed by Césaire's stature and poetry. According to Breton's own recollection, he found a copy of the Cahier in a Fort-de-France haberdashery, recognised it as a work of genius and relaunched the poet's career. In surrealism, moreover, Césaire found an aesthetic of irrationalism which coincided neatly with the anti-Cartesian precepts of négritude.

The war years were particularly harsh for Martinique, which was blockaded by the US navy in 1942-43, its white colonial rulers having sided with Pétain's Vichy regime. The enforced presence of thousands of French sailors encircled by a US fleet doubtless reinforced Césaire's hatred of racism. The emergence of the French Communist party (PCF) as the leading anti-Vichy force was another important development, and by 1942 Césaire was a member. In 1944, he escaped the claustrophobia of Fort-de-France and went on a lecture tour to Haiti. His exposure to the nation which had thrown off French colonial rule through revolution was a dramatic vindication of his négritude and reputedly cured his stammer. The heroic figures of Toussaint L'Ouverture and King Henri Christophe symbolised impoverished Haiti's grandeur and were later to feature prominently in Césaire's writing. He returned to a Martinique in political turmoil, where the PCF was capitalising on long pent-up aspirations for change in the colonial system. In rapid succession, in 1945, Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and a representative to the French constituent assembly, both on a PCF ticket. He was 32 years old; he held the mayoral office, with a brief interruption, for the next 56 years and, having been elected as deputy for Martinique to the national assembly in Paris in 1946, remained in post until 1993.

With the French colonies stagnating after decades of neglect and the privations of the war, Césaire and his colleagues on the left, both in Paris and the Caribbean, favoured political integration over independence, arguing that a "rational dependence" on France would quickly raise living standards through massive subsidies. The PCF-sponsored legislation creating the union was supported in a 1946 referendum, and Martinique and the other colonies became departements d'outre mer (Doms) or overseas departments of France, theoretically on a constitutional par with any French department.

But the rapid improvements anticipated by Césaire were slow to materialise. A highly centralised system of government from Paris gave too much power to a prefect; the subsidies from France were inadequate to rebuild the run-down island infrastructure. In 1958, Césaire voted in support of President de Gaulle's constitutional reforms which created the fifth republic and replaced the union with the "communauté française". These gave more political autonomy to the doms and also allowed Césaire to elaborate a political position which he held more or less consistently for the rest of his career: increased autonomy within a departmental relationship with France.

By then, moreover, he had shrugged off another form of centralising authority in the form of the PCF. In his Letter to Maurice Thorez (1956), he rejected Stalinism and the mechanistic downgrading of race and culture as diversions from class struggle. In 1958 he formed the Progressive Martinican party (PPM), an organisation which supported departmentalisation but demanded greater freedoms from metropolitan control. Re-elected mayor of Fort-de-France at every subsequent election and a deputy in Paris until his retirement in 1993, he was an efficient administrator and the personification of a status quo which most Martinicans found acceptable.

Despite his enduring electoral support, Césaire came under fire from both advocates of closer assimilation and supporters of independence. For the former, his demands for greater autonomy made Martinique an unjustified "special case" and threatened French goodwill. For the latter, departmentalisation had created a second-class citizenship and an artificial economy, held together only by French subsidies. President François Mitterrand's decentralisation measures in 1983 provided the PPM with some breathing space, allowing Césaire to claim that the doms would have a greater say in their development within a more regional framework of government. However, during the 1980s and 1990s advocates of independence made steady progress among a younger generation of Martinicans, accustomed to the subsidised welfare state and bored with the PPM's official line.

Césaire's literary work has also faced increasing criticism in recent years from younger Martinican writers who see négritude, with its mythic associations of primitivism, as irrelevant to a modern, non-African society. Although the republication of the Cahier in 1947 confirmed his status as a major 20th-century poet, Césaire never really achieved the same international success with subsequent work such as Soleil Cou Coupé (1947), or Ferrements (1960). His plays, dealing with historical aspects of colonialism, are little known outside France. As new Martinican writers stressed the importance of Creole as the medium for exploring the island's real culture, they derided Césaire's attachment to classical French as further evidence of his own assimilation to neo-colonial metropolitan values. The most ambiguous canonisation, meanwhile, took the form of the Cahier being included in the first-year French syllabus at Oxford University in 1996.

The contradictions at the heart of Césaire's career remained unresolved. Despite the massive importation of French consumerism into Martinique, he continued to argue that cultural autonomy could co-exist with departmentalisation. And despite the development of Martinique as a distant outpost of the EU, he persisted in looking to Africa as the source of authenticity. In his last years, he became irascible and would abruptly terminate interviews if the names of his political and literary critics were even mentioned.

Césaire's reputation as a poet rests largely on one epic expression of anti-colonial wrath and surrealist delirium; the Cahier has achieved the immortality that the French literary establishment bestows on certain works. But Césaire's legacy is perhaps more significant in the existence of a French department 7,000km away from France, whose people, for the time being at least, wish it to stay that way. His wife predeceased him; they had four sons and two daughters.

· Aimé Fernand Césaire, poet, playwright and politician, born June 26 1913; died April 17 2008

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--> This obituary appeared on : http://www.guardian.co.uk/