Songs of the Black Light

[Rob MacKillop]

I've just uploaded to my website a series called Songs of the Black Light - images and self-penned poems wrought from the images. I hope the images illustrate the poems and vice-versa, but admit some viewers might need help in making the connections. I might add comments below.

Songs of the Black Light - direct link.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

1.
(Not) About The Place

It's about the place
It's not about the place

An impression of light
falling
by the stilled breathless stream
a thought-less moment

There is beauty here
in the ordered chaos of life
in the silence
before
awareness

===

The scene is by a stilled river. I'm trying to capture in the image and the words one of those moments where the mind is still - in Scotland we call it a dwam - before nature. You are aware of the place, but you are not completely there. Zen-like, perhaps. "There is beauty here, in the ordered chaos of life" echoes my hero, Charles Darwin.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

2.
The Philosopher's Garden

One stem-snapped leaf turns earthwards
In death-revealing beauty
A once shadowed vein-mapped landscape
mocks the sundark field
where dull thoughts gather
solemn faced
===

A few yards away from the first image, I saw this white leaf, while all around was dark. It had been snapped off somehow, and its underbelly was on show, much brighter than the other leaves. One thing runs through many of my poems: that we are in a dark and meaningless universe, but the electricity of thought creates a sense of mind, and mind creates meaning. The philosopher's garden is mind/brain/consciousness, making its precarious way through the universe.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

3.
fallen. idle.

fallen. idle.
my feathered leaf contains landscapes
spine curved to edge of frame
fractured. broken.

the tales this en-veined quill had yet to tell
of a once green then yellowed tree

but now vein-sapped ink draws breathless words
beneath a silent canopy
===

The leaf, though dead, speaks stories to us.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

4.
Urban Angel


Urban Angel (through a stained glass
window)

Beyond the unclean glass
I see an angel

My angel has no head
does not float but hangs
from crosses of cold steel

My angel’s tired arms
can barely lift heavenwards
Its shroud, mud spattered and frayed,
outlines no form

My angel prays to me for help

I take a shot...


...and leave.
====

A poem about letting go of religion. The pun on 'shot' is deliberate.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

5.
In A Dream of Dark Matter

In a dream of dark matter
shot through with cross-angled light
a fleeting thought recalls
an awakening sense of being

a foetal dream of the unimaginable
beyond eyes as yet unseeing
becomes the electricity of mind
in a river of universes
===

The birth of thought in the womb - and the womb is also the multiverse.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

6.
Black Light - The Darwin Tree

Black Light
electricity emerges
pushing through matter
awakening thought and growth

Black Ink
as the misnamed Eroica
pulses through time and air
- adagio assai -
feeling out enlightenment

Black Life
and the artisanal eye
fully opened
catches in pearls of thought
Darwin’s Tree of Life

“in endless forms most beautiful”

===

The first stanza references the previous poem, with thought being an electrical charge - the Enlightenment.
The second stanza references Beethoven. He named his 3rd symphony after Napoleon...until Napoleon declared himself Emperor, at which point Beethoven scrubbed-out the name "Eroica" in disgust. My point is that Beethoven was embracing the Enlightenment.
The third stanza references photography "the artisanal eye" and Darwin's famous Tree of Life - the moment in his note book where he first mentioned what would become his Theory (Explanation is a better word for American audiences) of Evolution. Next to a picture of a tree of evolution of species, he wrote the words "I think...". The crowning achievement of the Enlightenment era. The little "trees" in my image remind me of his drawing.

 

[Brian Moore]

These poems are quite beautiful, Rob. As are the photos they speak to.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Beautiful series @Rob MacKillop !

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Thanks, gentlemen. The series represents something I would like to develop: images and words that ask questions. But poetry is hard for me, the word ‘wrought’ is apt, as if I have to beat it out of myself. And the imagery involves breaking some so-called rules of photography, but I don’t have complete command of the medium to do what I want with it. So this series is me searching for something indefinable, like I’m fumbling in the dark. Anyway, it keeps me from going mad. A kind of therapy.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Here is Darwin's revolutionary notebook sketch:



It must be said that post-genetics, evolutionary biologists say an 'impenetrable thicket' would be closer to the mark than a tree, but this was Darwin's first notion of it. He later said it was like a "tangled bank" - which is what you see in a couple of my images on the website.

 

[Ralph Turner]

Wonderful words and images, Rob. In 'fallen. idle' the leaf skeleton looks like a feather quill pen, pointing toward to poem, the ink was still wet from the author's crafted musings.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Ha, indeed, Ralph. Glad you like them!

 

[Gianluca Drago]

@Rob MacKillop your site is growing and is a nice place to explore, even in its infancy. I am a stranger to poetry, but I can still hear your words and read them (despite the language barrier), they speak to me along with your images. And your music.

We both love Darwin, and I bet you love it not only for his scientific contribution to human knowledge and aspirations, but maybe also for his literary style. May I suggest you another reading of equal poignancy (if you haven't already)? Alexander von Humboldt.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Interesting, Gianluca. I’m fairly certain I’ve read his name once or twice, but also certain I have never read his work. From his wiki page, which I’ve just had a quick read through, I see that his first book (1793) was about underground plants. What a thought! Worth exploring for the science but also the poetic possibilities.

So, thanks for mentioning his name, Gianluca, appreciated.

Talking of Darwin and poetry, his granddaughter, Ruth Padel, wrote a biography of him called A Life In Poems, which is a very beautiful book, worth tracking down. Her poetic style is very readable, unlike mine, as she has a very clear mind, again unlike mine!

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Her poetic style is very readable

This is another thing that I loved about your visual and poetry series Songs of the Black Light, and that is you at the end of each page give some hints about your poem (Beethoven with the Emperor, Charles Darwin and so on). You explain it, you contextualize it. Probably this attitude of you comes from you being used to teaching. And this is a gift. Teaching is a twin gift - everybody wins, the teacher and the disciple - that not everybody has.

It's strange that you've never read von Humboldt yet. I read some travel/exploring diary by him when I was in hospital and it was of big comfort to me. My wife read a biography of his life and got fascinated, falled in love.
The strange thing when you read him is that he was much more open minded than we are today, who claim to be modern.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

Ruth Padel, wrote a biography of him called A Life In Poems, which is a very beautiful book

Noted. I can't cite now the books my wife and I had read, and that is a serious deficiency since I'm a librarian and I'm supposed to remember them by heart. Be patient, wait until tomorrow and remind me if I forget, please.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

I am happy to claim to be primitive! The modern mind is so confused, and rarely worth engaging with. I’m thinking of the politicians, priests and experts who divide us. I’m retiring from work, and want to spend my time doing simple things thoughtfully, explore quiet things, be in no hurry, return to a degree of primitivism. But yes, you are right, I’ve been a teacher for many years, with all the ingrained habits of the profession. But I’m tired of it all, and want to be the student again, finding new things, discovering ancient and new connections, not fall into a rut. We shall see.

So, you are a librarian, Gianluca?! That profession is changing, it seems. Soon we will have libraries with no books in them, just academic papers, bought and restricted by digital companies behind a firewall. The independent researcher will get locked out of the latest knowledge. That troubles me and my academic wife, herself an independent researcher.

Well, if we live long enough we will get a sense of where it is all going. Best wishes to us all!

 

[Gianluca Drago]

I'm a different breed of librarian. It's difficult to reply to your message because you've too many things on the table. You are not wrong, but the landscape is more vast. First of all my workplace is inside an historic library that holds botany and medicine ancient books and archives that we, with our limited resources, are trying to digitize and put online, freely available to everyone online.

And second, we librarians are exactly the ones fighting against the publishers in favour of open access. At least here in Italy, I don't know more.

It hurts me how you and your wife depict librarians, because we are exactly the opposite (at least where I live).

 

[Gianluca Drago]

To shift the blame to librarians is unfair. When I think of all the money, time and effort spent by librarians to train researchers and faculty to convince them to publish their work in open access, it really is not fair what you are saying. It is like blaming global warming on Greta Thunberg.