One Life
your tear
my tear
one water
*
Love Letters to Vincent
Monday, July 29, 6 p.m. mountain time
zoom
Dear Friends,
Tonight was the most incredible, terrifying, heart-re-wounding, heart-re-saving, transformative night. Kayleen Asbo and I performed a tribute to Vincent van Gogh live in Telluride in The Palm theater (the stage where my son used to dance and where my daughter still dances), hosted by The Palm and Telluride Chamber Music. If you were not able to join us (and even if you were), please join Kayleen & me online on Monday night, 6 p.m. mountain, for a recording of the evening. One person said it was “extraordinary, healing, alchemical.” and another said “Transcendent! What a triumph. Haunting in the best of ways.” We will, in time, have a fully edited video to share with you–with multiple camera views and the images of van Gogh. For Monday, we will be able to share the wide-lens view with really good sound.
All donations will fund the completion of our recording project, and a tree will be planted for each registration through One Tree Planted. Come with a candle and a journa. As we connect, we wrap our arms around what it means to be human and in a communal ritual of love, loss, gratitude, wonder and a celebration of how beauty and devotion can reach out to transform the world. Sliding scale donations, Zero-$40.00. There will be a recording for anyone who can’t make it life.
To register, click here
Posts Tagged ‘Van Gogh’
Short poem, big invite
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged tears, Van Gogh on July 28, 2024| 4 Comments »
Love Letters for Vincent: An online celebration of music, poetry & art
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on March 14, 2023| 2 Comments »
featuring Kayleen Asbo on piano, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer poetry and the art of Vincent van Gogh
Friday, March 31
10 a.m.-noon PDT; 11 a.m.-1 p.m. MDT, 1 a.m.-3 p.m. EDT
Last year, the incredible composer and cultural historian Kayleen Asbo completed an astonishing suite of piano pieces inspired by the work and life of Vincent van Gogh. Rosemerry worked from her pieces and the art to create a body of poems that weave the paintings, the music, van Gogh’s life, and Rosemerry’s own story of losing a loved one to death at his own hand. The works were performed live last November in Petaluma, CA, and we will be sharing the video of that collaboration in this online salon of love and memory on the anniversary of Vincent Van Gogh’s birth. We will close with a heartfelt communal ritual of creativity.
“I don’t know what to call this because I’ve never experienced anything like this before. What I do know is that this is one of the most beautiful, healing and heart-opening experiences I’ve ever had. In my entire life. “
-Audience Member from the summer productionTickets available on a sliding scale donation. The program will be recorded for later viewing.
To register visit here.
When Feeling Stuck
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged starry night, stuck, Van Gogh on August 29, 2022| 8 Comments »
Sometimes I forget I’m surrounded
by whirl, forget the earth’s turning,
forget our galaxy’s spiraling nature.
But it helps me today to remember myself
as swirl, from the whorl in my fingerprints
to the curl in my hair to the twirl in my step
as I move through the rooms of a house
that somehow feels solid and stable. It helps
to think of the day as a twist,
an infinite trip on a mobius strip,
and suddenly stuck isn’t quite so stuck,
and whatever in me is wedged
isn’t quite so wedged, and I become more
like a starry night, ethereal, dreamlike,
as I start to recall the joy in the spinning,
the freedom in the churning,
and I open again to a magic that invites me to play
far beyond the frame.
Mornings with Vincent: A creative conversation and writing playshop
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh, writing classes on August 2, 2022| 4 Comments »
August 15, 22, 29
Join Rosemerry and pianist/composer Kayleen Asbo for a three-week ekphrastic exploration–writing poems about art that explore the work of van Gogh and our own heart awakenings. Each class will include a brief historical talk, a conversation between Kayleen and Rosemerry about how to meet a work of art with music and words, plus two writing times and a chance to share what you wrote. Sliding scale. On Zoom.
To register and for more information, visit here
Love Letter to Vincent
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, beauty, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on July 25, 2022| 6 Comments »
Oh Vincent,
There is in my heart
a small yellow room
with a small wooden table
with a dull yellow cloth
and a rounded clay vase
with your name scrawled in blue,
and it’s bursting with sunflowers,
all of them open, all of them turning,
turning toward the light,
which is to say the flowers face every which way.
There is light everywhere we dare to turn.
Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
a letter sent back in time,
a letter that impossibly arrives
just when you despair,
just when you believe no one cares about your art,
the letter that reaches you to say you are loved
in that exact moment you feel unlovable.
Let this be the letter in which you see
the sunflowers you sowed a hundred thirty years ago
have re-seeded themselves in me
and now grow rampant in my days,
golden petalled and flagrantly lovely.
And your stars, swirling, your wheat fields goldening,
your cypress reaching, your church bells unsinging,
you will find them all my words.
This is how love replants itself—
more love, old friend, more love.
Because you were so truly you,
so full of hope, so full of fear,
because you risked your everything,
I, too, will risk, will dare.
Consider this a love letter, Vincent,
the one that helps you see
how your life is linked to eternity.
Let this be a letter that says thank you, Vincent,
for teaching us new ways to see beauty.
Perhaps this letter will arrive
when you are in the yellow room,
or perhaps the asylum, perhaps in Neuwen,
and you, surprised to find it addressed to you,
will receive it and let the words in,
then hear your own startled voice saying,
It matters? as you pick up your brush
and begin again.
*
My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish.
If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account. And we have an anonymous donor who will match all funds donated before July 30!
If you want to engage in the full collaboration–Vincent’s paintings, Kayleen’s music, and my poems–I hope you will join us in “Love Letters to Vincent” on July 29, the day Vincent died, at 11 a.m. mountain time. We will present the entire collaboration, sending love letters back in time to honor this man who changed the way we see beauty. There will also be a chance to participate in a group creative activity, responding to his work, creating a giant love letter for Vincent. Sliding scale. It will be recorded and sent to all who register.
Love Letter to Vincent at the Saint-Remy Mental Asylum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, love, night, perspective, starry night, Van Gogh on July 25, 2022| 10 Comments »
inspired by “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh and the piano composition by Kayleen Asbo by the same name
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.
―George Washington Carver
You teach us how to meet the night,
the quiet shadowed pools of night,
the night outside the glow of home,
the night beyond the sleep-warm bed.
You teach us how to fall in love with night,
the violet night, deep fields of night,
the swirling, churning curves of night,
the whirling, sweeping waves of night—
and oh the stars in their spiraling
you share their gold and pink and green,
a twinkling, a burst of shine,
a firmament in which to dream—
but there’s no way to see stars
if you don’t first befriend the dark.
You teach us how to love the dark,
the verdant, fertile wholesome dark.
Oh, to love what frightens us—
to meet dark with curiousness,
Though it’s mighty, tumultuous,
you teach us the dark is generous.
Vincent, you didn’t paint your asylum’s window bars.
You showed us only night. And stars.
*
My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish.
If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account. And we have an anonymous donor who will match all funds donated before July 30!
If you want to engage in the full collaboration–Vincent’s paintings, Kayleen’s music, and my poems–I hope you will join us in “Love Letters to Vincent” on July 29, the day Vincent died, at 11 a.m. mountain time. We will present the entire collaboration, sending love letters back in time to honor this man who changed the way we see beauty. There will also be a chance to participate in a group creative activity, responding to his work, creating a giant love letter for Vincent. Sliding scale. It will be recorded and sent to all who register.
Three Lines from Vincent van Gogh
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, paradox, roots, Van Gogh on July 23, 2022| 6 Comments »
each line taken separately from his letters or speech
inspired by his unfinished painting “Tree Roots,” which was first hung upside down,
and by Kayleen Asbo’s piano composition “Roots”
you will find beauty everywhere,
the root of everything—
and the sadness will last forever
*
the sadness will last forever,
the root of everything—
and you will find beauty everywhere
*
My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish.
If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account. And we have an anonymous donor who will match all funds donated before July 30!
If you want to engage in the full collaboration–Vincent’s paintings, Kayleen’s music, and my poems–I hope you will join us in “Love Letters to Vincent” on July 29, the day Vincent died, at 11 a.m. mountain time. We will present the entire collaboration, sending love letters back in time to honor this man who changed the way we see beauty. There will also be a chance to participate in a group creative activity, responding to his work, creating a giant love letter for Vincent. Sliding scale. It will be recorded and sent to all who register.
Link to Video: The Art of Collaboration with Van Gogh, Asbo, Trommer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged collaboration, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on July 12, 2022| 2 Comments »
My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish.
If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account.
The Big Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged arts, conversation, Kayleen Asbo, loss, Van Gogh on July 11, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by Pietà by Vincent van Gogh and a piano composition by the same name by Kayleen Asbo
When Chopin wrote his prelude in E minor,
its melody descending like sundown in a field,
he could never have guessed how
Eugène Delacroix would listen to the song relentlessly
when he painted his Pietà, how the haunting notes
would infuse themselves into the twilight
of the Virgin Mary’s blue dress,
into her outstretched hands and her oddly angled neck
as she held the dead body of her son.
And Delacroix could not have known
how, two years later, Anna van Gogh
would give birth to Vincent Willem,
his heart unbeating, his lungs unbreathing—
how Anna would long to mourn like the Virgin
and hold her own dead child, but her husband
would forbid her to even speak of the loss,
calling her grief a sin.
And Anna could not have known
how a year to the day when her first son died
she would deliver another boy
and name him Vincent Willem van Gogh,
and he would grow up seeing his own name
and birthday carved into a gravestone.
No surprise then, perhaps, that when Vincent
painted his own version of Delacroix’s Pietà,
he painted the dead son in the likeness of himself—
his own slender shoulders, his own red beard.
In Virgin Mary’s eyes, he painted dusk.
And van Gogh could not have known
how over a hundred years later
a woman named Kayleen, inspired
by Chopin and the agony in Vincent’s painting,
would write a song for piano, a song infused
with heartache and beauty, eventide and gloaming.
And Kayleen could not have known how,
months later, another woman would hear
in the slow rolling bass of the minor key
a mirror for her brokenness,
the spilling of her own golds and blues,
how she would seek out Vincent’s Pietà
and see in the painting
her own empty hands, her own dead son.
She would understand in an instant
she was not alone
in meeting the darkling swell of unbearable loss
and the light of bearing it anyway—
*
Today (Monday, July 12) at 11 a.m. mountain time, I hope you can join me and composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo for an hour of conversation about the “unfolding delight of collaborating on a multimedia project for Vincent van Gogh. No charge, but if you want to donate in support of our work, we will accept gratefully! Above all, we want to share the joy we have discovered in weaving poetry and music in response to van Gogh and each other.
To register. cut and paste this link:
https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ej9t6q9ac30328ce&oseq=&c=&ch=
Two van Gogh Poetry/Piano Events
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged collaboration, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on July 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Dear readers,
As you know, I’ve been sharing lots of poems inspired by van Gogh’s paintings and the music of the incredible composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo–and finally, a chance for you to hear her work! We will have two events together: the first one is Monday, July 11 for a conversation about collaborating across the arts. We’ll share about the process of creating “Love Letters to Vincent,” piano compositions and poems all conversing with the art of van Gogh, who was, in turn, responding to other artists of his day. Join the big conversation! It will be practical and passionate! Donation based.
for more info and to register, copy and paste this link:
https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ej9t6q9ac30328ce&oseq=&c=&ch=
The second event, “Love Letters to Vincent” on Friday, July 29, will have all the pieces she composed, all the poems I wrote, all the art, plus a chance for you to write your own love letter to Vincent. This online salon of love and memory on the anniversary of Vincent Van Gogh’s death will be a heartfelt communal ritual of creativity.
Available on a sliding scale donation and also recorded for later viewing. for more info and to register, copy and paste this link:
http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ej8dm76j7c30686c&llr=q9rr4nabb
Longing to Be Seen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dance, ekphrasis, hope, Kayleen Asbo, still life, Van Gogh on July 1, 2022| 6 Comments »
after the painting “The Bedroom” by Vincent van Gogh and the piano composition “Yellow Bed” by Kayleen Asbo
In the tilted room with the yellow bed,
hope waltzes on the wooden floor—
one, two, three, one, two, three—
not that you see it there,
it’s not obvious like the windows,
the paintings, the mirror, the pitcher, the chairs.
Hope is what you don’t see.
But it is there, beside the water glasses,
beside the long towel.
Hope sways so keenly
to snatches of melody
the whole room seems to sway.
And it’s one, two, three,
one, two, three; Who, hope says,
will dance with me? It promises
friendship. It promises rest.
Will you dance? it asks, a dizzy mess.
It promises community. It promises fame.
Will you dance? it asks, but it smells
of paint and faraway dreams.
It smells of madness and longing to be seen.
Will you dance? it says, its arms flung out.
Here is where Vincent said yes.
Some see a still life, but others see
the whirling, the twirling, the beautiful
spinning of hope, reeling hope,
fragile hope.
Looking at Landscape at Auvers in the Rain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, rain, Van Gogh on June 29, 2022| 4 Comments »
inspired by Landscape at Auvers in the Rain by Vincent van Gogh and Rain at Auvers by Kayleen Asbo
Sometimes when it rains
I forget it will ever stop raining.
The rain, it falls,
it falls for days, it falls,
and the rain becomes
a metric imperative,
insistent as a stop watch,
familiar as the pulsing
of blood in the heart,
a throbbing, a beat so adamant
I forget any other tune.
Did you forget, Vincent,
the rain would stop?
Did you feel inside you
a storm as urgent, as bold,
as the rain you painted
long diagonal strokes?
I can’t look at your painting
without feeling inside me the rain,
the rain, feel it slant across my world
in thick dark lines.
I can’t look at the purples
and yellows of Auvers
without remembering how days
after you painted these hues,
you would take your life.
But how could I vilify the storm
even knowing what I do?
You found in the tumult
light.
You fueled the dampened, darkened world
with ecstatic gold.
You didn’t push the storm away, Vincent.
You let it drench you.
You shared with us all
how struggle, too,
is so terribly, terribly
beautiful.
Something Worth Sharing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, depression, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on June 16, 2022| 9 Comments »
inspired by Eternity’s Gate by Vincent van Gogh and a piano composition by the same name by Kayleen Asbo, with quotes from van Gogh’s writings about the painting
Perhaps you, too, have sat
in the corner of a room,
back bent like winter grass,
elbows on your knees,
head weighty in your hands.
Spent. Exhausted.
Unsure how to live
another minute.
This is perhaps
the moment
we least want to be seen,
but if we are lucky,
perhaps an artist
with an eye for eternity
will feel it his duty
to find in our ruin
something precious,
something noble,
something unutterably moving
something to help us
know ourselves
as a part of infinity,
our life a brief song,
unbearably beautiful,
a masterpiece,
dark and descending
though it is.
Learning from “The Sower”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh on June 7, 2022| 10 Comments »
inspired by the painting “The Sower” by Vincent van Gogh and piano composition by the same name by Kayleen Asbo
Forever, the farmer depicted in oils
strides across the field throwing seeds
in an eternal ostinato sowing.
Forever, the sun behind his back
pulses radiant, golden, glowing.
Forever, the worker is caught mid-step
as he swings back his arm in the blue-ish light,
Forever his work is never done.
Forever there are mouths to feed
and grain to grow and the need
for one who unstintingly sows—
and there are thousands of ways to sow.
It is said the only thing necessary
for evil to triumph
is for good people to do nothing.
And so like van Gogh’s sower,
it is our work to keep sowing.
Though forever loss.
Though forever the poor.
Though forever depression.
Though forever war.
Though forever the crows descend
to follow the sower and eat the seed,
the sower sows despite.
The sower sows because—
The sower sows forever,
for that is what a sower does.
Almond Blossom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bloom, blossom, ekphrasis, hope, Kayleen Asbo, spring, Van Gogh on May 28, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by Almond Blossom by Vincent van Gogh and music by Kayleen Asbo by the same name
I want to hang a painting
of almond blossoms
above your bed
so when you wake
the first thing you see
are delicate white petals
and a sky a thousand shades of blue.
I want you to wake every morning
into an ever-emerging sense of spring—
wake into sunshine,
wake to a world of splendor
and extravagant blossoming.
Of course, the fall.
Of course, the struggle.
Of course, the difficult days.
And of course, the almond blossoms,
painted in creams, pinks and greens
each one an insistent grace note
that lingers beyond its season,
promising something improbable
and utterly necessary,
like ever-blooming beauty,
like the light and airy perfume of hope.
On a Day When Life Feels Black and White
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, ekphrasis, gray, Kayleen Asbo, paris, Van Gogh on May 25, 2022| 10 Comments »
Inspired by “Impasse des Deux Frères” by Vincent van Gogh and Kayleen Asbo’s musical response, “Moulins de Gallette.”
Some days, like today, I long for rain,
long for the muted, grey kind of day
that unfolded in the oils of van Gogh,
when he’d stroll through the flat
and quiet daytime streets of Montmartre,
those dreamy hours when the world
is not too bright, not overly exultant,
not too sure of its gaiety,
a day when the wind is the only thing
that feels it needs to move,
when I don’t need to know anything
about anything, can notice how
the world resists resolution,
how the barest scrap of color
can change the whole scene,
can let myself be content to be gray,
can let myself be a student of windmills,
notice how it’s the invisible forces
like silent love, like persistent wind,
that make the whole world spin.
First Steps
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, love, parenting, Van Gogh on May 20, 2022| 8 Comments »
inspired by “First Steps” (after Millet) by Vincent Van Gogh and a song by the same name by Kayleen Asbo
Precious as the first pale green of spring
those first awkward steps of a child.
How we cheer their innocent tottering.
How we celebrate the very thing
that will lead our child away
from the safety of our arms.
Memory is like a Dutch painter
who insists on portraying
a child’s first steps
in only the loveliest hues,
and the frame contains
only lyrical hope,
and each brush stroke
is dipped in tenderness,
and we don’t yet know
how hard it will be to let go,
how the sweetest songs end
long before the heart is ready.
In the “Wheat Field with Crows”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, possibility, Van Gogh on May 20, 2022| 6 Comments »
inspired by “Wheat Field with Crows” painted by Vincent van Gogh and “Blackbirds” composed by Kayleen Asbo
Oh Vincent, I long to pause with you
where the three paths converge in the wheat field.
We can stand there beneath the sullen sky
like two piano notes side by side,
which, when played at the same time,
rub against each other
in an awkward, uncomfortable music.
Sometimes what unsettles us
is so unbearably beautiful.
I want to meet you in this moment
before you return to a wheat field
with not a brush, but a gun,
want to meet you in this moment
before the choice, before the shot,
this moment when there are still three paths,
all of them leading beyond the frame.
Let’s linger here, Vincent,
beneath the dark arpeggios of crows,
linger here while everything is still possible.
The storm is coming, I see it, too,
turbulent and full of change
while in the honest wheat, look,
you’ve shared so much light, so much gold.
Looking at Van Gogh’s “Wheat Field with Cypresses”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Art, change, ekphrasis, Kayleen Asbo, Van Gogh, wind on May 16, 2022| 9 Comments »
while listening to Kayleen Asbo’s “Cypresses”
The wind, that knows itself only by what
it touches, does not whip your hair
as it churns through the wide golden wheat fields,
does not steal your hat as it tosses
the clouds into frothy white and violet whorls,
does not slap your face as you stare
at the silver-green branches of olive trees
upswept into turbulent curves. You’re just looking.
Until you realize the wind has breached the frame
and touched you the way it touches all that it loves,
and your heart knows what it perhaps wishes
it did not know—that all is changed and rearranged,
all gets stirred up and remade, even the cypress,
even the mountains, even the stubborn heart.
you can see the painting here
Seascape Near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged color, ekphrasis, grief, Kayleen Asbo, sea, Van Gogh on May 14, 2022| 4 Comments »
inspired by “Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer” by Vincent van Gogh and music by Kayleen Asbo, “Les Bateaux de Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer”
Dear Vincent, I wish I could speak of grief
as well as you articulate the colors of the sea,
naming all the hues as they change in the light—
noting the deep ultramarine near the shore
even as it tends toward pale russet, toward violet.
It’s always changing, you wrote to Theo.
You can’t even tell if it’s blue because
a second later the changing light
has taken on a pink or gray tinge.
The same is true of shades of loss—
the moment I identify a deep feeling of sorrow,
I notice pale hints of trust, nuances of awe.
The moment I name it tenderness,
it shifts into pain, ferocity, exhaustion.
Tonight I stared into the seascape you painted
on the shores of the Mediterranean,
and I knew myself not as the water
with its capricious tones, but as the boat
that sails upon it, something transported
by all this change. I tried to see the sea
with the same perspective you had:
It wasn’t very cheery but neither was it sad
it was beautiful.
Oh those blue depths with their emerald, their white.
I let myself be carried by that beauty.