Elmallah, Bouk 3, image 6

I have been working for many months preparing the illustrations for an edition of Bouk 3 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. Last night I completed the 6th image. It shows Dumuzee, the Sumerian shepherd king. Captured by Areyan invaders, his spirit has escaped into the sky. It is based on an Assyrian bas relief in the British Museum.

Here are the lines that accompany the illustration:

Awl hiz serven herd the kruel lamment.
Thay herd the dry north wind
Wining thru the fouthillz.
Thay herd the kish-kish russelling
Ov leevz along the foutpathz.
Thay saw the hunter-king
Fawl owt ov the nite-time sky.

Thay saw the ram assend
Tu skip along the star-kragz.

    "Dumuzee haz eskaept!"
Hiz serven awl howl.
Now the bitter lamment iz thaerz.  Thay say:
    "He haz gon free
    "Wile owr chieldz ar made slaevz by hiz kurs."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And here are 4 variations of the completed image. Click on an image to expand it, and you should be able to scroll thru the images. That's the only way you'll be able to differentiate them. Your comments and preferences, as always, are much valued.

 

 

 

My 5 ebooks

For those of you who may be interested in finding out about the ebooks I've published, and perhaps even purchasing one or more of them (they cost less than $5 each), below you can find brief descriptions of each of them. Enjoy!

Atternen Jewz Talen:
This book contains the opening pages of the diaries of the Eternal Jew (aka the Wandering Jew). In the opening scene he describes Jerusalem in his youth, as it was in 30 CE. He then recounts his meeting with a revolutionary named Jesus. Realizing he has left out some critical information, he turns back to the origins of humanity, telling what he knows about those early days.
This is not the Eternal Jew you might have heard about from unreliable or hate-mongering sources. He is a wise and engaging fellow, proudly Jewish, with a biting wit, and a wry but mystical view of worldly events and his place in them.
The story is told in two versions. The original text is an altered English where words and ideas morph, one into another, using a strictly phonetic spelling. To help the reader, however, a translation into standard English follows each stanza. As a further help, each stanza is followed by an embedded reading, so one can listen to the story, and read along at the same time.
The story is further enriched by images produced by the author, and selected scans taken from the author’s notebooks. The final chapter of the book is a collection of useful source material and links for further study and exploration.

A Pilgrimmage tu Jerusalem:
A young pilgrim hears that the place to which he is making pilgrimage is not what he expects. Truth or illusion? Redemption or damnation?  What do we really know about our journey and its end? This short remarkable tale, rich with illustrations by the author, and supplemented with images of the original hand-written text, will challenge the mind, delight the eyes, and bring genuine pleasure to the reader.

The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1:
Elmallah, a divine messenger, is sent to Ertha to awaken her. Although she dwells as a shadow in a shadowy wilderness, Elmallah is instructed to liberate her latent beauty, power, and desire. But can Elmallah lift her from her wild state, or will she overwhelm his spirit and drag him into the darkness of her world?
The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming is the epic story of the man of God whose heart is captured by the one he is sent to redeem. The book contains many illustrations produced by the author, and also includes audio recordings of the author reading the text.

The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 2:
In this, the second book, Elmallah enters into Ertha’s prehistoric wilderness. He is unprepared for its danger and cruelty. He is equally unprepared for the passion and love he feels for Ertha that heightens and clouds his thinking. Ertha is as wild as the world she lives in. Can Elmallah survive in such a place?
The book’s many illustrations, produced by the author, are based on Mesopotamian bas reliefs. The book also includes 13 audio recordings of the author reading the text.

Ottoman Beachcomber:
The world was a very different place in 1983, at least in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey. In this book you will go on travels in a simpler time to places innocent and charming. Join me as I outrun demons that are chasing me, dance in morning dew with unknown women, walk across borders in the dead of night, find my estranged wife in a 15th century Ottoman marketplace, and explore delightful villages far off the beaten trail.
This ebook is also enriched with photos from the author's wife's archive, and liberally sprinkled with links to related websites and photo archives.

Elmallah, Bouk 3, Image 5

About 2 weeks ago, on Nov. 29, I posted some preliminary images I was creating for the fifth image in my latest ebook now in production: The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 3. The image illustrates Dumuzee's servant betraying him to jackel-headed invaders. The two stanzas describing the scene can be found here:
http://shivvetee.blogspot.com/2014/11/more-images-for-song-ov-elmallah.html

At the time that I created the images in the previous post, working from Assyrian bas reliefs, I assumed I'd use the following image (in one form or another) for Dumuzee. It is a Sumerian bas relief of the god Enki. I had already begun working on it, as is obvious:

However, I then came across a remarkable wall carving from the Assyrian obelisk of Shalmaneser, showing King Jehu of Israel bowing to Shalmaneser. I decided to take some liberties with the Elmallah text (in the poem the servant is not described as bowing to the invaders), and use this detail from the obelisk for my servant. Here he is:

Merging the dogs into this image wasn't so easy, as the colors and backgrounds were not originally compatible. Hammer and chisel; chisel and hammer. I then chiseled in some cuneiform text (sure wish the soft clay hadn't hardened into limestone...), put on a little border of semi-precious stones, and here's how it turned out. Actually the original image is a png about 5mb and 2000x1200 pixels, but to post it here, I had to reduce it to a jpeg, 800x250, which still doesn't fit on this page. Click the image to view it:

More images for Song ov Elmallah

For the next image in Bouk 3 Dumuzee, the shepherd/king, has fled from invaders who want to plunder his treasure. They begin bartering with his chief servant. These are the verses for which the image is being created:

Then up thay roze tu hiz hows and tu hiz serven
And with the cheef ov hiz men thay barterd in sienz:
    “We wil giv yu a wel in its wotter....”
    He ternd awway.
    “We wil giv yu a kow in its burden....”
    He ternd awway.
    “And we wil giv yu a feeld in its grane....”

Then the cheef serven, he pointed with hiz hand.
With the rite hand, the hand with 5 ringz,
He pointed tu the eest.
With the left hand, the hand ov 4 ringz,
He pointed tu the west.
With wun, he pointed tu the ruwenz,
    The abandond sittee.
With the uther he pointed tu the dwelling
    Ware the serven huddeld.
Fienlee he pointed tu the gulleez
    In the fouthilz north.
Then the jakkel hedded wunz
Tor him appart and devowerd him.
~~~~~~~~~
 
In the image, we see the chief servant (a Sumerian carving of Enki) pointing, while he is surrounded by dogs (taken from a Nineven wall carving). Here are 2 sets of the dogs, 2 versions of each:

Image for Song ov Elmallah, complete

The follow-up to my post of Nov, 25, 2014, http://shivvetee.blogspot.com/2014/11/image-for-song-ov-elmallahz-kumming.html .
Well, of course, I don't think of any of my work as ever really complete or finished, but here's the state of the art during my current state of mind:

Giv us Dumuzee!

Image for Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 3

I'm creating the images for the third ebook in the Song ov Elmallah series. The 2 alternative (but still incomplete) images below are meant to accompany the following verses:

Then Dumuzee fled tu the dichez ov Arrollee
Tu the baren kuntree ware the winter fludz gowj,
Az the liyon-hedded areyanz dessended on thaer rafts.
Frum the rivver thay roze tu hiz hows and hiz wife,
Tu hiz sister-wife hu waz hottee and prowd.
In thaer jawz thay touk her [Innonna]
And tosst thaer hedz,
Then dragd her thru the street
And roerd:
     “Giv us Dumuzee!”
     “Giv us the wun hu haz 1 lofe,
     “Hu haz 2 loevz, giv us him!”

These 2 images differ only in the shading of Innonna's face. I'm wondering which you prefer. Email me, or use the comment function at the bottom of this post. Thanx.

2 poetry titles now live and for sale!

After many months of work, I have completed all the audio, image, and video production for my latest ebook, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1. If you've visited this site in the last 6 months, no doubt you've seen some of the work as it evolved.

Now, after a 2 day crush of work, I put it all together into an ebook, and the book is now live and for sale at my publisher's site, The Vook Store. As a sort of bonus, a book I published earlier thru Vook, but which got caught in a glitch and remained stuck in the pipeline until today, The Atternen Jewz Talen, Era 1, is also now live and available at The Vook Store.

Here are the links, and after that, brief book descriptions. The books are $4.99 each, the price of, what, a latte? So buy them and enjoy them for many hours and years! Maybe they'll even change your life (and for the sake of full disclosure, that's my intention).

The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1:
http://store.vook.com/storefronts/book/the-song-ov-elmallahz-kumming-bouk-1.html#.Ubt8kZxaY8A


The Atternen Jewz Talen, Era 1:
http://store.vook.com/storefronts/book/the-atternen-jewz-talen-era-1.html#.UbtynZxaY8A

All of Vook's poetry titles:
http://store.vook.com/storefronts/book/?bisac_subject=Poetry

A brief description of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1:
The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming is a long narrative poem in 6 books. In this, the first book, Elmallah, a divine messenger, is sent to Ertha to awaken her. Although she dwells as a shadow in a shadowy wilderness, Elmallah is instructed to liberate her latent beauty, power, and desire. In the process, attracted by her beauty, Elmallah loses his way in her world.
The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming is the epic story of the man of God whose heart is captured by the one he is sent to redeem.
The ebook is illustrated by me, and enhanced with audio of the poem being read, and 3 short videos of text and image. Earlier in my career I produced illuminated manuscripts. Now I am trying to bring that kind of graphic skill and elegance to my electronic books.

A brief description of The Atternen Jewz Talen, Era 1:
This book contains the opening pages of the diaries of the Eternal Jew (aka the Wandering Jew). In the opening scene he describes Jerusalem in his youth, as it was in 30 CE. He then recounts his meeting with a revolutionary named Jesus. Realizing he has left out some critical information, he turns back to the origins of humanity, telling what he knows about those early days.
This is not the Eternal Jew you might have heard about from unreliable or hate-mongering sources. He is a wise and engaging fellow, proudly Jewish, with a biting wit, and a wry but mystical view of worldly events and his place in them.
The story is told in two versions. The original text is an altered English where words and ideas morph, one into another, using a strictly phonetic spelling. To help the reader, however, a translation into standard English follows each stanza. As a further help, each stanza is followed by an embedded reading, so one can listen to the story, and read along at the same time.
The story is further enriched by beautiful graphics, and selected scans taken directly from the author’s notebooks. The final chapter of the book is a collection of useful source material and links for further study and exploration.

Her Divvine Apparritten

As I close in on completing the audio (done), images (almost done), and videos (I *think* I'm done) for the ebook version of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1, I completed this image last night, Her Divvine Apparritten. If you have been following these posts, you'll recognize the 3 portraits that I have used to convey Ertha's emerging personality. They have appeared in a number of images. The intention is to build narrative continuity in the imagery, and to help visualize and build boundaries for the panoramic sweep of the poetry. This particular image accompanies these lines:

I saw theez events, in meerriyadz, flicker
Like sellz that form the hewman boddee,
Lievz and moments in korrona ov Ertha
Forming her Divvine Apparritten.

Her Alkemmek Boddee, 2

After completing the image posted on May 6, entitled Her Alkemmek Boddee, I began to experiment, trying to elevate the image so that it would convey a more out-of-body, or spiritual body experience. Here are 8 versions. The first 5 are fairly similar. If you like any of them I'd love to hear which one(s). I've numbered them for your convenience.

1. 

 2.

 3.

 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Her Alkemmek Boddee

Moving forward with Bouk 1, the following excerpt, stanzas 7-9, describes some of Elmallah's first impressions of Ertha. Below the poetry is the accompanying image for the book.

Astonnisht, my eyz saw intu her miend
                Beyond her minewt fabrek ov nervz
                That bownd her sensez
                In a dust-brown skin:
        Intu the spektrum
        Ov evree deziyer poring frum her loinz;
        Intu the prizzemz sparkling and pulsing
        With ideyaz arrownd her hed;
        Intu the intermixxing hewz ov need--
        Tenderness, kruwaltee, feer, aggressen--
        Mingelling beneeth her tranzlusent fase,
        Sentering eech in a chamber ov her miend.
   
                Arrownd her hed the lite
                Like flamez in the wake
                Surrownding a meteyor;
                Within her eyz, like a spray ov sparks
                Poring frum an overstoekt brik kiln.
                Evree thot and ideya
                Adding kuller tu her vizzij
                Az it touk shape in the glume.
       
                I saw shaddoez por owt ov her vajjina
                Like silveree dolfinz leeping frum the see,
                Like a minnotawr reering in nu fownd freedem
                And shaking hiz fureyus hed.

 

Arrownd her klay silluwet, 5; complete

I have completed my planned series of images for the the opening scenes of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1. Here they are: 3 individual portraits of Ertha, a composite portrait of Ertha, and a composite portrait representing Arrownd her klay silluwet.

Ertha on first appearance:

 
Ertha, ashamed, or modest:

Ertha in her becoming:

Ertha, a psychological portrait:

Arrownd her klay silluwet:

Arrownd her klay silluwet, 4

I continue to work on my ebook version of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1. I had expected it would be a simple project, quickly completed, since this first book in the series is but 10 pages long. However, I then decided to take advantage of the expanded features available to ebooks. Specifically, I chose to create illustrations for it, lay in audio of the verses, and even produce a few short video impressions of scenes and ideas. And thus a 2 week project has extended out into many months.

Since January 31, most of the posts on this blog have been devoted to experiments and completed images I have produced as I develop the ebook. This is the 4th in a series of images I have been working on for one scene which includes the line “Arrownd her klay silluwet....”

In this post I present 5 images I developed of a nude. Actually, I produced about 15 or 20 versions of this image after I created the basic foundation. These are my 5 favorites. One of them will become one of 4 layers that will comprise the image “Arrownd her klay silluwet.”

Arrownd her klay silluwet, 3

Working on the uppermost layer of the image to illustrate the stanzas from The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1, with the line "arrownd her klay silluwet" embedded in them, I have created the following images.
Each of the layers in the completed (multi-layer) image will be reused, as part of an on-going image-narrative that evolves in a parallel manner with the poem's narrative.

Song of Elmallah, image 2

I continue to develop the images to illustrate Bouk 1 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. Below is the second image, but first, perhaps these brief technical notes will help the reader/viewer understand a little better what I’m trying to do.

My poetry is highly layered, like a painting that uses multiple thin layers of translucent color to build up depth and accuracy of image. Our “seeing” of the world, in the same way, is a complex interpretive event, that lays narrative and value into sensory inputs. Our senses are not clear windows on “reality”. They are lenses with a large, mostly unconscious set of filters, in place at the outset by a synapsed nervous system, and then built up thru layers of mind (a crude list): emotions, needs, intellect, experience, conscience, soul/spirit (a vague term because our tools are weakest here).

I try to diffract and expose some of this thru my images, both textual and visual. In the visual image below, the abstract “background” is the chaos, the tohu and vohu, the perspective-less consciousness out of which we create narrative. In this image we discern three women, and with the poem as background, we can construct a tenuous narrative out of the atomized and incoherent ground in which they are embedded.

The image below, entitled Arrownd Her Klay Silluwet, accompanies the following lines that can be found in the early part of the poem, when Elmallah (an angel descending from the upper genomes) first encounters Ertha:

I ternd awway
But agen loukt bak.
    Wen Lots wife loukt bak
    Tu the Soddem that she fled,
    Her Sol kristeld in salt.
    Wen Polladekteez ternd frum revvelree
    Tu reseev hiz gift,
    Proteyus held the hed ov Meddusa
    And froze him intu stone.
    Wen Eddippus ternd and staggerd
    Frum the bed ware he
    And hiz muther had lain,
    He gowjd hiz eyz with redhot pinz.
Wen I loukt bak
Her tangeld hare wuz kut and koemd;
Her hed wuz bownd in kloth.
Her hips, her legz, her kumlee brests
Wer titelee rapt in dust-brown muzlin.
Akros her fase emotenz rippeld
Like wind akros the surfas ov a bay.
But arrownd her klay silluwet:
A korrona, like the Sol in eeklips.


(In most browsers, if you click on the image you can view it in larger format.)

Song ov Elmallah, image 1

Last night I completed the following image, to be embedded in an upcoming ebook, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming, Bouk 1.

The image (below) will accompany the opening stanzas of the poem:

Az if the sunrize
Had not yet begun
And thare on a hill,
Ware the ful moon hung
Entangeld in parcht akkasiyaz,
She muevd, her owtlienz obskure.

Az if thay wer smoke,
Frum a smoldering fiyer
Koiling in kazhewal ternz
Like tendrilz abowt the akkasiya branchez,
Her thots drifted in that wilderness.

Song ov Elmallahz Kumming: video 2

On 1/31/13 I posted a video for my ebook of Bouk 1 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. Here is a slight revision, with altered text fonts, based on your feedback:

Song ov Elmallahz Kumming: video

I am preparing an ebook edition of my poem, The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. Actually, it will be 6 ebooks, one for each book of the poem. The first book is the shortest, about 300 lines or 8 pages. However, the ebook will have both stevetok and normtok versions, audio tracks of the poem in 2-4 stanza clips, a complete reading of the poem, and will include many illustrations and images as well. It will also include at least one video, an impressionistic interpretation of the opening scene of the poem, 28 seconds long (without title and credits, which I'll add later).

Here's the video. Naturally, I would greatly appreciate your critical feedback.

Announcing A Pilgrimmage tu Jerusalem ebook

I'm pleased to announce that my ebook, A Pilgrimmage tu Jerusalem is now available for purchase online at these locations:

Through Vook, where I built the book:
http://vook.com/storefronts/book/a-pilgrimmage-tu-jerusalem.html#.UGnahFFXl8E

The Apple iTunes store:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/a-pilgrimmage-tu-jerusalem/id566967849?mt=11

Through Amazon, for the Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Pilgrimmage-tu-Jerusalem-ebook/dp/B009K4MH1W/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1349282878&sr=1-1

Soon to be available through B&N for the Nook.

It's great reading, including illustrations by the author!

Announcing... Ottoman Beachcomber For Sale

Yes, it's official! Ottoman Beachcomber is available as an ebook for the modest price of $4.99. Simply click on the following link to preview or purchase:

http://vook.com/storefronts/book/ottoman-beachcomber.html#.UDJITqNrVTa

The link above accesses the Vook portal. Vook is the cloud software I use to build and market ebooks. But you can also find Ottoman Beachcomber on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and via iBooks.

It's a great read. Buy it today!

Old caravanserai in Beysehir, Turkey

Working on a fair copy of a poem in book 6 of The Song ov Elmallahz Kumming. The poem is fairly short, 36 lines, but because of some technical complexities, it has gone thru untold numbers of revisions. I'm closing in, and will publish it here, soon, with a peek behind the surface, to some of the discarded and unrevised lines. In the meantime...

I continue to work on digitizing and restoring slides of Turkey taken in 1983 and 1986. I intend to use some of them for my ebook, Ottoman Beachcomber. Yesterday I came across this image, which allowed for some surprising results. Here's the original, a shot of a ruins of a rather grand caravanserai (pre-industrial truck stop; caravan resting place) in Beyşehir (pronounced BAY-sha-heer), a small town in south central Turkey.

There wasn't much I could do with this to enhance it while remaining true to its realism. But then again, as I see it, realism is just the surface of things. With not much effort, I found a lot of color lurking behind the surface. First this:

Which quickly revealed this:

Then this:

And then finally, taking some color away, this:

Who knew there were all those gemstones in the matrix of stone and the mortar mix? In 1983 when we first came across this site, this last picture approximates what I saw. The image prior to the last one is what I speculate Nancy saw when she clicked the shutter.