Staalsraat

STAALSTRAAT

In Amsterdam, in the old harbour district, on the corner next to a bridge over one of the narrower canals, stood a seventeenth century house. The sidewall was heavily shored up with timber beams to stop the house from collapsing before it could be restored. One day, one year? The neighbours got used to seeing a weathered wooden sign nailed to the building: 'onbewoonbaar verklaard' – declared uninhabitable - or as they said: 'onverklaarbaar bewoond' - inexplicably inhabited – and accepted it as the normal state of affairs.

The small shop in front was let on the quiet to a lady who made a living repairing nylon stockings. Nylons were expensive and laddered easily, so she had plenty of customers and sat all day behind the counter with her buzzing little machine, working her way through stacks and stacks of stockings.

The large kitchen behind the shop and the first floor were let to another young lady, a lady with long black hair who worked in a small basement bookshop not far away.

The gas ring in the kitchen worked well, the toilet in the corner did not, and had to be flushed with a bucket of water, the cellar underneath the kitchen was permanently flooded with seepage water from the canal across the road. From the kitchen a spiral staircase led to the living room upstairs and a few steps up again to the storage space above the shop. That storage space was actually a very nice room if you didn't mind ducking between the heavy oak ceiling joists: there was ample headroom between the joists.

The lady with the long black hair called the storage space 'front room' and, to help pay her rent, she decided to sublet it to a young man with a bushy red beard, a zoologist who had aspirations to become a painter.

The man loved the place and a room-warming party was in order. He invited friends: artists, some students, a nurse, and a young art teacher with wavy black hair and a short black beard. That day the art teacher was only teaching till 4 o'clock and asked his friend: ' Will you be home by then?'

'No, but that's no problem. Come whenever suits you. My landlady may not be home yet either, but then the stocking lady in the shop can let you in. Make yourself at home upstairs.'

When the art teacher walked into the shop the stocking lady told him: 'I think she might be in already, just knock on that door.'

A young lady let him in. He introduced himself: 'You don't mind me waiting here in your home?'

'Of course not. I'm Karen. My boarder won't be long, so we might as well have dinner together. Can you cook liver?'

'Sure.'

'Here, you cut the onions while I start the potatoes.'

They talked while he fried the liver and onions and she prepared the vegetables. They talked about their love of music and their interest in books and writing and about the young man's plans for an exhibition of his lithographs and other artwork in an exclusive upstairs art gallery in the city. He told her the director of the Stedelijk Muzeum, Jhr. Sandberg, had taken a personal interest in him after some of his work had been on display there, and she told him she also knew Jhr. Sandberg, and they talked about the Conservatoire, where she had studied music, and Bach's St Matthew Passion, which he loved and in which she had sung.

The boarder with his red bushy beard and short russet hair came home, but they hardly noticed him. After dinner, the room-warming guests arrived and much later went home again, and they still didn't notice much.

Late that evening both were convinced love at first sight was real, very real, in that old house in the Staalstraat, and the date was 7 April 1956.


PS
We married on 19 September the same year, and are still happily married.

BEYOND THE SURFACE 5

There are other ways to get away from the surface-only concept we have lived with in our Western world for so many years. Other avenues to explore.

I asked my model to pose in a gentle, demure way first - her social mask - and followed that up with a subtly different pose, now showing what she really felt.
Cast the first pose in clear casting resin and embed a pigmented cast of the second pose partly inside the first one. Would that work? Surely?

She does not hide her social face, naturally, but her real, inner face? She never ever shows it, probably not even to herself any more. All you can see of her inner self is her back, turned to the outside world. So sad.

And from this side only a vague silhouette shows, an uncomfortable silhouette. She must have tried to escape, once, when she was still much younger?


And by the way, I know we are taught to have neutral backgrounds for this kind of photo. I often do, when I feel like it. But why should I follow conventions if this way I can have contrast where I want it - like around the head - and patterns where I prefer those.

Diary 5

We have now finalized the program for our house concert. Our circumstances have changed, so I had to change some of the instruments. And write new arrangements. And learn new combinations. And get new strings for my lyre. And spend hours tuning.
We haven't set a definite date yet, but it will be second half of October, on a Sunday afternoon.

HOUSE CONCERT, the program.

with Karen Cappèl, vocals, strings, percussion, Leo Cappèl, flutes, strings, percussion, and Pippa Lawlor, percussion.

Yo me soy la morenica - Spanish renaissance; Lisboa - Portugese fado; La mourisque - Tielman Susato, 1551; Cascarda allegreza d'amore - Italian dance, anon., published 1581; Saltarello Hupfauf - Tielman Susato 1551; Come again - John Dowland 1606; Bergerette sans roch - Tielman Susato 1551; Awake sweet love - John Dowland 1606; Spagnoletta - Late medieval rond dance. Anon.; Pas time - Henry VIII 1491 - 1547; Andante - Renaissance. Anon.; Bergerette - Shepherd dance. Tielman Susato 1551;
The jasmine - De Lavigne; Philou - Michael Prætorius 1571 - 1621; Canario - Italian dance, anon. published 1581; Grucea phorminx - Pindaros, ca. 522–443 BC; Los bibilicos - Anon. Ladino love song, pre 1500; Virelay - Anon. Trouvere melody 13th century; Saltarello - Anon. Traditional dance, ca. 1350; Menuet - Anon. Traditional dance, renaissance; Vogelkijn - Anon. Dutch renaissance.

The instruments: Gemshorns (medieval flutes, pre 1550); Psalteries; Lyre; Flageolet; Galoubet/tambourine de Béarn; Folk zither; Pan flute; Percussion.

Earth quake

All you brave people living through that horrible earthquake, wish you strength. At least you are alive, that is a big thing to be thankfull for.
And there will be some future, even if it doesn't feel like that yet.

Silence.
Wounds enclosing.
Smile, to hide the twisted scars.

SHORT STORY: LONG LEGS

LONG LEGS


I am an artist. Was an artist to be more exact, but I still feel like one. One can't help being an artist and do painting after painting, even if they don't sell and clutter up the whole house.

Not that selling my work was important, what I wanted was to create a new, living world of my own, of my feelings, of me. And that's precisely what I did. That afternoon I did a mono-print of a cabbage tree. An old and tired cabbage tree. A neighbour looked in, smiled, and said: 'That tree looks wise.' So I did another mono-print, this time of some pine trees, those unwanted pine trees which are hunted like criminals in some parts of our fair country. It didn't work out too well. I tried once more. Worse.

It left me rather disappointed. 'One final mono-print,' I thought. 'I must show what I feel. I'll make a print of a disappointed woman. They say women have stronger feelings than men, so that should work all right.'

It drew a nude. A nice figure, lying face down, her long hair hiding her face completely. She had her arms and legs folded under her body, and because of the composition I made her legs extra long, accentuating her hiding face.

After I had pinned the print on the wall to let the ink dry, I couldn't keep my eyes off it. I had to look at it over and over again, until she became uncannily lifelike. In fact she was no longer the mono-print I had just finished, she had started a life of her own. She became a woman whom I had never known before, with her own thoughts and her own ideas.

'Ah, there you are,' she snarled.

'What do you want?'

'Aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

'Ashamed? Whatever for?'

'Yes, ashamed,' and she laughed mockingly.

'Keep quiet you. You are nothing but my own creation.'

'And a nice creator you are.'

I heard laughter all around me. My woodcarvings and limestones, an oil painting on the wall, and even the clay studies laughed at me. And not particularly friendly either.

'Look at my legs. Look at what you have done to my legs!' She was standing in front of me now, still nude and at least a head taller than me.

'Well, I think you have very nice and shapely legs.'

'I bet you do. But why did you have to make them so long? Don't give me that composition nonsense. Oh, yes, very shapely, but how can I ever get properly dressed with those ridiculously long legs. When I go out into town I can never buy a dress to fit, or nice high-heeled shoes, all because of you. And don't you keep staring at me, have you never seen a nude woman before?'

'Just look at me!' a voice from the other side of the room yelled. It was a kauri woodcarving, who had climbed down from her plinth. 'Look at me. My legs are great, but what does that help me if I have no arms?'

'And what about me? It was a limestone figure this time, with an unusually deep sounding voice. 'What about me? My figure is perfect, and my arms and legs really beautiful too. But who would ever love me without a face?'

'Well, what are you going to do about us? You have created us, you are responsible for us,' said the young woman I had carved out of my best piece of kauri. She was sitting beside me on the seat now. I felt uneasy. She was so soft and warm looking. She was very nice indeed, but not to me.

'I . . . I still have a good piece of kauri left. If you'd like, I can carve you a pair of arms?'

'Big deal. You'd like that, wouldn't you?' That was the mono-print woman again. I did not like her, she definitely was not my type. 'I know you can give her new arms, probably even nicer arms than my own. And you'll give your limestone girlfriend a lovely face. I'm sure of that. But how about me? You can't shorten my legs.'

What could I do? How could I escape? I could not tear up that print any more, it was too late to burn the kauri wood. They were standing and sitting around me. Alive. Yes, it was too late now.

'And you can't escape.' That mono-print woman again. 'Just have a good look at us. Where-ever you go we will be with you, always, and when you go into a shop, we will be standing all around you at the counter. With legs too long, and never properly dressed.' 'Wait a moment.' I suddenly had a bright idea. 'I might be able to help you too. I could make another print of you. But I can't work with you all standing around me. Just get me a piece of paper and wait outside the room.'

'But don't try to escape. We won't let you.'

'No, but please leave me alone now. It won't be long, maybe half an hour? Please go now and wait outside the room.'

They really went. Now I had to hurry. This was my only chance. My mind was in turmoil, but my hands steady. Had to be. I took my black crayons, and started the best piece of work I had ever done. The best piece, but the last piece too. I worked like fury, sometimes curiously looking into the mirror. I put my whole life into this last drawing.

They can't hurt me any more now, with their long legs. They can't hurt me any more, now my self-portrait is finished.

I'm one of them now. She had no arms, but I am just a head. A head without a body. Just a head.

BEYOND THE SURFACE 4

'CARRIE' Better take it a step further. Ceramic, stainless steel rods and amethyst.

DIARY 4

I have been told the score of Suzy Rice was too small, so here it is once more

Beyond the surface, 3

Making the figure strongly stylized allowed me to show - and think of - the essence, without any distracting details. Unfortunately I could not think of any way to use this for portraits.


Our kids loved sitting in her lap, although they sometimes had to move the cat away first.

The milk-truck-driving lass

There are many ways of painting a picture. One way: I let one of the people in my novel 'PIV' sing a song. This one:

I’m a milk-truck-driving girl,

I’m a milk-truck-driving girl.

The early morning sunlight
paints a halo on the picture
My baby-daughter’s halo picture
pasted on the dash.
Ask the truckies, ask the farmers,
ask the helpers at the crèche,
They know me as the ever-working
milk-truck-driving lass.

I’m a milk-truck-driving girl,
I’m a milk-truck-driving girl.

The milk of seven herds of cows
is trailing at my back
The road bends round and up and round
and down and round and up.
The picture on the dashboard smiles:
just one more evening run.
My baby-girl is waiting
for her milk-truck-driving Mum.

I’m a milk-truck-driving girl,
I’m a milk-truck-driving girl.