W R I T T E N · W OR K

P R O S E

AWAKENING

By Robert Ranieri, 2015

 

 

Low slanting shafts of winter sun extend from the sun porch to the large heavy red burgundy rug on the living room floor. Each corner had an intricate design of gold spear shaped leaves.


Here, like a small animal curling into repose, one could remain to feel the ochre gold leaves rise above the burgundy, to form a concealment from the red exspanse. It was Zio Frank's gift of a new record player that changed old records automatically, that first brought symphonic music into this day. An entire symphonic work unraveled around me. My pre-adolescence prior to knowing art as a significant experience, was now evolving into a landscape of rich sounds that carried the eye through and into unknown events.
One could move weightless and follow the moving stream, yet not know that music instruments with musicians were making this happen. I know of no other work of written music that can surpass Beethoven's Symphony #6 for voice or for orchestra than this his Pastoral, that can convey such a rich interplay of visual illusions vis-a-vis the full complex of music instruments.


There are numerous works in diverse mediums; music, painting, architecture, poetry, that are superb beyond belief, in presenting original material that brings a person to a place in consciousness difficult to match any other way. That burgundy rug with bars of sunlight, was turned into a nesting place, where the spirit could prosper.


Music notation on the page early on, soon became a filegree' screen that I tried to read, but could, only after learning to do so by memorizing the sound by heart. This notation would gradually enter my painting in various permutations or disguises, over decades of studio work. Overlays or veils became a necessity, that would reappear at determined conditions, with multi panel paintings and even the front gates to my house, can be traced to music notation.


My father was a ladies custom tailor and furrier, and as a child I was allowed to collect scraps of fur witch I joined to make an animal and turned my mothers sun room potted plants into a wild jungle.


Curiously, my father's home town was known for his two uncles that worked in wrought iron, which was seen as screens in churches, as ornamental public gates, and fashioned into filegree' vases and balcony screens. A large painted sign, "Fratelli Ranieri" (ornamental iron work), though now gone, was still visible when as a student, I visited the miedeval walled town of Guardiagrele in central Italy decades ago.

 

 

 

© 2003-2024 RobertRanieri.com

 

LAR