TOM CLARK: Baudelaire: Moesta et Errabunda / they're never going to believe we were driven underground by a giant stuffed bunny just before the war

_DSC6713: photo by Pierre Wayser, 12 August 2017

L1003122 | Hong Kong 2009: photo by Pierre Wayser, 16 March 2009

L1002884 | Hong Kong 2009: photo by Pierre Wayser, 15 March 2009

Charles Baudelaire: Moesta et Errabunda

Dis-moi, ton coeur parfois s'envole-t-il, Agathe,
Loin du noir océan de l'immonde cité,
Vers un autre océan où la splendeur éclate,
Bleu, clair, profond, ainsi que la virginité ?

Dis-moi, ton coeur parfois s'envole-t-il, Agathe!

La mer, la vaste mer, console nos labeurs!
Quel démon a doté la mer, rauque chanteuse
Qu'accompagne l'immense orgue des vents grondeurs,

De cette fonction sublime de berceuse?
La mer, la vaste mer, console nos labeurs!

Emporte-moi, wagon! enlève-moi, frégate!
Loin! loin! ici la boue est faite de nos pleurs!

- Est-il vrai que parfois le triste coeur d'Agathe
Dise : Loin des remords, des crimes, des douleurs,
Emporte-moi, wagon, enlève-moi, frégate?

Comme vous êtes loin, paradis parfumé,

Où sous un clair azur tout n'est qu'amour et joie,
Où tout ce que l'on aime est digne d'être aimé,
Où dans la volupté pure le coeur se noie!
Comme vous êtes loin, paradis parfumé!

Mais le vert paradis des amours enfantines,
Les courses, les chansons, les baisers, les bouquets,
Les violons vibrant, derrière les collines,
Avec les brocs (le vins, le soir, dans les bosquets,

Mais le vert paradis des Amours enfantines,

L'innocent paradis, plein de plaisirs furtifs,
Est-il déjà plus loin que l'Inde et que la Chine?
Peut-on le rappeler avec des cris plaintifs,
Et l'animer encor d'une voix argentine,
L'innocent paradis plein de plaisirs furtifs?

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867): Moesta et Errabunda, 1851, from Les Fleurs du Mal (1857)

1978_55566 | Philippines 1978 Marinduque, Philippines 1978: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1978

_MG2903 [Musée de la Marine, Paris]: photo by Pierre Wayser, 18 August 2011

Moesta et Errabunda

Agatha, does your heart rise up and fly,
Far from the city's black and sordid sea
Towards a sea that's blue as any sky,
And clear and deep as pure virginity?
Agatha, does your heart rise up and fly?

The sea, the mighty sea, consoles our labour.
What demon taught the sea with raucous verse
To choir the organ which the winds belabour
And lullaby our sorrows like a nurse?
The sea, the mighty sea, consoles our labour.

Train, bear me; take me, ship, to other climes!
Far, far! For here the mud is made of tears.
— Does Agatha's sad heart not say, at times,
"Far from remorses, sorrows, crimes, and fears,
Train, bear me; take me, ship, to other climes"?

How distant is that perfumed paradise!
Where all is joy and love with azure crowned,
Where all one loves is truly worth the price,
And hearts in pure voluptuousness are drowned.
How distant is that perfumed paradise!

But the green paradise of childish love,
Of races, songs, and kisses, and bouquets,
Of fiddles shrilling in the hills above,
And jars of wine, and woods, and dying rays —
But the green paradise of childish love,

Innocent paradise of furtive joys,
Is it far off as India or Hong Kong?
Could it be conjured by a plaintive voice
Or animated by a silver song —
That far off paradise of furtive joys?

Charles Baudelaire: Moesta et Errabunda, English version by Roy Campbell, 1952

SDIM1095 | Paris: photo by Pierre Wayser, 5 April 2008

1985_9922 | Eighties [Paris]: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1985

1988_9984 | Eighties: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1988

1908_9904 | Sydney 1988: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1988

1974_8624 | Seventies: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1974

1976_6252 | Seventies: photo by Pierre Wayser, sometime in 1976

_MG_8424: photo by Pierre Wayser, 25 March 2011

Dieter Zetsche (L), chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG, and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toast the new Mercedes-Benz G-Class at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). #GettyImagesNews: image via scott olson @olsongetty, 15 January 2018

For $350k I guess you would expect your #Rolls-Royce Dawn to come with an umbrella stashed in the door jam. #NAIAS #GettyImagesNews: image via scott olson @olsongetty, 14 January 2018

_DSF2694 | Paris: photo by Pierre Wayser, 12 November 2011

Evening fog along the East River #gettyimagesnews #fog #weather #dusk #blue #river #water #nyc #newyorkcity: image via Drew Angerer @drewangerer, 12 January 2018

#Philippines 12,000 flee as lava oozes from Philippine volcano Photo Simvale Sayat #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 15 January 2018

GAZA CITY - A Palestinian woman and her children are seen on the doorstep of their home in Gaza City Photo @mohmdabed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 15 January 2018

No umbrella for Barron as he boards Air Force One with @realDonaldTrump #TrumpInPalmBeach: image via George Bennett @gbennettpost, 15 January 2018

Trump: downgrading Liberty since 2016 | by ADMurr

Trump: downgrading Liberty since 2016 [Trump shithole, LA]: photo by Andrew Murr, 13 January 2018

A projection is seen on the Trump International Hotel in Washington.: photo by Reuters, 14 January 2018

_MG_4986 | Paris: photo by Pierre Wayser, 11 August 2012

#Afghanistan An Afghan man sews clothes as he works in a cloth factory in Mazar-i-Sharif Photo @Farshadusyan #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 15 January 2018

#Greece A woman leaves the closed entrance of an Athens' metro station during a 24-hours general strike. Photo @ArisMessinis #AFP.: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 15 January 2018

_DSF3533 | Paris: photo by Pierre Wayser, 22 July 2011

A Pegasus Airlines aircraft is pictured after it skidded off the runway at Trabzon airport by the Black Sea in Turkey: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 15 January 2018

The way the hill was [Contra Costa, California]: photo by efo, December 2017

Martin Luther King, Jr., lies at the feet of civil-rights activists pointing in the direction of his assassin. The Lorraine Motel, where King was murdered, later became a civil-rights museum.: photo by Joseph Louw / The Life Images Collection / Getty, 4 April 1968

The Lorraine Motel and Martin Luther King: Allyson Hobbs, The New Yorker, 18 January 2016

The Lorraine Motel, located at 450 Mulberry Street, in downtown Memphis, opened its doors in the mid-twenties. It had sixteen rooms and stood just east of the Mississippi River. It was first named the Windsor Hotel, and later the Marquette Hotel. Then, in 1945, Walter and Loree Bailey bought it and named it after Loree, as well as the popular song "Sweet Lorraine," which artists including Rudy Vallée, Teddy Wilson, and Nat King Cole had recorded. The couple expanded the hotel by adding more guest rooms and drive-up access, transforming it into a motel. It was a modest establishment, but it would change everything about their lives.

As a hotel, the Windsor and the Marquette were all-white establishments. Under the Baileys’ ownership, the Lorraine Motel became a safe haven for black travellers and visitors to Memphis. The motel was listed in "The Negro Motorist Green Book," also known as the Green Guide, a compilation of hotels, restaurants, gas stations, beauty parlors, barber shops, and other businesses that were friendly to African-Americans during the Jim Crow era. Given the motel’s proximity to Beale Street and Stax Records, black songwriters and musicians would stay at the Lorraine while they were recording in Memphis. Negro League baseball players and the Harlem Globetrotters also spent time at the motel. The Baileys welcomed black and white guests, served home-cooked meals, and offered an upscale environment. Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Ethel Waters, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, and Nat King Cole were all guests. As Isaac Hayes reminisced, “We’d go down to the Lorraine Motel and we’d lay by the pool and Mr. Bailey would bring us fried chicken and we’d eat ice cream. . . . We’d just frolic until the sun goes down and [then] we’d go back to work.” Two famous songs, "In the Midnight Hour" and "Knock on Wood," were written at the motel.

Luther King, Jr., was the Lorraine Motel’s most famous guest. He stayed at the motel numerous times while visiting the city, and again in the spring of 1968, when he came to Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers. On April 4, 1968, he stepped out of Room 306 and talked to friends in the parking lot below. He asked the saxophonist Ben Branch to play "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at the rally that evening. As King turned to walk back into his room, a bullet struck him in the neck, taking his life instantly. Loree Bailey suffered a stroke when she heard the shot fired. She died on April 9th, the same day as King’s funeral.

Walter Bailey continued to run the motel, but he never rented Room 306 again. He turned it into a memorial. The room has been preserved to capture exactly what it looked like on that tragic night. There are two beds. (King was sharing the room with Dr. Ralph Abernathy, a friend.) King’s bed was not fully made because he was not feeling well and had been lying down. Dishes left in the room were from the kitchen where Loree Bailey prepared food for the motel’s guests.

In 1982, Walter Bailey declared bankruptcy and stood by helplessly as his high-end establishment became a brothel. The Lorraine would have been sold at auction, but the Save the Lorraine organization bought it and decided to transform it into a museum.

The Lorraine Motel still stands on Mulberry Street. It is instantly recognizable, and appears as though suspended in another time. Two large cars—a white 1959 Dodge Royal with lime green fins and a white 1968 Cadillac—are parked in front of the motel, and the aqua doors to the rooms are numbered with a sparse font. The large motel sign features “Lorraine” printed in a dramatic script against a bright yellow background, and “Motel” is written in large red block letters, each letter stamped inside its own white circle. A large white wreath hangs on the balcony outside Room 306, to memorialize the spot where King stood at the time of the assassination. Standing in front of the motel transports visitors to a bygone era. If you close your eyes, the iconic photograph of King’s friends pointing off into the distance, at the place from which they believed the shot was fired, comes into sharp view.

The motel is now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum. Filled with artifacts, films, oral histories, and interactive media, the exhibits guide visitors through five centuries of history, from slave resistance to the numerous protests of the American civil-rights movement. The dulcet voice of the gospel singer and civil-rights activist Mahalia Jackson fills the small corridor where visitors can gaze into Room 306. (Jackson performed "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at his funeral.) Visits to the museum conclude with a video of images of the anti-apartheid movement, the election of President Obama, and other major events of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As visitors exit the museum, they glimpse their shadows cast against a wall of silhouetted marchers, a symbolic way of encouraging visitors to join the ongoing movement for racial justice and equality.

Walter Bailey died in July, 1988, just over a year after the motel closed. He did not live to see the opening of the National Civil Rights Museum, in 1991. His “Sweet Lorraine” would never be the same building that had held so much promise when he and Loree bought it. Perhaps there is some consolation in knowing that the Lorraine welcomes more guests now than ever before.

The Lorraine [Memphis]: photo by Andrew Murr, 26 May 2017

All above | Ke'e beach, Kaua'i: photo by efo, 31 December 2017

All above | Ke'e beach, Kaua'i: photo by efo, 31 December 2017

The happy seagull flapped toward its terrified shrinking mother, who turned to run but as in a dream found her feet tangled and confused, realized she was caught in the mud and could not move

All above | Ke'e beach, Kaua'i: photo by efo, 31 December 2017