MY EDENS AFTER BURNS
From the poem written by Val Kilmer ~ adapted by Laurence Fuller
In collaboration with Val Kilmer & Ruben Fro & Tania Rivilis & Jeremy Lipking & Henrik Uldalen & Goldcat & Ksenia Buridanova & Laurence Fuller
In the modern world cinema has become the vehicle for high concept multidisciplinary art, much like Opera was to generations before ~ incorporating cinematography, visual arts, literature, music and performance into a singular experience.
Today, we take this artform a step further to bring to the digital art space what we call “Cinematic Fine Art”
“My Edens After Burns” illustrates this cinematic notion through point cloud special effects by Ruben Fro, and the interpretation by artists Henrik Uldalen, Tania Rivilis, Goldcat, Jeremy Lipking, and Ksenia Buridanova, of a story written by Val Kilmer & Laurence Fuller.
The story, performed by classically trained actor Laurence Fuller, unfolds in the early morning of 1783.
At the dusk of America’s Revolutionary war, a young lady, named Lovie, peers out into the prairie waiting for her husband to return home from battle.
A portrait by the virtuoso painter and one of America’s premier realist artists Jeremy Lipking is revealed, and dissolved in point cloud vibrations by the maverick special effects artist Ruben Fro.
But what comes galloping up from the horizon was not her beloved husband, rather his fellow soldier, delivering an envelope stained with a drop of blood.
Predicting the worst, Lovie jumps on her horse and gallops into the valley, dust kicking up around her, she can’t think of anything but to escape. The animated painting by Tania Rivilis beautifully captures the high emotional tones of the piece.
She rides all day, tears streaming down her face. Until exhausted she settles by a camp fire and takes out the envelope left to her.
As she begins to read the letter, she is interrupted by the voice of the ghost of her newly deceased husband, depicted by Val Kilmer. Portrayed masterfully by the celebrated Neo-Classical painter Henrik Uldalen.
He has traveled back from a journey through the afterlife to visit his beloved one last time.
As night sets in, the ghost takes Lovie on a poetic journey through the afterlife, a final romantic rendezvous ~ through the magical realism of Ksenia Buridanova’s portrait that portray butterflies that explode in a combination of beauty and sorrow to light up the night sky over the forest.
In the final chapter, the dark of night reveals the voice of our narrator and the last message of Lovie’s husband through the expressive digital painting by Christie artist Goldcat.
A fitting climatic ending to this tragic romance.
Chapter I
Portrait by Jeremy Lipking
Picking splinters from her fingers,
The wood won’t chop itself,
Tin plate across the table,
Plates placed and for his return,
An empty cup for good health,
Petrified timber lined the floor,
Led to his old leather boots by the door,
Permanence stained by liberty’s war,
Beyond the dusty window framed,
A black uniform approaching from the gate,
His black leather glove grips an envelope,
Stained with a drop of blood,
Familiar bronze medals dropped into her hands,
The soldier’s solemn declaration:
Chapter II
Portrait by Tania Rivilis
It was the boys she worried for the most.
Untied Jasper from his post,
A whisper in her ear,
“Ride”
Echoes of his ghost.
The hot silent desert wind,
Turbulence of nothing,
Nothing rots or grows, only corrodes,
Along the broken dusty road.
Hooves crush rocks in a cloud of dust,
Scorpions scurry in the dusk,
Their father’s saddle worn,
Riding out into the savage plains,
How did it get this way,
Beneath the galloping,
Rubble and thorns,
Replicate the wayward,
The mattered main of an impassioned horse.
Launching forward at an impossible pace,
It’s neigh the only thing which rivaled her cry of pain,
She rode until the cool of night quenched the day.
Chapters III
Portrait by Henrik Uldalen
Dawn casts over Jasper’s hide,
She braced herself for the oncoming night,
Twenty miles from home,
Twenty miles from a red coat,
Huddled in the country where the savages roam,
Dug in the dirt with her toes,
All in dark but for the fire’s glow,
The dying flames of hope,
Time is but the remnants of a flame,
Ash is the dust of a forgotten life,
But all lives will pass again,
And you will find him in the dark,
For I passed through the heavens in a pillar of fire,
My soul was scorched,
And carried by an eternal choir,
Though each second for me is like a thousand years,
My love your face for me is so clear,
Chapter IV
Portrait by Ksenia Buridanova
Red lashes licked,
Beneath a red pool of cole,
Cynders in the buried parts of her soul,
A chorus of orange butterflies, burst into light
A shadow passes over, the glow
Jasper tramples in place,
She holds her head high with grace,
A man once fallen to flames,
Ash and cole covered his face,
Samuel did you find me?
“I live there, down the slow roads,
Across the mountains,
In the thimble holes,
where the gentle roamers,
Asking no one,
Tell only the secrets of their whole shattered lives,
To the wind,
Creating whipping and bleeding tools of the,
Tatter of jackets and buttons and brims,
The thin beginnings of skin,
Enough for these mostly men,
Listening to their hair grow in the darkness,
Limping on to heaven,
Whispering a lyric from a song on the radio,
Heard in the,
Train stop,
Truck stop,
Aching stop of the coffee shop heard thirty,
Years ago,
Now only the sound of the Santa Fe Railway,
singing:
The remnants of a tent on the hilltop slew,
His only known neighbor,
For what he never did to you,
I remember something different,
But could not do.
So you better find that bivouac in your soul, boys.
Strap her down, stake it tight,
For the whisper in the trees today is the
Wail of death in the wind tonight.
Chapter V
Portrait by Goldcat
Yes, I held such a precious in my arms one time.
She knew me through Edens after...
Of what knowledge she would own
Hereafter.
She was my maiden's song.
Oh the way she would hold the home thoughts
After the skin stopped pressing
after the summer's nesting
After the fool cut off his constant testing,
Dignity from God in her calm. Smile.
I took her first to second church
Where they spoke of those who furn
"mourning into dancing"
And I wrote her my real song
And sang it softly in her white ear
But I let her marry the wrong hymn
Very of very nights
And after, only once hummed it to myself
Then burned the lyrics in the only fire that
Off the slow roads
Across the mountains
In the thimble holes,
where the gentle roamers
Asking no one
Are bound
to be free.
Go on then, pour a little oil
pour on a little gentle charity. “
Disappeared behind campfire’s smoke,
Eden’s afterburn,
And I gave her this note, from my red coat,
To the wife of a soldier I had known.