This work is an alterpiece painting I completed for Gordon Froud's curated, travelling exhibition, Altered Pieces: Songs of Leonard Cohen (also featuring works by Diane Victor, Chris Diedericks, Anthony Paton and others). This piece entiteled Stories of the Street (after the song of the same name) is based on the Ghent alterpiece and the Arnolfini Wedding (Iv'e always secretly been chomping at the bit to do something'Flemish' and here was my chance):
Ann-Marie Tully, The stories of the street (2012).Oil on Board
Stories Of The Street (lyrics)
The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh.
The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas,
and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose,
yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.
I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come,
the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone.
But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk,
All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?
And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel,
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.
The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask
the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.
And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,
and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.
O come with me my little one, we will find that farm
and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm.
And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am,
O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.
With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl
I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky,
and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.
-Originally from the album Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967).
Alternate version by Beck’s Record Club: Songs of Leonard Cohen (2010).
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