Rainbow Ride by Carmela Tal Baron

I am a painter, poet and writer, she says, and most recently lyricist, composer and a performer of my own work.... Turtle Island Is In Mourning*.... Quite extraordinary song and performance."

* Included in Woody's Children: Six Months Later (Folk songs in response to 9-11, March 10, 2002), and in the CD Rainbow Ride (Track 3).

The song Tea Ceremony (Rainbow Ride, Track 11) features in Robert Sherman's program Woody's Children: Cream of the Summer Crop (WFUV 90.7, Public Radio from Fordham University, September 15, 2002).

ARTIST'S NOTE

Born In the Year of the Horse

Born in the Year of the Horse, I was always fascinated with the animal spirit. As a child, I was not allowed to pet a dog. Perhaps this was where the elephant spirit stepped in as a virtual pet and guide. The Horse of many colors was aroused to rescue me. My relationship with the Horse grew through myth and guided imagery, like a home remedy. Early on, the horse image was attractive, yet intimidating. It was not yet an intimate relationship of a woman who yearns to tame and ride horses as a way of mastering something in herself. Rather, a romantic way of looking at masculine forms of energy, living metaphors running free in the wild to be captured as art forms. As an illustrator, I enjoyed creating the galloping red horse for Dahlia Ravikovitch's children's poem, A Horse Named Tartarus, and more so spinning my pen to draw horses as curling lines in motion for Isaac Bashevis Singer's children's book, Good Luck and Bad Luck. Born in the land of the Bible, my imagination was fired by the red horse and other textured horses mentioned by the prophet Zechariah, and by the Neptunian sea horses riding the mighty waves. The four horses of the apocalypse started galloping through my artist's palette. In trying to unveil the mystery presented in the Book of John, I watched the rider of the white horse holding a bow, crowning me with a vow to rise above the shadows. I was attracted and repelled by the ambiguity of the red horse, moved by the rider of the black horse holding a scale, and protesting the death message of the greenish horse. It was the white horse that led me to the much-needed synthesis, the creation of the Rainbow Horse image (the cover artwork for the CD and the inspiration for the title song), galloping through a window in time into a new millennium.

Carmela Tal Baron

Summer Solstice 2002

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