#tom o bedlam

[skelleste]

Mad Tom and Mad Maudlin, OCs based on the famous 17th century mad poems Tom o’ Bedlam and Mad Maudlin’s Search.

#oc #character design #original character #tom #maudlin #mad song #tom o bedlam #mad maudlin #monster #bedlam #mad maudlin's search #mad tom #serious art #portfolio #O

[that-gay-jedi]

Always loved this channel but especially this rendition of the poem that first introduced 10 year old me to Edgar Allen Poe, which led me to all sorts of morbid literature and eventually to my obsession with tragedy in theatre, which unbeknownst to me predisposed me to like the Star Wars prequels long before I ever saw them.

#poe #edgar allen poe #illneas #spoken poetry #tom o bedlam

[pandaemoniumpancakes]

I know more than Apollo, For oft, when he lies sleeping I see the stars at bloody wars In the wounded welkin weeping; The moon embrace her shepherd, And the Queen of Love her warrior, While the first doth horn the star of morn, And the next the heavenly Farrier.         While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,         Feeding, drink, or clothing;         Come dame or maid, be not afraid,         Poor Tom will injure nothing. The gypsies, Snap and Pedro, Are none of Tom's comradoes, The punk I scorn and the cutpurse sworn, And the roaring boy's bravadoes. The meek, the white, the gentle Me handle, touch, and spare not; But those that cross Tom Rynosseros Do what the panther dare not.         Although I sing, Any food, any feeding,         Feeding, drink, or clothing;         Come dame or maid, be not afraid,         Poor Tom will injure nothing. With a host of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander. By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end: Methinks it is no journey.         Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,         Feeding, drink, or clothing;         Come dame or maid, be not afraid,         Poor Tom will injure nothing

from ‘Tom o' Bedlam’. 

   “I slept not since the Conquest,/ Till then I never wakèd,/ Till the roguish boy of love where I lay/ Me found and stript me nakèd.“

#tom o bedlam #lear #king lear

[theoutcastrogue]

Shannon - Bedlam Boys

For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, Ten thousand miles I’ve traveled. Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes, For to save her shoes from gravel

  Still I sing bonnie boys, bonnie mad boys   Bedlam boys are bonnie   For they all go bare and they live by the air   And they want no drink nor money

I went down to Satan’s kitchen To break my fast one morning And there I got souls piping hot All on the spit a-turning.

There I took a cauldron Where boiled ten thousand harlots Though full of flame I drank the same To the health of all such varlets.

Me staff has murdered giants And me bag a long knife carries For to cut mince pies from children’s thighs With which to feed the fairies

No gypsy, slut or doxy Shall win my mad Tom from me I’ll weep all night, with stars I’ll fight The fray shall well become me

So drink to Tom of Bedlam Go fill the seas in barrels I’ll drink it all, well brewed with gall And maudlin drunk I’ll quarrel

The spirits white as lightening Would on me travels guide me The stars would shake and the moon would quake Whenever they espied me

The moon’s my constant mistress, And the lowly owl my marrow; The flaming drake and the night crow make Me music to my sorrow.

Original tune by The Halliard, first recorded by Steeleye Span as “Boys of Bedlam”, 1971. The lyrics are from “Mad Maudlin’s Search”, the reply to Tom o’ Bedlam, early 17th century. Other versions: Hickey and Sparks, Heidi Talbot, Heather Alexander, The Bedlam Boys, John Roberts and Tony Barrand.

#Shannon #Bedlam Boys #prison ballads #folk #punk #Tom o' Bedlam #Boys of Bedlam #the ramblin' rover #a begging I will go

[unspokenmantra]

Norman Lindsay Tom O’ Bedlam, c. 1918

via Art Gallery X

#Norman Lindsay #Tom O’ Bedlam #1918 #art #artwork #companies #light #dark #the depths #mood #🖤

[mixamorphosis]

Blog post and linked up tracklist [HERE].

Kinder Scout - Interlude (Home Normal) Charles Bukowski - Go All The Way (Read by Tom O' Bedlam) David Cordero & Miguel Otero - Dolores (Archives) Slow Meadow - We Can Only Love Through Suffering (Hammock Music) Agnes Obel - Stretch Your Eyes (Ambient Acapella) (Late Night Tales) Endless Melancholy - Lost (Hidden Vibes) William Ryan Fritch - VII: In A Sense Of Ether (Lost Tribe Sound) Sven Laux & Daniela Orvin - A Moment Of Silence (Dronarivm) Luke Howard Trio - I Think It's Sinking In (Lukktone) Yumiko Morioka - Moon Road (Métron Records) Owl - Glimpse Of Decline (Silent Season) Steven Kemner - Sleep Well (Facture) Olga Wojciechowska - To Feel Much More Than Now (Self Released) Daniela Orvin - Sudden Farewell (Dronarivm) SiJ - Memories Lost In Time (Hidden Vibes) A Veil Of Water - Frailty (Hidden Vibes) Brambles - To Speak Of Solitude (Serein) Warmth - You're Not Here (Archives) Hania Rani - Today It Came (Gondwana Records) A Winged Victory For The Sullen - All Farewells Are Sudden (Erased Tapes) Walter D Wintle - State Of Mind (Read by Tom O' Bedlam) Adrian Lane - An Occasional Hushed Word (Preserved Sound)

Download available via [HEARTHIS].

#mixamorphosis #dj mix #soundcloud #ambient #music #downtempo #electronica #contemporary jazz #Kinder Scout #Charles Bukowski #Tom O' Bedlam #David Cordero #Miguel Otero #Slow Meadow #Agnes Obel #Endless Melancholy #William Ryan Fritch #Sven Laux #Daniela Orvin #Luke Howard Trio #Yumiko Morioka #Owl #Olga Wojciechowska #SiJ #A Veil Of Water #Brambles #Warmth #Hania Rani #A Winged Victory For The Sullen #Walter D Wintle

[theravenpiper]

The Best of Anonymous

This is the start of what has been called the greatest anonymous poem in the English language:

"From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend ye,

And the spirit that stands

By the naked man

In the Book of Moons, defend ye."

- Anonymous, "Tom o' Bedlam's Song"

#poetry #fantasy #Tom o' Bedlam's Song

[enchantedbook]

'Tom O' Bedlam 'by Norman Lindsay, c. 1918

#norman lindsay #art #illustration

[weantuniverse]

'Tom O' Bedlam' - Norman Lindsay, c. 1918 (via Facebook)

[victusinveritas]

'Tom O' Bedlam' - Norman Lindsay, c. 1918

#norman lindsay #tom o'bedlam #illustrations #folklore

[pricklylegs]

A lot of one's "Culture" is tied up in the food one eats.

Steak, for example. Nearly every culture has steak. Big prime cut slab of grilled meat. Roasted vegetables are another one, even if the meats and vegetables vary between geographies.

But you go to an "ethnic" restaurant? I've found that "ethnic" restaurants tend to serve dishes that are descended directly from what the POOR people ate. Because the rich folks walked off with all the steaks and the good veggies.

The chop suey in Chinese restaurants? Descended from "tsop sui" which, loosely translated," is "leftovers," or "odds and ends." I'm told it was served to the Chinese who built the railroads on the west coast by their wives and camp cooks. Odds and ends, whatever they could scrounge, cooked up and sauced over to make it palatable.

Cajun restaurants serve dishes descended from whatever the swamp folks could hunt, cultivate, or flat out FIND.

Damn near EVERYTHING at Taco Bell is descended from po-folks Mexican cooking, described in the words of Nanny Ogg as "whatever was left after the rich blokes walked off with the best parts of the cow." Or the chicken, or the fish or whatever. I mean, how else would a culture invent tamales?

I'll tell you: generations of grannies and moms and sisters working with whatever they had, figuring out what worked best, how to make it better, and adding new twists as they went along. Chinese, Mexican, Cajun, Italian, Greek, whatever. Grannies is grannies, and they will find a way, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum.

Started out as poor people food... and now it's restaurant fare.

And based on a cartoon I reposted earlier... I found myself wondering how, over the course of enough generations... grannies might somehow generate entirely new dishes and entrees... out of Government Commodity Food...

Can it be done? Don't underestimate the grannies, man. Credit to Tom O Bedlam

[danmjvandort]

[that-gay-jedi]

"Flaming Drake" by Qntal has been one of my favourite modern uses* of "Tom O' Bedlam" and/or "Mad Maudlin's Search" for a while but also drives me insane bc I think so many fuckin obikin thoughts every time I hear it nowadays. I picture a lot of it from the POV of Obi-Wan missing Anakin living in his depression cave becoming mad old hermit Kenobi. Just take a look at some of these:

By a knight of ghosts and shadows

I summoned am to tourney

Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end

Methinks it is no journey

TELL ME that wouldn't sound like Obi-Wan thinking about facing down Vader

I know more than Apollo

For oft when he lies sleeping

I see the stars at bloody wars

In the wounded welkin weeping

Insomniac, mad old Ben, who knows more than the sun god because he's up all night, seeing scenes from bloody star wars no one else is privy to?

* be warned if you're looking into other adaptations or the original text: the G-slur is used in two verses of the original, and a reference is made to Roma caricatures and stereotypes in one. They will not appear in this post, and are not used in "Flaming Drake"

The association has become so strong that I now also hear verses of the song that are not included in "Flaming Drake" through a vaderwan lens:

To find my Tom O' Bedlam

Ten thousand miles I'll travel

Mad Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes

For to save her shoes from gravel

Vader, hunting Obi-Wan at the expense of all else, chasing him painfully on cybernetic legs

And then that I'll be murdering

The Man in the Moon to a powder

His staff I'll break, his dog I'll shake

And there'll howl no demon louder

Honestly sounds a lot like how Vader probably thought finding Obi-Wan again would go

I now reprent that ever

Poor Tom I so disdain-ed

My wits are lost since him I crossed

Which makes me thus go chain-ed

Vader again. His regret for Mustafar, his loss of his former self which he conceives as a loss of sanity (another verse describes losing one's faculties as to "wander from yourselves with Tom"), his new life as Palpatine's invisibly chained attack dog

I slept not since the Conquest,

Till then I never waked,

Till the roguish boy of love where I lay

Me found and stript me naked

Obi-Wan not having slept since Mustafar, having been "asleep" to the darkness that lurked within Anakin until then.

#obikin #vaderwan #anakin skywalker #obi wan kenobi #darth vader #mad maudlin's search #tom o bedlam #this is exactly the kind of thing i mean when i say my brain smashes things together

[the-golden-ghost]

Tom for the ask game?

Tom o' Bedlam (King Lear) weirdly enough

And then I tried to think of another one and came up with Tom Kitten :)

#surprisingly few Toms in my mental space #I know there's actors and stuff named Tom but I don't watch movies so heck if I'd be able to name any

[wilheminalibrary]

11/29/2023

At the End of the Tunnel is More Tunnel: Week 3 of the November Writing Challenge

I was spending Thanksgiving last week with my family, and, for our last meal together, we went out to a Scandinavian restaurant. For immersive ambience, the TVs in the place played footage of trains going through the Icelandic countryside. For a significant portion of the meal the train was making its way through the inside of a mountain, rolling the frightening dark of a tunnel, lit by intermittent overhead track lights. When it finally cleared the tunnel, my mom and sister and I celebrated a return of the sky. Then, my mother gestured with her beer. “Oh look another tunnel.”

That’s what it’s felt like lately. I had a whole other blog post planned, but here we are. I won’t mince words with you all. I'm making an effort here to write with no filter, with no plan beyond a simple topic: Seasonal Affective Disorder is kicking my ass. I shouldn't be surprised, since it's managed to do this every year since I was a child, but here I am. Defenseless. Worse still is that the dark seems to know it. With each passing year the winters feel longer and meaner, their ribbons of ink-black shadows forming into teeth. I'm losing energy as the black bat of Winter bites through my neck and bleeds me out. Poems are coming slower, I'm behind on this putting this blog post up, and all my efforts have the distinct musical quality of mining from a tapped vein. This blog post is a full six days late due to Thanksgiving and travel stress, and the poems are actively clotting.

This is most often where I stumble during a writing challenge like this. It's the home stretch where everything kind of slows down, like I burned too much fuel on liftoff and, without the necessary momentum when I break orbit, I just drift off completely. I can feel myself drifting. But more than that, more than the work, I can feel my body retreating into itself, conserving itself, pulling away from socializing and other activities that restore me.

But we go on, don't we? We weather this for what it is: weather. It comes and bellows and roars and blows like the lowest moment of King Lear. It singes my white head, it drenches my steeples and drowns my cocks and all its germains spill at once. But I have my small shelter. I have my small fool. I have my Tom O' Bedlam. Let me introduce them.

One thing I've been doing with my dwindling energy is reading. When the writing won't come, there is always the looming stack of books I've yet to read. Currently, I'm chipping away at Robert Doran's translation of The Lives of Simeon Stylites a collection of three different accounts of the the early Christian mystic's life and ministry. The man lived most of his life, if the accounts are to be believed, atop a sixty foot tall pillar with no shelter or support. It comforts me the way faith and frenzy twirl around each other like a binary star. With distance they appear to be the same light winking in and out. For someone who loves body horror and the flesh and Christian aesthetics, why I had never thought to look into the saints is a cosmic oversight. It took my girlfriend (who has a fucking tattoo of Simeon) telling me about him for me to chase down the accounts. It's been soothing. Atop his pillar, performing his self-imposed penance for the sin of his existence, Simeon gave counsel, offered sermons, blessed crops and warded off savage animals with the help of his god. As I trudge through this last gasp of my self-imposed writing challenge, I can only hope to capture that same grace.

Too offset this onslaught of occasionally dry religious text, I've got a healthy arsenal of poetry to catch up on, beginning with Sean Patrick Mulroy's fearless collection Hated for the Gods. Equal parts a queer oral history and an intimate crawling tour of intimacy. Mulroy's work is a constant subversion of expectation. In deftly switching from the current to the primordial to more recent history, the book seems to assert that queerness and the rage that ripples off the page like heat waves are eternal. We have always been here. While still figuring out my gender and for my adolescence, I identified as a bisexual man, but quietly. While the mainstream perception of queer media is loud, brazen, and unapologetic, Mulroy's work leaves room for quieter moments and voices too. It's a fascinating book that demonstrates the depth and scope of a topic that a lot of culture tries to reduce to one note.

And, because I simply cannot be stopped, I'm reading Natalie Tatou's new collection S.M.D.H. Tatou writes like the the orderlies are on their way. Every story in the collection scrambles and scrapes together its contraband and crams them onto the page. Incest, violence, sexual taboos, and more all come to abject life in Tatou's writing, their radioactivity tempered by an attentive hunger to be understood. The book howls for connection and understanding, clawing at the my eyes so that I may better see its truths. I'm not very far into the book, weighed as it is against my mystic and Mulroy's poetry, but I can't help but feel grateful that such an electrifying book won't be over too quickly.

I'm still keeping more or less apace with my work, maybe a day or two behind at the time of writing, and I can feel the ugly dark behind me like a narcotic tentacle, but I'll do my best to finish what I've begun.

Until then, I'm reading. Until then, I'm writing. Until then, I am always doing my exhausted and darkening best. I can see the end of the tunnel…I can look forward to seeing the sky, at least until the next one.

Yours with an open mouth,

-B

#transgender #poetry #blog #nanowrimo #hoplessness

[talesofpassingtime]

You were born with the habit of consuming time. Be satisfied with that. Tom-o’-Bedlam had the only genius for consuming time: that is, to be utterly unaware of it.

— William Faulkner, Mosquitoes

#literature #booklr #fiction #reading