A Kiss from a Rose – Why the Rose is such a powerful symbol in the arts. By Sammie Venn.

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A Kiss from a Rose – Why the Rose is such a powerful symbol in the arts. By Sammie Venn.

Here at Jeeni.com we celebrate and support all musicians and performers, and poetry has its own dedicated channel for artists and performers to showcase their work and earn 100% of their sales, ticketing, merchandise and donations.

Last week Jeeni returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. We have been very encouraged with the positive response as we reached our target in just 6 days and now overfunding If you want to see our pitch click HERE.

Today we showcase Sammie Venn as a very talented and creative writer.

The Rose has long been considered a symbol of the divine feminine; when my daughter and I moved to our home in East Sussex a few years ago we bought a “Coeur Rose”, a “Love Rose”, in hope that it would manifest exactly that. Consequently it has never flowered when it should, in fact it has blossomed during the oddest of times, throughout harsh frosty winters as well as scorching hot summers. I even found two perfectly formed flowers one New Year’s eve under a dusting of snow. Suffice to say I see it as a strong and firmly rooted plant that can spring to life in the most adverse conditions, In Tarot a rose is seen as a symbol of balance, it expresses new beginnings, hope and promise. I see our magical plant as something that has stood the test of time. It is full of boundless wisdom and copious richness, whilst her petals answer my prayers the thorns protect the splendour it bestows.

So why is the rose such a powerful motif in the arts? It appears as a mark of love, beauty and virtue within every creative genre. It is a recurring theme in ancient literature and features in the greatest love poems of our time. Christina Rossetti, William Blake, J.B. Yeats, Dorothy Parker, Rumi, Charles Bukowski all herald the rose in their prose as nature’s metaphorical flower of Love. Roses have symbolised God at work, the scent has been aligned to that of an angel and the Virgin Mary has also been called the “mystic rose”, “the rose without thorns”. Clearly its power as a plant is multifarious, from religious connotations to passionate exchanges, sincere friendship and spiritual holiness, the rose can mirror any human sentiment.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans associated roses with Aphrodite and Venus, the Goddess of Love. However they have also been used to communicate messages without words. It is not just Love that the rose represents but also confidentiality. The Latin term “sub rosa” translates as “under the rose” referring to the notion that something is told in secret. When a confidential matter was debated behind closed doors in Rome, the wild flower was placed outside to indicate that a private matter was being discussed.

It is not just literature that celebrates the rose, singer-song writers have immortalised the exquisite flower in their lyrics for centuries. Without doubt it is an iconic plant and holds a plethora of meanings depending on its colour. A crimson flower is for lovers, it signifies enduring and life-long passion. The velvety petals of a lilac bloom represent enchantment and love at first sight. A white rose reflects humility and innocence whilst a yellow bud expresses friendship and joy. Stems with pink flowers can be given to express gratitude, appreciation and admiration whilst those with an orange hue can portray enthusiasm and desire. Every mortal emotion can be aligned to this beautiful woody perennial. There are over 300 species and tens of thousands of cultivars, whether they are trailing, climbing or standing tall as shrubs, the rose comes armed with prickles and thorns making them strangely more beautiful in many ways. Leigh Bardugo in “The Language of Thorns” wrote that “Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns”. This seems like a perfect metaphor for the life we live.

From Bette Midler to Janis Joplin, form Poison to Westlife, the rose has featured as a powerful overture in many songs and genres. It has been idolised for both its natural beauty as well as its harsher, darker side. Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” was released in 1994 and again in 1995 when it appeared in the film “Batman Forever”. 25 years later it’s still a song that sends shivers down my spine, I can even hear it loud and clear in my head as I’m writing this article. But it’s the lyrics of Bette Midler that resonate like a thunder bolt to the heart. Harmony is not always achieved when everyone sings the same note. It is what lies between these musical tones that produces accord. The rhythm and rhyme that they ensue creates a melody that dances to its own beat and this verse from Midler’s “The Rose” does exactly that. The lyrics are haunting, rich, joyful, romantic, wild and intoxicating, just like the rose itself.

“When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose”.

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10
Jun

The Death of Letitia

Jeeni has returned to Crowdcube to raise more funds for helping new talent. Jeeni founding director Mel Croucher says, “We’re ahead of our original schedule, but there’s still so much more to do. We need to scale our online platform globally now and build our mass artist showcases. Jeeni raised £100K in 6 days and we're working hard to get more investors on board. Then we can hit all our targets, and give our new artists the recognition they deserve.” If you want to see our pitch click HERE. Mel has been writing the best-loved column in top-selling tech magazines for over 30 years. Now he’s agreed to share his work with all our members. He’s a video games pioneer and musician, and to to find out more about Mel check out his Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Croucher. Here’s one of Mel’s latest! Black lives matter. Unless black lives feature in a videogame, in which case they don't matter a toss. I still remember the feeling of hope and despair when I played Daley Thompson's Decathlon for the first time. That was way back in the Olympic year of 1984, and it was a primitive sports simulation from Ocean software for a little home computer called the 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Daley Thompson was an Olympic gold medal winner from Notting Hill. He had a fine body, and a great moustache, and according to his skin he was the son of his assassinated Nigerian dad. Anyway, I fired up the game and there on my glowing colour monitor was the pixilated figure of Daley, the great black athlete, running along a red cinder track. The thing was, the programmers had made him white. No, I couldn't believe it either. A huge crowd of spectators also appeared in the gameplay, and every one of them was as white as a Ku Klux Klan convention in a chalk pit. It's not as if no black characters ever appeared in videogames. Almost all the assassins, hoodlums, terrorists, monsters and mobsters were black, and their purpose was to be killed off willy nilly. Apart from Michael Jackson. He was the hero in a Sega videogame called Moonwalker and his role was to rescue kidnapped children and take them home. So there was nothing creepy about that, was there. Mind you, wee Michael was mostly as white in the game as he was in real life. For a real black and white issue from the early twenty-first century, I have revisited Ethnic Cleansing, developed by Resistance Records for PC desktop machines. That's the one where the white player gets sent off on a quest to murder blacks. It is equal opportunity racism, because you also score points for killing Latinos and Jews. And speaking of equal opportunities let's hear it for the computer character Letitia who appears in an update of Deus Ex, which is set in a cyberpunk future. Letitia lives on a rubbish dump, she is as horny as she is simple, and she speaks minstrel drivel in the sort of deep-South accent last heard in a Mel Brooks parody. You couldn't make it up. Except that's exactly what they did. And shame on you Mary DeMarle for writing it, Amanda Strawn for acting it, and Square Enix for publishing it. In the USA, over 70% of all African Americans play video games, but they make up less than 3% of game developers, which tells me quite a lot about the state of the play over there. This side of the pond, things are much better, where we have over 10% of people working in game development of a BAME demographic. That's a higher percentage than their number in the national working population, and way higher than in UK publishing, tv and music. This is good news, but it's where the good news ends. Last time I visited a major gaming studio in pre-lockdown, I did see several black faces. One was on security at street level, one was behind the reception desk, two were behind the counter in the canteen, and one was swilling out the bogs. The number of black and minority ethnic decision-makers in the UK computer gaming industry is shockingly low. As a result, race has lagged way behind gender and sexuality when it comes to stereotypes in gaming. Mainstream game designers tend not to question a norm, and they rarely rock the boat by refusing to carry out a questionable storyboard handed down to them by predominantly white hands from above. Most game designers I come across have less creative imagination than Rufus my Irish Setter, not to mention a much poorer sense of loyalty and the inability to lick their own genitalia. Video games have always followed movies in characterisation, and they are painfully stiff with stereotypes. Historically, lazy, myopic creatives have allocated blacks four roles - the violent black, the servile black, the sidekick black and the comedy black. I am removing sports games and music games from my list, since they exhibit no imagination whatsoever, but simply copy real people from the real world, unless you happen to be Daley Thompson or Michael Jackson, of course. The blame for all this lies squarely with the course leaders who purport to teach video game creation in universities and colleges. I have never met a creative course leader who is darker skinned than me, and I'm a sort of mottled puce. They may well instruct their students to bung in a character of the negro persuasion as if to fill some sort of racial minority quota, a bit like when those tv adverts suddenly started to feature blacks doing non-traditional things. Like working in building societies, and driving new cars. The change is coming through the independent video game creators, the so-called home-brew developers, and the change had begun in the UK way before the Black Lives Matter movement gathered such momentum. Creative change always comes from the mavericks and rarely from the corporates. As for the people who play the games, next time you come across a racial stereotype you know what to do. Take a knee. To the groin of the writer, programmer and publisher. The Death of Letitia, from Deus Ex: Human Revolution Click HERE to visit or return to jeeni.com

22
Jun

Oasis Maybe at The Gaiety Southsea on South Parade Pier

COMPETITION TIME WIN FREE ACCESS FOR A GROUP OF 6 Oasis Maybe at The Gaiety Southsea on South Parade Pier Sunday 13th June 7pm - 11pm Oasis Maybe were formed in late 2013 in Birmingham by five close friends and fans of Oasis. Since forming they have become one of the most in demand Oasis tribute bands on the scene and boasting to be the only Oasis tribute band to have performed live with an original Oasis band member – Tony McCarroll. They attempt to capture the sound look and feel of the Band from the 1994-1997 era performing tracks from ‘Definitely Maybe’ and ‘What’s the Story Morning Glory’ with a few famous B-sides thrown in for good measure. GIVEAWAY! We have 3 x tables for 6 people to give away for free, for the Oasis Tribute band at South parade pier in the Gaiety on Sunday night from 7pm to 11pm again saving £60 per table. How to win: All you have to do is like and share this blog post and we will enter you into the draw to be announced Saturday Night 12 June 2021 at 8pm. Full Details of event can be found at: https://book.events/maybeoasis/2021-06-13/29861 #oasistribute #britpop #oasismaybe #pop #rock #livemusicinportsmouth #tonymccarroll

05
Jun

What can the music industry do to reduce its carbon footprint?

The carbon impact of all those gigs and gatherings is up for debate more now than ever, big acts such as ColdPlay and Massive Attack have cancelled gigs until they can measure the impact on the environment. But not all artists are in a financial position to cancel all their gigs and many artists rely on touring for an income. Let's be real most musicians and performers can not afford an environmental consciousness. Today on Radio 4 Tom Heap asks what the music industry can do to reduce its carbon footprint. Tom spoke to various different artists and also interviewed the founders of Music Declares Emergency - No Music On A Dead Planet https://www.musicdeclares.net/. The main three areas for discussion included the emissions for the band travelling, moving the equipment, the venue emissions and the impact of audiences travelling to and from the event. Having listened to the show I checked out Music Declares Emergency - No Music On A Dead Planet https://www.musicdeclares.net/ which advocates the following: We call on governments and media institutions to tell the truth about the climate and ecological emergency.We call on governments to act now to reverse biodiversity loss and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2030.We recognise that the emergency has arisen from global injustices and will work towards systemic change to protect life on Earth.We acknowledge the environmental impact of music industry practices and commit to taking urgent action. We have signed up and will follow Music Declares and are very interested in how our members can benefit, however the interview raised many contradictions and many of the suggestions for us were very weak and hypocritical. But it is very tough debate. We get that. To summaries the main suggestions in the interview with Tom included the following: Standard riders to not include plastic Not to allow single use plastics at events Always use renewable power sources when you can Event organizers to insist on recycling as a priority Working with responsible corporate partners Not to work with financial institutions that are not responsible Using LED lights to reduce energy use Put restrictions on touring, travelling and taking less equipment Use streaming media as an alternative to reach audiences Do not fly around the world to shoot gigs on environmental change Going on a bus rather than taking your own car Car share Put pressure on venues to be more environmentally friendly Getting rid of plastic CD cases Ecological packaging Environmental merchandise and use organic materials Higher train usage, go car free Ecological and renewable streaming and data storage Rent all the equipment at location and not travel with all the kit you need Do not produce and sell vinyls The largest omissions on carbon footprint is the audience travelling so a main argument from the artist is that they need to travel to the audience. Surely, the suggestions made in the interview is not enough and it will not deliver the outcomes to climate change that is needed, it is sycophantic and feeble for global change. In our view the recommendations and solutions suggested are not sustainable themselves. However, Music Declares Emergency have a great section on their website which is much more comprehensive and lists about actions for artists, songwriters, producers, a label, publisher, a venue, festival live music promoter, manager, agent and fan. So we are going to support them.

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