From Bitterness To Gratitude

[Dream Warrior]

Well, I just had my long message vapourize before posting, so starting over. Maybe, I'll be more succinct as a result (damn!)

First, kudos and a personal thank you to Mirka for her generosity. It is a valuable reminder, perhaps even a lesson, about the innate goodness we all carry inside us. Your open-heartedness lifted my spirits. Merci, Mirka.

Second, kudos to hesperides23 for being a man of integrity and sharing his gratitude with the forum. It took fortitude and strength to be so open and allow the rest of us to particpate in the moment's joyfulness. I can relate to your hardship. All artists struggle. The image of spoiled brat artists with silver spoons is one of the great fallacies of our age. The spreading of this message in the mass marketplace is an injustice perpetrated by the money making moguls who reap the real profits of creative output. The only greater disservice they do artists is to keep them in a state of perpetual empoverishment. Even those artists who seem to be doing well are not doing as well as the public is led to believe. And those who are allowed to ride the 'gravy train' are a miniscule portion of those many others who toil at their craft in obscurity, and like hesperides23, even finance their efforts without any hope or expectation of renumeration.

Third, kudos to Jarkko and his intrepid moderators who do such a fine job of maintaining this forum and enabling the rest of us to celebrate the genius of Monsieur Cohen. Many message boards deteriorate into recriminations, bile, and flame wars. It is wonderful to particpate in one which manages to stay relatively free of such excess. While it has veered dangerously close to the 'dark side' on occasion, Jarkko and his crew have brilliantly guided the discussions and helped us to step away from the precipice of any such juevenile nonsense.

Muchos gracias.

Liam

[imaginary friend]

Eloquently stated, Dream Warrior!

[micropup2008]

For all in the Oakland area who haven't noticed, they have scheduled a 3rd concert for April 15, fan club tickets go on sale tomorrow.

[hesperides23]

This is a dream I had last night...

I am in a theater to see a concert by Leonard Cohen. I'm seated in the front row, far right in the next to the last seat from the end of the row. The house lights go down and a man comes out to introduce the performers... or does he? For some reason I'm not sure now, I can remember a previous and perhaps related dream about a young woman singer-songwriter named Jean Kinsey (?), who is something like Marissa Nadler (if you know her music) or a Canadian Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Jean's name has an English and a French-Canadian pronunciation... In any case, the band members come out in silence and stand at their stations. The stage protrudes out so that at the left and right ends of the stage there are corners, like a table, so there are sides to the stage that go back about twelve feet. There is a kind of partition along the edge of the stage behind which the band members stand, evenly spaced, each man/woman with a sort of (Tibetan?) bowl with a lit candle or flame inside in front of him/her, each at his/her own podium, sort of. I think of these as 'prayer stations' or something such as that. (When I wake and recall the dream, it occurs to me that the arrangement of human figures along the edge of the stage is similar to and evocative of the way the nine Seekers and the Master line up along the top of a Mayan pyramid, naked and standing along the edge and silhouetted against the sky, in the Alejandro Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain, near the conclusion of the film). The audience is silent in hushed in reverent expectation. Leonard Cohen walks out or appears out of nowhere and walks across the stage to greet and embrace each musician individually. The crowd is still silent. He comes over to just a few feet in front of where I am standing now (we are all standing now, as though it were a courtroom and the judge had made his entry), and he smiles and gently takes the hand of a woman and embraces her. This woman is one among a coterie of tour or management associates who are grouped at the right end of the stage, directly in front of me. There is a small, sort of disfigured and wizened man (almost a homunculus?) in a baggy elegant suit and a hat (he appears to have a similar physical condition to Stephen Hawkings, that kind of premature aged look, I don't remember the name of the degenerative disease). Leonard picks this little guy up by the shoulders and raises him in the air above his head, beaming a smile of love, and pulls the man to his chest in an embrace as though the man was his child. I am still standing there, not more than six feet away, watching this scene. There is definitely something Christlike about it all. My heart is beating expectantly. I am wondering if Leonard will make eye contact with me, and if he will take my hand, half wanting him to, and half afraid.

Then, I awoke.