elsewhere mat james wrote:
Chelsea/~greg,
I noticed that the butcher ("butchery") enters Leonard's work once more in
Book of Mercy # 41
“...Bind me, ease of my heart, bind me to your love. Gentle things you return to me, and duties that are sweet. And you say, I am in this heart, I and my name are here. Everywhere the blades turn, in every thought the butchery, and it is raw where I wander;”
"And in the case of "The Butcher" Leonard was trying to work, or pray, his soul
up to where he could take over from his father, and carry out his last instructions
--"lead on, my son, it is your world" (now).” ~greg
Cate suggests (on the BOM thread above quoted) that the "you" could be Leonard himself. But If I read your thoughts correctly, then I think that you would suggest that "you" is his father, again.
Am I accurate here?
MatbbgmephistoJ
Dear Mephisto,
First of all, we must never again speak of Cate in this forum!
Not after her outrageously improper interpretation of "Light as the Breeze"
in terms of a term that can be dear only to herself, and perhaps to a small
number of similarly depraved lost souls not wanting to be found.
(That song is obviously innocent of her vile accusation!
It is clearly and simply about the pleasures of flying a kite
on the Nile delta, at "the cradle of the river and the seas",
near where Moses led the Jews out of sado-masochistic bondage in Egypt.)
Second of all, no one should ever take anything I say seriously.
The longer I live, the more mistakes I notice I have made, and
continue to make. It'd be no exaggeration to say that I have made
nothing but mistakes. And while others don't usually bring them
to my attention, I always eventually see them, and they keep
me in a constant state of cringing.
(In my defense, when I seem to be speaking authoritatively,
that's not the attitude I actually have. But I read once a certain
famous writer's description of how annoying he found a certain
bad writer to be on account of all his qualifications and
considerations of all possible exceptions which made
what he wrote well neigh impossible to read and respond to.
Or something like that. And I am quite serious about this.
I do do an enormous amount of hemming and hawing,
(or "doo doo",) but I do it implicitly, not explicitly, because
to do it
explicitly is
effeminate. And this attitude
is so much a part of me that I always forget that I do it.
And so it always comes as a real surprise to me when people apparently
hear and respond only to the 1/10th explicitly authoritative tone coming
from me from above the surface, and hear not the implicit 9/10ths of total
tentativeness that, purely for the sake of making a more
masculine read,
I had to deliberately drown out under foot below. (You see? There's a mistake
right there! I don't
actually walk on water! It just seems that way sometimes.))
~~~
It is possible that with the uncapitalized 'you' Leonard was referring to his father.
There might be no simpler way to interpret eg
...I am in this heart, I and my name are here.
...you hide me in the shelter of your name...
However, what I really think is:
asking who the 'you' refers to, -- himself, his father, God, or whoever, --
is the wrong question to ask. It's a question that can never be
answered in a satisfactory way because, at the level that Leonard Cohen
does introspection, they are really all the same thing. So that it's not
even right to say "all of them" because, again, they are exactly the same thing.
The following quote from Theodor Reik's "Listening with the Third Ear"
should make it clear why this is so. And I hope that everyone will read
it, because it is not a throw-away quote.
I have colored red his central assertion. And also what I consider to be his most
important point. It's important because, as he says, he said it in order "to avoid the
impression common among many analysts that the superego is
a factor that only criticizes, punishes, forbids."
I think that the concept of "superego" is neither particularly clear nor plausible
without that observation. Whereas with it, the concept is lucid and really inevitable.
from Listening with the Third Ear - by Theodor Reik, pgs 5-9
~~
Where is the transition from observation of others, as we see it in children, to self-observation?
There must be an intermediary phase which has been neglected. Here it is: The child realizes
at a certain age that it is an object of observation on the part of its parents or nurses. Stated
otherwise, the I can observe the Me because They—-She or He—
once observed the Me. The attention the persons of his environment paid to the child
will be continued by the attention that the child pays to itself. Self-observation thus originates
in the awareness of being observed. The intermediary stage between the observation of others
and self-observation is thus the realization that one is observed by others.
Where the personality is split, as in certain psychotic diseases, self-observation is again
transformed into hallucinations of being permanently observed by others. In another form
the phenomenon of depersonalization, in which the person complains that he does not feel
but only observes himself, reinforces this point. A man gives a speech and suddenly becomes
aware of peculiarities in his voice, of certain gestures that he makes, of some personal
ways of expressing himself. This awareness is not independent of the fact that he sees
or senses the impression his speaking or the content of his speech makes upon his audience.
We have a good expression for this kind of recognition. The speaker becomes self-conscious.
One does not become self-conscious only in the presence of others, although that is usually
the case. The occurrence of this reaction when one is alone is much more rare, and of a
secondary character.
I repeat, self-observation is not a primary phenomenon. It must be traced back to being observed.
One part of the self observes another part. I assume that differences in the kind and intensity
of this observation may be significant for the future psychological interests of the individual.
A little girl I know asked her mother, "Why do you always smile when a lady in Central Park
smiles at me?" The child had observed that her mother smiled at another woman who looked
with pleasure at the pretty little girl. Such a case shows not so much self-observation as
observation of others who react to one's self. By primitive observation the child learns early
in life to interpret the reactions of his parents or nurses as expressions of approval or disapproval,
of pleasure or annoyance. Being observed and later on observing oneself will never lose
its connection with this feeling of criticism. Psychology teaches us again and again that
self-observation leads to self-criticism, and we have all had opportunity to re-examine
this experience. Add that self-observation is from its inception a result of self-criticism.
This self-criticism continues the critical attitude of mother, father, or nurse. They are
incorporated into the self—become introjected. Introjection, or absorption of another
person into oneself, is an indispensable precondition for the possibility of self-observation.
Without it a child cannot transform the feeling of being observed into self-observation.
The process describes a circle: attention directed to external world and others; awareness
of being observed, often criticized; incorporation of the observing or critical persons into oneself;
self-observation. We know that many psychologists have wondered—some did not even wonder
-—about the possibility that the I can observe the Me. We see now who this observant
and observing I is. It is the object taken into oneself, the mother, the nurse who observed
the child. The split, which enables one to observe oneself, comes about through the introjection
of the supervising person into oneself. We make one part of the self the supervisor of the other part.
The observant I is a survival of the observing mother or father.
We are reminded at this point of the genesis of religious belief in the omniscience of God,
the belief that God sees everything. A little girl was very indignant when she heard this
and said, "But that is very indecent of God."
Freud once remarked that the introspective perception of one's own instinctual impulses finally
results in inhibition of these tendencies. We would like to add that such self-observation of one's
tendencies is already the result of a previous inhibition. If there were no memory-traces that
persons in the child's environment reacted with disapproval or annoyance, with withdrawal
of affection, to certain instinctual expressions, no self-observation would develop.
Let us return to our speaker. When he becomes self-conscious, and if this feeling reaches a certain
intensity, he becomes embarrassed. He begins to stammer, to hesitate, to make slips of the tongue,
to grow uncertain. That would be the result of the impression he gets that his speech is not being
received with approval, but is being met with negative criticism. To become self-conscious means
to become conscious of the negative attitude of others, to realize or to anticipate that the others
are critical of one.
Psychology makes the presence of two persons necessary—even if it is introspection done by
a researcher in a lonely study. There is always a second person there who observes the Me.
We know this person was originally the father (or mother) who now continues his existence within us.
The seer of oneself has an overseer; he who has received a vision of himself has taken on a supervisor.
Psychoanalysis has given a name to this invisible superintendent of the self; it calls him the superego.
We thought we were masters in our own household until Freud discovered this inspecting and introspective
factor, the superego—the image of the father incorporated, taken into the self as a part of it. The superego
is also the second person present in self-observation.
I want to avoid the impression common among many analysts that the superego is a factor
that only criticizes, punishes, forbids. If this part of ourselves, this concealed roomer in our
psychical household, is a survival of the father and mother of our early childhood, he cannot
have only these functions. We learn in psychoanalytic practice that the superego can have
pity on the individual, and we call this experience self-pity. It is really nothing but the unconscious
idea: If mother or father could see me in this misery she or he would feel sorry for me.
The superego can smile, console, and seem to say, "Take it easy; it isn't half as bad as you think it is."
We call it humor. We even know situations in which the superego forgives the person who is aware
of his misdeeds or sinfulness, and we call this self-forgiveness. Religion calls it grace that descends
upon the worshipper. In many cases where we use words with "self" (like "self-confidence"),
"self" refers to the part of the person which is the representative of the father within him.
Without knowing it, we mean the superego.
The ego is primarily an organ of perception directed toward the outside world. It is unable to
observe the self. The superego is the first representative of the inner world. It is the silent
guide in the subterranean realm of our psychical life. Psychology started with the supervision
of emotional processes by this superintendent, this proxy-parent within us. It was this factor
which examined what took place in our thought and emotional life. Its attention and vigilance
were directed to those tendencies and impulses that were socially disapproved. It would criticize,
condemn, suppress, and finally repress them.
The first discoveries in the field of psychology were made in the service of those suppressing powers.
The origin of psychology can be easily recognized in our psychological descriptions and judgments.
Language has immortalized this origin. How do we characterize or describe a person? We say,
for instance, that he is stubborn or avaricious or pedantic or kind or friendly. Does not the voice
of the superego sound in such psychological descriptions? We want to observe and describe
without preconceived ideas, but our miserably poor language forces us to put an undertone
of approval or disapproval into scientific statements. Psychology was for a long time in bondage
to moralistic and religious conceptions, and the superego is a witness to this servitude to ideas
foreign to the spirit of research. The superego knows more about what takes place in the human
mind than the other parts of the ego, exactly as worldly-wise, clever priests often know more
about people than people know about themselves.
...
~~
ps:
I am sparing 'you' ( me, you, God, etc) my essay on the trinities
("Father Son Holy-Ghost", "Osiris Isis Horus", "Hecate Demeter Persephone",
"Brahma Vishnu Shiva", "etc etc etc". ---I assume that everyone here can name
a dozen of these things.).
All the trinities have mystery cults associated with them in which the parts
are mystically identified with each other (--they are 3, and yet they are 1.)
Which, superficially, is what I am saying about the identification of LC with his father and God.
However, after thinking about this for awhile, I have decided that the drive
to mystically identify the parts of the trinities with each other does not
derive from the same elementary structure of the human psyche that
accounts for LC's ambiguous use of "you".
The trinities derive from concepts of the atomic family (father mother child)
and the basic temporal life-link (3 successive generations,)
(all mixed up of course with the Neolithic planting and harvesting sciences.)
And it is really the clear and ever present dependence of our human existence
on the continuity of these things that drives us to mystically equate the parts.
In fact, the secret behind all the mystery cults is
monotheism,
- the unity of the noumenon behind the phenomena.
We feel that by forcing this
unity in our imaginations,
(mystically regarding different things as really being the same thing)
we can force the
continuity that we require for our survival.
(The chain can't be broken --if it's got no parts to separate.)
So you can be thankful that I didn't go into that.
~~~
pps:
The song "Everybody's Child" had me baffled, and still does.
I probably heard its lyrics wrongly in more ways than Jack knows how to treat a cat.
How did I get "I remember Lilly Pons / Singing Hey Lisbon"
from "I remember the promise/ That you made in the barn " ?
For the longest time I thought that "Blessed is the memory / Of everybody's child"
referred to either a wayward hippy girl child (as in
"One of sixteen vestal virgins / Who were leaving for the coast")
or to a kidnapped child.
But then, while jogging and listening to it on my muvu, it suddenly came to me
that for every one who has had a child, there is a memory of
them implanted
in that child. And that to bless that memory, amounts to a blessing on the parent.
Even the worst parents and caretakers had to have done at least enough
that the child
survived. And most do better. But even when that's not the case,
children always, instinctively, bless their parents anyway. Even when they have to kill them.
Hence -
....You draw me back to close my eyes,
to bless your name in speechlessness.
Blessed are you in the smallness of your whispering.
Blessed are you who speaks to the unworthy.
~~~~
ppps:
(There're still several problems with "Everybody's child",
---as was mentioned in one of its threads
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9174&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
--- particularly whether the variable X in the lines
but you lost X in your freedom
and you need him now you're wild
has the value -him- or -them- or -'em-.
When you listen to the song without thinking about it,
then you'll definitely hear it one way or the other.
But then when you listen closely, on repeat loop,
it becomes impossible to be certain.
Even the "him" in the second line becomes uncertain.
)